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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.
Rob Urban Jun 2012
Lost in the dim
streets of the
Marunouchi district
I describe
this wounded city in an
  unending internal
monologue as I follow
the signs to Tokyo Station and
descend into the
underground passages
  of the metro,
seeking life and anything bright
in this half-lit, humid midnight.

I find the train finally
to Shibuya, the Piccadilly
and Times Square of Japan,
and even there the lights
are dimmer and the neon
  that does remain
  is all the more garish by
contrast.
I cross the street
near a sign that says
  "Baby Dolls" in English
over a business that turns
out to be a pet
  shop, of all things.

Like
the Japanese, I sometimes feel I live
in reduced circumstances, forced to proceed with caution:
A poorly chosen
adjective, a
mangled metaphor
could so easily trigger the
tsunami that
    sweeps away the containment
             facilities that
                   protect us
                        from ourselves
                                                            and others.
  
The next night at dinner, the sweltering room
     suddenly rocks and
        conversation stops
                  as the building sways and the
candles flicker.

'Felt like a 4, maybe a 5,'
says one of my tablemates,
a friend from years ago
in the States.

'At least a five-and-a-half,'
says another, gesturing
at the still-moving shadows
on the wall. And I think
     of other sweaty, dimly lit rooms,
      bodies in slow, restrained motion,       all
          in a moment that falls
                         between
                                     tremors.

         Then the swaying stops and we return
to our dinner. The shock, or aftershock,
isn't mentioned again,
though we do return, repeatedly, to the
big one,
         and the tidal wave that
                           swept so much away.

En route to the monsoon
I go east to come west,
   clouds gathering slowly
     in the vicinity of my chest.

Next day in Shanghai, the sun's glare reflects
  off skyscrapers,
and the streets teem
with determined shoppers
and sightseers
wielding credit cards and iPhone cameras, clad
in T-shirts with English words and phrases.
I fall
          in step
             beside a young woman on
                 the outdoor escalator whose
shirt, white on black,
reads, 'I am very, very happy.' I smile
and then notice, coming
down the other side,
another woman
wearing
        exactly the same
       message, only
                        in neon pink. So many
                                  very,
                                          very
                                                 happy people!
Yet the ATMs sometimes dispense
counterfeit 100 yuan notes and
elsewhere in the realm
      police fire on
      protestors seeking
                more than consumer goods,
while officials fret
about American credit
and the security of their investments, and
     the government executes mayors for taking
                       bribes from real estate developers.
    
    A drizzle greets me in Hong Kong,
a tablecloth of fog draped over the peaks
   that turns into a rain shower.
I find my way to work after many twists and turns
through shopping malls and building lobbies and endless
turning halls of luxury retail.
               At dinner I have a century egg and think
of Chinese mothers
urging their children,
'Eat! Eat your green, gooey treat.
On the street afterwards, a
near-naked girl grabs my arm,
pulls me toward a doorway marked by a 'Live Girls’
sign. 'No kidding,’ I think as I pull myself carefully
free, and cross the street.

On the flight to Bombay, I doze
   under a sweaty airline blanket, and
       dream that I am already there and the rains
         have come in earnest as I sit with the presumably
           semi-fictional Didier of Shantaram in the real but as-yet-unseen
            Leopold's Café, drinking Kingfishers,
              and he is telling me,  confidentially,
                     exactly where to find what I’ve lost as I wake
with the screech and grip of wheels on runway.
            

     Next day on the street outside the real Leopold's,
bullet holes preserved in the walls from the last terrorist attack,
I am trailed through the Colaba district
by a mother and children,  'Please sir, buy us milk, sir, buy us some rice,
I will show you the store.'
    A man approaches, offering a drum,
                        another a large balloon (What would I do with that?)
A shoeshine guy offers
                                           to shine my sneakers, then shares
the story of his arrival and struggle in Bombay.
     And I buy
             the milk and the rice and some
                      small cakes and in a second
                          the crowd of children swells
                               into the street
               and I sense
                     the danger of the crazy traffic to the crowd
                         that I have created, and I
think, what do I do?
           I flee, get into a taxi and head
                             to the Gateway of India, feeling
                                                                                  that I have failed a test.

                                       My last night in Mumbai, the rains come, flooding
     streets and drenching pavement dwellers and washing
the humid filth from the air. When it ends
           after two hours, the air is cool and fresh
                                  and I take a stroll at midnight
          in the street outside my hotel and enter the slum
   from which each morning I have watched
the residents emerge,  perfectly coiffed. I buy
some trinkets at a tiny stand and talk briefly
      with a boy who approaches, curious about a foreigner out for a walk.

