I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.

it's embarrassing but it's true.
i just googled "how to fall in love".
and i googled "how to fall in love" because i am not in love right now and i really, really want to be.
my google searchings were inconclusive and i am just as unsatisfied
mind, body, and spirit
as i was when i started typing "h" into the search bar
there is nothing in my heart right now.
my mother knocked and no one was home.
it makes me anxious:
how did i go from someone so overwhelmed by the enormity and ever-presence of her emotions
to someone so void of them that i feel an echo in my chest when someone says my name?
i've also googled sociopathy,
but apparently i'm not one of those.
so here i am, somewhere on a sliding scale
between all or nothing.
and i report from the field that it is not, in fact, all or nothing.
i know i'm not alone out here,
but it sure does feel like it,
when i reach out and even shadows don't reach back.
it's not like i've already accepted dying alone but it's not looking likely that i'll be marrying my college sweetheart, either.
i just want my feelings back.
is there a link to that in the first page of google results?
i'll even pay for shipping, i guess.

you don't understand how long some people have been here
you don't understand the changes we've seen
you don't understand how much we've longed for the people to
be who they be
you don't understand how it breaks our hearts
to see such infighting
bought to our world from other pages
used to back biting
you don't understand, for us
that have believed from the start
that Hello Poetry was once a place
where we always laid our heart
we gave over our life to this place
we endured every change
when you see something different here
know we have suffered more than this strange
once upon a time
in an awesome time and place
when people googled
Poetry
they found this space
they found inspiration
they found laughter that never ends
they found confidantes and a place
to plant
a never ending garden of friends
So if you're from another site
drawn here by the skin of tooth
sit a while in our midnight garden
and I'll speak to you a truth

Hello Poetry has been my best friend
for over 5 years, and all the friends
I've found on here, they've danced beneath my laugh, and held onto me so tight
that if I ever fall so wrong, they'll make
it all right

And that's the saddest thing
about Hello Poetry today...
is that most don't try
to make true friends
really real friends
or interact with them
in any meaningful way

Today I googled your name
I know it’s pathetic
But it’s just me
And you
Together

Today I googled your name
And found that photograph
I know it’s pathetic
But that’s just me
With you

Today I googled your name
And found out I still love you
But that’s just me
Too late for you.
Pathetic...

GOOGLE’S LOVE ADVICE
© Louis Brown

His relationship with girls was somewhat awful
He'd used less than brilliance in that world
So he searched the internet for wisdom he could get
To get some ***** kisses from the girls

Folks told him Google had a lot of answers
And he learned a lot by reading Romeo
And since he studied Hindu, they like what he is into
He's popular with all the girls he knows

IT JUST TOOK SOME GOOGLE’S LOVE ADVICE
NOW IN HIS ARMS THEY WANT HIS LOVING THRICE
AND OLE GOOGLE TAUGHT HIM PLOYS
PUTTING SHAME TO ALL THE BOYS
IT JUST TOOK SOME GOOGLE’S LOVE ADVICE

He found they wanted more than pretty roses
And though some sweet perfume may change their mood
The **** tips He googled means overtures by the oodles
The girls all want a piece of this young dude

So now his black book's full of pretty girls
And they call him well before he starts his day
Every time he learns new angles they love to get entangled
Learning those love lessons from Bombay.


CHORUS

Bridge:  Old Google taught him every new approach
                             Now when it comes to romance he's the coach……..

CHORUS

Rexie was his name,
I met him on my tumblr page.
He's similar to Ana,
but different in a mental way.
I never worried 'bout my weight,
but still he got ahold of me.
He whispered to me "start counting your calories."
I'd eat less and less,
I loved the feeling that came with it.
I googled 'side effects of starving yourself.'
Euphoria.
That's what came up,
I ignored hair loss, osteoporosis, death.
It's like a drug, that's what he said,
Thats how the addiction began.
Always tired,
Brain rewired,
Kilos dropping,
There's no stopping.
Now the vision of the scale plummeting makes me feel something.
Rexie's always gonna be with me,
Maybe soon I'll realise
His goal is to ****** me.
Until then,
I can say,
Rexie is my best friend.

-T

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 9, 2015)

The tendency to forget information that can be found readily online by using Internet search engines.


This information is the result of my searches on Google this morning:

• “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Online this quote is widely attributed to Albert Einstein.

• “[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” This was Einstein in response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test. (Wikiquote)

• Many people wear the same clothes every day. In Einstein’s case this was a grey suit--the reason being that our thinking time is wasted making irrelevant wardrobe decisions. I also re-read the Henry David Thoreau quote about life being frittered away by detail. But when considering what is being frittered, you could add the mind, the spirit, time itself. This idea was part of Thoreau’s “simplicity, simplicity” quote which I once bought as a magnet from the museum at Walden Pond in the fall of 2001. I didn’t remember that date. I just googled a story about the trip, (www.apeculture.com/travel/boston.htm). In any case, I felt the magnet was being ironic. Like Einstein, President Barack Obama wears the same variation of two suits every day in order to “pare down decisions.” Apple genius Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day as does Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. (Elite Daily: elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-thing-every-day/849141/)

• Google is creating personalities for androids, personalities that will live in the cloud and can be swapped into robots. I plan to forget this information because it’s creepy and like Ripley in the movie Alien, I’m suspicious of androids unless they are like Lance Henriksen in the movie Aliens in which case I would probably buy that personality for my robot if I had one.

• I also found out today that Google's images section, (which I use religiously when blogging), was created due to Jennifer Lopez’s green floral Versace dress, the one that opened like a surgical split to her navel, the one that caused such a kerfuffle when she wore it to the 2000 Grammy Awards and everyone searched Google fruitlessly for it afterwards. I’ve forgotten about that dress because I hated it. It looked like a Miami house-robe for one thing and I don’t like any couture that structurally hangs off *****.

• Google also announced a new patent today for a warning system that protects you from pop culture spoilers on Internet pages. If you think about it, this warning system will protect you from Google itself. Sometimes a little information ruins everything.

• I found all of this Google news on Google News.

• You can find more Einstein quotes here:  brightdrops.com/albert-einstein-quotes, one particular quote informs me that creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

• D’oh!

• Which is a word I have always remembered because the great poet Homer said it.

You ******, exotic,
Beautiful creature.

I could not be more intrigued by you.

I drove,
46 miles,
just to meet you,
you screamed at me for being late.
I wasn't.
I just live farther from your perspective than you can imagine.

I saw your face,
then I saw your eagerness,
Then I played this game,
Where I googled every word you said,
became an expert on it.
Throwing back refferences to things
i've never seen.

