Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

She's beautifully chaotic
a whirlwind of makeup and hoopla
she'll kick bushes on her way;
to a can of beer and a good comic book

“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.

And in the end,
You begin to realize who your true friends are.
The ones who stand by your side
Through thick and thin
Trial, error, and sin.

In this day and age,
Not many stand the chance
In nomination
For the sacrificial commencement of honour.

Nature plays its part indeed.
Because it is only in time
The veil is lifted.
Root by root,
Seed by seed.
Humanity reveal their true colors.

Next thing you know,
You've been cursed by a plague.
A whole school of fish
Swimming to discover their own island.
That is only for thyself.
You've been contaminated
By the human race.

Look at the social media blow up.
The narcissistic selfies,
The I, me, my's,
Gaining daily acceptance
All in disguise.
The public audience is their show.
It's needed for everyday approval.

Nobody really cares about you
It's all about
"Look at me!"
"Look what I can do!"
"You are so cool."
"Thumbs up to you!"
I'm going to abuse the word "love."

Forget the hoopla
Here today
Gone tomorrow.
Everyone feeding off of
Self loathing attention.
There is no more room for pitiful sorrow.

Truth is
Sheep lie among the prey
Victims...
Don't be another
"Nodding Acquaintance"
A distortion of the facts.

Don't get fooled.
Not by social grace
Not by exploitation of the face.
You'll just be a bargain commodity,
For their convenience.

Stand true
True to yourself
Because in the end,
Nobody else really cares.

Mahmoud Darwish: English Translations

Mahmoud Darwish is the essential breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging ... his is an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered.―Naomi Shihab Nye



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's trembling beginnings,
a boulder covered with moss,
mothers who dance to the flute's sighs,
and the invaders' fear of memories.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
September's rustling end,
a woman leaving forty behind, still full of grace, still blossoming,
an hour of sunlight in prison,
clouds taking the shapes of unusual creatures,
the people's applause for those who mock their assassins,
and the tyrant's fear of songs.

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
Lady Earth, mother of all beginnings and endings!
In the past she was called Palestine
and tomorrow she will still be called Palestine.
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life!



Identity Card
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Record!
I am an Arab!
And my identity card is number fifty thousand.
I have eight children;
the ninth arrives this autumn.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
Employed at the quarry,
I have eight children.
I provide them with bread,
clothes and books
from the bare rocks.
I do not supplicate charity at your gates,
nor do I demean myself at your chambers' doors.
Will you be furious?

Record!
I am an Arab!
I have a name without a title.
I am patient in a country
where people are easily enraged.
My roots
were established long before the onset of time,
before the unfolding of the flora and fauna,
before the pines and the olive trees,
before the first grass grew.
My father descended from plowmen,
not from the privileged classes.
My grandfather was a lowly farmer
neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Still, they taught me the pride of the sun
before teaching me how to read;
now my house is a watchman's hut
made of branches and cane.
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name, but no title!

Record!
I am an Arab!
You have stolen my ancestors' orchards
and the land I cultivated
along with my children.
You left us nothing
but these bare rocks.
Now will the State claim them
as it has been declared?

Therefore!
Record on the first page:
I do not hate people
nor do I encroach,
but if I become hungry
I will feast on the usurper's flesh!
Beware!
Beware my hunger
and my anger!

NOTE: Darwish was married twice, but had no children. In the poem above, he is apparently speaking for his people, not for himself personally.



Excerpt from “Speech of the Red Indian”
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let's give the earth sufficient time to recite
the whole truth ...
The whole truth about us.
The whole truth about you.

In tombs you build
the dead lie sleeping.
Over bridges you *****
file the newly slain.

There are spirits who light up the night like fireflies.
There are spirits who come at dawn to sip tea with you,
as peaceful as the day your guns mowed them down.

O, you who are guests in our land,
please leave a few chairs empty
for your hosts to sit and ponder
the conditions for peace
in your treaty with the dead.



Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

They left me unrecognizable in the shadows
that bled all colors from this passport.
To them, my wounds were novelties―
curious photos for tourists to collect.
They failed to recognize me. No, don't leave
the palm of my hand bereft of sun
when all the trees recognize me
and every song of the rain honors me.
Don't set a wan moon over me!

All the birds that flocked to my welcoming wave
as far as the distant airport gates,
all the wheatfields,
all the prisons,
all the albescent tombstones,
all the barbwired boundaries,
all the fluttering handkerchiefs,
all the eyes―
they all accompanied me.
But they were stricken from my passport
shredding my identity!

How was I stripped of my name and identity
on soil I tended with my own hands?
Today, Job's lamentations
re-filled the heavens:
Don't make an example of me, not again!
Prophets! Gentlemen!―
Don't require the trees to name themselves!
Don't ask the valleys who mothered them!
My forehead glistens with lancing light.
From my hand the riverwater springs.
My identity can be found in my people's hearts,
so invalidate this passport!



Excerpts from "The Dice Player"
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?

I am not a stone
burnished to illumination by water ...

Nor am I a reed
riddled by the wind
into a flute ...

No, I'm a dice player:
I win sometimes
and I lose sometimes,
just like you ...
or perhaps a bit less.

I was born beside the water well with the three lonely trees like nuns:
born without any hoopla or a midwife.

I was given my unplanned name by chance,
assigned to my family by chance,
and by chance inherited their features, attributes, habits and illnesses.

First, arterial plaque and hypertension;
second, shyness when addressing my elders;
third, the hope of curing the flu with cups of hot chamomile;
fourth, laziness in describing gazelles and larks;
fifth, lethargy dark winter nights;
sixth, the lack of a singing voice.

I had no hand in my own being;
it was mere coincidence that I popped out male;
mere coincidence that I saw the pale lemon-like moon illuminating sleepless girls
and did not unleash the mole hidden in my private parts.

I might not have existed
had my father not married my mother
by chance.

Or I might have been like my sister
who screamed then died,
only alive an hour
and never knowing who gave her birth.

Or like the doves’ eggs
smashed before her chicks hatched.

Was it mere coincidence
that I was the one left alive in a traffic accident
because I didn’t board the bus ...
because I’d forgotten about life and its routines
while reading the night before
a love story in which I became first the author,
then the lover, then the beloved and love’s martyr ...
then overslept and avoided the accident!

I also played no role in surviving the sea,
because I was a reckless boy,
allured by the magnetic water
calling: Come to me!
No, I only survived the sea
because a human gull rescued me
when he saw the waves pulling me under and paralyzing my hands!

Who am I to say
the things I say to you
outside the church door?

I'm nothing but a dice throw,
a toss between predator and prey.

In my moonlit awareness
I witnessed the massacre
and survived by sheer chance:
I was too small for the enemy to target,
barely bigger than the bee
flitting among the fence’s flowers.

Then I feared for my father and family;
I feared for our time as fragile as glass;
I feared for my pet cat and rabbit;
I feared for a magical moon looming high over the mosque’s minarets;
I feared for our vines’ grapes
dangling like a dog’s udders ...

Then fear walked beside me and I walked with it,
barefoot, forgetting my fragile dreams of what I had wanted for tomorrow
because there was no time for tomorrow.

I was lucky the wolves
departed by chance,
or else escaped from the army.

I also played no role in my own life,
except when Life taught me her recitations.
Are there any more?, I wondered,
then lit my lamps and tried to amend them ...

I might not have been a swallow
had the wind ordained it otherwise ...

The wind is the traveler's fate: his fortune or misfortune.