A couple of days after that, in
the foothills of the Himalayas,  monks' robes flutter
on a clothesline like scarlet prayer flags behind the
Dalai Lama's temple.
I trek to 11,000 feet along a
narrow rocky path through thick
monsoon mist,
   stopping every 10 steps
to
   catch
        my  breath,
              testing each rock before placing my weight.
Sometimes
    the surface is slick and I nearly fall,
sometimes
    the stones
        themselves shift. I learn slowly, like some
             newborn foal, or just another
                clumsy city boy,
                   that in certain terrains the
       smallest misstep
                            can end with a slide
                                             into the abyss.
                  At the peak there's a chai shop that sells drinks and cigarettes
                                of all things and I order a coffee and noodles for lunch.
While I eat,
      perched on a rock in a silence that is both ex- and
      in-ternal,
the clouds in front of me slowly part to reveal
a glacier that takes up three-quarters of the sky, craggy and white and
beautiful. I snap a few shots,
quickly,
before the cloud curtain closes
again,
obscuring the mountain.
                                                
                                     --Rob Urban: Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Delhi, Dharamshala
                                        7/13/11-7/30/11
Glenn Currier Dec 2021
Listening to Leopold’s symphony
for two minutes,
I was bored.
My mind wondered.
I recalled the dramatic first chords
of Wolfgang’s symphony 41
how it awakened me
how I was hooked by his energy and zest.

Even though Leopold taught his son,
the fame of the impulsive and creative Amadeus spread
as he wrote and played
and captured the attention of the world.

I wonder what poor Leopold thought of his own work
in contrast to his prolific son
a son who seemingly created great music
from nothing
who freed himself from tired conventions.

A creator makes something from nothing
and I wonder if being lost in nothingness
as we poets sometimes are,
if letting go of the familiar
makes it easier to create.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

All black virtues and white vices to day
Point to the reality around the British Empire
Or the famous Great Britain
Or the British Commonwealth
If not the English commonwealth
That its next monarch must be an African
Truly an African without streaks of cosmetic Africanity
Deeply black in colour, ***** in race and African in blood,

The monarchy of England should not be confined
To the parochial and Provencal English blood
Falsely named the royal blood
What a misnomer? For science and religion
Has nothing in history like the royal blood
But only brutal probability of genetics
Ever and ever will befall humanity,

The royalty of blood is only a smokescreen for racism
Or inter European apartheid or apartheid in universality,
The empire of British Commonwealth, Gambia included
Is not about the royal blood of charlese, Elizabeth nor Victoria
It is all about world class cultural inclusivity
Of all the pillars of the English culture,

English commonwealth is of culture, language, attitude and geography
This has to be known devoid of racial biase
And this is the great English empire;
It is a billion African English speakers
Its five hundred million American English speakers
It is a million Australian English speakers
It is a hundred million Indian English speakers
These are the bricks that mould the English commonwealth
Not queen Elizabeth and her son the cuckold of Egyptian mangy dog,
It is the nation of Uganda which is hundred percent African,
No Caucasoids nor Asians but its mother tongue is the British English,
Uganda is crazy; its peasants speak English like Cambridge scholars,
It’s the Nigerian Afro -cinema that promotes spoken English
With the muscle only inherent in the stampede of cultural imperialism,

The royal family is not royal at all in the informed understanding
Or else which family is not royal, show one me please
And I will show you folly of the day
Who wants not to be royal, why not all of us,
Crudeness of culture is the pedestal of reserved royalty
Inclusivity is the contrasting mother of cultural strength
Thus, all English speakers are the royal family
Of the British Commonwealth,
They don’t need royal blood
They already have full amour of the royal culture
Of the English linguistic or mental civilisation,
Please Queen Elizabeth listen to me carefully
Listen with your wholesome body and soul to this song
The song of freedom echoing cultural modernity;
Give to us, we your children of the commonwealth our rights
Include us in our hard earned monarchy,
I also want to be the king of England
I want to fill that royal palace with my dark skin
I want to speak and write English poetry inside the palace
The royal palace of England whose
Whose Golden floor and pavement are  s
Reeking the blood of colonialism
The wood and gold in the palace
Was taken from Africa without any pay
During colonial robbery with violence,
Give me my historical rights to be the king of England
Then my four African wifes; Lumbasi Opicho, Namwaya Opicho, Nangila Opicho and Chelangat Opicho, the most beautiful of all from the heroic Kipsigis
Will be the four queens of England, queens of the English commonwealth
Lumbasi for Scotland, Namwaya for England, Nangila for Wales and Chelangat
For the begotten Ireland,
I have all the virtues in my blood to be the English king
If it’s military, shaka the Zulu is my uncle
If it is wisdom, Nelson mandella is my uncle
If it is intellect Kwame Nkrumah is my father
If it is culture Taban Lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek are my brothers
Whereas Leopold Sedar Senghor is a son of my father from another mother,
If it is beauty Cleopatra the Egyptian whose beauty killed the Roman king is my mother
If it is science my witchcraft is superior in technology to silicon computing
If it is ***, ask your daughter in law princes Diana
Now what am I missing to become the next English monarch?
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

