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

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

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

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

Marines call to say hello,
impress. I'm over 35 but my boys
19. They could go: Hide!

One moment spent tying a shoe,
another dying, gunshot wound or poisoned food.
Events in their mere chronology
                                                      ­ make no sense.
And the details of yr dad's life don't either.
                                                         ­               Late night
quiet cigarette smoker. But next day,
the butts cleaned into the can. Who does that?
Lady in a skirt or overalls rolled up - cigarette smoke.
Now it's yr dad.
                            Yr dad who
                                                 watches for war.

Even if Uncle Sam disbands, dissolves
we the people will still be here and stay involved
with North America. The purple mountains majesty
                           and shining seas
little people, big people, brown, red, and white. Addicted
                           to action movies.
Perhaps there is no choice. One must sit, sitting still
                           as a buddha, sitting bull.
I can imagine myself and all others - drivers, voters, runners -
                           little fetal muscles
at first. Metastasizing. What's it called when the cell
                           at the tip of the *****
or organism, divides, and the ***** grows? It's called
                           ******* a bicycle.

I find I make no sense. Her ****, a practicality to her, is
                           delicious to me
a miraculous sea lettuce or snapdragon. You've heard it before.
                           A moral dilemma
wrapped in robes and silks and odors. Yet, come close,
                           and business beckons
work gets done, life goes on, hair grows in, we go on
                           vacation
the Marine Corps calls, desperate for new fetuses to teach
                           purposeful workmanlike killing
I'll do my own killing, thanks, when violence comes to the
      neighborhood
                           if I've got your back
your back's gotten and if I'm on point, the point's taken.

One world under God invisible with liberty and justice for all who
                           Art in heaven
what the hell's his name.
                                          Nemesis.
        ­                                                  Hysterical.
The small war of an especially inept empire. The world's too big
to swallow as the Krauts and Nips found out. Empire
is self-correcting. Them dark-skinned mustachioed *******
who can't fix their own electricity seem to be kicking our *****
pert good. As did the ***** before them. All to the good. A
good lesson to know and then we all become friends following
the brawl. We apparently cannot skip the fight. It must
be fought, and **** the girls.

Brexit. Exit. There ain’t no turning back
Tear down the flag of Europe and hoist the Union Jack.
Throw out all the migrants, lock the borders down
Fill in the channel tunnel and watch the desperate drown

Brexit. Exit. We don’t need the EU
Krauts & Frogs & Belgians, telling us what to do.
Boris & his cronies are planning out our fate
You know that we can trust them to make our country great

Brexit. Exit what was that you say?
The interest rates are rising and you’ve had a cut in pay?
No-one wants to buy our goods the Pound falls through the floor
Boris has gone missing & Nigel’s locked his door

Brexit. Exit. Is this not what you planned?
Fighting with each other for this green and pleasant land?
Well there’s nothing left to fight for, our country’s turned to *****
As the last one leaves ‘Great Britain’ will you please turn off the light..

The warmth of the cigarette, as its smoke thaws my chest.
The cool winter breeze, as the icy bristles clout my eyes.
The thick, lingering smoke, fading as my conscience lies unrest.
The sound of their laughter, as it’s quickly devoured by cries.
The smell of burning, as their bodies fade to ash.
The ending footsteps, as I stand at the end of my path.
The life I once had, all my dreams they had smashed.
The hatred within my soul, as my heart is filled with wrath.
The exhausted cigarette, for it’s light has gone out.
The melted snow flakes, putting out the dying flare.
The job is finished, they’re now truly lifeless krauts.
I light another cigarette, enjoying it without a care.

At dinner, Zach asks
about our nation's history, wars.
I say We're taking on everyone, one at a time.

First Britain, then Britain again: "He was the surly English pluck, and
      there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be."
Next Mexico: "Death is indifferent to what hide he tans; life crushes
      men like flies."
The War Between the States: "Well done, Mr. Cromartie. Time now
      for rest."

Most of Latin America: "Not only humans longed for liberation. All
      ecology groaned for it too. The revolution is also one of lakes,
      rivers, trees, animals."
Then Southeast Asia: "The slight bump the mortars make as they kiss
      the tube goodbye. Then the furious rain, a fist driving home the
      message: Boy, you don't belong here."
Now the Middle East: "A land to be admired like all lands. Harsh
      mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people, adapted
      ungulates, carnivorous mammals."