I flew north, east, west ...
but the south was too harsh, too rebellious for me
because the south is my country.
I became a swallow’s metaphor,
hovering over my life’s debris
from spring to autumn,
baptizing my feathers in the cloud-like lake
then offering my salaams to the undying Nazarene:
undying because God’s spirit lives within him
and God is the prophet’s luck ...

While it is my good fortune to be the Godhead’s neighbor ...

Just as it is my bad fortune the cross
remains our future’s eternal ladder!

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
Who am I?

I might have not been inspired
because inspiration is the lonely soul’s compensation
and the poem is his dice throw
on an unlit board
that may or may not glow ...

Words fall ...
as feathers fall to earth:
I did not plan this poem.
I only obeyed its rhythm’s demands.

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?

It might not have been me.
I might not have been here to write it.
My plane might have crashed one morning
while I slept till noon
then arrived at the airport too late
to visit Damascus and Cairo,
the Louvre, and other enchanting cities.

Had I been a slow walker, a rifle might have severed my shadow from its cedar.
Had I been a fast walker, I might have disintegrated and vanished like a fleeting whim.
Had I dreamt too much, I might have lost my memories of reality.

I am fortunate to sleep alone
listening to my body's complaints
with my talent for detecting pain,
so that I call the physician ten minutes before death:
dodging death by a mere ten minutes,
continuing life by chance,
disappointing the Void.

But who am I to disappoint the Void?
Who am I?
Who?

Keywords/Tags: Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine, Palestinian, Arab, Arabic, translation, Gaza, Israel, children, mothers, injustice, violence, war, race, racism, intolerance, ethnic cleansing, genocide

Nothing Remains
by Fadwa Tuqan the "Poet of Palestine"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, we're together,
but tomorrow you'll be hidden from me again,
thanks to life's cruelty.

The seas will separate us...
Oh! Oh! If only I could see you!
But I'll never know
where your steps led you,
which routes you took,
or to what unknown destinations
your feet were compelled.

You will depart and the thief of hearts,
the denier of beauty,
will rob us of all that's dear to us,
will steal this happiness from us,
leaving our hands empty.

Tomorrow at sunrise you'll vanish like a phantom,
dissipating into a delicate mist
dissolving quickly in the summer sun.

Your scent! Your scent contains the essence of life,
filling my heart
as the earth absorbs the lifegiving rain.

I will miss you like the fragrance of trees
when you leave tomorrow,
and nothing remains.

Just as everything beautiful and all that's dear to us
is lost! Lost, and nothing remains.

Keywords/Tags: Fadwa Tuqan, Palestine, Palestinian, Arabic, translation, nothing, remains, parting, separation, loss


Fadwa Tuqan has been called the Grand Dame of Palestinian letters and The Poet of Palestine. These are my translations of Fadwa Tuqan poems originally written in Arabic.



Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.

Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.

Published by Palestine Today, Free Journal and Lokesh Tripathi



Existence
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In my solitary life, I was a lost question;
in the encompassing darkness,
my answer lay concealed.

You were a bright new star
revealed by fate,
radiating light from the fathomless darkness.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice—
until I perceived
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
and in the twin tremors
of our entwined hands
I had found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate and distant!
Don't you remember the coalescence
Of our spirits in the flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us.

Published by This Week in Palestine, Arabic Literature (ArabLit.org) and Art-in-Society (Germany)



Labor Pains
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight the wind wafts pollen through ruined fields and homes.
The earth shivers with love, with the agony of giving birth,
while the Invader spreads stories of submission and surrender.

O, Arab Aurora!

Tell the Usurper: childbirth’s a force beyond his ken
because a mother’s wracked body reveals a rent that inaugurates life,
a crack through which light dawns in an instant
as the blood’s rose blooms in the wound.



Hamza
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hamza was one of my hometown’s ordinary men
who did manual labor for bread.

When I saw him recently,
the land still wore its mourning dress in the solemn windless silence
and I felt defeated.

But Hamza-the-unextraordinary said:
“Sister, our land’s throbbing heart never ceases to pound,
and it perseveres, enduring the unendurable, keeping the secrets of mounds and wombs.
This land sprouting cactus spikes and palms also births freedom-fighters.
Thus our land, my sister, is our mother!”

Days passed and Hamza was nowhere to be seen,
but I felt the land’s belly heaving in pain.
At sixty-five Hamza’s a heavy burden on her back.

“Burn down his house!”
some commandant screamed,
“and slap his son in a prison cell!”

As our town’s military ruler later explained
this was necessary for law and order,
that is, an act of love, for peace!

Armed soldiers surrounded Hamza’s house;
the coiled serpent completed its circle.

The bang at his door came with an ultimatum:
“Evacuate, **** it!'
So generous with their time, they said:
“You can have an hour, yes!”

Hamza threw open a window.
Face-to-face with the blazing sun, he yelled defiantly:
“Here in this house I and my children will live and die, for Palestine!”
Hamza's voice echoed over the hemorrhaging silence.

An hour later, with impeccable timing, Hanza’s house came crashing down
as its rooms were blown sky-high and its bricks and mortar burst,
till everything settled, burying a lifetime’s memories of labor, tears, and happier times.

Yesterday I saw Hamza
walking down one of our town’s streets ...
Hamza-the-unextraordinary man who remained as he always was:
unshakable in his determination.

My translation follows one by Azfar Hussain and borrows a word here, a phrase there.



Biography of Fadwa Tuqan (aka Touqan or Toukan)

Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), called the "Grande Dame of Palestinian letters," is also known as "The Poet of Palestine." She is generally considered to be one of the very best contemporary Arab poets. Palestine’s national poet, Mahmoud Darwish, named her “the mother of Palestinian poetry.”



Excerpts from "The Dice Player"
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?

I am not a stone
burnished to illumination by water ...

Nor am I a reed
riddled by the wind
into a flute ...

No, I'm a dice player:
I win sometimes
and I lose sometimes,
just like you ...
or perhaps a bit less.

I was born beside the water well with the three lonely trees like nuns:
born without any hoopla or a midwife.

I was given my unplanned name by chance,
assigned to my family by chance,
and by chance inherited their features, attributes, habits and illnesses.

First, arterial plaque and hypertension;
second, shyness when addressing my elders;
third, the hope of curing the flu with cups of hot chamomile;
fourth, laziness in describing gazelles and larks;
fifth, lethargy dark winter nights;
sixth, the lack of a singing voice.

I had no hand in my own being;
it was mere coincidence that I popped out male;
mere coincidence that I saw the pale lemon-like moon illuminating sleepless girls
and did not unleash the mole hidden in my private parts.

I might not have existed
had my father not married my mother
by chance.

Or I might have been like my sister
who screamed then died,
only alive an hour
and never knowing who gave her birth.

Or like the doves’ eggs
smashed before her chicks hatched.

Was it mere coincidence
that I was the one left alive in a traffic accident
because I didn’t board the bus ...
because I’d forgotten about life and its routines
while reading the night before
a love story in which I became first the author,
then the lover, then the beloved and love’s martyr ...
then overslept and avoided the accident!

I also played no role in surviving the sea,
because I was a reckless boy,
allured by the magnetic water
calling: Come to me!
No, I only survived the sea
because a human gull rescued me
when he saw the waves pulling me under and paralyzing my hands!

Who am I to say
the things I say to you
outside the church door?

I'm nothing but a dice throw,
a toss between predator and prey.

In my moonlit awareness
I witnessed the massacre
and survived by sheer chance:
I was too small for the enemy to target,
barely bigger than the bee
flitting among the fence’s flowers.