From America I have gone home to Africa
I jumped the Atlantic Ocean in one single African hop and skip
Then I landed to Senegal at a point of no return
Where the slaves could not return home once stepped there
Me I have stepped there from a long journey traversing the
World in search of dystopia that mirror man and his folly
Wondrous dystopia that mirror woman and her vices
I passed the point of no return into Senegal, Nocturnes
Which we call in English parlance crepuscular voyages
I met Leopold Sedar Senghor singing nocturnes
He warned me from temerarious reading of Marxism
I said thank you to him for his concern
I asked him of where I could get Marriama Ba
And her pipe ******* Brother Sembene Ousmane
He declined to answer me; he said he is not a brother’s keeper
I got flummoxed so much as in my heart
I terribly wanted to meet Marriama Ba
For she had promised to chant a scarlet song for me
A song which I would cherish its attack
On the cacotopia of an African women in Islam,
And also Sembene Ousmane
I wanted also to smoke his pipe; as I yearn for nicotinic utopia
As we could heartily talk the extreme happiness
Of unionized railway workers in bits of wood
That makes the torso of gods in Xala, Cedo
As the African hunter from the Babukusu Clan of bawambwa
In the land of Senegal could struggle to **** a mangy dog for us.

Any way; gods forgive the poet Sedar Senghor
I crossed in to Nigeria to the city of Lagos
I saw a tall man with white hair and white beards,
I was told Alfred Nobel Gave him an award
For keeping his beards and hairs white,
I was told he was a Nigerian god of Yoruba poetry
He kept on singing from street to street that;
A good name is better tyranny of snobbish taste
The man died, season of anomie, you must be forth by dawn !
I feared to talk to him for he violently looked,
But instead I confined myself to my thespic girlfriend
From Anambra state in northwestern Nigeria
She was a graduate student of University of Nsukka
Her name is Oge Ogoye, she is beautiful and ****
Charming and warm; beauteous individuality
Her beauty campaigns successfully to the palace of men
Without an orator in the bandwagon; O! Sweet Ogoye!
She took me to Port Harcourt the capital city of Biafra
When it was a country; a communist state,
I met Christopher Ogkibo and Chinua Achebe
Both carrying the machines guns
Fighting a secessionist war of Biafra
That wanted to give the socialist tribe of Igbos
A full independent state alongside federal republic of Nigeria
Christopher Ogkibo gave me the gun
That I help him to fight the tribal war
I told him no, I am a poet first then an African
And my tribe comes last
I can not take the gun
To fight a tribal war; tribal cleansing? No way!
Achebe got annoyed with me
In a feat of jealousy ire
He pulled out two books of poetry from his hat;
Be aware soul brother and Girls at a war
He recited to us the poems from each book
The poems that echoed Igbo messages of dystopia
I and Oge Ogoye in an askance
We looked and mused.

I kissed Ogoye and told her bye bye!
I began running to Kenya for the evening had fallen
And from the hills of Biafra I could see my mother’s kitchen
My mother coming in and going out of it
The smoke coming out through the ruffian thatches
Sign of my mother cooking the seasoned hoof of a cow
And sorghum ugali cured by cassava,
I ran faster and faster passing by Uganda
Lest my elder brother may finish Ugali for me
I suddenly pumped in to two men
Running opposite my direction
They were also running to their homes in Uganda
Taban Lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek
Taban wielding his book of poetry;
Another ****** Dead
While Okot was running with Song of Lawino
In his left hand
They were running away from the University
The University of Nairobi; Chris Wanjala was chasing them
He was wielding a Maasai truncheon in his hand
With an aim of hitting Taban Reneket Lo Liyong
Because him Taban and Okot p’ Bitek
Had refused to stand on the points of literature
But instead they were eating a lot of Ugali
At university of Nairobi, denying Wanjala
An opportunity to get satisfied, he was starving
Wanjala was swearing to himself as he chased them
That he must chase them up to Uganda
In the land where they were born
So that he can get intellectual leeway
To breed his poetic utopia as he nurses tribal cacotopia
To achieve east African thespic utopia
In the literary desert.

