The stars align on the dark canvas of the night
The paths draw a line on the edge of the window ledge
Time and it's constancy is a delusional illusion
Hash, hash sleep
Count the stars undone
Greet the moon in lunacy
Hash, hash sleep

my mother has blue eyes
but I'm still a ******
my mother has blonde hair
but I'm still a ******
my daddy is black as night
but I'm still a *******
my daddy has ***** curls
but I'm still a *******

I call this hash tag the struggle
because to be biracial is nothing
more
because to be biracial is nothing
less
than a struggle
to find who I am
to find who I should be
to find who I'm supposed to be

i really wish they were the same person
i really wish you understood hash tag the struggle
but you don't
and you won't

so stop telling me about my
good hair
and stop telling about my high
yellow skin
and stop telling me my parents have the fever
and stop staring at me when I
walk in
and stop trying to guess which parent is black
and stop trying to guess which parent is spanish

No

I'm not Spanish.

No

I don't speak Spanish.

No

You CANNOT touch my hair

Yes, my nose is in the air
Of course I think I'm the ****
Because I live my life trying to be better than women who are dark skinned ...with something I was born with
...out of my control
Of course I try to flaunt my plush lips around the white girls who get botox
who then become the have nots because I've stolen all the brothas hearts from the city and the boondocks

See you don't even know me
but you think these are my goals

see I call this hash tag the struggle because nobody understands the trouble in being whole
when you're given two halves
that don't match to patch up one soul
and you're born into a ****** up mess still expected to know

and they tell you to ignore them all
be yourself
race should not define you
but I can't even fill out two ******* boxes on a standardized test
because you are only allowed to check ONE to describe you

hash tag
**TheStruggle

I've borne the heavy load.
I've worked all the day.
Got two children at the house to feed.
Husband's gone away.

I've a bunion on my toe,
But I've got a corn pad.
With a smile upon my face,
Swear, it don't hurt so bad.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky!
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.

My fingers gnarl and seize,
The handle's hard to grip.
I hope the boss don't send me home.
The kids have a field trip.

When the kids get on the bus
To travel out of town,
I might take a few days off
To lay my tired head down.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky.
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.

I am faithful to the work.
I don't call in sick.
I'm hardworking as a man.
The foreman calls me "chick."

I never complain about my back.
Lord, He knows, I need this job.
I can take the stripes they give.
Don't give my raise to Bob.

Don't the moonlight look so grand,
Shining in the sky.
Walking home from second shift,
Clean cars are wizzing by.

There's a light mist in the air
That gives me some relief.
In the crock *** waits at home
Hash and good corned beef.

Salty rancher spackle is to Earthy diva smackers as Swinging hotel number is to?
Rippling cling bread is to Three lizard chariots as Indigo lime tangent is to?
Nighttime reunion planet is to Nettle lane scuffle as Soaking spider *** is to?
Fancy trance logs are to Sticky fudge lather as Vivacious gator college is to?
Cheerful blossom face is to Secret tractor rocket as Canned gremlin emblems are to?
Jealous pitchfork generals are to Heartbreaking patchwork veranda as Folding robot noise is to?
Pretty rhino rash is to Lost locket vengeance as Back pocket weather is to?
Frosted candy sidewalk is to Sneaky kook code as Shiny waffle smoke is to?
Sapphire cloud romance is to Magnetic comet lava as Blue triangle envy is to?
Vanishing honey melody is to Thermal elf pajamas as Whistling iceboat shampoo is to?
Peach mint politics is to Frozen doll pennies as Rusty anchor catapult is to?
Swollen pony fever Throbbing sword kazoo as Silent turbine science is to?
Obese germ thunder is to Stacked lemon towers as Corrupt moon jockey is to?
Demented insect whistle is to Glass trophy cleanup as Purple geode bubble is to?
Nighttime razor slime is to Lacquered dragon maps as Tint paper mittens are to?
**** camel drops are to Velvet ****** shoes as Slippery red muffins are to?
Flying hot drool is to Pale chocolate telescope as Tin trumpet ballet is to?
Expensive puppy speed is to Flowered duck mirror as Cosmic needle factory is to?
Fractured laser doodles are to Cracked butter gravel as Rubber holster straps are to?
Majestic panther fortress is to Jeweled cork target as Iron swan taxi is to?
Poisonous pepper bouillon is to ****** goat soap as Chrome feather pirates are to?
Digital gorilla scriptures are to Timid hunter stench as Frozen domino video is to?
Eccentric troll opera is to Transparent wax village as Spoiled coral agony is to?
Bizarre green metal is to Pillow eating hamster as Leather cavern ***** are to?
Eternal hurricane evidence is to Powdered rainbow perfume as Smoking yellow prune is to?
Liquid wish cleanser is to Exploding meadow ladders as Brittle rose hammer is to?
Caged foam filter is to Cherry balloon string as Ivory cactus spider is to?
Carbon puppet watch is to Sad kings compass as Elastic lace whiskers are to?
Nitrogen trolley dust is to Lazy elephant toffee as Orange toad choir is to?
Dark pole zodiac is to Blue finger blanket as Illegal bug nozzle is to?
Stinky towel cookies are to White jade caskets as Sticky snail tea is to?
Converting stellated caramels is to Mythic aerosol socks as Rubber raspberry jokes are to?
Flying clock carousel is to Whisky nut worms as Plastic fish platforms are to?
Queasy Vaseline queens are to Moody pigeon pills as Aqua mice fur is to?
Spotted bowl shadow is to Idiotic radiance lotion as Bungalow toad hearse is to?
Gushing chimney fungus is to Funky lamb acrobat as Utopian **** sprinkler is to?
Twinkling bungalow tablet is to Botanical duck rope as Bug hat ram is to?
Broken clock fossil is to Black ginger confetti as Parisian cobra meatloaf is to?
Silly Xerox ribbon is to Obedient raccoon carny as Traditional cat linguini is to?
Last astral advisor is to Elastic badger riddles as Broken circle rifles are to?
Bagged squire channel is to Temporary mosaic cake as Ancient bacon thread is to?
Wireless math army is to Moronic neon money as Pearl razor radar is to?
Rubber buzzard blizzard is to Troubled bubble wizard as Crushed hash ******* is to?
Purple birdy cure is to Tangled frost blossoms as Silken bridal saddle is to?
Unisex owl accordion is to Sugar bottomed boat as Optical nougat treasure is to?
Flavored saline rain is to Black arrow clan as Transistorized clam guitar is to?
Sharpened twig scar is to Mutant beet sonar as Baked troll mask is to?
Boxed noodle secrets are to Traditional guru buttons as Glossy marshmallow strategy is to?
Vibrating melted jelly is to Silver furniture dream as Spewing collated seats is to?
Burnt mountain pickles are to Baby preacher shoes as Sympathetic pilot pain is to?
Narrow portal treaty is to Monkey warehouse vacancy as Painted tornado trap is to?
Porch penny sulfur is to Glowing pony fat as Patched mattress bait is to?
Frigid waitress fallacy is to Graphic shrimp salute as Misted sneezing window is to?
Moist apple moss is to Daddy’s zoom seed as Downtown Pope cart is to?
Tired felon trickle is to Holographic squirrel candle as Wild ray hay is to?
Deadly zero chalk is to Folding wilderness chart as Curved ******* vacuum is to?
Hollow porcelain pellets are to Strawberry rain stencils as Microwave taxi nomads are to?
Wasted machete balcony is to Crumpled creature confessions as Fridge fuzzed fruit is to?
Sloppy demon damage is to Squeaky puppet chuckle as Mental arcade combat is to?
Monster trout stories are to Lewd pirate cocktail as Locked mammal grommet is to?
Rotting rope network is to Tragic toy goat as Cotton submarine shoes are to?
Complex pepper dance is to ****** cloud cushion as Marching taxi holiday is to?
Mental petal collectors are to Spooned barn putty as Dork factory fiction is to?
Hot spotted tops are to Timed stepping pests as Yogurt notching tartar is to?
Crazy dog comics are to Ambitious cartoon sphinx as Pavlov’s zinc ballet is to?
Soiled spinster wedding is to Padded razor wound as Floating fish map is to?
Slippery leopard pants are to Perfumed nut button as Dart wizard party is to?
Needy alien elephants are to Barking garden gnats as Quasar focused paper is to?
Slanted heart **** is to Bronzed cliff sandals are to Cunning jockey jokes are to?
***** thumbprint massage is to Holistic princess memory as Sliding dental sword is to?
Drifting wood whistle is to Fluorescent carpet powder as Foam dragon whistle is to?
Chopped web shadow is to Immortal vermin soup as Collapsing porch conspiracy is to?
Stolen thunder chant is to Haunted comet heart as Swollen throat portrait is to?
Fragrant frost parfait is to Grumpy caveman *** as Random stingray solo is to?
Squeaky polar turbine is to Silent lava fever as Oversized lunar fulcrum is to?
Synthetic dew droppers are to Pocket poster paste as Hypnotic screen dog is to?
Symbolic whirlpool nausea is to Dreaming tree phantom as Log badge bracket is to?
Camp hippo map is to Horseradish seizure insurance as Distant insect mirror is to?
German lady sherbet is to Stuntman laundry wax as Hungry butterfly ghost is to?
Fly smudged foil is to Amped maze coil as Shifting optic terror is to?
Automatic sheep floss is to Panoramic tanker anchor as Throbbing bone pillow is to?
Mutant clown village is to Nightmare translation treasure as Spotted spectral chakra is to?
Blind roach tweat is to Hermit worm tiara as Divine logo ritual is to?
Glueless gun stamp is to Malicious spam pump as Floral toffee pods are to?
Dudgeon mist removal is to Menacing bolt smacker as Boating duke shadow is to?
Costly metal plungers are to Creaky buzzing gushers as Glowing star cushions are to?
Raked barge sludge is to Crusted cream glitter as Zircon gutter babble is to?
Fake gold scholar is to Amish ******* mogul as Faithful ***** choir is to?
Sacred limo prayers are to Fried mice café as Splintered ****** thimble is to?
Dealing rabbit decals is to Pelican bongo festival as Patched equator rot is to?
Freedom gourd gasoline is to Cobblers studying acorns as Desecrated dice crater is to?
Tattered tapestry rod is to Busted particle scanner as Bogus piffle catalogue is to?
Trifle truffle raffle is to Last lamb laminate as Segmented cake goggles are to?
Domestic tackle tactic is to Ticking tic talk as Cordial corps coordinates is to?
Tucked duck caftan is to Sunken ramp ruckus as Wretched ranch rhetoric is to?
Clearly incomprehensible directions are to Useful archaic nonsense as Antiquated skeletal outline is to?
Bewildered beasts feasting are to Lazy busybodies resting as Vaccinating brave volunteers are to?
Lucky wagon dragons are to Famous gargoyle gargle as Formal postman funding is to?
Furrowed shroud chowder is to Borrowed tartan pajamas as Martini mixed algebra is to?
Cowgirl balloon helium is to Chewy glucose habitat as Stationary monument movement is to?
Diamond powered powder is to Diagonal diameter diagram as Purposely condensed expansion is to?
Organic iodine capsule is to Gleaming beach probe as Dominant dome static is to?
Shaving wrinkled targets is to Petting sensible monsters as Selling invisible whiskey is to?
Frozen piano architecture is to Note dotted clouds as Screaming Korean worms are to?
Sonic plant website is to Telepathic climbing clam as Bored protein exercise is to?
Gourmet mollusk cone is to Numb poodle caravan as Asian raven radar is to?