When I rolled in with my cigarette lit,
Sporting my badboy leather jacket,
you asumed I was this rebel.
This dangerous,
adventurous,
amazing creature.
Dropped onto this earth to entertain you.

Today.
That's exactlly what I am.

I'm 46 miles away from my home town.

My foam swords,
magic the gathering cards,
Dungeon and dragons playing self
Packaged tightly in the lockbox at my bedroom door.

The daddy, I became years ago
because I wanted too.

The lover I was raised to be,
watching nothing but romantic comedies my entire childhood
like some sort of propaganda to be the perfect boyfriend.
Tucked crisply into my bed.

My smolder is a gas mask.
you are the poison gas.
It was invented specifically for me to survive when I'm in the trenches with you.
My attitude is an army.
I hold myself like a commander shouting orders at my mind like it needs a leader.

“Stop calling her beautiful, maggot! She wants you to take charge.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

...So uh...
What do you wanna do today?

“What do you think you're doing?
Don't give her options!
Tell her where you're going!”

“Sir, yes, sir”

We're getting coffee.

We go to her favorite coffee house, I guessed.

She gets a nutella mocha.

I get a 16oz almond milk maple syrup latte

She calls me a hipster,
I laugh, I don't disagree.

I give her the radio,
“You pick the music”

“What do you think you're doing maggot!?”

“trust me,
we need to find out what music she likes before I play my music.
It's very important.”

I can pull brilliance out of any genre,
bands she's never heard of, but she'll fall in love with.
She plays show tunes.

Oh...

... Jackpot!

I start the conversation, you ever heard of Rocky Horror?

You ever hear of
Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog?

You ever hear of
Little Shop of Horrors?

You ever hear of
Repo, The Genetic Opera?

You ever hear of
Hedwig and The Angry Inch?

She has.
All of it.
Every last word.
And she knows all of the words.
In fact,
every song I sing,
she sings along.
Word for word.

I  crack the whip,

you ever heard of Bo Burnham?

She has.

This girl might be the one.

“What do you think you're doing maggot?
Don't fall in love with this girl already,
Don't fall in love with this girl at all.”

“Sir, yes, sir”

We walk the beach,
Singing,
Dancing.
Every word of every song either of us start the other knows all the words.
She's breathtaking.
I can't believe it happened myself.
We chase each other in the sand.

I confess.

“You're actually the first person i've seen in real life from tinder...
I hear all these stories of couples meeting people for threesomes online and then murdering them.
I was half expecting you to **** me.”

She says:

“Well we didn't get to the end of the beach yet.”

I laugh.... wait... is she serious?

She laughs. “No really, i'm a sociopath.
My boyfriends waiting at the rocks down there and when we
Start to **** he's gonna jump out and slit your throat.
The redness of your blood spilling on the rocks is going to make me so,
*******,
Wet.”

This sounds like a great Idea.

She texts her boyfriend and asks if it's okay to kiss me.
When he doesn't reply she spams him.

Babe.

Babe.

C'mon Babe.

Really, Babe.

Babe.

Babe.

Babe.

It starts to rain,
We stay and get soaked together,
We don't care that we're wet, we keep singing.
The rain stops.
We get in my car.
I drive her to portland,
We park in the parking garage,
because i don't understand...
Signs...

I buy her dinner,

Not because it's the polite, gentlemanly thing to do,
I'd do that without the leather jacket, no.
because her sugar was low
she was having a panic attack
her boyfriend and her were probably breaking up and I felt bad.
Her boyfriend finally texts her back.

“Yeah, do what you want.”

I kiss her.

She asked me too before he gave permission, and my colonel said to do it

But I've been on the otherside of that text messege.

And even knowing what she wanted, I was waiting for that reply.
I don't know that boy.

But he deserved that

We go back to the parking garage, and she does not waste time,
My belt undone,
Her mouth eager,
Did I mention that this was the mission?
After awhile She asks to go to the back.
We do.
She removes the leather jacket.
this is her chance to wear
The leather jacket.
I make her ***,
I have this brief thought that maybe she faked it for me, but then
I can taste the truth,
I'm proud.


“Good job, maggot.”

“Sir, thank you, sir”


I drive the 46 miles back to kennebunk to drop her off.
She keeps my shirt.
I get home and find her phone charger in my backseat.
“Looks like we have a second date,"

I text her. “you forgot something, beautiful.
And I think you might want it.”

If I think harder do I burn more calories

Does being hot or cold burn more calories

Silent night time exercise

how many calories in
           lexapro
           ibuprofen
           air
           saliva

how many calories did Auschwitz prisoners eat

is diy liposuction possible

what body parts can you live without

could they have poured calories in this water

how to give myself the flu

can thinking about food make you fat

how much does a finger weigh

"Zara, have you ever felt tired?"

My heart clenches and I jokingly respond

"Of my 'dumbness' yeah"

"lol but no"

typing...

I know that isn't what you mean.
Don't take this the wrong way, but
I've gathered enough information about you secondhandedly.
I'm quite aware of your state of mind, and you are not okay.
Still, I am taken off guard that you're exposing this to me.
Because you've never shown me your weaknesses.
So much so that I seem to have forgotten what I heard.
But you tell me nothing, giving me no more to ponder.
The conversation swings, but I still feel uneasy,
I've gone through this before. This is only beginning stage.
You're carefully introducing me to your horrors.
The third conversation of it's kind for me.
The third conversation to leave me speechless.

How do you comfort a depressed person?
My Google history shows only this question.

The process is the same each time,
First page, second page, third page.
I've been scrolling blindly through, searchingly, Desperately, Till my sympathy feels shrunken.
Because there are only so many times that I can say, "I'm sorry,"
For a situation I only wished to control.
Sincerely, I empathize with you.
'It will get better one day'
I've typed in the letters to this five word sentence
Five times this morning. 'Keep your chin up.'
My fingers are not lying, but they don't feel authentic.
Not when my eyes are sore from staring at Google's homepage. 'You'll make it through this.'
I've varied in saying this ten times this week.

Please someone tell me,

How do you comfort a depressed person?
My Google history shows only this question

I check daily for new suggestions,
Refresh, refresh, nothing, refresh again.
Because there are only so many times
that those crafted words could hold meaning.
I utter them again, *'It will get better one day.'
Making it six times for the morning.
And I hope it will, I'm not saying this weightlessly.
Even though researched, these are my only responses
to your cry for help.
Because when you show me signs if indirect defeat,
And the Googled suggestions stand still, I become silent.
I have nothing to say, clueless as to what to do.
So I end up muttering meaningless sentences
That I know cause neither harm nor good.
Short senseless sentences that I can only hope will distract you, Confuse you till I collect my gathered sources of ease.