Thank you for your audience!
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2018
so... i know that i will not be richer than
my parents...
they're heading off for two weeks
to Costa Rica,
while i'm heading back to Poland...
a tourist hellhole,
back to the town of my birth,
a ****-hole (once communism collapsed,
the steel industry collapsed)
to spend five masochistic weeks
with a neurotic grandmother,
who hums a lot,
a song i'm still to decipher...
and a dementia riddled grandfather,
to read a book,
       not drink, not use the internet:
on that point... thank ****!
i'll need about 5 weeks to forget how
**** youtube became in the past year!
it's not exactly a, "holiday"...
when i think of the tropics i think...
that one time in Kenya...
looking for shade...
why do these people travel
to the most obscene destinations
for a ******* suntan?
or some, other **** and *******?!
go somewhere colder...
i said to them... go to Norway...
you'll come back to England...
hey presto! the tropics!
instead, going to a tropical region,
and then experiencing holiday
blues, shell-shocked by the return
to the cold...
   it's like you're in an ice-bath one
minute... foo! into the sauna with
you....           eh?!
but i appreciate the offer...
it's not like enjoyed Kenya that much...
what, a, waste, of, time...
the macaque monkeys and
the pirate baboon were the only fun
bits staying at this tourist resort...
the rest?
bland bland blah blah...
i was so bored that i just pretended
to sleep most of the time...
just give me the ******* basics,
a book to read, long nights,
and two old people,
and enough recipes to cook for them...
i'll be fine...
    i'm not exactly the type
easily distracted like a cat might
be with a laser pointer...
5 weeks? a 3 volume book?
over 1000+ pages?
                smithy...
                   ****... it's more
than a holiday, it's a hiatus...
i can leave this garbage lewd language
behind and turn to the high-brow
19th century *******...
no, i think this time, i'll cut off
the internet completely,
i'll not buy credit...
i'll not drink for five weeks,
i'll certainly not ******* for five weeks...
i'll not smuggle in bottles
of ***** and drink and write
at the kitchen table during the night...
**** it, i'll make this classic...
i'll be armed with 70cl of liquor
for the trip,
that should do it,
the alcohol ought to run out by
the time i'm as Warsaw Western
train-station...
so me cooking dinners for two old
people for a month...
obviously i'll take a book in English,
so i don't, "forget" the language...
Heidegger's ponderings VII - XI...
plus... i sleep better in the fellow
land...
   i don't need alcohol to lullaby
me...
   which is a nice relief...
one thing you find out,
after doing a self-imposed rehab...
you appetite comes back,
you actually eat three meals
a day...
given the day's genesis of
a coffee and 2 hour's worth of reading...
i guess that's why i wouldn't
bother going on holiday
to some exotic location,
sieving through two weeks of
a tourists' resort...
         who the **** expects to read,
on the beech?
  in Kenya i could hardly breathe
in the sun... shade shade... show me the shade!
i almost can't wait...
a hiatus mingling with a reading
holiday...
  a neurotic grandmother
and a dementia prone grandfather...
match made in heaven...
  i just can't wait for the nights
were he attempts to wander out
from the apartment wearing his
pajamas... working on calming him
down and getting him back to bed...
oh, don't worry...
dementia isn't that bad...
it doesn't involve any
   hostile proteins... that eat the brain
away... he's just super-charged
with memories...
that, yes, that flaw of being
mortal...
the cameo cinema floods
the old mind...
                           but i do like
the fact that my presence uplifts him...
i still feel pretty ****** not
bothering to read a book suggestion
he's nudging me to read...
what?
  Leopold Tyrmand's
      book zły,
and i'm like... but when you die...
i won't have any meaningful association
with this country, or these people?
if you're into the vlogging scene
you'll know this...
tim pool / tim cast...
'they're just, economic migrants...
oh? so... that makes me less than
what is a, "genuine" migrant...
a refugee...
you know, the Kosovo refugees
that came to England in the late 1990s...
and were prominent around
the Ilford train-station?
they ****** off!
   but the economic migrants remained,
integrated...
  just economic migrants...
yeah, because economic migrants
were not just the same old migrants
with not language skills they had to learn
as, muted 8 year old kids in
a primary school...
     oh no... economic migration is
privy to all the benefits of...
"other" migrations...
      oh yeah... i was ready, economically...
oomph...
             i had it easy... all the way through,
having my *** smeared with
honey sitting on a laurel wreath!
we're just economic migrants...
           **** it... let's call Pol ***
and get this party started...
we can even groove out
to the brian jonestown massacre's
song fingertips...
                        while we're at it!
god... 5 weeks... no internet...
the rekindled fascination
with the texture of paper in my hands...
this is more than a holiday...
     this is a well earned hiatus;
where i'm going to, isn't my "home"...
all it is, is a memory...
of a child leaving it aged 8...
there is no longing of me for it...
i'm not some czesław miłosz...
who left with a longing...
   economic migration has that aspect
worth its worth...
you... have no emotional investment,
in either the place you left,
or the place you went to...
Poland gave birth to me,
but England isn't a home either...
    this... this language?
this isn't ownership of the British people,
since anyone can acquire it...
conquer it, without even wanting
an inch of the language's geographic
extensions...
  i, i own, this, language...
because, it, is, mine!
this is my home...
            and sure as ****...
Poland is a vague recollection,
the day my grandparents die,
the die when i have no one to speak
Polak to...
                that will be my first death...
i'm, white, you see, i'm privileged,
i get to experience more than one death!
   i really have a vague sense
of identity...
         the best assumption i can
make of myself is... to be... rōnin;
i pledge no allegiance to either camps,
i have a certain critique of both...
i have my reasons...
but it's not like i'm going to tell people
what they are.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2018
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.
Scott Hamsun Apr 2017
My dearest Leopold:

The blind birds propaganda course is enlightening. Yeah, Ive taken it, In fact, Ive taken it once a week since June 7th, 2015. The boat started sinking on that day as well... Probably just a coincidence. I apologies if I come off as acclumsid but that devil has got my mind in a twist. I think being an afterling of this great man is an honor, unfortunately I'm not sure that he enjoys my company.... He already has his own little Heinrich Himmler. The button nose girl popped up again. This time outside of a dream. Quite a queer circumstance... She never stops bluttering and she is a bit of a daggle-tail and feather-head, but I feel what I feel.  Anyways I can hardly believe it has been three fortnights since last we had correspondence, But the elves are riding scamper like a horse and its been quite a hassle to get them off.

Always with flerd,

-Lorenzo
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2018
.well, among all the other phobia contenders? the funny ones, even i sometimes succumb to an arachnophobia, the reflex reaction to an extremely large domestic spider... a slight ****, no rhetorical base... like: what the ****?! the simple beauty of an irrational fear, since a phobia is an irrational fear... but... islamophobia? what the **** is irrational about that? no one seems to talk about islamophilia - unless of course in the convert community of ginger ninjas from the York-shire, or some other Rotherham *******...

...and if you were to talk to any Urdu speaking
Pakistani?
    he'd tell you: i hate the Wahhabi movement...
perhaps in Saudi Arabia it is mainstream -
but outside of Saudi Arabia?
            just plain old hypocrisy - banning music,
but still singing an adhan...
          why not murmur the call to prayer
like a bunch of ******* Catholics at that point
in the mass, where the congregation almost
sounds satanic, murmuring the credo -
   the i believe in...
blah blah... go to a Polish Catholic mass...
   and wait for the moment when they start
their satanic murmuring of the credo -
          i just don't remember if it's after
    the body & blood transfiguration -
hmm... poetry in motion, hanging on a thread
of metaphor...
         but irrational fears are funny...
         it's not even: not all the spiders...
well, a baby spider is like a baby muslim....
       "just" some, some...
             whatever, tell that to the Manchester
matriarchs who lost their granddaughters...
         claustrophobia is a funny fear,
      agoraphobia, yet another,
      and the list goes on...
              it's funny not from the perspective
of mocking the individual,
      but the fear per se...
                         and if I really were islamophobic?
would i trust a Turkish barber to shave
a part of my neck, while he molded my beard
for the Istanbul look?
                      don't think so...
    but... concerning the Turks... esp. because
of their talented, absolutely top game
barbers...
                               the year is 1683...
and Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold are
playing courtesan chess over Spain
   and Portugal...
                  in comes the Ottoman empire,
and besieges Vienna...
         who bails out the Holy Roman Empire?
the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth -
with Jan III Sobieski at its head...
                   see... Poles have had many ruff
& tumble encounters with the Turks,
   after all, the Turks owned much of southern
Europe...
          now take that, and move this into
the current year...
     they're Muslims... but... WE SHARE
A COMMONALITY... A HISTORY...
   AN UNDERTAKING OF / FROM THE PAST,
translated into the current year,
   and subsequently the future...
              i already said once upon a time...
is it really "islamophobia" if i'd rather favor
Turks and the ****'ite?
           forget whether Islam is a religion of
"peace"... they're not perfect,
   did the ******* Sunnis forget that their religion,
like all others, is schismatic?
       there's your ******* perfect -
but you have to give them credit,
   on account that... well...
   Muhammad didn't keep his word to Ali...
and that the schism happened so fast...
     not at least 1000 years it took for
the East-West schism of 1054...
          bam-wham thank you Ahmed...
plus... if you look at it... no ****'ite terrorist...
only the ******* Sunnis...
            the Turks imploded on themselves...
that's why the grandmothers of Poland
prefer the imported Turkish tele novellas
over the Mexican ones...
          so... if you want to avoid the bumper sticker
of Islamophobe...
              (a) what is irrational about it,
        when it's not a quirky, irrational fear?
  (b) find yourself a Turkish barber.
Donall Dempsey Oct 2018
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"out of the man
who makes the false teeth.

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.
As the old woman on a bicycle so perfectly puts. . .