Then I feared for my father and family;
I feared for our time as fragile as glass;
I feared for my pet cat and rabbit;
I feared for a magical moon looming high over the mosque’s minarets;
I feared for our vines’ grapes
dangling like a dog’s udders ...

Then fear walked beside me and I walked with it,
barefoot, forgetting my fragile dreams of what I had wanted for tomorrow
because there was no time for tomorrow.

I was lucky the wolves
departed by chance,
or else escaped from the army.

I also played no role in my own life,
except when Life taught me her recitations.
Are there any more?, I wondered,
then lit my lamps and tried to amend them ...

I might not have been a swallow
had the wind ordained it otherwise ...

The wind is the traveler's fate: his fortune or misfortune.

I flew north, east, west ...
but the south was too harsh, too rebellious for me
because the south is my country.
I became a swallow’s metaphor,
hovering over my life’s debris
from spring to autumn,
baptizing my feathers in the cloud-like lake
then offering my salaams to the undying Nazarene:
undying because God’s spirit lives within him
and God is the prophet’s luck ...

While it is my good fortune to be the Godhead’s neighbor ...

Just as it is my bad fortune the cross
remains our future’s eternal ladder!

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?
Who am I?

I might have not been inspired
because inspiration is the lonely soul’s compensation
and the poem is his dice throw
on an unlit board
that may or may not glow ...

Words fall ...
as feathers fall to earth:
I did not plan this poem.
I only obeyed its rhythm’s demands.

Who am I to say
the things I say to you?

It might not have been me.
I might not have been here to write it.
My plane might have crashed one morning
while I slept till noon
then arrived at the airport too late
to visit Damascus and Cairo,
the Louvre, and other enchanting cities.

Had I been a slow walker, a rifle might have severed my shadow from its cedar.
Had I been a fast walker, I might have disintegrated and vanished like a fleeting whim.
Had I dreamt too much, I might have lost my memories of reality.

I am fortunate to sleep alone
listening to my body's complaints
with my talent for detecting pain,
so that I call the physician ten minutes before death:
dodging death by a mere ten minutes,
continuing life by chance,
disappointing the Void.

But who am I to disappoint the Void?
Who am I?
Who?

Keywords/Tags: Gaza, Palestine, Palestinian, children, mothers, injustice, violence, war, race, racism, intolerance, ethnic cleansing, genocide

It's pouring rain and my backpack is full of strawberry kefir.
I think when we decided to take a break,
you took half my brain with you.

Kefir is a delightful crossbreed of Yop and Perrier. Creamy sublingual fireworks. A single tablespoon is sufficient to send a conga line of 5 billion probiotic bacteria boogying through your innards. But like most things I enjoy, I cannot successfully covet in small, measured portions. Which is why I went for the litre in the first place.

I imagine your face as I rinse my strawberry saturated belongings and imagine the microscopic bacterium hoopla happening between my fingers (you would laugh at my conga line comparison, because you are one of the world's only people who knows how much I truly despise conga lines).

Oh God, the water is just diluting the yogurt. It has become the great Sea of Kefir.

You would have the solution to this. When it comes to logic, you manage to beat me every time without ever making me feel intellectually inferior.

But I need to figure these things out for myself.

Luckily my other groceries were sealed in plastic:
-chia seeds
-goji berries
-cacao nibs
-wheatgrass

These were spared.

As you can see, since we have decided to embark on our own paths for a while, I have tried to be "HEALTHY!". The bathroom is a small library of moth-bitten self-help books (Thanks, Mom) and my bedtime is close enough to twilight to high-five the sun on its way down.
I've started to work out again with a little more addiction than conviction or even common sense.
And because you aren't here to regulate me, I've busted my knees (aaaa-gaaaain.)

And all notwithstanding, as I wandered down 13th avenue with my organic Hippie super-loot, feeling very smug and self-possessed in my birkenstocks, I passed by my favourite breakfast joint, and my kale-fertilized stomach was very persuasive: No, I insist.

Proceeded to savour three enormous pancakes that I could have stitched together to form a roomy buckwheat overcoat. Drowned them with a 3pm coffee. I thought nothing of it, but after all we've been through when it comes to food, you would have been so proud of me, babe. When I admit that I've got a broken heart (-darling, I know I broke my own) people are far too kind to me. 110 minutes and three sacks of flour later I float in a sweet gluten haze from my free (and freeing) lunch back to my apartment.

Which is when I discover the Sea of Kefir.

I think I'm trying too hard.

I think, really, the Art of Becoming One Whole Person isn't so much about us becoming the Perfect People we've always wanted to be. That's not why we strapped a hundred helium balloons to our otherwise incredible relationship and tearfully waved as it disappeared over the horizon. I think it's really about just learning how to regulate ourselves.

Here's one Truth: We will never, ever be perfect. And we will never find our perfection in each other. We have to let that go. We have to stop fighting against the invisible standards we create in each other.

But we can get over ourselves enough to be Pretty Great.
Just make peace with the Pretty Great folks we are. Have the 3 pancake- sore knee- kefir backpack afternoons, and still feel Pretty Great.

And when we do, I think our relationship will feel Pretty Great, too.

Because I'd rather be able to remind myself that I'm Pretty Great,
than rely on you to convince me I'm Perfect.

Yikes, there it is.

So that's my homework. It's full of errors, and there are countless agitated holes worn through by pink erasers, self-doubt, and heartache.

But I know, darling- that by the end of this, you'll give me a sticker-

(and by then I wont need it)

I'll put it right next to the one I've given myself.

The time has come.
I must now say farewell.
But don't be glum!
You will see me again.

I'm going to make my name known
Across the ocean in a foreign land.
I'm going to experience the world
So as to soak up the wisdom of others.
And they will know me--

My name will ring like a battlecry.
My stories will entertain the passerby.
They will chant for me "Encore! Encore! Brava!"
They will throw themselves into the midst of the hoopla.
And when I've exhausted their reserves of attention,
I'll head home and be done with pretention.

For in all the traveling I'll do,
No one will know me like you.

And no matter how good
The fame makes me feel,
They will only know
My name as a battlecry,
My stories for the passerby,
How they chant "Brava",
And throw themselves into the hoopla.

But you will know
My favorite color is grey.
My hair is naturally straight.
My jam band is Train.
And most of all...
My real name.

Wait, why am I leaving?
To travel and meet Sting?
Why would I waste my days
Scouring the world for fame
When happiness is being known
By the One who loves you the most?

I think I'll retract my farewell,
That I might stay and with You dwell.

To state what seems true
it's about the ratings
don't you
agree.
We shall gather up plaudits to Lord around Shoreditch and Hackney to Bow and watch as the ratings go up.
We shall sup on our tea somewhere down in Lea Green,which is South of the Thames, or as the crow flies about two beats from Lewisham,these are names that I know,places I've seen when I've been down on my uppers and up on the downers,where stories to tell are retold by the fires that burn bright in hell,but I'm well,
It's the ratings we dream,the ratings that seem to be honey,making money more money and funny how sweet it becomes,number like runs on a wheel,spinning the new deal,rating things real when they're not,like spot the ball when there's no ball to be found.
The sound of the ratings that comes through the grating grates on my ears,a whine,electronic,white noise and quietly ******,turning me on,tuning me up,making me look good and I'm just a dwarf plant that grows in the wild wood.
Even better than this as the ratings reach up to **** on the sky,there is payment that's due from the ratings that you long to give.
Why,
I don't know how to live is a mystery to me,a case of rate it and see how it goes
and ratings are all about shows that we take,things that we break,hearts that we make full of joy.
To state what seems true
I am sated on ratings and fated to be
a number in someone's
dating directory.
Did I say dating?
I meant rating
almost the same
but not quite.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 9, 2017)

Hocus pocus—artifice alchemy brew.
Seek the dictionaries of abracadabra
To find a liquid mercury clue.
Alla peanut butter sandwiches
Will turn your poem blue
While Walla Walla Washington
Will douse the verses through.
Best recipe for a glimmering hoopla:
Salagadoola…bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.