How do you comfort a depressed person?
My Google history shows only this question

Because I become muted without it. My words choke me.
I'm worried that I would cause your fragile wings
To wither even further. Like I have to the others,
Who settled on my fingers before you.
I'm sorry that I haven't got much to offer you,
But I'm used to making everything into a joke, laughing foolishly.
I do this to comfort myself. However most times,
I'm caught holding my hands together, whispering
To my lord, pleading in his divine perfect presence
But,
How do you comfort a depressed person,
When they don't believe in God?
Still I pray, and jokingly ask that his science
Brings him relief.

But you, you pray with me, and I'm unaware of methods To comfort you that you haven't already failed at.
I have so many strung up words that are familiar to you,
But I can't speak them, you've told me nothing yet.
I myself can relate, but Google is opened up again.
I have no first hand knowledge of your mental strength.
You laugh as I do,

"I'll message you later love. My parents are fighting"

A piece of you unfolds and reveals itself  to me boldly.
I don't know what to say.

"I'm running away"

But unlike with me, To you, your issues aren't funny.

My Googled message doesn't reach you.
"Keep your chin up," I said at your little revelation
Because it's easier for me than organizing the words in my chest.
"His mother is abusive."
"His father is absent."
"He stays in school so late because he doesn't want to go home."
"He lived on the street for some time."

Jokingly you'd say that your eating a tomato a day, kept the doctor away,
But the humour doesn't reach your eyes, it never does.
However, you leave it at that. You only reveal to me so much. I know it's coming, so I prepare myself,
Once again refresh.

Please someone tell me,

How do you comfort a depressed person,
When Google's suggestions are no longer working?

"Zara have you ever felt tired?"

"Of what?"

**"living"

I googled the word entertain, realised my mistake,
made a decision to walk in wisdom and be kept safe,
refusing to entertain fear; choosing to entertain faith.


entertain - ɛntəˈteɪn/ verb:

1. provide (someone) with amusement or enjoyment.

2. Give attention or consideration to (an idea or feeling).

To: consider, give think about, contemplate, give thought to, bear in mind;

Antonym: REJECT!



                                                **© Qwey.ku

I just realized,
I have a painting of
A pineapple
In my room
Made by
Yours truly

I have a pineapple
Hat bought on a whim
At Walmart
Last year

I have a newly bought
Pineapple
Backpack
Because of
The sheer
Randomness

I nearly googled pineapple
I used to watch Sponge Bob
(For those of you who don’t know, he lives in a pineapple)
...
...
...
I don’t even eat pineapples that much
...
...
What’s going on?
...
I think multiple
Sets of coincidences
Became a serious
Thing
..
.
..
But I don’t have a pineapple obsession!
.........
......
...
Do I?

Here are the names of my lovers,
The women I sleep with, whom
I use, like they use me.
Spent, they discard me, for when their pleasure needs
Satiated, they climb aboard another man.

What they do not know,
Is that in my mind, in my ears,
everywhere,
I did not let them, or you go,
We are still romping,
For I
Take them as needed.

I need them all,
For my pleasure needs, like my unshaped heart,
Addictive, endless.

If your is name is here, I do not
Apologize.

Pink
Adele
Lilly Allen
Anna Nalick
Bess Rogers
Beyonce
Brandi Carlisle
Cat Power
Colbie Callait
Duffy
Eva Cassidy
Evanescence
Alison Sudol
Fiona Apple
Florence Welch
Grace Potter
Ingrid Michaelson
You
Joni Mitchell
K.D. Lang
Kate Nash
Kate Voegele
Leona Lewis
Lizz Wright
Madeline Peyroux
Marie Digby
Mary Wells
Norah Jones
Regina Spektor
Sara Bareilles
You
Sara Haze
Taylor Swift and Tracy Chapman
Tristan Prettyman
Vanessa Carlton

So many others, used so long ago, I can't remember the faces,
Which can't be googled.

Use them hard, use them often, more than daily.
Bluntly, I tell you
Your name is on my list,
Even if I do not disclose it.

Don’t know how it started,
or if it’ll ever end,
some call it Samsara,
others call it trends,

watched a video on YouTube,
Mac Miller in bed with Ariana Grande,
Mac died last week from an OD/suicide,
after Ariana got engaged to another man,

then I Googled this,
“**** photos of Ariana Grande”,
what’s the matter with me why does everything lead,
to having my thing in my hand,

swear to God YouTube is the Devil,
got me to watch screens,
used to have more freedom,
because I didn’t own a TV,

but laptops just made it all too easy,
now I barely go out,
and when I do it’s usually just for food,
then it’s back to my bed or my couch,

laid up like I’m ill,
typing on my MacBook like an addict,
I mean how do you think I wrote this poem,
I wrote it by typing on my MacBook like an addict,

and I don’t know how it started,
or if it’ll ever end,
some call it Samsara,
others call it trends…

∆ LaLux ∆

I have this vintage dress
it's green
Silk
Gorgeous
every six months I try it on
every six months it doesn't fit
this time
it fit my waist
but I couldn't fit my arms into it
I tried so hard I ripped it
You must be thinking
Just buy a new dress
But to buy a new dress is to admit I am me
Not the skinny thing I long to be
To buy a new dress
Is admitting they were right
That he was right
That I am just going to be fat and alone forever
so now my focus
is on making my arms slim
arm fat exercises
googled and practiced
I'm going to fit into that dress
even if it kills me
you can bury me in it
I'll be the thinnest prettiest corpse you've ever seen

A list of words I cannot ever say
But I will have to say them every day
I am supposed to practice saying ice
Ice with spice and six o’clock
I will lie and say I did it all
But they all know my tongue will always fall

I googled it to find out what I do
My speech impediment is sadly true
I haven’t done anything about it since
My speech therapist gave me the final mint
I hated it, and it was all suppressed
But now I tell it, I always confess

I wonder if I do it without thought
Am I saying it right or am I not
And no one ever says a thing to me
(Except the boy I crushed on, that one week)
I don’t know if it changes who I am
But I’d still be better off talking like a normal man

It’s something that a lot of people have
But the harsher term makes me inexplicably glad
“Speech impediment”, now I’m special too
Deviancy just like my missing tooth

I always sing even though it sounds weird
Sometimes I avoid the words I’ve always feared
Not “just” the “sea” but “change”, “commotion” too
Especially when I read I’m conscious of how my tongue moves.
Not just that, but I spit and stutter
All my “spreading” is full of clutter
The judge says “Clear”, I have to try
But I could lose the debate, and feel like dying

I know I should grow out of it as a child
But habits stick after so many miles
Along with my disproportionately small hands
And legs and everything that makes me feel like no man’s land
Between a kid and the way I should be
At the age of seventeen
I wish it didn’t change who I am
(Is it just another reason I can't find a...)