Ineluctable – that which cannot be escaped from.

modality– A condition like eyesight. Hearing is a modality. However, from each condition a limitation can also be implied. As eyesight is a modality, it also implies the limitation of not being able to hear, or being limited by the quality of our eyesight.  A modality only offers a partial reality.  Eyesight doesn’t give us reality in its entirety, because it can’t give us hearing or taste, both which add aspects to reality.  Eyesight, hearing, and taste are all visible modalities, and all limiting, even together.

By its nature of being visible, it is an ineluctable modality. That which is visible is limited because it’s being observed by a modality which implies a limitation.

This is the entire sentence as it appears in Ulysses:

“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.”

This means his current thought is only about what he is observing through his eyes.  “at least that and no more” implies the limitations of eye sight and he is saying here that there is more.  There is an old saying that goes  “there is more than meets the eye.”

Now...imagination on the other hand. . .
axr Nov 2014
They were masked
with obedience of terrorism on their lips
shoot people mercilessly
played with their souls
in their eyes, no sign of remorse
that dreaded night
when Mumbai cried rivers of blood
death toll increasing with the politicians giving zero *****
ten men killed approx 164
so many injured
so many scarred
lest we forget them from our hearts
martyrs left a legacy
they were many other than Salaskar, Kamte and Unnikrishnan
They played with blood in
Taj, Oberoi, Cama Hospital, Nariman House, CST and Leopold Café
their minds were moulded to be like this.
the innocent tried to hide in hotel lobbies
she watched her husband die
and then she died a silent death
they shot her unborn child
they ignored the infant's cry
they killed humanity
they came with guns
tied their hostages to a pole
and had fun.
The bomb exploded
shattering all their body parts
nothing but chunks of human flesh here and there
the innocent hid themselves in a room
took up the phone and fumbled words
they found the innocent
and...nothing.
the phone line went dead
6 years later,
we still can't forget
Today marks the 6 years since the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Proper justice was never served.
read more here
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks
Donall Dempsey Sep 2016
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.
blushing prince Jun 2017
There was ink in his mouth and it was Monday morning, doomsday morning.
The comparison of both these seemingly random attributes could mean nothing at all
to anybody else but they came hand in hand for a man that always walked with his shoes untied
and while the rest of the world chewed tobacco; he chewed cinnamon sticks that he would grind
to a fine powder in his mouth spitting it out at nearby ant mounds and by the nests of bumblebees.
This nomad’s of nobody’s business would wander the streets of his hated town, the world’s armpit, the city of fire and angels and whatever the hell else.
He would walk Pico Boulevard all the way to Wilshire Ave., towards Venice and then crookedly stumbling to Van Nuys but he didn’t know his bus routes and his mind was always swarmed by imaginary bugs that he picked up from old soda cans.
What he loved most of all was stopping by the bridges of highways and looking all the way down to
the cars below swimming past in a hurry; the sky dark blue and the headlights like light bulbs
almost running out of their batteries. He saw this as cathartic as most people saw sunsets or a pianist
shaking his head violently to his own tune and it was true. This simple man was born, some say, out of dust, car exhaust and the lost ID cards of peoples’ whose wallets were stolen. However intriguing this could be it wasn’t so.  He was born in a hospital in Chinatown and his mother had gold teeth that glistened whenever she drank too much and how often they shone.
You see, I knew this man long ago when my hair cascaded down my back in fine strokes and my lungs
weren’t yet tired from the things I chose to inhale. For all my purposes, this was the only person I wanted to talk about, to spit and screech whenever I heard his name and I didn’t even exactly know his name; The poor imbecile. He went by different pseudonyms and I suppose I did too but I had a name that most knew. Carmen and Leopold. They chose to remember it because it rolled off, it clawed at your teeth as you said it.
But Monday mornings were a specialty. It meant that he could go and see his brother who lived across town, the one who sang at fancy pubs and refined restaurants, where people didn’t have to yell to admire you, but slowly clapped, a soft hum in a room where everyone understands and doesn’t have to make up for it in the way they whistle your name. He always shook his head at this profession.
“You’re an animal to these people, an exhibit they can safely see from their auditoriums and then go to sleep without having to take you home. Your last hurrah will come soon and then what will you do?”
He didn’t understand Leopold’s hostility. This art he was drawn to. This voice that could have been
given to anybody but it was given to him. Deep down he knew he would never be a big star, he would never leave the place where he born. He would die close to where he went to elementary school and what a big sham, the whole big world so big and he would never see it. Never unfold, instead slowly
crumble like the crust of cakes he stared at through shopping windows.
thomas Nov 2015
The late afternoon sun shines amber rays upon a silent grasshopper.
A profound event is under way.