Can't forget the Krauts & Nips: "Then I heard the bomber call me in:
      Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two engines on fire. Can you see
      me, Little Friend?"
Nor the Commies: "You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the
      beginning of a new one. I put this book here for you, who once
      lived, so that you should visit us no more."
The original indigenous people say: "In time we'll become prosperous,
      or else we'll become martyrs. The force that placed us here cannot
      be trusted."

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”

Kempton showed Benedict
his collection of knives,
long, short, sharp and blunt.
That’s a German one my Dad
bought back from the War,
he said, taking one out
and showing with pride.

I expect it plunged a few bodies
before he choked it.
Benedict took the knife
and ran a finger
along the blade.
Sharp and coming to a point.

His own collection of knives
was small (dangerous things
his mother had said)
and kept in a drawer.

Dad took it
from this dead German’s belt,
took other things as well,
a photograph of some German girl
or so Dad said, pretty and smiling.

Benedict gave back the knife
and looked at others,
all sizes and lengths.

This one’s Russian,
Kempton said,
plunged a few Krauts I guess
before the Russian caught it
in the back, he added,
his dad having informed
some time before.  

Benedict liked the Yank knife best,
took it into his hands
and sensed the holds
of yesteryears, the fingers
having touched, the bodies
entered, the blood sensed,
the fears felt.

After a while Kempton
put them away,
feeling content,
proud of his collection.

Benedict thought it swell,
his own small collection
of knives would be
no one’s envy, tucked
in the drawer
with his vest, pants
and handkerchiefs
and that tie his auntie
had bought of red and grey.

Kempton and he left
the Kempton household
and went across the Square
to begin their wars in play.

i. let us offer each other a sign of peace. you turn and you reach and there is your hand and here is their hand and here is your heart, between. your grip is firm, hands not yet calloused, and the words like a mantra fall from your lips. peace be with you. peace be with you.

ii. the crucifix hangs above your bed, painted gold, and like gold it glitters. you kneel on the floor and the wood is rough on your skin and you clasp your hands and say father, father. you have heard of a war and though it is not yet yours still you kneel and you pray and you think father, save me.

iii. your hands shake.

iv. war has come like revelations said it would and you rub your hands together so they won’t seize up. you thank god and you curse god for the 1A stamped on your enlistment form.

v. you read your bible: do not think that i have come to bring peace to the earth. i have not come to bring peace, but a sword. you read your bible and you think: this is not what i remember.

vi. the war does not end before you get there. it makes you lose track of the days, the weeks, the months you have been in europe and away from home and away from god. you wear your crucifix around your neck but the chain is hidden by your uniform and in the winter of the bois jacques, it burns your skin like a brand. father, father you pray in your foxhole, but the noise of artillery drowns out your words so you stop.

vii. you look at julian in the snow and his arms are spread out like wings. the blood bubbles from his neck and seeps into the ground and you watch and you think, war is hell. you leave julian to the krauts and cannot ask forgiveness because you don’t want this sin wiped away.

viii. on the ground, in the snow, julian was a crucifix. you don’t pray with your own anymore.

ix. father, father you say to the sky. if this patrol kills you, you won’t be going to heaven. your gun is heavy and your ghosts are heavier and you think of a classroom on a sunny afternoon. thou shalt not ****** you wrote in cramped, careful handwriting and you think:

x. i am a murderer.

xi. today and tomorrow and ten days from now blend into one in austria and you want to stay here for the rest of your life. your crucifix beats in time with your heart and you haven’t looked at it since haguenau. you don’t know if you want to. you don’t know if you can.

xii. and then you are home and the crucifix above your bed is painted gold. do you know what happened to me over there, you ask it. do you know what i did to survive. you take the chain of the cross around your neck and unclasp it with shaking fingers. you place it by your bedside. the watch you stole off the corpse of a dead german ticks away the seconds. you watch the hand creep around to twelve and you think father, father. you do not kneel.

xiii. forgive me father, for i have sinned. the words leave a metallic taste in your mouth.

xiv. you read your bible: be broken, o peoples, and be shattered; and give ear, all remote places of the earth. gird yourselves, yet be shattered; gird yourselves, yet be shattered. you close your bible and you think:

xv. peace be with you.