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash
          (A metaphor)

Life is a corned beef hash -
Or chicken, pork or any stash
Of edibles you have at hand.
If you are clever
You will use the cleaver
To make dishes
So delicious
Guests will never understand
With formulaic words
How to make the bouquet of accolades
Big enough.
(Wow!  That was pufferific!)

All you have to do is focus,
Be a tiny bit courageous,
Use a quantity of hocus pocus
So your genius
Can shine,
Your mine of treasure
The impromptu measure
                           of the moment.

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash 8.12.2017
A Sense Of the Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin
puffery – in case you didn’t know: exaggerated  praise; hyperbole.

In Chibok,
An IED finds it way
Into the mind of a savage sect
And made good use of the emptiness therein.

In helplessness,
Some school girls are bundled up
From their school compound;
Taken for a noisy ride into Sambisa;
From where they will forget
Their mothers’ voices.

On the tube,
There is a very loud lady
Anathematising the “sharing” of blood
In Borno.

When she is done,
The media is awash with the sound of
‘Na only you waka come?’

As if it is a joke
To ****** young Nigerian girls
From the four walls of their classroom
Into the coldness of the wilderness
To dwell amongst wild beasts.
To learn new lessons;
Weird lessons.

In bed at night,
My wife talks of
Church bombings;
Internally displaced persons;



Slaughtering of citizens
And the role of government in all of these
And the security of our country
And I pulled at the hairs
From around her second mouth
To make her change the topic
And she falls for it and changes the topic.

The white bearded Mallam
On the rickety bus to Yola
Fixes his eyes on me
Like some foreigner
And I feel the fire
All through the trip
And I burn and burn and burn
Like the victims of Nyanya motor park blast
It feels good though to know
What it takes to
Be burned into countless degrees.

But after three weeks
I am back to normal again
I can feel again
My senses are back again
Working optimally
And I can hear again
As the presidential pit-bull
And the black parrot
The one that used to be
In the fourth estate of the realm
Begin to mete and dole out
Slippery speeches, speeches you can’t hold
That comes upon our ears
To push out every substance
From our heads


Everything except this load of hopelessness

This bitter bile in our mouth
This unwanted fetus
That no one would claim

And then the hash tags;
The media craze;
The count down
The women in red
And the men that joined
The bring back our girls
The Michelle Obama
The celebrities from across
The noise, the sweat, the blood
The ****** thighs of those girls
Their torn underwear
Their wails, their sobs, their pains
To say the least
The echo, the deafening echo
And how we wave them all aside
And look the other way.
Like it did not happen at all
Like it was just a movie
Directed by a director
That must be a sadist  
We sweep it under the carpet
Like our other numerous
National issues

But I won’t write another story on betrayal
I won’t write another poem
On how a nation
Could forsake her innocent children
Instead I would write of a country

Steeling, steeling, growing
Growing resilient to emotion;
Becoming many times dead

To any feeling
Tearing its tissues to pieces
And building new ones
That will be senseless
Lifeless
Bloodless.

And the noise
And the noise
And the noise.






















In Chibok,
An IED finds it way
Into the mind of a savage sect
And made good use of the emptiness therein.

In helplessness,
Some school girls are bundled up
From their school compound;
Taken for a noisy ride into Sambisa;
From where they will forget
Their mothers’ voices.

On the tube,
There is a very loud lady
Anathematising the “sharing” of blood
In Borno.

When she is done,
The media is awash with the sound of
‘Na only you waka come?’

As if it is a joke
To ****** young Nigerian girls
From the four walls of their classroom
Into the coldness of the wilderness
To dwell amongst wild beasts.
To learn new lessons;
Weird lessons.

In bed at night,
My wife talks of
Church bombings;
Internally displaced persons;



Slaughtering of citizens
And the role of government in all of these
And the security of our country
And I pulled at the hairs
From around her second mouth
To make her change the topic
And she falls for it and changes the topic.

The white bearded Mallam
On the rickety bus to Yola
Fixes his eyes on me
Like some foreigner
And I feel the fire
All through the trip
And I burn and burn and burn
Like the victims of Nyanya motor park blast
It feels good though to know
What it takes to
Be burned into countless degrees.

But after three weeks
I am back to normal again
I can feel again
My senses are back again
Working optimally
And I can hear again
As the presidential pit-bull
And the black parrot
The one that used to be
In the fourth estate of the realm
Begin to mete and dole out
Slippery speeches, speeches you can’t hold
That comes upon our ears
To push out every substance
From our heads


Everything except this load of hopelessness

This bitter bile in our mouth
This unwanted fetus
That no one would claim

And then the hash tags;
The media craze;
The count down
The women in red
And the men that joined
The bring back our girls
The Michelle Obama
The celebrities from across
The noise, the sweat, the blood
The ****** thighs of those girls
Their torn underwear
Their wails, their sobs, their pains
To say the least
The echo, the deafening echo
And how we wave them all aside
And look the other way.
Like it did not happen at all
Like it was just a movie
Directed by a director
That must be a sadist  
We sweep it under the carpet
Like our other numerous
National issues

But I won’t write another story on betrayal
I won’t write another poem
On how a nation
Could forsake her innocent children
Instead I would write of a country

Steeling, steeling, growing
Growing resilient to emotion;
Becoming many times dead

To any feeling
Tearing its tissues to pieces
And building new ones
That will be senseless
Lifeless
Bloodless.

And the noise
And the noise
And the noise.


In Chibok,
An IED finds it way
Into the mind of a savage sect
And made good use of the emptiness therein.

In helplessness,
Some school girls are bundled up
From their school compound;
Taken for a noisy ride into Sambisa;
From where they will forget
Their mothers’ voices.

On the tube,
There is a very loud lady
Anathematising the “sharing” of blood
In Borno.

When she is done,
The media is awash with the sound of
‘Na only you waka come?’

As if it is a joke
To ****** young Nigerian girls
From the four walls of their classroom
Into the coldness of the wilderness
To dwell amongst wild beasts.
To learn new lessons;
Weird lessons.

In bed at night,
My wife talks of
Church bombings;
Internally displaced persons;

Slaughtering of citizens
And the role of government in all of these
And the security of our country
And I pulled at the hairs
From around her second mouth
To make her change the topic
And she falls for it and changes the topic.

The white bearded Mallam
On the rickety bus to Yola
Fixes his eyes on me
Like some foreigner
And I feel the fire
All through the trip
And I burn and burn and burn
Like the victims of Nyanya motor park blast
It feels good though to know
What it takes to
Be burned into countless degrees.

But after three weeks
I am back to normal again
I can feel again
My senses are back again
Working optimally
And I can hear again
As the presidential pit-bull
And the black parrot
The one that used to be
In the fourth estate of the realm
Begin to mete and dole out
Slippery speeches, speeches you can’t hold
That comes upon our ears
To push out every substance
From our heads

Everything except this load of hopelessness

This bitter bile in our mouth
This unwanted fetus
That no one would claim

And then the hash tags;
The media craze;
The count down
The women in red
And the men that joined
The bring back our girls
The Michelle Obama
The celebrities from across
The noise, the sweat, the blood
The ****** thighs of those girls
Their torn underwear
Their wails, their sobs, their pains
To say the least
The echo, the deafening echo
And how we wave them all aside
And look the other way.
Like it did not happen at all
Like it was just a movie
Directed by a director
That must be a sadist  
We sweep it under the carpet
Like our other numerous
National issues

But I won’t write another story on betrayal
I won’t write another poem
On how a nation
Could forsake her innocent children
Instead I would write of a country

Steeling, steeling, growing
Growing resilient to emotion;
Becoming many times dead

To any feeling
Tearing its tissues to pieces
And building new ones
That will be senseless
Lifeless
Bloodless.

And the noise
And the noise
And the noise.