Gospel Heirs  

This unique clan of gospel workers consisted of a father a mother and son and daughter the origins
Reach back to Plymouth the first settlers are their forbears and from this tough stock in these end times
The lion of Judea would give birth to a lion cub his head of red fiery hair suited him well it was a mane
That pronounced to the enemy war was at hand to long the bleating of lambs had not been answered
Now all would be different Bruce Wakefield was quarried from rare marble he had hardness for battle
But inner gentleness that could sway crowds of men and women show them his heart reveled was one
Of combustible fire in the cold a world where people didn’t matter as much as the bottom line their
Frailty their inherit need of being protected an guided came to complete and utter fruition in his life it
Came from a soul that stole away in to private encounters with spiritual magnificence he brimmed he
Glowed from the inner soul that had been much with the father he gathered the residue of life made it
Of no value in so doing he was the rich depository of what was real and true it resonated among those
That wondered and were confused it was like being on a long journey arduous and moments of great
Despair but at a cross roads you met in this single life a man of autumn austerity like the season also
He brought glories colors out of darkened glens and shadowed harshness leaves would fall in the
Dooryard of the hurting they breathed in the customary silent grandeur that lay on the now brown
Grasses it was a colorful display it meant the end in one sense but a beginning in another he didn’t just
Walk about the church platform he charged forward into Hells gate keepers he put them on notice the
Way things usually are had come to an end he spoke of love but he advanced it this way through the
Building blocks of creation not just simple but the essential God repeated what he did at the beginning
Of our worlds creation in one instance he shows the breadth and depth of He who makes everything
Then nurtures it carries it on to perfection a barren piece of land to start then his greatest creation in my
Opinion he joins two through romantic drama and dreams and a little thing called love you take
Infatuation the pleasing pleasure of thoughts and smite the heart in that cosmic moment the planets do
Collide two worlds are being redefined and made into one this will be the essence of their whole lives
They build relationships they build a dwelling and then the most gorgeous ribbon of all sets it off when
their love makes a little one in distant time not believing it possible this is out done when the first
Grandbaby comes that infancy that extended love at first now gives the gift that has cherish written all
Over it and your fully awake dreams do come true when they speak to you your heart melts it’s the
Greatest trick you are this adult and in seconds you are a marshmallow if we could package and sell it
There would be no more conflicts just tell the opponent to bite smell this and in moments all would be
Fun and joy so not to leave you to sad that this can’t be the day is coming when the lion will lie down
With the lamb you’re just living its precursor you set and live among miniature wonders maybe you even
Were involved in picking out their names Bruce uses this to great effect in this swirl and hoopla you find
Your center and know the ideal of life and then the shift must occur not is all sweetness the barrister of
The wind makes the argument that this great structure this family has fissures and brokenness a young
Father told of the great pain he suffered when is son was abducted and taking into another country
By other family members he since has created a international program that visits this issue and gives
Hope to people that are helpless against governments of other nations Bruce explains this is Gods
Predicament and oh how so many more of His children are missing taking into a world that subtly woos
Them by every artifice that plays on their weakness and in those areas they have a tendency to fail the
Dark Part of a painting in art greatly needed for contrast and mood sensibility but disaster in following
And living a Godly life there are restrictions in normal living all manner of give and take that make
For happier more successful living he ends with this ultimate truth I am the way and the life all of this
Is factored in and it is of gravest concern that we act on it when we hear it and that night a goodly
Number heard and responded to the very changing of their eternal destiny Bruce had words he used to
Say my morning sky used to only hold dread without question I knew my soul so precious was truly
Dead but then He spoon fed to my feeble lips Himself as the word it told in detail the darkness that is to
Everyone a plague he stole deep within captured my heart and soul changed this man alone into a
blessed vessel that cared only for His children so fare made me fearless in pursuit of them gave me the
Ability to allow them to see dreams that were their own lives after the tender mending done with hands
That bare the nail prints and imprinted on tender children the expressed love of the father that started
At the beginning and will never cease please we bid thee come to him lost ones

Out of the loop de loop into the swirl of hoopla hoop
Transfer into the oasis of illusion, awaiting the water boat
Fall over the bolder dropped from your shoulder
Rolling and gathering moss, scraping off the parasites
Bowling the ball down the aisle into the skittle alley
Knocking down those fellows who denounce you
Don't hear you, read through your eyes to the back of
Your head and beyond, into their own ace of space
Rolling around the ground belly aching their sound
Machine, mean warriors of gloom, for soon they'll fall
Short of time to relish their pleasure boat, punting along
Paddling their pedalo into the grey below, capsizing
Forlorn arms stretching out to capture, only trickery
Bickering, as you fall through the gaps and rake your ratted
Soul with grit between teeth, spit, of solemn men who
Give out black track thoughts for you to devour.....
Finality bleats, gongs the looming song....the hour, fatal shower

something beautiful happened to me,
more beautiful than a Mona Lisa,
a Staffordshire terrier (funny how you
say b'ah b'ah sheer, or you do say shire - shy ire,
but the former is a gluttonous tongue
expression) ran up to me barking
and tail waggling from ~200 metres away,
i asked the breed but not the petting
i just called him a nice fella the owner called
him a dragging-of-the-leg ******...
what a bulging scull, firm throughout,
strong limbs, hidden ribs, a proper meat-head
of a dog, quick to please,
i turned into a butcher in an instant,
that's what i mean, a moment like that,
you go walk in the Essex fields and you
meet strangers with welcoming dogs,
former convicts judging by the tattoos...
when a dog forgets its owner and rushes up to a stranger
instant magic,  barking, tail waggling, head readied
for a patting... moments like these are better than
a striptease; i was a bit furry in feeling throughout,
come to mind - it's funny, isn't it?
how a man will readily magnetise his feelings
into animals when he's experienced unsatisfactory femininity,
that sexualised belittling "motherhood",
some men can take it, others can't,
to be frank mothers are less relentless in what a man
should be... women bully men into
acting as tools for provisions, who the **** thought
of excavating harems from lions or sea-lions
was a genius... imagine exporting the 11-year itch
to Iraq... i mean, the only success story of western
society is ******* everyone over, given
that ~50% of marriages in the western world fail
after 11 years... the curse of individuation,
morphed into a pet chihuahua in a purse of some
glamour model, the Chinese are laughing, believe me,
even in their factories, numbering over a billion,
and in the west? the success of science, prolonged
old-age... and the care homes... hip hip hooray!
******* marvellous, sleeping in my own ****...
Jimi Hendrix got lucky, god loved him...
is old-age really a success story? i mean, does it really,
*******, matter? what sort of achievement is it?
a life a century a hoopla of the next brigade
of hip replacement surgery? i guess only turtles get to
live over the century mark, trying to sabotage this
ontological fact is suicide or, well... sadism...
i rather live to my necessary expectancy
than outlive it in one;
but what a beautiful scene, he spotted me from
~200 metres away, and i got to pet him while
he barked joyfully, that thick-skull head of his,
a fine fella that staffy - i never knew that a dog
could give you more pleasure than a woman;
well i do now, having petted those autistic animals
known as cats.