I've been suddenly promoted by 11 raunchy ****-joys to head of jury
after falling off the court house building that caused my head injury
that was injurious to my slick-chick-hick-eye-baiting phlegm sprain
over the kitty cat calls of 1 swollen-shut dog's nictitating membrane
When cukes are worth more than gold, slutty *****'ll pawn pickles,
pickled in the remains of  satanical dirt-bag goons like Don Rickles
whose ill-will for krauts'll be sated when, with blood, Bonn trickles
I asked crapped-out Denis Johnson, the boozin' writer, dwarven elf,
Can't you spell Denis like everybody else? Denis Johnson, silly elf!
Start spelling Denis with 2 n's, like everybody in the world, or else!

Cookie Lucky
There goes a cookie
I'm feeling lucky!
Observed the RAF aircrew
When the huge bomb blew
An explosive filled dustbin
Made of little more than tin
Killing more ****** Germans
The blame was all Herman's
Sending the Krauts to Hell
Sound of the final bell
Dead in their beds at night
What an awful Satanic fright
We gave them a real blitz
Enough to make the Nazis schitz
For here comes the RAF!
Who don't give an eff
About carpet bombing the ***
At the time of no sun
Lancaster bombers flying high
Destroying without a sigh
Taking the battle far away
Determination knows no sway
They started this this ruck
We'd win with skill and luck
English and Empire men of skill
Who'd defend their sacred hill

Ireland for Democracy
Nigel Farage and Brexit.

We should leave also.

Better be with the Brits
than Sprouts and Krauts.

Ps.

And Frogs.

p.s. as a pre-scriptum: oh, now i know why i think this is mediocre, i haven't drunk enough to relax my "narrative"... something's here of some worth, the rest... well... it's still a tier above tabloid "journalism", if you don't me thinking.

i'm still figuring out this body, this rent...
after all: aren't we renting in this life -
although i tend to make my monetary
dynamics purely on the basis of debit
(i don't remember the last time i used
a credit card, i don't own one,
i used to, but it was such a hassle to use...
having to remember what you spent
"invisible" money on & getting a summary
at the end of the month rather than:
remembering how much money is on
my bank account... coughing up a large chunk
of it: like some sickly hindsight...
never, again)...
horrid several days in December...
the "season to be jolly": like hell it is...
over-advertised, over-sold...
                             it's not like i belong
to a large family that gets together
and spews their little "micro-aggressions"
and covert-ridicule over a meal...
being weary of ******-attractions...   huh?
yeah... but it's the culmination
of the year... the end of it...
  i'm already gearing for a restart...
December fatigue is impossibly...
the damp doesn't help...
         sitting around eating food pointlessly...
i'll eat the necessary food...
like today i enjoyed a ******
white borsch... it's a sour soup, clear...
consisting of ****** bacon...
(look up Tenacious D's kiełbasa)
hard boiled eggs...
stock made from root parsley,
     carrot, leak, plenty of garlic...
             & the stock itself: for the borsch...
mainly rye flour fermentation
juice... you also add a decent spoonful
of horse-radish to the soup...
eat it with a side of artisan sourdough
bread...
white sour borsch... oh hell...
Ukrainian borsch can hide...
the ****** red borsch (made from beetroots)
served with uszka (ucho, ear...
uszka, the diminutive of ears...
for some reason, the ****** tongue uses
a lot of diminutive terms...
to endear them... even names
of people are churned via the diminutive
machine...
Mateusz becomes Mateuszek...
Ewa becomes Ewunia)...
bay leaves + allspice pellets (also)...
plenty of sour notes...
point being, i think the **** "Aryans"
got the story wrong...
historically... the area of land that was
& is still Poland was visited by
a nomad group of Iranians...
the Sarmatians... last time i heard...
Iranians are referred to as Aryans...
& their cuisine... has plenty of
sour notes...
perhaps the sauerkraut migrated
from the region where i was born
over the Oder to...
Frankfurt-upon-Oder & subsequently
further... why the American soldiers
ref. the Germans as KRAUTS...
it's a funny side-note...
the supposed "Aryans" were fighting...
Aryans... i guess falsehood lost...

beside that... sitting around the house
doing **** all... it will get to you...
i even managed to cross that threshold
i told myself i would never cross...
coming in at more than 100kg is not
acceptable anymore...
99.5kg i can stand... but i've also managed
to go down to 96kg... but that was
during the summer, when you eat less...
or rather: you are active more...
i had to do something about it today...
i'm done with these gluttonous festivities...
did a ******* exercise quickie on
the bicycle while riding to the supermarket
to stock up for new year's day...
no more eating in the night...