[Intro]
Ah, it's a plane, it's a bird, it's a zombie, hahaha

[Verse 1: Meech]
The highest high, I'm Ayatollah
Rubber on my ****, allergic to baby strollers
Blue dream, that amazing odor
Ant is a pyrex, I'm the coke and the baking soda
Juice be the blue flame that create the whole thing
Rap game, crack game, apparently the same thing
If this was eighty-something I'd be in shell toes
Gucci link fat rings ashy *** elbows
Saving every penny trying to get up out this hell hole
For my super-thugs, hustling up off the jail phone
Life's a battle fool you better have your weapon drawn
How could I be scared of death, *****, I'm already gone
Money on my mind, your ***** on my zipper
Breaking up pound after pound, THC on every finger
You gon' need a boost from God to get as high as me *****
Excuse me, I meant to say as high as we *****

[Bridge]
Flatbush Zombie, A$AP Mobbin'
Hit a killswitch and put an end to any problem

[Verse 2: Juice]
Hash and ****, hash in a ****
Got **** by the ton, got blow by the load
If you wanna get throwed, A$AP Ant got the po-tion
Three fly *** ******* with we
Double-cupped them double D's
Hi-high *****, hi-high living
Three young *** ****** running ****, no slipping
Gotta know the game, gotta know the lane
Gotta know the pain, no handouts, ain't **** easy
Dark shades, on my Eazy-E, got ******* on my mini-me
And you ****** in the rap game can't relate
I'm real pimping, no fornicating
**** what you heard, I'm goin' ape
Smokin Grape Ape, **** your mixtape
That's a **** plate, Zombie style
A$AP, never mind these clowns
I love brain, zombie style, never mind these clouds

[Interlude: A$AP Ant]
Juice pass me the ****, Meech where the acid at?
A$AP Ant in this *****, uh

[Verse 3: A$AP Ant]
I'm a demon triple beaming, painting pictures
****** Mona Lisa, blood sheets, creeping for the *******
With the collar danny's, killing ******* sniffing *******
***** Wonka candy *****, three ******, one *****, one clip
One brain dead girl off your mind leave your brains on your moms
Razor blades dipped in bleach, tear your skin to pieces
Dump the body in Tennessee, highway getaway OJ bronco
Cap it baby drive 'em off the bridge, look into my eyes, vivid tears
I see fear, y'all some ******' queers
Grow a ******' pair, I'm 'posed to be here
'posed to be dead, overdosed on shrooms
Let's cruise, drive by on site
Ride like a bike, for my zombie homies **** tonight

[Bridge]

[Verse 4: A$AP Rocky]
A$AP ****** we aliens, cold-blooded *****, reptilian
Acid, acid, ambiens, only **** a ***** if she lesbian
Trill ****** run the city, got the key on lock
Juice got the juice, ***** Meech gon' pop
Addie in the Caddy with the heat on ****
When a Mac go brrra cause the beef don't stop, *****
My name is, that pretty *******
From the land of the lost of the gully and the gutta
See the Preds made a toast for the honey and the butter
Only die for two things, that's my money and my mother, *******!
****** know my name, did I stutter?
****** know me, man I keep it one hunna
I'm a stunna, Hood by Air for the summer
Toast to the God and it cost nine hunna
So-so ru-run up if you wanna
Mac in the backpack, right by the Macbook
And I rep that Harlem
And my Zombie ****** straight out of Flatbush

Loaded down with swag, you could say I got some baggage
Now tag me in your post - host server overload with traffic
Havoc, I smashed it I'm smokin on that hash **** its magic I'm laughin,
***** where the **** my brain go?
Oh I know **** I got so braindead before I wrote this
I'm monumental, moving boulders
Deport this *****, jumpin borders
Spit my lyrics so hot just like you was sippin Folger's
Burn your tongue? I burned my face,
You in a race?
Huh, ***** don't even try to run

Your nightmares are my fantasy
I make your dreams rip at the seams
Best believe it I'm the reason
You be losing sleep
Unfeasibly
Freddy who? Man **** that dude
This ain't no ****** "Elm Street"
11-12 Better check yourself
**** with me I killed it
You're in my world now *****

And grab your crucifix
Ha! AND PRAY TO GOD *****

Oh ****, break in the beat
I can't be defeated so don't leave your seat
So many drugs my heart feels complete
Lungs replete with the cloud of a thousand burning trees
Smokeapalooza, my brains on vacation
maybe it's a factor, all the inhalation
Snoozing you loser?
Got it going on,
Got more bombs than a marathon in Boston
AND IF YOU THINK THAT **** WASN'T A FALSE FLAG GO BACK TO SLEEP

I'm a self confessed bongaholic by definition
Cro-Magnon, I'm stone-age in terms of cognition
though hopefully I can get some ignition, generate some sparks
My colorful rhymes stand in stark contrast
against this black and white palette
all these so called artists paint with
Oh and blunts are great, ******* Wiz Khalifa
pearl another one and I'm feelin golden
withholding nothin, so I'm puffin til I'm huffin

straight baked like space muffins
something you can't relate or replicate,
so don't defame, or deface my status as
realest ***** in the rap game
no malarkey;
you have a better chance swimming with sharks b

breaking bad
take a line of that Walter White to my head
til my brains are frying like eggs at breakfast
hear just a little sizzling
**** bro I'ma wake up dead

David Banner he don't know swag
Lil' B holla that he own swag
Overflowin with all these newfags
I /b/ like :bitchplease: I ******* made swag

I'm beautiful man super cool
and all all the ******* love me
most popular boy in school
I have everything I want
it seems -
in my dreams,
******* **** me
My ADD is so infuriating
which is at least partially
why my primary hobbies
are screaming rapping and smoking ****

Light up the hash, we goin' get real high
While the smoke blows to the flows from Half Life of Phi

This is a beat for all the ****** freaks
Smokin the keef til they get wide cheeks
Yo we got them blunts rolled proppa
With a fat core of shatta, even Big Poppa
Would hit it, then hit it again, spit a refrain
About how that **** smoke makes the brain
Feel so sane, goes with the grain, healing pain
I'm the DEA's bane of existence,
All because of my dank scents
But all we tryin' to do is make rents
For my friends, choppin ends
Put it in a crock *** but not too hot
Leave it in the spot for a while

Light up the hash, we goin' get real high
While the smoke blows to the flows from Half Life of Phi

Spend the time with a fat pile
Of hash, spittin that medicated style
About the cash that
We goin to make from the batch
Once this plan hatch
Time's up open up the hatch
See the green butter be quick to ******
It up in the cheese cloth
While it's still nice and soft
Strain out the chaff from the grain
For a better product better do it again
Cause you wanna have the fame in the game

Light up the hash, we goin' get real high
While the smoke blows to the flows from Half Life of Phi

Known by the name of the green baker
Risk taker, Swimmin in money lakes-er
Don't ***** wit the shakes
except for personal bakes
Only keef rinses sinces
you don't chinces
Keep the potencies
Gotta keep pounds around
One from each corner of town
Keepin your inventory down
Most diverse selection **** elections
With all that and the dope sound
And nobody around to **** with your crown

Light up the hash, we goin' get real high
While the smoke blows to the flows from Half Life of Phi

i've done a full circle on my music listening habits, i've started listening to music i could play guitar to, oh man, that drop-D on almost all of the songs of System of a Down is mesmerising to listen to, esp. Aerials... it's right up there with smoke on the water and iron man... i even have a pretty decent voice when it comes to singing when no one is listening, it's surprisingly idiosyncratic, sort of rhaspic... ooh! ooh! i'm onto another google-whack... rhaspic alone generates only 10 results... rhaspic glue? 2 results... hmm... not to overcomplicate matters... let's just add a D... rhaspic glued... bingo! 1 search result: study number theories... great... i misspelled that first word, i was looking for something to the singing style of the dear, late, still lasting Chris Cornell... the message from Google reads:

It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search

nope... it's not that... i'm a google-whacker... it's a mild version of hacking... i like to find the needle's eye for a camel like me to walk through... because i do... and if i'm going to procrastinate it will be either google-whacking or solving a sudoku... ah... so no surd H in the word i was thinking of, i.e. raspic? ****, i didn't even realise there is a technical term for raspic: dysphonia... hell... it's not even raspic: it's raspy... oh... esp. with a "handover" from drinking to sobering up and a "hangover" from cigarette smoking... me singing is like me *******... best done so only the heavenly dead might want to see...

I.

strange occurrence at work, so i was given these nine stewards
who are a tight-knit bunch on the south stand of
the London stadium...
well... i say i was given nine, but Danni is a terrible
supervisor, everyone says...
who has ever worked with her...
she might have the qualifications to be a supervisor
but... i don't: and whenever asked i do the role...
because the greatest lesson my grandfather ever taught
me was how to deal with people,
i learned how to deal with unengaged problematic
youths by myself...
good training if you're going to go in the teaching
profession... i can see it now...
a fox in a hen shack...
obviously i'd love to have a wolf as my totem...
but you can be choosey... no wolves on the British isles...
plenty of foxes... fox it is...
and i can be a sly ******* if i really want
to be: i'll pretend to be naive... stupid...
ooh... ooh! "what's happening"?!
i know what's happening... i'm just figuring out
if the people playing games will figure out that i'm
also playing a game: their game and my own game...
i like pretending to be an idiot...
but when a chance comes and i can launch an
assault... i can be a merciless Rommel... Erwin...
i just play a waiting-game game...
it's fun... it's very much akin to a game of patience
when it comes to making wine...
or cooking a pristine curry...
like with Frankie, the girl i work with from time to time...
of all the colleagues she's the first one
i made personal references to...
she's also the first colleague i met up with outside
of work in casual clothing... i pointed it out:
a bit weird, not seeing you in a shirt / tie or a black
t-shirt...
it took me back... to the old days of...
"smooth-handshakes": i have £25 in my hand
she has a sachet of hash in her's... we shake hands in
public and the transaction is over...
she texted me last night: so... how's the "gear",
the dealer Adam wants to know...
i replied: well, i don't know... i haven't smoked it yet...
i'm all for delayed gratification...
i must have mentioned this already:
when i was younger i used to smoke marijuana to a level
of stoner, a stereotypical long-haired blonde "surfer boy"
type that an Australian girl would and did go out
with... i stooped to the level of binging on reggae music
and stoner rock and progressive rock blah blah...
an 1/8 (ounce) would last me a weekend...
then psychosis hit and i haven't smoked it for over 10 years...
a ******* invisible choir in a church
and a great wind that dispersed it... sad, sad story
(ha ha... back in 2007 it might have been
if nothing spectacular happened since...
but a lot has happened)...
but like i revealed to her: i need a smoking session
to be ritualistic...
i won't be delving into the mind that's high on hash
with the use of these two hands and a keyboard
and imaginary paper...
funny... when it comes to typing i'm very much
ambidextrous... you have to be... using a keyboard
to type... although... i once encountered
a general practitioner, old geezer... who used only one
hand to type, well... "typed"... he chicken-pecked with
his index finger the keys on the keyboard...
sure... some people go as far as use two index fingers
on both hands... me? i need to use all my fingers...
some i use more frequently otherwise i don't...
the pinky and the thumbs are especially favourite when
it comes to spacing and line-breakers and all the SHIFT
additions to a text... i think... i think i use the ring fingers
the least, mostly index, middle, thumb and pinky...
yes, the occasional ring finger: ah!
right hand ring finger is mostly used when deleting text,
and sometimes using the enter button
to give ground for a new line...