The monetary balance has gone crazy
In this world we call our home,
The fiscal market's shot to hell
Stock collapsing like a stone.
The hedge deals are un sellable
Most banks refuse to loan
Good real estate is valueless
The roof's a "Plummet Zone".

Oh yes the suits are stepping out for air
And falling like a stone,
Termination of their worries
Beats explanations on the phone.
There's always a dependable
To help clean up the place,
And oblivion's a better option
Than awkward questions and disgrace.

Capitulating companies,
Whole nations in default
The piggy banks are bulging
With the greenbacks from the vault.
The banks refuse to part with cash
Lines of depositors do queue
And the finance houses shut their doors
Explaining, briefly, "Well...*******!"

Heads of Government meet and talk
The photo ops are really grand,
Banner headlines in the daily's
Report resolutions that seem bland.
The fanfare and the hoopla
Announce the remedy is payoffs....
And global confidence is sprinting
For the trees...In panicked chaos!

But the C.E.O's are catered for
Their future is secure,
There's several million tucked away
In the Cayman Island tour.
Unfortunate about the desolation left behind
But these things are bound to happen
When the blind do lead the blind.

There will be some opportunities,
Some bargains coming up
And the prudent keep the check book close
For when the number's up...
Of all those struggling little people
Who bravely slave away
And collapse before they realize
Their firm's capacity to pay.

So What's around the corner?
Do we hide our heads in sand?
Do we kiss our **** goodbye
And join the suits in splatter land?
Or do we bravely hoist our trousers
Hitch our belts another notch,
And convince ourselves that someone
Higher up has got the watch
And the ability to work out
What the hell is going on..
And deliver us from evil
Before the world is ****** gone?


Marshalg
Mangere Bridge.
8th October 2008

There is no 'real time'
even the speed of light takes some time to light up somewhere where the time has already gone and that's passing time or past time on the timeline,

show me a now and I'll tell you it was,
but when I kiss you and time stands still and the clock ticks on and the place where you were is still there but you've gone,

what am I to make of it?

I imagine a dial with so many combinations and each one a moment in these times of frustrations and too many numbers to call

there is no 'real time' at all,

give me a minute and
Chopin gave me a waltz,
but
that's just diamonds for the dancers of
which only few sparkle

the ideal time not real time but my time with you time
is the one time it's real but never in 'real time'

when you've cracked the code any road that you walk on is the road that will take you to where fate awaits you and if time overtakes you
don't worry
there is really no 'real time' at all.

No mound of dirt was shuffled to top a grave.
There will be no tombstone, no epitaph.
No weeds to pull, lawn to mow, flowers to tend.
There will be none of these.  Only this box, this
terra-cota colored plastic box, comprised of a
sampling of him, secured by a seat belt on my
car's back seat.
It's fallen to me to transport his ashes from a city
in Ohio to one in West Virginia, my poor dad,
who's had the misfortune of dying in a hospital
two hundred miles from home.
How ironic, I think, that of all his years of living,
he never once rode in my car, yet here we are on
a road trip together.
This is not my father.  But it may as well be,
the distance looms between us just as big a gap
as it ever was, minus the polite conversation,
the awkward moments we'd always encountered
when together not knowing what to say to one
another.
As I drive I feel this need to talk to him, to tell
him what I have always wanted to tell him.
I love you Dad.  But the words won't make that
transition from head to mouth, prove themselves
no easier to say after his death than they did in life.
So I recite my poetry to him, poetry being the
only thing I have to offer, words I'd never shared
with him when he was alive.
Poems flow from my mouth as freely as the tears
which stream down my face.  I cry for my dad
but also for myself, for all the hugs never
exchanged, all the words left unsaid.
The car is eerily silent and I half-expect were I to
glance in the rearview mirrow I'd see his ghost
sitting on the back seat.  I search the sky as I drive,
praying for a sign, something to let me know he is
at peace,  But there is nothing, only blue sky dotted
with clouds, and this plastic box entrusted to me
for safe delivery.  It asks nothing of anyone, gives
nothing in return.
Shortly it will be delivered to its final destination.
Without hoopla or fanfare it will be placed on a
table set up for the ceremony.  Put there for the
sole purpose of giving him a proper mourning.

no other - a windowsill and an open window -
sitting on a folded leg and slouched
like a crow - i would be begging for it to rain -
no other music can capture rain -
safety net of all that sporadic improv. -
                      other other music - except jazz...
whether it be rain nibbling on the countryside
or the full-on cosmopolitan havoc of grey,
dust, grease, cement and rats and glass...
                 never mind: because i never thought
i'd say this...
                of the moderns... closely ruling out
wojciech kilar - for no particular reason other than
he's probably more known -
christopher young - since his hellraiser stint...
what's new - the revamped pet cemetary?
well... if christopher young was primo...
      soon to follow him... graham... plowman...
work on h. p. lovecraft adaptations...
                     horror as a genre...
                                the music wins me over...
however spectacular the visuals are...
                               if the music isn't bone grinding -
unsettling the nerves -
well... that's like pop music when it's raining...
i guess: oh i guess jazz can capture more feelz
when it comes: when it's raining...
when it's lazily sun-dazzling with the impression
of an "underneath" sizzling sensation -
or melting butter - or for that matter melting chocolate...
or adding splashes of cornflour made in water
to a sauce and watching it thicken...
this recipe i will remember by heart...
i will have to at someone point...
but this dhal was quite sublime...

   scrap book recipe...
          a man in a kitchen...
               and in hell... the devil's mastery...
almost like a chemistry experiment...

       half and half: masoor and mung dal... lentils...
kabuli chana (chickpeas)...
    a bay leaf...
              3 cloves...
  a tsp of cumin coriander turmeric
                     chilly powder and another of kashmiri
   chilly powder
                chopped tomatoes
  coconut milk...
            onion ginger garlic
                spinach
      gochugaru flakes coriander for garnish...
veg and chicken stock...
                          ghee...
butternut squash...
                    cayenne pepper (1 tsp)...
    i was looking for a pinch of asafoetida...
i knew it was in the kitchen...
    alas... also know as a substitute for those
vegan cults that don't include eating onions
and garlic... or perhaps just onions...
    cinnamon stick? no...
but three decent pinches of a homemade
garam masala...
  and yes...

   https://ministryofcurry.com/moms-garam-masala/
is the only spice blend...
   the russians can have their nukes...
the americans can have their nukes...
i have an arsenal of the following spices and...
i'm feeling... like i just had a manicure done...
the only garam masala:
asafetida, bay leaves, black peppercorns,
black cardamom, cardamom, cumin seeds,
(sorry, no black cumin seeds),
      cinnamon, cloves, cordiander seeds,
dried chillies, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds,
(mace? no mace)...
         nutmeg, poppy seeds, star anise...
turmeric...
          again: no stone flower...
well... that's almost covered it...
                it's not the recipe asks for black
mustard seeds... those i do have...

                   cult recipe and it says: who needs...
meat?! even i'm convinced...
god i do love a good steak tartar...
    anything ****** and oozing wriggly bits
of life - as tender and gelatin grizzly as a...
even the names: bleu... ooh... saignant...
  haha... medium: demi-anglais... what else?

the butchers rolling in their graves
when someone orders a steak: fini-bien...
                          or some other frankenstein of the kitchen...

coleman hawkins - the high and mighty hawk...
some guys were putting up a fence
for me and my neighbour - it only took 15 years
but who's counting - they were told to
cut out all the bushes and foliage in my garden...
so that they could get a straight line
and so the fence would be put up...
unlucky for my rosemary bush...