When at first it happens I want none of it. I even say no. I discard the plane tickets, the train stamps, the envelopes of money into a safety deposit box some train station off The Embarcadero and just head East. It frightens me, I'm horrified. The potency is developing in my inner organs, I can't cough right, sleep right, I just suffer and complain. Instead of doing things differently, they've made it so you can soak right in. Just strand yourself on the side of the roadway and they've got rules for you too. The sounds are torturous, the rooms are empty, and the men grow complacent and empty. Nothing is as serious as this. Four years ago a car, three years ago a plane, now I just shuffle and complain. I search for a key to my happiness. I look for it in desktop monitors, caramel apple lollipops, new cashmere vanilla candles, consuming six or more bottles of water a day, E-Cigarettes even, even those, I use apple juice, lychee nectar, mango sorbet, and chocolate fudge sundaes. I'm 40 up on the 140 I went down with. All the miles I'd walked in a firm step, a fever, a bag full of cheap wine for a man that works the car park. 43rd between 8th and 9th. Every thing is bright lights and theater nights. More pacing, there is gum stuck to every square of sidewalk, men and women wheel around a block away selling discount drugs in the streets and outside the Subway on 44th, in the Chinese food mart on 7th. They blow blow blow in their little plastic straw tubes and for $12 a drop they ask you to reach your hands inside their pockets, "take what you like and leave the rest. No one remembers it like this, the girls laugh practically upside down, they wear sky-blue light dyed denim overalls, covering all the parts of their shoulders but exposing their ****, they have plastic bags in their boots, and cute bobby bobbing hair cuts like water crest shoots exploding in lime juice. They pace too, but their legs are shorter, their conversations longer, the horns in their heads grow slowly out from midnight. The devil put the hate on them too.

Even the children are bigoted in this bicentennial. The ******'s nook is no longer the sewing shop in the corner of the strip mall up by Deerbrook Mall. I haven't seen a fountain with change in it since the 80's. The newest thing I heard about imaginations are that, "They come out the first and last Wednesday of the month, you gotta check with Game Stop if you want to pre-order the right ones." I think we must be on number 18 by now. There were four of us riding shotgun in the boxcar up to the valley last month, now they don't even run the trains anymore. One third of everything left to go.

I'm growing quiet; if they can't tell it's not my job to teach them. If they can't spell, I ain't gotta word to word combat that's going to come down on 'em. My brain is so uptight I can't sleep before sundown or sunrise. I see legs and oil futures with every blink. I listen to the old phone messages constantly. I make up stories to go with the missed calls. Still I hope everything will work out okay, because nothing is as serious as this. It makes me sick. It makes the guy undo itself with a brass nail, the blood unclogged from the rash from last month, I find out I'm toxic to poisons, and then I'm told that they're a prescription for that too. It wasn't a ******* rumor. The time to back up or move is now. A idle figure in an orange shirt, a tapestry that moves with every hallucination, forty, fifty, sixty hours I've never slept. I may have been years. My stomach is rusting from water with nowhere to go. I feel sick. I feel woozy, but I don't believe in feelings. I sit upright because I'm uptight, I turn my head around and look over my shoulder. But I know that any friend that's worth looking at me wouldn't arouse my spirit at this hour. There is a net that they speak of when everything's gone. It's the madness that transforms nothingness when the devil's around. Whole empires are crashing. Whole bottom drawers of unworn clothing, tagged and abetted stuffed into black crape garbage bags and drove off into the moonlight. I'm sweating and soporific, living half by half two in and two out, if I had the chance I'd try to remember just which way I get out. When I check on the rumors, when I say my goodbye, I know that I'm the only one sitting in this room of cocksure spirit animals and half-plastic book casings, and that no one whispers and no one cries, not even the bereft can produce a lullaby. I am dying to figure out how to move voicemails from iPhones to iTunes, I googled it while sitting down in the city last night. Poor service. 10 months. Not even one blame the famous few.

After tired comes guilty, after guilty the shame, after that apathy, after that I'm awake. I've never been good at being better than me. But those voicemails, I want them somewhere permanently.

florence white or better known as mumma rose gets captured in ron’s psych ward



after losing her mate harold stone  in 2011, florence ‘mumma rose’ white started

to show the screws that she is a changed woman but she can’t resist, escaping from the secure

psychiatric unit and then started to search the web to find tasha andrews, so she can have

ella white, who is the chosen one, but this time mumma rose was determined to win, and

mumma rose decided to bring her commune to the web and she would trick everyone who

looks like they can help her into joining the computer generation, which was the name of her

new commune, and florence wanted to find tasha and ells, and she would do anything to get

help to find them.

ron was searching the web and wrote on google after having problems with the web and

‘what is wrong with the computer generation, and surprise surprise, he came across mumma rose’s

website, but it was secure, because florence didn’t want no irene roberts to stop her plan, but

ron was unsure about whether this was a lead, so he searched for any way of finding a date of when

this website was found, but he couldn’t find it, but ron forwarded the websie over to the police and

then ron was called in, with the police saying, where did you find this site and ron said, i was searching

for something i like and i then accidentally googled what is wrong with the computer generation and

this was on the top, and the police said, yeah well, this site was built in 2012 in the hope of capturing

tasha and ella once more, and it looks like she is off her medication as well.


ron left the police station and went to his usual place and there was one of mumma rose’s computer generation

buddy’s having a cup of coffee and a cake, and he said, my friend mumma rose wants me to bring ella white home to her

after that evil tasha andrews and irene roberts took her away from her, and ron said, listen, do you know where she lives

and mumma rose’s buddy said nothing, not even his name because he can’t see the evil in mumma rose but ron wanted

to trial a new medication on her because the one she was on wasn’t working and the man said, why the **** are you doctors

trying to shove good people on drugs, and she is a good person, you know who the real villain is.    it is that evil irene roberts and

tasha andrews, or she wants is to have her baby brought back to her.

ron said, she has manipulated so many people, and she is dangerous and the man said, ‘dangerous’  a wild dog can be dangerous

a tiger can be dangerous.  better still a knife reeling bandit is dangerous, but mumma rose is ever so gentle, and the computer generation

are protecting her from you quacks and cops.