no, no one likes working with Danni, she's a terrible
supervisor, as most women when given
charge over young men,
instead of working with then, trying to gain them
she dismisses them and sends them packing: home,
not getting paid for a shift...
rifts of resentment... there are some aspects of
life that women don't understand:
their enlarged hearts are dismissive of certain
nuances... you can work with boys that
are not engaged with this simplest of works
concerning crowd safety, but you need to engage with them,
you can't just dismiss them!
i play into her thinking process that i'm
somehow her friend... she has already bought
the line and sinker... i'll keep her there...

i had to, for ****'s sake, take care of my staff
and her staff too, why?
who did she choose as a breaker,
Darwinism beckons, nature yawns...
a diabetic sick-girl who suffers from spells of standing-still
vertigo... i had to ask this sick girl to change her
function and stand in one place...
Danni? oh... she placed her in the worst possible
position... in a place where all the fans are rowdy
and constantly standing...
some people "think" they're thinking...
they're not...
i don't think they are being purposively
******* ******* but it just looks like this:
all-inclusiveness is not working out
as many have thought it might...
what are we talking about?
single men... tiger-mums in the East
and mantis-wives in the West...

how will a boss ***** relate to an unruly bunch
of teenage boys?
she won't! me? upon signing in i fist bump
or shake their hands... i recognise them...
men crave being recognisable, familiar,
constant... women? just attention-*******...
anonymously... or in passing...
men like to adapt to being recognised:
being familiar... women don't understand that
through their own self-objectification...
men are more prone to the: other's-subjectification...
a woman is self-objectifying
while a man is the subject-of-the-other...

i've watched enough people, i should know...
at a usual game i've built up this rapport with a few fans...
all the men are shouting out from the crowd:
hey! 5 bottle man!
a point of reference i should know about...
when this guy asked me for five bottles of water
from within the crowd...
he's referential point being: the subject-of-the-other...
women? ha!
they're like the solipsists of their youthful advantages
of looks... they are self-objectifying...
they are never a subject-of-the-other in their perception
of reality... they are not even an object-of-the-other
in their own mind's cravings...
could i ask a woman to dress up or put up make up
without her wanting to a priori the demands
or her own conjuring?!

but this one shift amazed me...
i had this breaker tell me...
'i'm not really sexist... but would you mind if i gave all
the female stewards breaks first,
before giving the males a break...'
i played it out... sure thing mate... you do that...
after all... the "new" gynocentric is the "old"
egalitarian movement, no?
let's see how this plays out...

              the old model worked according to: left to right...
or right to left... oh... not a spectacular specimen...
started talking me with all seriousness of
casualness... i hate my hair...
but you wear a baseball cap, mate, no wonder your
hair is matted... heard of Agar oil?
it's so much better than wax or hair gel...
but of course i didn't say it...
all the Asians with beards use it on their beards...
they carry bottles of Agar oil in their pockets to oil
up their ****** *****... i would too...
hadn't i oiled up before every shift...

sure thing mate... you do you "i'm not a sexist"
experiment by breaking the women before the men...

i'm just trying to figure out what i could possibly write
if i were in the vicinity of children that belong
to other people, how i could mould them with
the PROPER sort of ROT of explorative
tactics... hmm...

i'm getting a hard-on just thinking about it...
just the past two days i've been punishing myself
with a pleasure-delay tactic,
tomorrow i'm going to scoop the buds...
******* without *******...
my god... my hands are big...
no wonder i built up a beard-envy
and sort of forgot about a ***** envy...
the last ******* was sort of inhibited with her
pleasures... sort of uncomfortable...
half-way in and already the signs of discomfort...
big hands... mega business of jazz clapping...
well... that's life...

the KOMBUCHA mushroom people!
   shoe-g'ah!
rewrite everything in English phonetically!
come here, pwetty! give us a kiss!
smooches: yummy yummy!

but this guy "thought" he figured it out...
giving out all the breaks to the women
first, before the males...
i gave him the "substance" of "sport"...
work out? like **** it did...
one elder steward rebelled...
d'uh...
i'm taking into liking the Somali girls...
a Somali girl actually sent him back
to do things hierarchically...
from left, to right...
i'm a man... but i'm not a sexist...
seriously, mate, you're not a male...

it took a Muslim girl to teach you otherwise...
all smiling, smiles in slime...
i implored her: you know it wasn't my idea...
you know that he was just trying to get
his ***** wet in your ****:
not as literally...
she agreed with the most beautiful smile...
i'm starting to get turned off by white girls...
i'm starting to get turned off by white girls...
i'm finding the ones in niqabs and of a certain
ethnic "persuasion! rather attractive:
like one manager in the company
said the basics: black don't crack...

i'm looking at these girls and thinking:
butter melting by the power of the moon's rays...
how pretty they look...
i terribly want to **** them...
i'll terribly **** them!
these clues into nuns that Muslim women are
for a Don Giovanni...
these pretty petite Somali noses...
i bite i bite i bite i want to bite them
like cherries!

no wonder then...
i masturbated for two days prior to engaging with
the prostitutes...
i checked the proportions and non-proportions...
i'm done dealing with the ***-affairs of
stereotypical men...
i'll be ******* anything that moves...
married? not my problem!
seriously, not, my, problem!

mosh-pit carnal maggot fun!
well... if one generation sold us the patriarchal restrictions
being lifted, and what? we're to return to
a patriarchal system of "authority"...
you, what?!
i'm not going to live a life my elders lived with
full freedom that i'm somehow supposed to
inhibit, deny myself...

oh... i'm going to have the same as them: please!
no please?
then i'll **** the status quo!
simple!

the night crawls into a fruition of being limited
with being imbed....
two spiders for the worth of my hands....
i will die the most exotic pain
imaginable....
i iwlll surprise the "lost crowd".....
i will surprise the brothel...
30 minutes with one...
then as i am about to leave:
30 minutes with another...
and another... and another...
and another...

              one of those Lucy Letby trials...
only men are monsters...
my hernia and my Chernobyll
tattoo: the one she almost choked me
with... i survived...
i shouldn't have survived...
woman! agony to come!

i scratch my beard... i think: time is...
precious...
but women are very little inclined
into this dynamic.....
the world can burn!

death's trough: and pigs eat ****....
   best, kept reminder!

       well what a shift i truly wasn't expecting yout atypical
chocaletiers to come up with a game
of: broken chair frisby...
that yellow burning man pyro-technics was also
spectacular... but not even my mum would be
so concerned about my well-being as
this supervisor was today... what a terrible sloppy
mommy... i don't need to be protected
by your inability to protect me: i'll judge for myself...
******* busdy body...
i want in on the action...
    
i just couldn't wait for the shift to end...
i promised Frankie a review of the hash she sold me...
i told her:
i need to be tired from a shift,
i need some whiskey... i need an imaginary
octopus slobbering on my cranoum,
i need ***...

funny... the freely i have *** the more i'm detached
from it...
once upon a time i was all about pleasing
women... after they stopped pleasing me
i figured out: a **** it modus operandi...
time to be taken care of...
i think i'm so emotionally detached while having
*** that i'm borderline psychopathic...

not that i have any vanity project coming across
implying i might be hurt by
this condescending word...
no, rather the opposite: i very much enjoy it...

just today i stole another kiss from a *******...
she was so unwilling telling me:
you moustache is fiddly and it's tickling me...
but we kissed nonetheless...
she wasn't into ******* vaginally...
i felt growing limp at some point...
mental blockage...
it happens...
never again will i spend two days prior
jerking off without *******...
i know the "even horizon" of jerking off
and the moment when the head of the phallus
is being pierced via the ******* being
expanded: for men... anti-circumcision...
it's like being a ****** again and again: and again: and again...

she blew me, then massaged me with her long
fingernails...
oh... once she reached my cranium,
neck and shoulders... it felt better than the *******...
i was going limp... why? mental constipation...
it happens with men...
i was actually thinking about the furnace
of nothingness after *** after smoking some Afghan
hash... having grated into a cigarette on
a Rodin's take of ******* NUTMEG!

i ****, i love *******,
but i'm surrounded by people who don't like *******...
a terrible bewilderment...
to be alive is to love to ****...
who am i surrounded by? people who have attired themselves
in: progeny...
  people with children...
careless and carefree mothers of agony...

II.

i have to admit, it took me about 4 hours to wake up:
wake up proper...
each time i opened my eyes i felt myself
needing to turn to my side and fall back into nothingness
of that currency of switch-off brain
(let the body recuperate) -
a comforting numbness with a side dish of tickling
and fuzziness...
i woke up absolutely not interested in thinking...
for once... i wanted to absorb last night: fully...
frankly, i didn't want to let last night go...