       & that's how i came across the fact
that... oddly enough... exercising can provide
you with more energy...
why? because you spent some of it...
simply ingesting calories & not utilising them
fatigues you... exercising counters fatigue...
you might feel tired...
but... all the mental fatigue is gone...
you become motivated: even motivated to write
something as banal as this...
then again: i haven't been this "lazy"
celebrating: **** knows what since...
well... last year...

             by definition: during exercise you
are no longer a res cogitans...
more a res vanus: since slithers of thought
enter your mind like flashbacks
or rather like postcards...
but they're not really thought by
standards of narrative... letters become surds
like the G in the word: gnostic or, gnome...
so: apostrophes: 'nostic, 'nome...
that sort of thing...
    sometimes when cycling i meditate
on Braille, sometimes the Morse Code...
or usually diacritical markers: forever missing
in English!

more res cogitans, somewhat res vanus...
but more or less: res corpus:
a body-thing... the mind being detached from
all those constipated thoughts,
all those ego-***-solipsism alleys...
flimsy daydreams...
just my body: the wind, the eyes,
my legs, my arms, my sweat... the bicycle...
no other liberation out there,
in all honesty...       pickled brain frenzy
only comes after... when i sit down
to relax to doodle something...
        
i came across something today while my phone
was charging & i couldn't do my usual
routine on the throne of thrones...
instead of playing Mech Arena i picked
up where i left off reading Heidegger:
those black notebooks didn't come cheap...
circa £30 a volume...
             obviously first editions...
i need to find that passage once more...
i doubt i will...
ha... in the 20th century it was already noted:
we now write about reading...
sometimes... it's unavoidable...
only yesterday i was hearing loads of stories
about the stewards doing the Wembley
job when the hooligans rushed the stadium
for the England vs. Italy final...
we were driving in the car...
i felt... less was being conveyed & that it was
more about... impressing the "other"...
oh i felt like i was bonding with the supervisor...
but he was also impressed with my
plum hue tattoo... my Dalmatian eye-patch...
one of the girls inquired: i brushed it off
telling her that there was nothing to brag
about... she just assumed: oh, you Polacks...
you drink & you fight...
well... from what history has given me...
if the Polacks aren't fighting the Ottoman Turks...
the Swedes, the Russians & the Germans...
if we're not fighting the backstabbing Hungarians
who decided to side with the Austrians...
if Polacks aren't fighting then:
start counting the sitting-ducks...
why would i tell her that i was fighting my own
shadow?
in a professional environment:
you keep people guessing... informality at the core...
we're not here for ******* lunch!
arbeit macht frei has, sickly... become my motto...
not some **** joke...
oddly enough... arbeit macht frei
& RADFAHREN MACHT FREI...
cycling makes you free...
    - du macht frei
or macht du frei?!
                         oh... right... there was no
"you" in the Auschwitz slogan...

                          i could never imagine myself
being content with what people suppose
to be: relieving acts... ******* picnics in the park,
adventures in a zoo... sun-tanning...
cruises... football matches...
                   cinema...
                                     it, has, no, use, for, me...
es, hat, nein, benutzen, für, mich!
i need strain, all the time... i'm not relaxed if i'm
not doubly-aware... i always need
to be on a look out for something:
anything... i like football matches in the current
role because...
never have i watched girls without them
noticing me... sure... some do...
but they're there for the football match...
i'm there for... any possible build up of tension...
perhaps that's why i sleep:
but don't really dream...
perhaps unconsciously the gods sent dream-blockers,
evil geniuses who recommended for my
psyche to be rid of dreaming...
or being a dream-architect...
like, for example: the phenomenon
of the recurrent dream, that some people cite?!

huh?! recurrent dreams?!
it's a bit like saying: you dumb ****!
since when is it so hard to
understand the metaphor of 1 + 1 = 2?!
how long does it have to be repeated to you?!
if i don't dream... then i'm on autopilot...
almost... sure... some major dream did happen...
i even told this dream to my ex-girlfriend's
mother:

so i'm on this *****... a Pythagorean triangle:
because it's all abstract...
and these sheep like people... or these people like
sheep are falling down the *****...
behind me there's only an abyss...
they're coming down & these demonic creatures
with scythes are also coming down...
cutting the crying people's heads off...
while i'm running at the bottom of this *****
trying to save them from falling into the abyss...
i was... 17(?) when i had this dream...

have i become a paramedic since then? no...
ergo: the ***** is an abstract of something that's
not the inevitability of death.