ron sat there and took a photo of the guy with his phone and sent it to the police and then went to his HDU and the inmates were getting restless

and charlie chaplin said did you hear the news, they caught mumma rose, and she should be back in her psych ward soon and ron

said, when did this happen and before he can say anything else, mumma rose was walking into his HDU, and florence said, hi, my name is

florence white, and i was arrested for having a website, just imagination in this day and age, getting arrested for having a website.

ron asked mumma rose, you were a NSW lady, what brings you here, and mumma rose said, i had a sure plan to get my daughter back

from those evil so called family people irene roberts and tasha andrews, i was ready to pounce till i got a visit from the police, and ron asked her

did you have a lead, and mumma rose said yeah, there was this little 9 year old girl really got hooked on this website and i thought, ella, this is ella

i know it, she is my daughter who has been taken away by irene and tasha and i am ever so determined to reach out, and when the police came

i lost all hope of ever seeing her again, so are you happy mr ron cooper, and mumma rose added i am not taking any medication, because there is

nothing wrong with me, give tasha and irene medication and send them in here, and let me go, i have my new found friends to look after

and ron said, ‘NO’, you are staying here and while you have still got thoughts in harming that child, you will stay here as i prescribe largactil to you

with a dash of serenace and mumma rose walked away saying, i am not participating in any childish games until i get out of here, i will take your

wonder drug, to get me better so i can be with my daughter again and ron bought out the lunches and mumma rose had nothing and charlie said

eat this, it’s great and mumma rose said, if i wasn’t missing my daughter, i would punch you and patty roe went up to florence and said i am

george washington and florence said ‘SHUT UP’, and went over to the television yelling at every word said on the television, and that meant a

lot of yelling and ron tried to settle her down and brought her medication to her, and mumma rose said, my daughter is out there with evil

and ron bought out the sandwiches as well as the rest of the medications and mumma rose went up to charlie chaplin and grabbed him

and said to ron, i will **** him if you go home now, ron said, no you haven’t got any weapons so ron went home, but when ron went home,

mumma rose continued with her threat to **** someone and she killed george washington, saying go back to the USA in a coffin and the nursing

staff rang ron up and ron came straight away and went into mumma rose’s room and said, you ain’t going to see your daughter if you **** everyone

in here, ok and after yelling at florence ron went to his office and put a do not disturb sign on his door while mumma rose was pumped full of drugs/

Hello
this is a short message
written this Sunday morning
on March the first

the rain keeps coming from the west
non-stop for two days
risk of flooding
government says.

I miss you - had another dream
driving in sunshine.
It's the sun I miss
mostly - and then of course
there is your friendship
to treasure and to hold.

I hope you're having fun
on your quad.
They say four wheels
are better than two
I'm not so sure
how could you
have Zen and the art of
quad biking -
impossible?

I see you have given in
to peer pressure or whatever
and made your modest entry
in the ******* book
I had a quick look.
It looks
OK.

Now I suppose Twitter
and MySpace
where you can compose
even wittier
sayings.

You're a true master
of Wisdom
with a capital W
But it is not that
you struggle to say something
wise
it comes spontaneously
best when blurted out
immediate response
like:
"they throw babies in dumpsters
in your country too, Janet?"

She'd never forgotten it
as it
was such a strange and powerful thing to say

by the way
I googled your name
and you have loads of coverage
mostly under AHEC and Best.

This is just a few short lines
to say you are on my mind
and in my heart
as always
yours
me.

Spent my hard earned money buying stuff I seen on commercials
with two singers claiming all they use was the stuff I bought to fix faces.
Both them women got to be telling fibs if they said a little bit of
skin fixer works good did not work and used full bottle and nothing.
I googled them womens pictures and seen how they faces look bad
and messed up and both got blotchy skin and look real tired in pictures.
Seen all them commercials with them woman I am talking about
saying all they used was that stuff but saying did not work on me.
I would be fibbing if I posted I thought those women are pretty
in google search pictures of them without tons of makeup I see on their faces.
No make up do make them look like not so good as women called plain Jane.
Simple telling when women ain't plenty made up or they not wearing skin fixer
when they got them dark circles and darker spots like some pictures I seen when I google.
We got a few women looking very pretty cause they got that natural beauty.
I not grandma old but I got crows feet and cracking lines on my face.
I been trying making up my face with gobs of crap and went to expert at store
where rich folks shop and I know I did not look good like she lied to me
telling me I looked good but that mirror in that store showed me truth.
No more making up this face cause I was born to be what I am not pretty.

today I did not think about him
It is the first time in an entire year that I haven't
I don't realize this until tomorrow
but it is an accomplishment nonetheless

today I went to lunch, did laundry, drove to the gym
I didn't see his shadow in my rear view mirror
It is the first time during a commute where I don't feel the overwhelming urge to pull over
often the speed of the traffic mixed with the acceleration of my thoughts guides me to the side of the road
anxiety blowing loudly through the vents into my open mouth until I am too tired to focus-
today is the first time that didn't happen

last week I googled "therapists near me"
I settled on a woman with a nice smile and a specialty for trauma
This is the first time I find myself familiar with that word
almost comfortable like a distant family member I am just now recognizing
trauma is something with one definition but too many faces
for the past eight months I have been wearing his

on monday I spend an hour in the office of a stranger
she asks me why I'm here and I respond with I don't know but
my answer is as dishonest as my avoidance is expanding
she asks me how I am and I almost forget that I didn't come all this way to say fine
for a moment I almost forget that I am not.

I tell her about him without trying
I don't say his name
or the details I remember with more clarity each day that goes by
she says memories are really only what we remember each time we remember them
I think it's funny how I remember more every time I do
how sometimes laying in bed becomes catalyst to chest pain
I can still feel him kneeling on top of mine
pressing body into cracked ribs into spit on my neck
I can hear his humming of a song they play too often on the radio
there is no trigger warning for the reminders life has to offer
I find them everywhere without trying

she understands as much as I want her to
she says it's really about power
I say I know
she asks if I feel like I lost some kind of control
I say yes
I don't tell her that I have spent countless hours trying to find it
in bodies that aren't my own
digging nails into muscle and mattress trying to pull out some semblance of who I used to be
For too long I have covered up with a bandage
I am just now ripping it off for the first time
this pain is a sort of cleansing
I took three showers after he left but it is only today that I feel his remnants washed off my skin
I can't help but wonder if this is what Pinocchio felt the first time he was honest with his demons

today I did not think about him
yesterday I did not think about him
the day before I only thought about myself and pizza and myself again
there is very real possibility that my mind could figure out a way to bring back the unwanted
that tomorrow could be another way to remember
but today I didn't
I went to lunch, did laundry, drove to the gym
I made it home without incident
not perfect,
but it is an accomplishment
nonetheless

I pick up this book of Robert Burns poems
As my great-grandfather picked it up a hundred years ago
I put it down in exasperation
As I guess he put it down

Promising himself
As I promise myself
To give that sentimental Scot
(getting teary-eyed over a mouse)
One more chance maybe

1912
2012

The numbers swirl
As numbers can do

And I find myself
Talking to this man I never met

At a loss for small talk I just say,
“Hey, did you know I googled your surname and my middle name
And our roots are in the Isle of Wight.”