In the woodland's soft loam, mama grasshopper has planted her eggs, the ****** of a brief, worthwhile life.  Having evaded field mice, mantids, lizards, snakes, and birds, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED - almost.

In this little patch of sunlight, it is her time to "donate" to Mother Ecosystem.  It's an honor she shares with the butterflies, bees, squirrels, gnats, toads, termites, foxes, deer, hawks, robins, ants - and let us not leave out microbes and fungi.

Now sugar ants have discovered her and are dismantling, tugging, dragging her away in parts, reminiscent of an automobile salvage.  

Wayward workers stumble into ant lions' pits and become meals themselves.

The old, hollow white oak log, once mighty King of the Forest, is prostrate and bare.  Yet, with its last molecule, it continues giving.  Within its hollow, a disparate multitude is moving about, hiding, hunting, chewing, defecating, sleeping, reproducing and dying. 

In decomposition, the oak's material essence  melds back into the earth as nature's great Round River,*  an incomprehensibly slow, invisible tide.

It is late spring and waves of woodland sounds are pulsing through the community.  Cicadas shrill chorus fills the air. Distant flocks of song sparrows and warblers combine in a cloud of chirps. Above it all is the sharp tapping of a  woodpecker.

A charred fence post has become prime real estate:  a coveted,grand perch for phoebes and jays, and for a fence lizard, an elite high rise station for sunbathing and attracting a mate.  Mating azure damselflies dance in the air above the lizard.  They alight for a moment - snatched!  Above, a circling red-tail hawk eyes the lizard.

Across a draw stands an abandoned farm, tragic end result of disrespect for the land.  Goodbye sweet, precious loam, created over millennia.  You are being carried away with each rain.  Where, on where are you going?  
To brooks, rivers and the sea.

On a bleak ridge, a few oak tree survivors huddle together as they endure relentless grazing.  This parcel of land has nothing to offer anymore.  If you were to listen to the wind, you might hear its whispers of dispair.

But here, in this vibrant, buzzing woodland community where the land breathes life, there is home, food and an ideal place for all.

*  Words coined by Aldo Leopold, pioneer American ecologist, conservationist, and educator
Jonathan Finch Oct 2016
We arrived (as the brochure indicated) at a treeless station, only  
To find the fond cities dying,
And one or two savage urchins beating
Each other’s faces and tearing clothes.
We learnt later that our relation, Leopold Muckslick,
Having abandoned his job, grew desperately thin, and,
Giving up the Ghost, set himself alight and jumped in the Thames.
(He was unable to greet us.)
After many fretful minutes, filled with the clanging of old bells
                                             and engines letting off steam,  
We decided (and not a moment too soon, either) to board a taxi.
As we drove away, a blue-and-white scarfed crowd
                                                           ­       of a hundred or more
Began to clash with a blue-and-helmeted crowd of twenty,
                                                                ­         at a guess.
Only a side-window of our taxi took a knock
As we screeched beyond the flailing crowds
                                      and cold railings, though                  
We had realised by then that our journey had no sponsor
And our brochure was a nothing-lyre.
We became preoccupied with Leopold,
With water and with fire.
This poem was runner-up in the All London Silver Jubilee Poetry Competition in 1977 (when I really was trying to be a poet!). Hope you like it even though it is as old as the "engines letting off steam".
Janek Kentigern Oct 2014
When his mother was dying we each said goodbye
I was moved to tears.

The funeral came and though I tried to remain stoic, English, I cried.
Then he died, pulled under by umbilical cords, tied by my bloodied hands.

When the service came I cried then too.
My parents told me not to cry, as though it was an admission of guilt.
Still I wept through the service, as though their sternly worded advice meant nothing.
I sat and felt several tides of sorrow wash over me.
I tried to clench my bowels when it came. Through the first I stayed strong, forcing the emotion down.

The second wave made my eyes water; and whilst a stray tear dribbled off my chin I remained strong, forcing the emotion back down my swollen throat to maintain composure.

The third wave came, and though I kicked and struggled to keep my head above the guilty waves I sank below
My weeping, scabbed face betrayed the guilt of a murderer and finally I let go
Allowing the full horror of what had transpired to engulf me.
I drowned, my face covered by my ***** jacket.
The priest offered for us to share a final moment with the victim before he was burnt to ashes
And I, like the guilty party sat stock still, paralysed by the truth; that I, at that young age, had killed
And whilst I swore that I would never **** again
I collapsed adrift on a bitter sea of tears,
Howling at the injustice that I had wrought.

Later, when composure had been regained I felt a stirring in those clenched bowels.
I sat down on the porcelain throne and proceeded to **** out a large and meaty ****
I strained, my eyes watered, and my **** tipped to the edge of prolapse.

Comforted, I wiped and then felt nothing.

With humility I knew, that I was not noble Simon Daedalus but lowly Leopold Bloom.