r.i.p. my rosemary bush...
        today i started to salvage the poor thing...
the newer shoots i placed in water for
a drink and hopefully 2 weeks from today
i might think about planting them back in
the ground... for the rest of the bush?
i had to freeze the rosemary...
all afternoon my fingers were scented with rosemary...
which is fine... when you're working
with a raw piece of lamb...
but i'm no walking and breathing and aching
lamb of god about to be hanging
on the cross...
                even through the soap...
an afternoon of my hands being heavily scented
with rosemary...

vivaldi can have spring and the other three
faces of "god"...
holst can have his mars and the other circle of hell...
but thank the high-flying-****
that jazz can capture a rainy day better
than that song: i'm only happy when it rains
by garbage...
            
  guess i'm not letting go...
         an active rebellion against classical music...
one jazz record after another and i can gravitate
to...ward... the entire e.p. being played...
none of that new wave harakiri diat l.p. scene -
much appreciated... but i always need to move
beyond the half-an-hour mark...

         then again: i can't see how jazz could
compensate for snow - snow on the exit format -
jazz doesn't - then again...
no, categorically...
                           if there's only a sly insert of drum...
no horns - the piano and some guitar -
  
   otherwise you can't go wrong with
joshua redman - back east...
         a modern classic - notably with zarafah...

speed-conversations - none clinging
to a cameo of a date...
                 fickle minded - always changing
the course of events that... nonetheless remain
intact on binding themselves to a blind will -
        
music and all these interpretations are my own -
too bad to see and have to work with
a cipher - what's behind this image -
what's behind that image -
at least music stands stark and shivering naked...
less chances to abide by some propaganda...

unless of course mathematics is to be given
the crown - i hardly think: one shouldn't really
think about music -
                one can never really fathom
the constraints and the escapees from these
constraints... these constant revisionary scribbling
over and skimming the orthodox:
brick-on-brick intricacies of: immoveable objects
being: nonetheless moved...

- i too am waiting for my libido to die off -
anytime soon... like right now...
no harem therefore "jazz hands" and the algebra
of "magic fingers"...
idle man and all that *** that could have been...
until that magnetism is steered off a cliff
of: not another tomorrow -
                    at least no ***** or *** doll upon
the horizon -
            no point getting intimate or personal...
only a few days back i found a weakness in
this exoskeleton -
standing in a shower... pouring running water
onto the back of my head...
i almost knelt and said my prayers from
the exhaustion of succumbing to this multiple-******
of nuance...
       right on the spot where
a higher evolution of a more, protruding occipital
bone: as i've heard it once before: being noted...
i'm waiting for my libido to **** itself off...
in the meantime no harem...
imagine my luck when it comes to
the wisdom served up by men like king solomon...
even by then:
this most exhausted man had
to settle for a swan's dignity in monogamy
with the queen of Sheba...

                 but it's hard to translate wisdom
when you have all the basic forebodings
already at your disposal... the harem will discover
***-toys and you will be...
the limp **** in the whole affair...

                 such hard-on feats of fear when it comes
to... two cakes too many
when all you've been asking for is, merely a slice...
jazz... i can't find
a clint eastwood in alcatraz...
or steve mcqueen in sagan...
               or witold pilecki in auschwitz...      
but i can find myself in jazz...
hummingbird or some, other, champagne flute
and that bothersome fly...
nothing against flies: everything against
mosquitos... i would **** those buggers with
the same joy of donning wool having
just sheered a sheep or two...

jazz and: the wriggling fish...
jazz and all the fish out of water...
i'd call them constipated ***** and lobsters
but... jazz and the wriggling fish...
jazz and smoking a cigarette to appreciate
the deaf centre point of night's culminations...
living close by to central london...
"walking in" and not feeling like
anybody important: or a tourist...

       if i wasn't a billy joel: i would most certainly
not want to be a bob dylan -
hard to be living the obscure with a cross
made up of iconography...

the applauded and the: billy joels' piano man meets
neil young's old man...
they shake hands and subsequently depart
where the crossroads begin, and end...

believe me when: i'm the last to be believed...
usher in a dozen penguins attired
to be... fizzy kosher dosh...
in all their napkins and bowtie-neck strangle 'em
into a hush of a bamboozle...

such the life the music the mathematics
of living in shackles - wriggly ol' ****** with
those improv. would-be-turns and...

how many words will it take for it to be clear...
i have nothing but rejoice at clinging
to my obscurity... primo amigo:
alea iacta est: too bad for me...
or too bad for my shadow...
                       faking being a gemini
in the horoscopes of fate and superstition...
shadow: mime out of the confines...

      these is my second chance at retaining
the crown of obscurity? is it?! is it?!

   to have to burden oneself with love...
akin to... well... if i were about to spoon her...
but no... i wanted to catch the 8 hour kipper....
but every time i would fall
to sleep... i'd fall asleep with a tarantula bite...
numb all over to one side...
because i was oh too willing to fall asleep
when clinging to her...
like a bracket fungus to trunk and core...
one side of me complete in numb...
which had a rubric of recitations
should all else not be true...

but *****! that slap in the face...
                             come to think of it...
i'd like something to eat...
less **** with... that could pinch me...
i'm starting to think that
being ganged up by a group of hyennas
is not such a bad way to go...
perhaps being mistaken for a tuna
when a shark attack is being
noted...
            hard to imagine
sharks or bears or lions as having
sadistic undercurrents to their day-in-day-out
beats...
  even sharks nibble but never gorge
and feast on... this cranium solid first and only
hope when it comes to god
not making mistakes when gambling...
the ******* roulette or a black jacks' "choice"
of cards...

i can't exactly "think" this out to appease
a gravitating en masse...
                       pour me another shot and
debackle! all in the faith and hope
of un-thinking thinking...
trying out this suction tenticle of the void...
replacing descartes' res cogitans with
res vanus... what is due: is due...

no more wisdom from me aged 34
as me aged 73... there's only rain and jazz...
i'm buying time...
concerning whether it would be even
remotely likely to appreciate jazz
when it's snowing... unlikely...
very much hell-bent unlikely...

      - who would have thought that peering
into an aquarium would have to,
become more entertaining that zombie-clad
watching a t.v....
what ever happened to the watching
a klepsydra... or the tick-toe-tightening
of seconds into minutes into hours...
dying from the skeleton diet of time
whenever catching-up: unaware with
the clock in the confines of:
old people not really...
no, not really, listening to coleman hawkins'
much of anything...

                     because this doesn't tease
the affections of the young...
like a trainspotting revamp might....
because there's, clearly no new dracula...
and there's no new: new....
                     i wait patiently like a salamander....
no easy picking no low hanging fruit...
no fatty boy'oh to matter...
         no leeching off the three-quarters
of                               the better part of the engineering
cohort that were behind
the manhattan bridge... or Malbork Castle...
and hands on hands: do touch...
the event horizon of a dead star...
                    in that: pulling fabric...
basic genesis... talking fire "misanthrope": "god"...
bushes outgrowing fungus when
it came to 1970s ***** flicks:
notably in fwench and italian...
                   prune the perm hair...
                             keep that afro on a leash!

these days ***** is half of the cure's nostalgia
and more...
onomatopoeia and...
    refining the contorts with painting...
and keeping the act on a hush...
               the lazy hands speaking
dozen **** cracks being discovered but
none being experienced...
bone the hand...
it's called a ****** just because
of oysters... it's called a ******
because of the clams and of the irises...
and because the tongue:
god... ever time i wanted it to exfoliate...
it's forever that timid tulip!