He smirked
Then took me out to his front yard
(If they had front yards back then)
Pressed his hand in the soil
Grabbed something
Hefted it
Pulled on it
And said to me,
“They’re in Texas now.”

these are not monsters. there are no monsters here.
these feel like love, and when they enter you
they feel like something that was once missing is finally home.
how could monsters make such pretty girls?
such pretty girls,
such pretty skinny girls,
they look like the most glamorous parts of life. like everything
that is wonderful about being alive,
like diet cokes
and pictures of hip bones on a sunny, sandy day at the beach
here i am and all i’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails
and these not monsters
can make you beautiful too.

you’ll learn to make jokes about why you’re cutting
the banana you brought for lunch
(and breakfast, and dinner)
into thirty-five pieces.
bringing the tiny pieces to your mouth from
folded napkin with exquisite fingers
to tentative tongue
and when the jokes become too unmanageable,
and taste too much like sustenance,
like letting go, like pleasure,
learn to put a stand hold to lunch,
forget what it means and
by the end of your senior year
you’ll know every spot in that school of yours
where no one will ask where your peers are
and why you look so tired,
and so sad


the not monsters
will tell you all their secrets.
you’ll learn that toothpick thin bones, when crushed
into ashes and stirred into
the twenty, thirty, forty glasses of water you planned on drinking today
taste like sweet, sweet lemonade
and you can drink it
for only the cost of the rest of your waking life spent praising
the feeling of emptiness
looking up number after number
and dead girl after number
you, too, can spend the rest
of your day smelling of what
you just had to flush down the
bathroom toilet.

go, they will tell you,
boney shaking hands, bottle cap wrists
make sure to memorize menus and all the lies you will have to tell
spend hours at the grocery store obsessing and counting
fifty
one hundred
two hundred
no more than three, of course
or else your thighs begin to blow up like the balloons
from all the parties you could never go to
you will learn to avoid celebration
because celebration means food
cake, chips, soda, foods you simply cannot consume
you will spend christmas day
dreaming about burying
your dissolving teeth into your knuckles and biting at your shirt
until your heart stops.

the not monsters
will feed you your first cigarette
and your second, and your tenth.
they will leave your once healthy and shiny hair
in a clump
on your pillowcase, just for you.
in your friends hand, while being braided.

and when your body gets too frail,
it starts to fall apart,
but where sick breaks skin
flowers will grow.
an entire garden will rise and grow
itself from your empty, malnourished stomach
rippling out your mouth and you’ll choke on the flowers
but you’ll be joyous
because at least you’re not consuming calories.
you’ll disintegrate
until you cannot be seen differently
from all the skeletons that are currently
living in your closet
don’t you just wish you could shrink
don’t you wish you could have that control
don’t you just wish you could make nobody know about this
because they just don't get why you’d do this
you don’t get why you’d do this
you’re so so smart but you just googled
how many calories are in mouth wash
the pretty girls
pretty skinny girls
pretty dying girls
pretty dead girls
the parasite can be restrained but it cannot not destroyed.
but it does not even matter.
it’s a beautiful thing to be made of porcelain. to be fragile. delicate. beautiful.
the picture of your hip bones at the beach was worth it.

This poem based on a joke on eggs (!) is dedicated to Timothy, a fellow-poet here at HP….I  was reminded of that joke about eggs  by Timothy’s comment on my recent poem: “Corax versus Tisias”.  
Timothy:  “This is great, Raj, another humourous poem with a good meaning, if you are an Egg or a Crow, lol! Keep them coming!!!!~<3<3:):)☺♂♀♥♠♣♦◘☻◙•○.O♫” …
Well, here’s another humorous poem, Timothy – and dedicated to you…



Dad, the Kid, and the Girl Next Door

(1)
“Dad,”* says 6-year-old Tim
back from the neighbour’s
“Sandra next door and I’ve decided
to get married”

Dad laughs…What do these kids know? he thinks…
I’ll humour him, just kid along
with this precocious child of mine


(2)
“But you’re too young, Tim,”
says Dad

“That’s OK,” says Tim
“Sandra doesn’t mind I’m a year
younger than she”


“Oh,” says Dad
“but marriage is such
a huge responsibility”

“Yeah,” says Tim quick and sharp
“Haven’t you seen my school reports?
Teacher always says I’m hugely responsible;
it’s the same on Sandra’s card”


Dad’s smile weakens
“Well, what will the two of you
do for money?”

“Oh, we’ve worked that one out
We get $20 a week in pocket money
between us and we reckon we’ll take
on extra jobs:
I can mow our lawn;
and she’ll wash dishes at her home
Beside we’ll save a lot of money
since we don’t at all eat out
and lodging is free -
a week here and the next at Sandra’s”


(3)
Now Dad has lost his smile
These kids have thought of everything,
he thinks.  I’ve got to do better –
come up with an objection that’ll  strike fear


“Have you thought, Tim,” says wise old Dad
“about babies? Married people make babies –
what you going to do about that?”

“Simple,” says Tim the kid, cool and unperturbed
“We’ve googled all that:
Every time Sandra lays an egg
I’ll crush it under foot!”

Dad sighs with relief…

So, this is what I get for liking you on Facebook
and following you on Twitter.  No wonder
we're not Linkdin or Googled plussed.

It isn't the right word.
But I just can't find the one that will fit
to describe me.

I thought it might be right
until I googled it...
"A shy person"
does not begin to describe me.

I'm not angry at it,
my shyness,
but it frustrates me so much every day.
I sit inside my own head
Screaming!

Screaming at myself,
Screaming out what I just want to say
But
I
Can't!

Screaming at my head to think,
think of something,
anything!
My mind is full of thoughts
but I'm stuck sitting with my best friend
in silence,
my thoughts pounding
against my skull
but not one breaks free.