O grand father time and the river that's your bride...
what a gloomy day... my perfect sort of day,
i'm so very fond of the weather of England,
more so the weather of Scotland,
island weather: my kind of weather,
gloomy, autumnal, the sweetness of botanical decay
and all the flourish of chlorophyll retreating from
the once bulging leaves of green...

wow... so that's what it feels like?
like that photograph by Richard Lam with the couple
who were knocked down by the riot police
during the Vancouver hockey riots
(Stanley Cup playoffs)...
well, last night it wasn't exactly like that...

west ham vs. Anderlecht... what a shift...
flares were thrown either side, chairs were ripped out
and used as frisbees... coins were thrown...
and i was on the edge of the tension...
me? never in a million years could have thought
the Belgians to be so triggered...
in comparison the Danish and German fans were tame...
phew...

afterwards like i said:
a magical combination of work fatigue,
an 8.2% cider and two or three sips of whiskey...
three cigarettes,
brothel... ***...
well... she didn't feel like having ***...
she felt like performing oral *** and looking
at herself in the mirror...
that's the first time i've seen it...
alternating from looking in the mirror at herself
and looking into your eyes
and then closing her eyes... a rare combination...
it's usually eyes looking at you
or eyes closed... rarely out of her own accord
looking at herself in the mirror...

and then? laying on my stomach the better part
of the evening: a massage... shoulders...
back... long nails digging into my flesh and...
roughing up my hair...
then? persuasions to steal a kiss...
yes! stole one... she was put off slightly by the tickling
of my beard...
but my god... those nails digging into my shoulders
neck and head...

another one i will give a book of poetry to...
raven hair work of a blue night in Venice...
then onto home and some more whiskey
and... that Afghan hash...
   two pinches of it being heated up... so... not much...

i just smoked a cigarette and opened my cigarette ash
tray (a jar that formerly housed pickles)
and peered in... what?! i only smoked half of the Afghan
hash joint?! seriously?!
i'm a light-weight... that 15 year break from smoking
anything has seriously did me some good....
me? last night? i was travelling across the entire
universe... i was hallucinating a darkness that was
a thinking-darkness that was heartbeat-darkness
a musical-darkness... i was travelling with the sort
of energy that could connect the dots between
gravity and antimatter...
     i was on the edge of a black hole and my heart was
dancing...
upon waking you have to listen to something
like Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch...

a touch of a woman... i'll agree with any critic:
i am a paranoid psychopath during ***...
i don't like being lied to during ***...
i have enough pornographic doubts to understand
that i don't want to be ******* an actress...
she might be a *******: but to hell with *******
actresses... even in their own words
they are asexual... prostitutes on the other hand
are closer to nymphomaniacs than actresses...

what, after the ****** revolution of the 1960s
future generations would tame the whole Pandora down?!
i don't think so... the Vietnam war had the best
soundtrack (period)... am i going to slow down?
no! but this Western Model that a man has to have a *******
horse cart and cottage to have *** is beneath me...
no! no! i looked into the Japanese model of
the Love Hotels and figured...
well... that's not getting any traction over here...
and since i'm only willing to follow the Laws of the Dogs
i.e. a dog only ***** if a ***** is willing to give...

and if prostitutes are the only ones willing while
the remaining women are interested in pair bonding
*******... i tried that... dates... clams and oysters
and spaghetti dates... cinema dates...
russian roulette of condoms and contraceptive pills...
i tried but i figured...
not even the whole dating app hook-up culture...
that **** passed me by, i was being busy in my 20s
unravelling a schizophrenia misdiagnosis
and reading up on philosophy...

                         imagine that... unlike Syd Barrett...
i descended into madness and... looks like many years
later i have emerged a pillar of nerves...
i'm calm during crowd riots,
i'm calm in the middle of one guy trying to choke
another guy to death while calming both of them...
and i can sit very calmly across 5 women that
i ******... oh sure... and i don't need that much
alcohol to have a brave heart... just a little...
and i won't flinch... i'll look all five of them in the eyes
and take my time before choosing one
of them for yet another night...
  
Western narratives morphing words like
******* into *** worker... "*** traffic" blah blah...
spoken by women about women
who actually enjoy having ***...
a female intellectual is hardly interested in ***:
true or false statement?
sooner rather than later i realised that i'm
more than just a political or a social animal...
i'm a ****** animal...

i like the idea of: an abstraction of people...
a sort of pedestrian abstraction... a quickie encounter...
a snippet of an entire other world that appears
and disappears as one might assume for it to be the case
in the macrocosm reality of time and all the people
in the world and the past and future to come...
but this... in a microcosm sort of imitating-the-host-of-god
so of way...

maybe because it's because of that Van Morrison song
Brown Eyed Girl... maybe, just maybe...
a well worn leather peeping through those eyes,
a body i could pretend to sit on
and snooze, or something like that...
it's just so much easier when women drop all their guards
and something casual can be achieved
without all that neuroticism of relationships...

i wish i learned this lesson when i was younger:
you can never love one woman,
well... you can love your mother,
you can tease your mother in a way that she feels
more like a friend than some authority figure...
and even if there's Lucy Letby when you were
born, attempting to **** you by somehow choking
you in a way that enlarged your heart
on top of the hernia and oh: if mother was in agony
giving birth to you you gave a second birth unto
yourself with equal agony:
no wonder that i turned to prostitutes for what
i really needed...
the medication of touch...

i'm not going to hide my intentions or for that matter
boast with "performance cues"...
sometimes it's long, sometimes it's short...
sometimes this, sometimes that...
but i'm sometimes a very impatient man
and i don't like being impatient...
even now: it would be pointless to merely focus my
attention on one woman...
a projected investment with Khadra that i ended
with buying her lingerie and not over-stepping
her demands to push further with 18-carat
earrings and necklace: let's be realistic...

of all the things i gave her, my bleeding heart of
poems blah blah...

point being, i just have Samuel Little and Jack the Ripper
on my mind when engaging with ***
with prostitutes... esp. when kissing them...
how could they?
**** me... not enough girls out there to ready yourself
for work in a nightclub and save up enough
dough to buy a mandolin and play it outside one
those girl's windows...

in a way i'm a loser that won...
a very limited number of pastimes occupying my mind...
reading, writing, listening to music,
cycling, walking, ***...
i replaced watching movies with the cinema of
my memory... surely if i were a bad man i wouldn't
want to remember anything from the past...
hell... if there's no afterlife i'll just relive my life
in reverse... i jump into the vehicle of memory
and unravel all that i have forgotten...
because i don't believe eternity could be spent
so idly as presented by either heaven or a hell stasis
of a realm...
i could fill out eternity given the dynamic of what
i remember and what i have forgotten
(not by choice, but by the naturally fickle selection
of memory, eroded by the pedagogy rubrics
of arithmetic and spelling, to begin with)...

We had Tie Dye hopes,
and hash laced dreams,
Smoke covers up,
Our heartfelt screams.

I was in pain,
and so were you,
That's the only thing,
I feel is true.

Numb me,
Numb me,
Numb me more,
I would smile,
as you'd implore.

My Fingers covered,
in the lightest green,
as I packed the bowl,
for my hippy queen.

Foot thongs,
and dream catchers,
little things,
That ease pressure.

Black leather,
a Devilish smile,
We were happy,
for a while.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

Deleanor hit the old hash pipe
I burnt my fingers
Like a dingaling in the ringer
I was choked to the bee's stinger
As the hash made me crash
Like a bullet
The smoke made a quick dash

With my bobby pin, taken from my hair after volleyball practice,
I scrape black resin from a blue bowl
It's a rougher
Dirtier
Hash ball
But it loves on your brain just as much
And my arms are bruised from passing
They could use that numbing forgetfulness
That lurks  like stupidity
In the back of my brain

Always

The *** just emphasizes it
The way gaudy clothes do on a pretty girl

That's me too sometimes

But I have a mother,
Just as you,
And she gave me dreamss
To live up to
A school of science and engineering
So...what do you do?

Many make up the festival
so many warm hearted

Who would deny a place
to the hot fire
of the hash fudge maker

Let's get some sunlight
Let's start a bar fight
We'll take our problems and forget we have to solve them
Let's take two tabs
Let's start a **** lab
We'll cover up insecurity with promiscuity

Let's sleep 'til Sunday
It's only Monday
I have to work at 2 but I think I have the bird flu
Let's call the drug store
Ask for a couple more
Insignificant reality crashes into banality  

Let's make a hash pipe
Out of Brite Lites
We'll quote Pulp Fiction with Ezekiel's conviction
Let's start a fight club
Where we can make love
Punch me in the ear and then I'll disappear

Let's start a new life
But after midnight
There's a whole universe waiting to be uncovered first
Let's make a difference
Let's make new friends
Let's go where the wind blows but first I have to put on clothes

no weapons, no drugs.
he had the eyeballs of an aztlan prince.
touches water.
touches hot-grill to meat /repeat/
/replete with cerveza.
                to roil in love of sun said lights, all things lovely.
                to return by city driven lights, lake to shore to shoulder.

[to sleep.]

[to dream.]

dad is on the grill, cookin’ up something scorched.
swill is on the lake, skiin’ up something else.
sweat &
stretching lungs, the sun busting gut.
unseen, bikini pink
& green sauce.
pass the tortillas.

winterous: awake.
ice-fish and stoke the pipes of flash and holy hash.
ice-fish our favorite frozen mass.
we all grow beards,
untrusting of men who wobble blades to their faces on the daily.

spring sprung and spigot. we
return to blushing shores of wet rocks
& girlfriends.
girl bands exploding amps from atop houseboats
in styles of the highly drunk and tameless.
plucked in memory
of the ******* to come before them.

Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mount Crumpit,

He rode to the tiptop to dump it!