         what came of a ****** became a hand
and the cusp... and what would never
become a San Francisco needle hinge epidemic...

was anyone praying that
one direction would become the next rolling stones...
cougar: meow...
that **** jagger was going to be
the "reincarnated" harry styles?

           knock-knock... who's there?
a premonition... i.e. touch-wood...
base: i will require the wood to be touched
by bone - notably a crunch of the knuckle in how
the fist is formed / fathomed...

        otherwise known as the lap-lapping-dance-off
with a tongue wriggling in imitation
closure of a worm...
or a fighter for a boxing champ. contender...
belt-up... knot and noose down....
the new news is no: good skit...
i **** myself to fickle my shadow
whenever i see a hoopla or a trance inducing
recoil of the swinging dancing spare
of a: rope that's not leftover for
the dangling first come first served...

daydreaming zeppelins...
the day the elevated english man will fall...
and bring down the bowler hat with him...
touch the philosopher's stone and turn
that attache of good taste into an umbrella...
the same day i stop daydreaming
about zepplins...
will see me think of the anglo-saxon
as whittle brother... the younger Swabian...
and all part of the infuriated minor
Germany that found inkling to behave
like the nomad Yids...
and move... and move... and...
never the sort of people to conceive of a ship...
without also being receptive of carrying
an anchor!

then again...
                   monkey man albino and...
forever the one to follow the white rabbit back home.

Eyelids are closing
like the huge velvet curtains on a stage,
But you don’t want the show to be over!
not yet! it's too soon!
You scream at the actors
but everyone is screaming, too
Yelling, gleeful, chanting, shouting:
Hurrah! hurray for the play!
You want to slap them.
“I’m not done yet,”
you say.
You are furious,
you roar, but
no one can hear.
They are too busy basking
in the hoopla of their own dreams.
Their faces alight
like a hundred drugged infants,
clapping away for the pure marvel
of the Sound.
Stop it, stop it, stop it,
Don’t you know what’s happening?
You wish someone could hear.
But no one listens;
they continue their merry ways
of oblivion, of blindness, of pride.
And you:
There is nothing you can do
but close your eyes
and go to sleep.
“Do not worry,”
you tell yourself.
It is but a dream.
*It is but a dream.

You can choo cha, doo da, hula with a hoopla,
It's all an oil on canvas by the man that they call Dali and you go sail away like Raleigh with the Queen and off to Bali, but your Sheila and the Children wait for you in
Basildon.

It never makes a rhyme when you ******* every time that the debts start mounting up and it shows in the starved faces of the cold and golden places in the eyes and on the lips you leave behind.

You,
the star now
going far now
and forgetting who you were,
are you aware in some false state that this love can turn to hate?
are you bound so tightly to the dream, does it make you happy, can you hear the scream of fate?

The kids are still in Basildon
but Sheila met a soldier boy and moved away to Warrington, long gone the Queen and dream
you're getting old, can't hula hoop, but you seen it all and now you fall into a reverie.

With Dali
and
a cup of tea.

vänster, samt vad är kvar / left, together with what's left (Sveedish).

i didn't tell you which hemisphere of
the brain was affected, the uncensored region
you might say - unaffected by
αφασια - a fine balancing act:

right*                              |                     ­       left
imagination                                        ­          logic
intuition                                                  langu­ge
insight                                                  reaso­ning
music                                                   arithmetic
art                                           science in general
= Σ, a holistic basin            = Σ, a rat in a maze

so no wonder - the left was pumped up studying
chemistry and not really bothered about
theological-humanism or humanism per se,
arguments came, arguments went,
some argued, some prayed, it was all a bit
like a fiery hoopla thrown in the air with
a dog jumping through it at the same time -
but what i don't understand is how,
certain aspects of knowledge encapsulating
a universal breadth of things are based upon
limitations, limitations that are, after all
the particulars - like Socrates mused,
universally we can all see the stars -
blind men and speech coupled with
imagination are a particular cut-off point,
as i guess are astronauts - star-gazing must
seem rather boring after you've seen the earth
from above like that - never mind the photographs
from up there, won't do it justice -
so let's say we have the above stated schematic of
variations in the hemispheres - why did
i get this adrenaline / steroid boost in language?
the only reason i can think of is that this language
was acquired, it's technically an inorganic part of me,
should it be organic akin to the body it would
have to be spoken to a child in some remote part
of Poland, any haemorrhage is an organic event,
it's this inorganic implant in me that's surfacing
and seems unaffected, rebellious against the body's
change... for a minute there i thought i handled
the whole debate well, now i'm not so sure -
it's this music pounding that's affecting the writing,
sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong,
but the compensation is... it's on digital paper,
i'm not chopping down the Amazon or stealing
other people's toilet paper... language usage based
upon misnomer-ism, a theory that to encompass
a well-intended vocabulary given the depth of
all human vocabulary is a sheer impossibility unless
it be limited, and by being limited invokes
emotional connection to averse reaction via a censor
or without a censor - or was that the expectation
to understand left and right in a classroom with prim
instances of use of thought out immortality and
Japanese perfectionism in the garden? mortal, mistake,
mortal, mistake - and if mortality wasn't bad enough
the insistent lamentations of a would-be-heaven-to-come.
now i can write blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah
like this forever, but i just have a feeling for anymore,
it's this contradictory lamentation of what
adequate language activity is expected of anyone -
or why the qualities of the left are only partially damaged,
and the sudden exponential rush to compulsive
writing, hermit-like-existence and overall boredom
with existence (i hate that in england there's a
distinction between existence and life... existence always
has negative connotations, to me it just means life
in slow-motion- i.e. out of every instance; or?
attention to detail). but it's true, that's how it's spoken
in england - existence bad, life good - or why is it
that both self and ego are used in psychology?
they're no longer proper pronouns, so i guess they can
act as bumper stickers or boxing bags to bash
about because no one is going to write or speak a
sentence using them, well the self is still used more,
no ego-tripping as they say - but you wouldn't
exactly write, so self went to the corner-shop
and bought myself a brimful of asha (forty-five!),
one's german, the other is latin, and we're bashing
these words about with theories, structures
of necessary conviction while using a more fluid
system of pronouns, but we nonetheless kept them
for theoretical purposes, supposing we wouldn't
hurt anyone in the process... why keep both?
it's like two histories colliding - the history of barbaric
invaders from the north with their ram-like
persistence to keep talking, and the southerners who
didn't like the runes and like Greek thought.
i don't know, seems like a bordello in terms of keeping
any language tidy.

p.s. i wonder why, with the right hemisphere being
unaffected i do not experience lucid dreaming...
i guess the brain just said: dreaming is irrational
when justifying a good night's sleep.

They're lighting up the north east corner of "the meadows"
practice run with low flying pyrotechnics
Sin city reds and globular silvers like coins exploding
against the new born summer sunset night
while the pillars of cumulonimbus thunderheads claw the desert sky
and like sharp fingers that squeeze a water filled balloon
the roiling fronts will burst and its dark deluge will gush
as the lightning flicker behind the gloom
and the boom of the Gods colliding battle  on high
shakes the earth and bones that languish in its boon...