I don't know the word to say
to sum that up.
Maybe there isn't one
because it is only me trapped in my thoughts
wanting to break out,
wanting to speak out.
Maybe that's why it's so frustrating.

I feel alone inside myself
and I just want to get out.

I have a friend with the same name as a poet on here so when I googled his name I found this site.
I write poetry so I made an account.
I posted some poems and met a nice poet, who told me I should put up a picture of myself so I did.
Me and that poet became distant friends.
I posted some more poems and liked some from a different poet (you).
You read my inspirational bands/singers list and liked some of them.
You said the reason you sent me a message was because you liked my profile picture and the inspirations list.
Those are all of the major things that lead up to us meeting...
and I wish that none of them had ever occurred...

Specialism, electro mechanical circuits,

moving parts yet move, you see, but when we read we bring our senses
inside
privacy can become a public mind, if one is connected, in a giving way,
taking thought,
as the original medium we found message in,
thought takes form
in words,
words take form in things. Right. Check.

Blake feared the objective world was being walled in,
and all the people screamed, amen.
Again

Build the wall, from icons demoted to mites of no more
weight than a tinker's think,
phe-nomenal noment-ation, if we may

Hot and cool both bubbled up as burps, perhaps from the babes
booming through the lies told before the great war.

No future? You allow that thought in your culture?
And shame and blame?
No wonder you choose to lie.

Bear with me a while, share my load, it's light.
There is a hopeful object,
we can go easy into that good night,
the world is round.

Free from Ra and Isis and all, in one fell sweep of the besom.
Broom, besom, means broom, but the effect of an e,

e-lectrix

you give us the fire we'll give em hell  a game ad in the middle of the massage
Call of duty, black ops.
they
You use you eyes to see, it's a with-spiracy,

a hair of the dog that bit you. Eh?
live in bonanza land, 1965.

and so it goes, Dresden, every minute of every day

the walls of your home are coming down,

unless you were born with a cell phone in your father's pocket.

Privacy is calling for walls from the fenced in time after Bonanza.

Ah, too late, ours is an all new world of all at onceness, a global village, happening simultaneous.
extreme with everybody else's business, huge in
volvement in every body's business

we know too much to be strangers
walls fall down, not go up,
the wallbuilding never workded, did it Grandpa?

Nineteenth century student could believe
the factory system
would use the knowledge, hard-won
from books and chalkboards,
to keep him outa the mine.

Now, the information age,

are we the leisure class? Ever learning,
never knowing everything,

but knowing walls and wars do not perform as advertised.

The safety car, that was one with seat belts, 1965.
Our body percept, it changes,
this image of which you are un
aware.

The disconnected minded man, alienated
artist living edgewise to
cattywompus.

My life is my art, eh, not the other way.
Global village information age McLuhan named these things
from Canada.
More expert than my teacher,
Pop art is not a pun, it was a bubble,
that's a fact. The-joke-with-no-story-line-conundrums,
elephant jokes, blonde jokes

Those tests, Turing would approve,
any old A.I. can play chess,
just remember every response to every move ever made in any game in the system,
like the amygdala, your lizard thought-speed brain,
at the top of your spine.

But humans can make funny seem.

Humor comes from a world of un happiness and gripes,
Jose Jimenez was the example they made. Racist, right?
The guy was a jew.
William Szathmary, Googled it.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Dana>

Communicating with the logo-label-designer you wear,
messaging the world what? Exactly,
any un thought thought goes unsaid,

but T-shirts and body art, henna's the best,
those send a message with no thought whatsoever.
Same as Redcoats in bearskin hats, what's being said,
same as the judge with a wig?

What is the role?
Why the ongoing act?
It must have changed into that wigged judge from something.

Theater of everywhere, accept allatonce, or die asking y not.

Inward directed seeking
deep meaning
a role that changes

some outside
the future of the future started, a while back. not too far.

No inevitability.
An act of high poetry

envisioning,
the future was friendly

metaphysical value, brilliant, incomprehensible
a man, a thinker,
storytellers the experts say,
need some mud behind 'em. and some snow.

a mother never satisfied with her life,
brittley self confident,

the whole approach to knowing is old.
Diogenes's search for a good poem, with
shifting levels of imagery,
never shall you know,

they work
the way a word works,
the effect.
effect. fect from Latin facere,
sistere mechanically deus
The oracle of the information age
Ah,whatvoiceisheardaroundtheworld,
oh,mine.2018 Mr. McLuhan,
you'd likely lighten up a little.
Toejammspredder was mcluhan I heard on the grapevine.

Hey, mom, I'm on TV.
Up to doctrine, then destination syndrome a hopebubble

He had brain surgery and returned to Catholicism, a safe place.
But he left his vision to television's offspring.
That's about all I know of his work.

Tick Tock Lane
A sign that caused my head to crane

In time my wonder got to me
So Googled what there was to see

And so I saw to my horror
The story of Elmer the clock maker

He killed his wife
And did some time
Then married again
Those wedding bells chimed

In two years time Elmer's no more
Two men came shooting
New wife and Elmer

His wife survives
She testifies
"This is for Ma" is what I heard...
Tick Tock Tick Tock
Was time finally served

in their disguised self-centered ways, the faithful are obsessed with going to Heaven and staying away from Hell


1
all the faithful,
these holy believers,
they all fear this address:
No.1 HELL, OUTSIDE UNIVERSE,
POSTAL CODE: 0001
all the faithful
want to avoid this place like, well, hell!


the non-believers just take it easy;
they have no such obsessions


all the faithful, the holy believers
they all aspire to this place:
ONLY 1, HEAVEN, DIVINE UNIVERSE,
POSTAL CODE: 0001
they all try and get there
and with their narrow True Only One Way
they think they'd get there anyway
easy as if you'd googled for Heaven


the non-believers just take it easy;
they have no such obsessions



2

and well, if the faithful are always imagining what God sanctions
and says, I don't see why their opposites can't also imagine what this Grand Supposition says



and in their aspirations,
to reach
ONLY 1, HEAVEN, DIVINE UNIVERSE,
POSTAL CODE: 0001
the faithful
***** the planet earth
with all their doctrines
and their aggression
and their violence
and their narrowness and bigotry
and their holiness and their obsessions
and creating constant divisions
and so I can sympathize
with their supposed God becoming sane
and thus declaring to the faithful:
Oh no, I'm not letting you ******* in
as surely you'll make a Hell of Heaven;
I'd rather let in the non-believers here anytime
at least they don't have your hang-ups and perversions





conclusion

well, the poor faithful then, the holy faithful wholly excluded, they'll have to content themselves with Googling for Heaven, and viewing the streets of Heaven on Google Maps of the Divine World

Am I someones "one that got away"?
Do I keep them awake at night,
with regrets that thing's weren't different,
that they'd not given up the fight?