"Pooh-pooh to the Whos!" he was grinch-ish-ly humming.

"They're finding out now that no Christmas is coming!

"They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!

"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two

"All the Whos down in Who-ville will all cry BOO-HOO!"...



At the top of the mountain he untied his dog

From the sleigh. And the valley was filling with fog

As thick as the Who Hash he'd grinched just before.

He chuckled with glee at what was in store.

Now the Grinch grabbed the sacks from the top of the sleigh,

And with a mighty "HEAVE **!" he shoved them away.

The bags filled with toys well they weaved and they shook

With the weight of the things he so sneakily took.

Until finally momentum made things far less slow.

They fell 3000 feet to the jagged rocks below.

A sickening crunch and several sharp cries

At first startled the Grinch but caused him to realize

When he stole from the Whos down in Whoville his pride

Had gotten the best of him; he'd thrown some children inside.

He giggled maliciously, grabbed his dog Max

And got back in the sleigh, for he couldn't relax.

He had to go back, for his job wasn't done.

All the Whos down in Whoville, every last one

Every man, every woman, every daughter and son

Would be dead in their beds by the dawn of the sun.

The trip down Mount Crumpit was faster than up

As he growled to himself, "where's that ***** with the cup?"

He jumped off the sleigh, machete in hand

And marched straight into Whoville, whose gates could not stand

For the rage made him strong. How he hated the Whos

With their **** cheesy smiles, and their dumb pointy shoes,

Turned up noses and pigtails and hideous songs,

THE SONGS, THE SONGS, HOW HE HATED THE SONGS.

And now he'd make sure that the Whos sang no more...

At Cindy Lou Who's house he kicked down the door

And strode into the bedroom of Cindy Lou Who.

She woke with a start, murmured "Santa? That you?"

The Grinch, with a sneer, grabbed Lou Who by the hair,

****** her out of bed seven feet in the air,

And with two sharp knives pinned her arms to the wall.

Her screams roused her parents just down the hall.

They ran to their child to save her from harm.

The mistake that they made cost them each their right arm.

Writhing on the floor in their own ****** mess,

They looked at the Grinch in a state of distress.

"Why would you do this?" they managed to hurl,

"Please, you can **** us, just not our little girl!"

He listened to their pleas with a wry little smile,

He patiently heard them, then after a while,

He cut out their tongues with another sharp knife,

First of the husband, and then of the wife.

Then he turned to young Cindy with glee,

And hissed in her ear, "you'll do something for me..."

Cindy shook her head violently, but to no avail,

For the Grinch had the tongues on a rusty old nail.

He shoved them down her gullet. She started to choke,

Then she finally died, for the rusty nail broke.

He stepped over the body of mother Lou Who,

And the Grinch slithered over to house #2.

With this house he made quick work of the Whos.

He set them on fire to cure them of the "blues."

The blaze that resulted would spread down the street,

Drawing Whos from their houses like flies to dead meat.

A grenade waited for them in center of town.

A click, then a boom mowed, like, half of them down.

The other half attempted a weak attack.

With a Type-67 the Grinch kept them back.

The little Who children could do nothing but stare

In open-mouthed horror as the Grinch, without care,

Shot them down one by one till the snow was stained red,

And he would not stop firing till they were all dead.



And as the sun rose oe'r the grisly scene,

The Grinch drenched in blood of adult, child, and teen,

With a pentagram smack in the center of town,

And the tree in the middle would slowly burn down.

With the scalps of the Whos down in Whoville in hand,

The Grinch called his dog Max, who could barely stand

Because he was violently shaking in shock.

He could not even whimper, let alone walk.

Not a Who was left standing, not a song to be heard,

Save for that of a single Who bird

Which was quickly snuffed out by a single pistol round.

And after that there was not a sound.

The Grinch, his work finished, got back in the sleigh,

Cracked the whip over Max, and slithered away.

The last thing the poor town of Whoville would hear:

"If there's anyone left, well, I'll come back next year!"

the Himalayas rise
there is snow on the peaks
I watch it from my bed
I gaze and gaze at it
in the morning
as a little village girl goes by
sniffling with cold
I too am cold
it is chilly here in Tosh in May
but a young Israeli boy
took off his shirt
and stood on the fencepost of the guesthouse dancing
down was the deep green valley
all of us watched in admiration
the next day I went down to the waterfall
which from here is a beautiful whisper in the air
there are donkeys and a path
and pretty houses on the other side of the valley
and everywhere there are people smoking hash and relaxing
in the cafes and the guesthouses
it is almost like a pilgrimage smokers keep coming
and sit around smoking talking
I pull down my woollen cap my arms and back
feel the chill despite a thick sweater
despite a blanket and a four inch thick quilt
I roll my joints and smoke them alone
sometimes smoke them with others
I look at the hills and the valleys and the wooden houses
I look at the white peaks glowing in the sun
and talk about CCR and stained glass art with Michael from Norfolk
who’s going down the valley to another village for a party tonight
with his young Spanish friend
I talk about Bombay with Puneet and Manya from Kanpur
who’ve come here on a Bullet
Hash Heaven Manya says reading my mind as the joint passes on
to the four engineering interns from Delhi
and all the time I sip on ginger lemon honey
for my sore throat until on the last day it disappears
unlike the young Israeli girl’s pink laptop in a pink cover
found by the part time caretaker in the garden on a pink chair
she left behind last night because it was too dark
come again the guesthouse boys say to me as I pay them
what a scene I think how cool as I begin to leave the village
down the dung-clotted stone steps nodding to the smokers coming in.

Purp-Purple Purp-Purple in my blood, cut it, cut it, cut it
Let it bleed, blee-bleed
Sipping on the lea-le-lean
Smoking that dank
My blood stream-stre-stream

When the codeine hits
It hits real hard
When the codeine hits
It hits real hard, hard-hard

Drop a rancher in, let it-let it splash
Splas-splash
Turn up the system, ***** let the snare drum
Crash cra-crash
Rolling through the hood, chevy dropped low
(Lo-low yeah)
My Chevy real lo-lo-low
I said my leather and wood Chevy dropped low

Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine
Mixing up the-mixing up the medicine-med-medicine
**** C's in the backroom letting all the ratchets in
Ratchet-ratchet-ratch-
Letting all the ratchets in

Dumping out cigar trash-tra-trash
Fill it back with the hash-ha-hash
Sip that lean slow
Bringing the good old nineties back
Ba-back
Said bring the good old nineties back

[Hashtag]MeToo
Here it goes again,
trending on Insta and Facebook.
Where real awareness stems.
Mind the sarcasm,
social media’s a powerful tool
not knockin’ that.
I wonder though,
does the mind of the follower
understand the context of the hash?
Do they get it should be a call to action?
Not necessarily at the keyboard.
More like on the couch with their children,
Giving the conversation of consent.  
Most people do not even understand it by definition .
The meaning of yes and no convoluted by scenario.  
Bias boils over like milk and water over full flame.
The posts bubble out and stick to the side of the pan,
quickly drying; leaving their mark.
Until the soap and warm water flows over them,
and the steam evaporates the confessions.
Until they are again whispers we all hear and know.
It’s whispers from the alley ways,
and from married couples bedroom doors.
The woman is the property,  
the man is the proprietor.  
We refuse to address the real problems,
the failures of our up-bringers.
We point fingers and slay names
yet the statistics provide the truth.  
One in four for females, one in sixteen for males.
We all have been violated, slandered, and forced to say
[Hashtag]MeToo
Not going to say I did not share it,
I know the touch of unwanted hands,
the invasive *******.
All for the sake of the insanity,  
in repeating a useless gesture.
The only difference is
My hashtag went to my Senator.

Every time, I pass by an In-N-Out I remember that night we went to a show in Sacramento.
You, driving your van full of people and hopes and laughs and drugs,
pulled up in front of the school around 5 o'clock on a rainy January afternoon.
I hopped in, immediately overwhelmed by the love I took the back seat to myself.
In front of me was Jena, wearing her blue and purple sweater that I always will remember by.
Next to her was Fritz, dressed in his usual attire consisting of a hoody and jeans.
Next to him was Shelby, a girl I had not had the pleasure of spending time with before that night.
She didn't say much throughout the whole night nor has she since then.
Riding shotgun was Dylan, another person I had not hung out with before. He was busy mixing shisha and hash oil and I don't blame him for not saying hello.
And you, Tyler, you were driving. And as we drove with the windows down, your hair whipped around.

Almost as soon as we were on our way, I was packing spliff, courtesy of Shelby into a pipe, courtesy me.
We got it burning, just as we reached the highway and not long after that the hookah, courtesy Fritz, was slowly burning the hash-shisha concoction, courtesy Dylan.
I remember not saying much, except when we sang along to some rap song that I could not tell you the name of now.
And at one point, after the spliff had all been smoked and quick hooka session  had concluded Dylan turned around and asked me something I could not make out.
I replied back to him with a what and he again asked an non-understandable question, only this time I said "Sorry, I can't hear you, I'm really high."
Everybody in the van laughed and Tyler said she loved me and Fritz patted me on the back and Shelby turned around and smile at me.
Maybe a half hour after we left we stopped at In-N-Out for some beautiful Double-Doubles.
Once we got our food we began to understand that we had ordered not Double-Doubles but regular hamburgers. Albeit we were very put off by this, it did little to ruin our night.

I can only remember brief portions of that night.
I remember being dropped off at the curb of a punk rock show Shelby and I were attending.
I remember meeting our friends Lukas and Dakota, who are dating, inside.
I remember standing watching the bands, thinking of God knows what.
I remember walking two blocks to a parking lot the van was parked in.
I remember getting in, again overwhelmed by the love and this time, smoke.
I remember Lukas and I went outside to smoke a cigarette.
I remember a local coming up to us and asking us for a light.
I remember talking to him about something. The weather, perhaps.
I remember hugging Lukas good bye and getting in the van.
I remember falling asleep.
I remember waking up at a gas station where the tank was filled, courtesy Fritz.
I remember getting home.
I remember the laughs
and the smoke
and Lukas
and Fritz
and Tyler
and Jena
and Shelby
and Dakota
and Dylan.
I remember the love.