Let the celebration begin, its 4th of July weekend,
let's recall how this great nation got its independence
by each **** of a fellow immigrant from the Mother Queen's scrutiny
cousin with your race & legacy in mutiny

how odd the madness of the power that deludes and controls
commands without minds finding recognizing similarities
in the Simeon faces of fellowships in God
turned traitorous in the name of freedom & love
how high that pedestal we have built to make idols of
slave owning founders with their profundities of words
to make law a movement, verbs for pride and enforcement
of unjustified bloodletting
See how modivated the stampede
as they rush washed of their guilt to take precious
the lives that have fell without having yet learned to live it

Let us get drunk on ale, and dress up in re-enactment
and cheer the invasion of the land not belonging
nor will ever belong to any mortal man
who will lie in its' skin in the end since life is brief
as a musket flash or saber's slashing the breath from their necks
Let us respectfully remember how putrid the blood
and the diseases that bubbled from therein
Let us celebrate that old America who's governing bodies
as white as the wigs worn in parliament
and lingering still the idolatry of such grand fathers
to dismiss the atrocities then
and ignoring the colors that now myriad
our country's racial profile / face / forward / march...

Can we then presume to celebrate the massacres after
the revolution in its greatness and re-written historical text
to condition the minds of our own
still underdeveloped --so as not to question
Gramp's authority,
or question the miens by which the old hatreds bleached
and soaked itself in the common sense

Can we celebrate the truth?
and in memorium of the old world
when freedom that was fought for
against the powers of powerful governments
we stand thankful now with what this world stands for

Let us dance and sing and hoopla
because we have succeeded in making it
creating that dream of total equally
with every struggle for the truthful peace
there was pain and growth of our nation's reign,
with every war never to be won
we find victory in the lives that discard its old ways
of divide and conquer
Because this is your America,
in debt and desperate for a new balance
and refreshing breath without
from within... the thoughts we collectively share
We are human after all
we are evolved and intelligent
and we can take what ever the **** we want
because we have the best immigrant minds
and we're # 1...

I can hear the popcorn firecrackers
with squealing of children's laughter fading
as the storm sweeps in...

if it is the future we reason
that we fight for, why do we celebrate with dishonesty
and deny ourselves the true face
of a miracle that is this current state ...?

It seems that it is and will become too loud
for anything other than exploding glitter in the sky
and doubt with its enemy - faith
is as silent as the thieves that steal dreams
that shatter like

exploding glitter in the sky...
if only awe was as that innocent and meek
when secretly I still wish
"God save the Queen"
and beg for world peace...

The son of Jung, Achilles

(This is after and during a second or third time through
Jung, by Anthony Stevens, via Hoopla brought to me by LAPL)

libraries with online audiobooks,
isn't that closer to perfect? Imagine
knowing CG Jung's dad was Achilles Jung,
epic, knowing that
back when only real, material-real, rich folk,

(they could not have known, but we can, on a smart phone)

of any sort of the many there were in the co-fusion's aftermath

much of the world may agree with things once hidden in tomes
being eaten by mindless worms, now

no known thing is secret, by right

truth makes free and it's a system.

dynamic
free true free true free

We ident-ify it or id

what ever I and d


these ids (letter i and letter d as a pre
fix identifying us, u'n'me but only I am re-alified,
set to iseate

(is-e-ate is individuation for an idea, this or that, which may be verbalized
prior to re-alization)

t' be for a while, as long as you wish, t'
be fixed ideas in the minds of all

minds culturally touched
by this particular
point of
been
as
in been there done that.

Time is nothing at all
like mortals think
ing no no nothing is re

alone is rare. For us, my pieces of the unum,

we are here as ever.
ever is our role.

guides are made
however, we have noticed a scarcity of read writers
aware of pin points of light expanding

on the walls of his nursery window, nur turer, real mmmmm

screen
really must we be limited forever is ly lying as in

acting positive while being negative and being

entangled
in your self for ever, never for now,

you don't know how.

do you?
ex
per
ienced, per se, are ye?

be yond. yes. be

yond. practice makes perfect, bact to the top

erie canalic real

tote that veil, hide that barge
camptown lasies sang some songs

wrong, as did the ******* minstrels
and gamblers and bedroll
cowboys and hobos
and plain bums,
like us.

You were curious. Does yellow mean anything
to you?
Murrillo, with y's for ll, maybe? ¿ se?

--- un told stories ---

none remain, in re al ity, if we agree

nothing is ever impossible, even
for sapiens sapiens, how much
more, the us in the unum

previously pluribus,
scatter-brained,
that is.
id est, at its best. Muse.

Homeostatic balance,
hot to cool, cold to warm

round and round
twisted in the middle
by Van Allen's belt, or Orion's?

I never asked. I could,
right now I COULD WISH SO BAD THA I'D

not notice allcaps from the teenage wasteland,
(mea culpa, I bury all my misses there, take one, free)
as I,
the grown up number two, I mean,
I was saying I could stop this flow, interefer, dam it

I could ask Google and follow ath
the real thing either real or
otherwise, yet

wise, still.

How well will we be? Should we not

agree, un agree disperse the mob?

become a one, with a mind
we may share, at will,

reason, count, measure, make, see, seek how, find how, learn how

now,
why are you a ware of me while I am
ware of you.

An unread, unspoken spell. What the hell, right?
What the chaos, entropy, dis
integrate
wash away, mud to dust to twisting spirtis seen dancing

dust, this highest part of the dust of the earth,
time will tell, the physician must heal himself.

---
the art of letting things
haps
hap
pen, pen or ready-writer mode,
we can do this, but we must

be leaving the ality re all o'this reality.

And it has been fun, un done
fun is never the final goal.

be yond that. Search okeh. It was
intentended in tension-ality

to be the key we
as u me mist

when we
lied about being
experienced in the comunicito, (wee ity bity)
do you know of
the transfiguration, I was asked that

southside of Sunset at Laurel Canyon, by
that TV kung fu cowboy guy's dad,
Carradine, the old man,
from scary movies,
circa 1960.

that was fun. it happened. nobody noticed,
but me and the elder Carradine.

Real, as best as my memory just
ifies me right there,
that day, there
is where

this point was proven to be
memorable, a point
of a pin, 'pon whose head
merry messengers make nothing of
darkness, shadow, thin light.

Member be, re member
we see you saw
re all ity-ness is fun, if you find time to do it.

Typical assumptions of a man born in his time
and so
cial class. Social, is that a joke?

Follow me, don't be ignorant of a fine refined use,
right use of ordinariable words which have
born the burden of the ages

patiently, awaiting meaning,
on your scale,
the me as sure of the other in the unem,
the measure of a man, any
old man, still standing

under all the knowing Eve ever knows,
hope and time and all this took.
The price of knowing,
is the knowing, learning is easy

At home by right of being, we are such
beings, in a word, two if you reason there is
measurable ratio twixt
iiii in and am out, yamiyam ah yeh

we do. Allatimenolie, my will. The inside
the numinosity of being

me and you in the midst of all we may imagine real,

no, hell, yesses, hell is still a joke you never want to play.
ax Mr. Boo, he was my guide in Bangkok

read the reports, they are more,
nevermind, let's not let the

lie live here. the the right man thinking this thought
at this time, right

Each magi's knowing is the only knowing he can share,
without playing I pious fraud and naming it
legion, re
legion ligated to ob la dee and dah?

Joke, jest, foolish jest. Not my best but better'n
never imagi-ing  bein' good at all.
Good for nothing but
being possible
ly
good to the sense-if-ative troglodytes

with one lit window on reality. It's funny. POV. Seriously

lighten up
you putin me

beyond your grasp… winsome, alas

The vintage was old vicarage
the label was old spice
the taste was new, peculiar,
a touch which I thought nice.

But I'm spinning rings
a hoopla stall
the fairground's gone,
what happened to it all?

Everything goes
every one grows
everybody knows why
except me.