Is there someone there that thinks of me,
on those damp depressing days,
that makes them smile out the window,
chasing their blahs away?

Do they search for me on Facebook,
have they Googled me at all?
Do they see me here with nothing,
or do they think I have it all?

I guess for sure I'll never know,
if they don't or if they do.
Kinda makes you wonder though,
does someone do that for you?

My happiness comes from me ask my friends and the world around me blossoming in a spark of crimsony red moon glow on forethought walks through the shivering lenses of percept that trickle down our backs as we enlighten ourselves with all that is in between and unseen.

It is as if our aged limbs were caressed into a symphony of leverages and their shapes. We cannot be cadavers. We are arms of cheer and picture jasper, adolescent googled-eyes gathers with virile fixations on our partners as we prey on the map lines subtly employing our eyes as we dart across each dimple, pimple, freckle, and gently worn rash lines.

These are the dogs of our incessant barking. Idling for sincerity, as actors swiftly press Winter into us while our limbless diction presents our inadequacy Rd upon our ugly and I'll-tempered neighborly-things. Aliens of the afternoon, first floor agony and karmas standard for living in a reduced climate One.

Wearing down the hooves, undulates from Pepperdine mark trails with breaking breads and twigs and bones. Undulates from another world, behoofed and bemoved, curdling their sappy reselling a of drat and unkindly remarks. And we have begun to wonder when evolution will kick-in. When will the military come for them at the doors and vacate is all from our nontoxic lie-shrouded apartment complexes, condos, and cabins. Slaughter numbers of letters and integers right out in the street; loonies in the town square and the moose are crying.

She doesn't think
I'm much of a guy...
I meant much of
An interesting guy.
I did say "interesting" before...
Didn't I?

Why?
Why does it matter?
Oh I love her I think...
We will go well together,
Like bread and jam
wait.. a better rhyme...
Like bread and "butter".

I must tell you...
The amount of efforts I make!
Even wrote her a poem to which
She said "For God's sake!
We are not in 19th century. Get new..."
It made me feel like leftover cake.

"Swag", she said
Something you lack ***;
I opened net and googled it
After our short conversation.
The guys must do this and that
Looking at it I went into depression!
(Have you seen the latest trends?
I'm soooo far behind. oh good heaven!)

Back home I sunk in my sofa low
I was ****** exhausted,
Nothing I did pleased her
Didn't get her one bit excited;
She wanted someone bad and strong
And all she got was a guy *******.

Why is it that...
Her crush drinks a bottle of whiskey down,
In one gulp and calls her cutie pie.
And I can't even pull off a leather jacket,
I'm just a ******* teetotaler orange juice guy.
In this world full of jibber-jabber,
I look at her as if She's my only high!

Okay!
So I'll love her silently and pray,
Like how Earth keeps Moon
Neither too close nor far away;
A miracle is all I hope for
(like the guy she loves shifting to Burma)
Then she'll have no other way!

I know...
I'm not a bad boy!
Why o God you've made me this nice?!
She loves to play with fire and you've
And you've...
Made my heart outta ice!

White maze for the middle classes,
collect your museum passes at the door,
please
continue through into exhibitions,
photo pictures of art you won’t remember the name of
but because you’re educated you’ll hope to retain its
name, medium, date and frame size of,
and equate them with those pieces you Googled before you came.

Through the double doors
her cries walked down the corridors
whilst cradled in his hands, cradled carefully,
he stood upright in boots on the
newly polished granite, shipped-in, floor.

The art gallery Father and Daughter
are the hidden display
only found in writing in the pamphlet
for today. Some will see them
through cuts in the door,
others may hear them but assume
it’s ambient art-gallery-played-through-speakers
sound coming from the back room.

I swear to every heaven imagined
If I hear one more teenager say "art is dead."
I personally will raise William Shakespeare from the grave so he can tell them a million reasons why he wished he could have had a gmail account.
The night I tried to teach my mother how to send pictures through text message
She sent me eleven texts of the same blurry photo of our family's black labrador.
Don't you dare try to tell me you can't find something beautiful in that.
But whatever, stay in your close minded, backwards, noninclusive club.
The rest of us will keep falling in love over Skype.
Write your protest letters to the packaging companies of children's toys
We're all going to watch the first sunrise of the year
So we can remember what a hopeful beginning feels like
When it feels like we're close to a hopeless end.
Lock yourself away like Marie Antoinette
While we all eat cake and tweet about its delicious flavors.
Hashtag stop living in your own pretentious world.
Vincent Van Gogh would have take 20 pictures a day and posted them all on instagram.
Sylvia Plath would have texted her lovers heart eyed emojis when she ran out of words.
Andy Warhol would have had the worlds weirdest vine account.
But that okay because we all would have checked it every morning
As we snapchatted pictures of our coffee orders to the people we wish were pressed against our lips instead of that first sip of latte.
This world is spilling over with 85 year olds rewatchibg their favorite musical numbers from my fair lady,
And eight year olds teaching themselves how to play ukuele, all through YouTube videos.
I never have to worry about forgetting what my mothers voice sounds like.
No longer must we sneak into our families phone books to look up the suicide prevention hotline for our best friend.
I'll never wonder how a German person says Guatentaug
Or how butterflies procreate.
Yeah I've googled both of those things,
Don't worry about it.
I'm going to take pictures on my phone of a field filled with dandelions next to the public park
And you will walk by and scoff
As I so expect you to do
But I can only hope one day you realise
How fortunate you are to live in a time
Where at any moment you can Google how to say I love you in one hundred and ten different languages.
J'taime
Te amo
Art is not dead
You are just not looking for it.

Romeo, oh Romeo
Wherefore art thou Romeo?
I friended you on Facebook an hour ago
and I saw you tweeted recently, so...

Romeo, oh Romeo
I can see you're location with these iPhone apps
And I e-mailed thee this route from Yahoo maps
so you should of been here, but perhaps...

Romeo, oh Romeo
I stare at your picture in utter torment
because you deleted my Myspace comment
I know! I'll text bomb your phone 'till ye repent!

Romeo, oh Romeo
They say stalkers should feel ashame'
Thy parents say I only have myself to blame
I say deny thy father, and...(oooh, I just Googled thy name)