The first time a man ever pointed a gun at me and asked me to love him was at Granny's Kitchen in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The waitress, a soft spoken white woman with her hair pulled back in a bun, had just dropped off my plates --- a simple mix of scrambled eggs, two pieces of greasy bacon, and a short stack of pancakes. Now, no matter how cheap, I always feel like I'm cutting loose at breakfast places for the sheer abundance of plates. While I'm sure the eggs and bacon could have shared real estate, each component had its own china.

The waitress lingered at my table, her fingers fidgeting with straws in her apron. I made eye contact. Well, my eyes contacted hers; she was staring at my lips.

Sure I can't get you something to drink? she asked.

This was approximately the tenth time she'd made sure. She was uncomfortable that I had supplied my own beverage -- a Big Gulp. But even more than that, she was uncomfortable by the deep red stain taking over my lips. Contents of the Big Gulp: merlot, boxed.

(That is an unnecessary detail. I've only written it so I never do it again.)

Before Greg hopped up on a table and announced to the restaurant, If I could have your attention, my name is Greg and this will only take a second, blah, blah blah, I poured a copious amount of syrup on my pancakes. Then I moved the bacon to my pancake plate. In my experience, very little in this life is better than syrup on bacon.

I shut my eyes for that first bite, just like the commercials. The syrup dribbled a bit onto my beard, and when I opened my eyes, I discovered it had also landed on my shirt. I grabbed a napkin. Heard a chair slide backwards. I started with my beard, peering around the diner, making sure no one saw. I think I heard someone gasp. But I was busy, working that napkin then against my shirt. Jesus, I thought. My grandma, who's got a splash of the Parkinson's, could eat with more grace.

If I could have your attention, my name is Greg and this will only take a second, a very official voice boomed behind me.

I turned around to see if I recognized him as one of those cuffed jean-sporting, wild plaid-loving NPR hosts. He wasn't one of those. He was a sunburn with mop hair in a black tank top and hemmed jean shorts. He did, however, have a cleft chin. That's actually worth noting. Don't see a lot of them these days.

I know you guys are busy, he said. I know that like me, you guys are probably broke as hell. I mean no offense Granny's, I love this place, but it ain't exactly four stars. Or three. Anyway, all I want from each of you is five dollars. If you ain't got five, give me four. Ain't got four, three. And so on.

He started with the stringy Japanese couple on the west side of the restaurant. Nobody really seemed scared, not the freckled brat in canvas sneakers, not the liver-spotted gentleman with a copy of that day's paper.

My old friend Jerome used to say that white folks are the only romantic criminals. He tacked it up to that whole Bonnie and Clyde crap. Greg, it seemed, was privy to that information, too. He smiled and thanked each person as he robbed them of a few presidents. The victims, smiling back, seemed to be thinking of their names tagged at the end of some newspaper dialogue. A few even gave more than he asked.

Here, take fifteen. Times will get better.

Aren't you just a charmer.

It was all very moving.

So he gets to me, and of course, I don't have any cash. I carry a debit and an arsenal of credit cards like a normal American. I don't know how he made it to me before running into this particular problem.

No, I don't have one of those iPhone card swipers, he said. Well, you gotta give me something.

I offered a gift card to Harold's Clothes for Men, it had like two bucks on it, but he wasn't interested.

What's your name?

Henry.

How much do you weigh?

Enough to keep me prohibited from most amusement park rides.

I like you, Henry. Well, let me ask you something. Have you ever loved a man? he asked, pointing his smudgy revolver just past my ear.

I shook my head no.

Me neither. I've always been curious, though. You been curious?

There was a time when I was thirteen -- Blake Hinton was changing after basketball practice -- and I remember thinking, that is an incredible chest. These lines just sprawled from his sternum, lines leading to these almond *******, and I specifically remember wanting to eat them like, well, almonds. But that hardly counts as curious. So, I said, No.

To which Greg responded: Get curious, boy. You're coming with me.


In the spirit of honesty, I was in a bit of a haze before Greg made me climb into his beat up Cavalier. Not just from the Big Gulp brimmed with merlot, no, I hadn't slept in two days prior to the whole gun-in-face incident. Reason being, I was, as Greg would say, broke as hell, and the rent was due. I stayed up both nights conspiring (and drinking). So, really I was pretty thrilled to be kidnapped away from the whole situation.

I had visions. I guess from the lack of sleep. Maybe they weren't visions, maybe just dreams, or fever dreams, I don't know. All I know is I blinked, and we were in the Appalachians. And there was a grey longbeard in the backseat rattling on and on about how change is easy, movement is easy; it's that whole nesting thing that takes courage and strength, blah, blah, blah. I told him to be quiet. Greg told me to get some sleep. I blinked.

We were in a karaoke bar in Madison, Tennessee. There was a gin and tonic in front of me. I took a drink. There was a water with lime in front of me.

Greg asked, Where did you go?

I told him, your dreams, trying to be cute. He turned and asked the bartender for a Yeager bomb. Reaching for the server in -- granted -- an overly dramatic gesture, I said, Make it two. We made it three. We made it four. Seven. Then some vague, but perfect number, because my head rang right. The words came right. And I was a journalist, asking Greg all the right questions.

I'm not a criminal, he said.

I was just bored, man, he said.

You see, I was in a rut, he said. Last month I put up a personal on Craigslist. I know, it's pretty ******* desperate. I've read the kind **** people put on there. But mine was different. I just wanted some time with my ex-wife. Some couch ***, you know? We hadn't done it on a couch since I dropped out of college, and I hadn't even really thought about it until a couple weeks after the divorce. Then it was all I could think about.

A black woman, whose teeth glowed under the black light, began singing "Wild Horses." Then he read my mind, I think.

Yeah, she answered it. Did our thing on her sofa. It was nice and all, and like all nice things, you just want more, but she said I couldn't have no more, this was a fluke, a one-time, or no, a one-off thing, she said. Had to relocate, so that's why I did that whole thing at Granny's.

You ever get it on a couch? he asked.

No, I said. I've see a bra though --- two actually.

He took that as a joke, which was good.

Though wild horses couldn't drag me away, a gasoline horse could.


He handed me a courtesy breath mint after I finished throwing up. The Nashville skyline looks perfect, he said. Especially at night.

My stomach was gravel in a washing machine. Masculine love. At gunpoint, I had agreed to indulge it. I was going to make love to a man -- not just a man -- a criminal. Not something to write about on a postcard.

Mr. Winters, my esteemed landlord,
Apologies about the rent. Got kidnapped by a *******, and I'm presently banging and being banged by him in Music City, USA.

I blinked.

We laid on opposite ends of the queen-sized mattress.

I always liked Super 8s, Greg said. I don't see the point in spending so much on a hotel. A bed is a bed.

And I tried to be funny with something about the confidentiality of dark bedsheets, but it fell flat.

Greg cried. I love my ex-wife, he said.

Can I help?

Will you hold me? he asked.

The air conditioner kicked on in the already freezing room.

I'm sorry. You don't have to, he said.

I scooted against him. He smelled pleasant in a family-vacation-kind-of-way, like a fresh pretzel covered in salt. I put my arm under his neck. He buried his face into my shoulder. I blinked.


The front end of his Cavalier was held together with copper wire and coat hangers. It was a two-door. Both doors dented from, according to Greg, hit-and-runs. It had a Vermont plate on the back. It was red. I mention all of this to say: if we kept moving, we were bound to get pulled over.

In the parking lot of 3B's Breakfast, Burgers And Beer, Greg asked me to retrieve his revolver from the glove compartment. You kinda have to uppercut it, he said. And I did.

I don't want to do it again, but we have to. I'm not staying put, not until I hit the ocean. But don't worry, I'm not going to hurt anyone.

He showed me the revolver. No bullets. I nodded, in approval, I guess.


The second time a man ever pointed a gun at me and asked me to love him was at 3B's Breakfast, Burgers And Beer in Bellevue, Tennessee. Of course, it was the same man, Greg, but the circumstances were a little different.

I went with two orders of biscuits and gravy --- or B & G as my dear friend Chance affectionately calls it. Four bites in and I'd yet to hit biscuit. For a moment, I wanted to tell Greg, C'mon man, ***** the ocean. Tennessee does gravy the way God intended. Nobody would find us in this suburb. We could be sharecroppers. Do they still have sharecroppers?

Do you like fresh corn? I asked. It was the first crop that came to mind.

Greg didn't answer. I noticed his plate of hash browns and eggs -- sunny-side up -- were untouched. You okay?

He was, he said, trying to get in the zone, that's all.

Alright.

Our waitress looked like a poster child for ******'s Youth. She couldn't have been much more than sixteen. She had blonde -- almost white -- hair. Her eyes changed color with the intensity and direction of light, a gradient between seaweed and dark ocean blue. She appeared to be an amish girl gone defective, and I was about to inquire into that very supposition when Greg stood on the table, and said, If I could have your attention, my name is Greg and this will only take a second.

Tennessee is not North Carolina. In North Carolina, they got a healthy aversion to firearms. In Tennessee, however, once a babe can walk, the *******'s got a BB gun and an endless supply of empty soda cans for target practice. I say that, to say this: when Greg stood on the table, so did three other men. Their three guns pointed right at him.

Lower that gun, brother. You ain't gettin' any money out of us.

Hate to shoot you in front of your boyfriend.

Coffee spilled and ran off the tray our waitress held. She shook so hard, it wasn't clear how many women she was.

Greg's cleft chin centered on one gunman, than the other, than the other.

Just drop the gun, *******.

We don't want to ruin no one's breakfast.

Fellas, I said, he doesn't have any bullets in his gun. We need a little money that's all.

That ****** is just trying to protect him.

I'm calling the cops, a purple-haired old woman yelped from under her table. Silverware clanged against the floor. Then the buzz of a fly. Then the pop of fries drowning in grease. Then the bell chimed as some idiot walked inside.

Greg's arm was shaky as he pointed the gun at me. Do you love me? he asked.

I blinked.

And I was at 3B's in Bellevue, Tennessee.

I blinked.

And I was at 3B's in Bellevue, Tennessee.

I blinked.

And I was at 3B's in Bellevue, Tennessee.

I put my arms up. Slid my chair back a ways. Stepped on the chair, then unto the table.

Do you love me? Greg asked.

His breath smelled like last night's alcohol and that morning's coffee. He was a child, a sunburnt child with a cap gun. He wasn't going to hurt anyone.

I put my hand on top of the revolver and lowered it. He crumpled, as if I were scolding him. They still pointed their guns at us. But for the first time in my life, I felt secured, tethered to a space.

I lifted Greg's chin up with my index finger. Covered his eyes with the palm of my hand. And I kissed him. I kissed him, keeping my eyes closed tight.

PINK HIGH HEEL SHOES

I remember drinking
pink champagne

from your pink
high heel shoes.

I remember making love
with you

wearing only
your pink high heel shoes.

I remember
how your pink high heel shoes

became

candle holders
ashtrays
(where you stashed your hash)

deadly weapons
in an...OW!...row!

& you ask me
do I remember

your pink high heel shoes?

Do I?
I do!

Maybe it was love

maybe it was bourbon

maybe it was the hash

that baked us like an oven

*AA

I sometimes take words that were first used by others
(I'm About to admit I'm a bit of a crook)
Re-hash and re-use them, and make my own covers-
Stealing little known lines from an eloquent book.

I've stolen from Shakespeare, yanked words off of Yeats,
And pilfered from Plato and Brown;
I've probably swiped stuff off all of the greats,
And many of zero renown.

There's more to be heard in the wise words of Wilde
Or took from a Tennyson line
Or the thinking out loud of an inquisitive child,
Than could spill forth from this pen of mine.

So if I've stolen from you, and perchance have offended,
(Yes- I'm about to steal Shakespeare again)
Just think but this, and all is mended;
Nothing original came from my pen.

Which means that, eventually, all that I've ever done
Will be lost in the shadows of time,
Skipped over, or lost, and simply outdone
By your works original shine.

you want the good first, and the bad second?
never mind, you're going to get
the bad first...

so there i was,
sitting in the street, outside a pub,
sipping a cool drench
of heineken pint, probably
the best beer in the world
(i'd agree with the carlsberg ad.,
but then it's featherweight
at 3.8%... so dear dane?
probably no... stick with
shakespeare... you *******
umlaut wannabe (ø) diphtong)...
so i was sitting there
with some dutch-bewilderment,
a local...
  out pops a skinny kenyan
and starts ******* in front of us...
sure, he's ******* against
the dumpster,
  but the dutch-bewilderment
glaces at me and his eyes
are already saying to me:
worth a knife or a stick,
to clobber the ******* down,
i've lost the desire to drink
my beer...
         centre of amsterdam,
i was wackoed out of the pub
by sheer: huh?!
     i admit, not all stories are bad,
the other time, i was sharing
a hostel room with two germans,
who decided to waste
a mushroom experience while
watching *american dad...
while me and this egyptian
architecture student hit the town...
i was drinking, he was
smoking,
   then i took a **** at one of his
"special moment" rollies...
and then he said,
   put these on (headphones),
listen to this music...
the music? le trio joubran,
the song? masar...
     i was drinking throughout
the day... but one **** of
the rollie, and the music?
            **** me, the dam bursts...
i was sitting there,
in one of the cafes,
  mouth open, eyes closed,
one or two dutch girls looking,
my egyptian companion said...
     it must have been akin
to someone shooting up ******...
with my eyes closed i must have
been looking at god,
  or a diamond, or into a kaleidoscope;
gravity fused itself with my genitals...
i was dragged into my seat...
  and couldn't move,
eyes closed, mouth agape,
      monged out of my nuts,
which by this moment in chronological
order, was beyond the chance to orbit
saturn and take a selfie...
  the holy trinity of an excess
of *****, some marijuana,
   and music you've never heard
before, suggested by a stranger...
last thing i remember was walking
through the streets of amsterdam,
laughing my head off...

when i consider reviving memories
of cities i usually have several
version to mind...
the first amsterdam i went to was so:
.............................
........................
...............................
a boring trip, i bought two pipes,
a classical pipe, and this asian pipe...
the second amsterdam?
         was this the amsterdam where
i visited a *****?
can't remember...
  amsterdam no. 3?
             i think that's the amsterdam
account i just gave...
    never mind the minor thrill
of "smuggling" a few grams of hash
through the airport,
  in a biscuit can...
                a bit like plagiarising
that sociology essay, just inviting
the thesaurus to change the sentence
structure at university...
for the thrill, not for the grade...
  evidently a.i. isn't familiar with
the thesaurus cheat mode...
  **** me...got a first in that essay,
and managed to beat the computers;
oh yeah, smuggled the hash in...
it wasn't a lot, barely an 8th of an ounce,
fact of the matter is, i did it;
that being said,
  i have no romance with amsterdam,
i just miss paris...
      i'm never going back,
the memories are too precious...
              that hostel... duck something,
drowning duck? drunk duck?
    i can't remember...
   i'm never going back to paris,
the memories are too precious,
and the current affairs are too painful
to make that city a beacon of light
once more...
   we showered in the outside,
and we made courgette pasta with onions
garlic, bacon and cream...
    but that was 2005 or so.
       for some reason, i never had the sort
of affection for amsterdam,
            great for smoking,
great for drinking,
   great for not feeling guilty about
window-shopping prostitutes:
   with that victorian-feminism attitude
of the brits...
     hey! you're cutting the chivalry costs
of paying for the meal: back to basics...
  stochholm? over-priced...
      you'd probably become intoxicated
quicker, having downed a bottle of *****
you bought at the airport,
  and then drinking your own ****,
than you would, while drinking at the swedes'
americana experiment with pseudo-prohibition
tactics...
    how are you going to keep warm?
fat ain't furr... but sure as ****,
alcohol numbs the biting cold,
    no matter how you think about it
in describing it as a placebo effect...
                    it still warms the poles
in the outdoors, esp. when a person dies
in winter, and they have their stypa /
   wake drinking session in the graveyard.

i just can't forget that look of disgust
from the dutch guy sitting next to me,
drinking his beer,
   without our shared canvas, of an african
******* in the street, against
a dust-bin;

as borat would have said...
                     *mmm das nnnnnnniiiiiiice.

“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

Like a captive, I capture rapture wrapping around stakes that matter
Joan of Arc battered
Also tattered but, easily dismissive
Refracted from fractured prominent phrases people play with
Distinctly persuasive and evasive, dressed boyishly attractive, lax stature, dawning armor crafted by absence as if asked about it-
I’m drifted
Protection is principle prerequisite, when fire is lit
I sort of implore your aorta before it’s incinerated to ashes
Dethatched as a habit, with swords or hatchets crafted to singe heartstrings that attached it
While I slash slick Rick as a quick fix,
To fend for pretend pretenses or presumed tricks,
I can’t quit
Cause I hit lips against hash spliffs fashioned with dashes of passion all while rationing fireball cinnamon sips
Martyr to avoidance
I gaze at fabled dazed gossipers galvanizing grips on gritty grapevines while licking warning labels through smoke haze on blurred lines
Capably unstable
Other eyes attending scandal circles able to shout lies and rekindle handed arguments on tables with locked smiles stay boxed in
Avidly amiable
Searching for counterparts when combusted or branded
Toying with matches loses meaning when rules reseed
Those vagabonds claim love is some all end hard bent to mend what the same above can’t comprehend.
Breaking boredom, I pillage pillows with night terrors
And ardent arsonists yearn for flames that churn, turn, liquefy and learn learned thoughts and smoldered feelings
Completely complacent
Melting in one another they are completing each other like two candles tryst true at a wedding day
However later the blaze is severed, smoke sears, and charred black wick stands alone for them.
Aggressive and progressive.
As for me never pleading, fire forever fleets to streets between iron bars I built that cage in deep heat and seep dire dreams once desired
Suppose I’m a skeptic
Roasted or disconnected
Just jaded, just met you
Always over it too soon
Burnt but I’m amused.
I’m useful.

Twenty-five pigeons are doing **** rips in my living room.
In the middle of my living room
twenty-five pigeons
are doing **** rips
of **** that they bought
off my next door neighbor
who just happened to have some lying around.
There are twenty-five pigeons
doing **** rips in my living room,
and they will not stop watching
Battlestar Galactica.
The twenty-five pigeons
doing **** rips in my living room
ate all of my Cheese Nips,
and they drank the last
of the RC Cola I bought.
I try to get
the twenty-five pigeons
doing **** rips in my living room
to leave,
because I hate it when they do this,
but they just coo at me
and that shuts me up.
One of the twenty-five pigeons
doing **** rips
in my living room
accidentally knocks over
the ****
and spills bongwater
all over my ******* carpet.
The **** cracks.
They start flapping their wings really hard
and ******* everywhere,
because they're pigeons
and they're mad.
But then,
one of the twenty-five pigeons
produces some hash wax
from under his wings,
and now there's twenty-five pigeons
doing knife hits
of hash wax
over my stove,
and quite frankly
I'm ******.
I run in
and start waving my arms
around,
and scream,
"Get the **** out of here,
who let you in anyway?"
And the head pigeon drops the knife on accident,
and they all fly out of my living room
and into the sky,
all really blazed,
leaving me here,
mad,
with a bunch of stains on my carpet.