The same avenues corporeal brinkmanship that led me to that sad place
Had led me to safety.

It was at first a sad realisation
But I’m happier now.
I haven't looked at this one in ages. I was shocked and repulsed to the point where I considered editing it.

Then I realised that my former self must've thought that was kind of the point.
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2018
not that i'm paranoid, but, my jewish neighbour,
who recently converted
to islam... has...
     god almighty...
   the biggest dumps of information on
         my other neighbours...
in england, you can be employed,
and still be homeless...
so...
           why should i be ashamed
living with my parents?
when i add to the cooking,
the cleaning...
  and the invoice writing
for a self-employment
              partnership?
the "elders" call her a reuter:
yes, the meaning is
there: but in phonetic spelling?
rojter...
    no, not rodge-ter...
  roy-ter...
             me?
   i have her a nickname for her...
mossad...
   in conversation i slip it in:
so what's mossad saying?
   ha ha... and this is a jewish woman,
in her late 50s...
  and she knows more
about my neighbours than i do...
   and all i know is that
her younger son: joseph hates
the heat as much as i do...
and that her elder son...
         ****... can't remember his name...
works for the police...
  and won't tell her what
he does...
  about the conversion... ha ha!
i'm pretty sure as **** she didn't
"switch" sides for the prayer manual...
or the pomp of 5-a-day (not a fruit)
typo for ceremony...
ha ha... she has a name...
   Hilary...
                   god knows what her last
name is...
        but it's an old relationship...
the kind, that amon leopold göth
mentioned...
about king casimir III welcoming
             the jews...
that's how being neighbours works...
you, don't, get, in, each, other's, way...
you, crack, a, joke,
and, get, on, with, it...
you compromise...
   these english natives no nothing
of compromise:
   they know about dictating rules
over properties they don't own...
but to be on equal standing with
neighbours? not a ******* clue...
    i actually hope some Hindu family
moves next to us...
     then we can seriously start
      sharing curry recipe secrets...
yes... multiculturalism,
does work... but only between
                    immigrants...
as long as we can expect to share
the lingua franca...
             but speak native in privy?
ah...
              it's funny...
    there was but one english native
in the catholic school i went to...
i tend to forget that i was educated,
among... primarily the irish,
    with a scottish english teacher...
england... england... england where?!
is that even on the map?
oh... but i went to the Cheltenham
book festival, and experienced
the "heartland"...
     i left feeling -
                sooner i'll land on my ***
in a fist fight with someone here,
now, than allow my foot to step
on this land...
   thankfully i have adapted
and disguised my accent -
or thereof lack of one,
  other than - which bemuses
the local essex folk, as being:
     at worst slurry,
               at best cosmopolitan...
some arab... who went to an american
university of cairo type of scenario...
but how does Hilary (mossad)
know so much about my other neighbours,
i don't know...
   i hear she goes to the local
laundromat...
            perhaps...
                      that's where she gets
all the info.
            - oh, the jewish neighbours?
they're not rich...
         not all jews ever were,
or actually are;
but she's has her weight's worth in gold
for giving up the giggles.
JR Potts Jan 2014
There is a machine
it's hands driven by no singular man
nor collective of men but by the subconscious desires of whole societies,
possibly by all mankind.
It's will; perhaps passed on in our blood
but I suspect a more devious actor at play.
The augmented reality of language ****** upon us in our youth
with such tyrannical force it makes the rule of King Leopold
hardly a murmur in the heart of darkness.
It's reason as noble as it is useful. It aims to connect;
to help share the eloquent, heavenly images
that reside behind our eyes in our most sincere and naked moments.
Noble indeed are the intentions of language but they deceive,
make it hard for our pupils to see what needs to be seen
thus we live as Thoreau has said 'lives of quiet desperation'
blind to what our hearts cry for in the black of our deepest silence.
We deny them in the name of acceptance and comfort
for the fear of failure wear upon us like a heavy robe.
These words they echo such violent doubt
and in days past I had triumphed this lingering hesitation
with holy regard as if it embodied me with some super power.
What lunacy, what madness I endured;
twisted about by the contradictive nature of logos.
No more shall I wear this weight upon me,
cast off the coercive syntax and again like a child;
I think in images.
I may still write, even speak in fictitious representations
but I shall live my friends,
live to see these fiery reflections of light manifested into reality.
Live so that I am not remembered in words
but in the hearts of other men...
Ivan Brooks Sr Aug 2019
How long shall they
**** our prophets,
While we stand aside
In hopelessness and  look?
Silah., oh sihah  oh Silah?
Oh Allah, said the Muslim.
Why lord, asked the Christian,
Shallom said the Jew!
A few of whom knows
What's wrong with the truth.
Wisdom is better than silver
And gold but the jew chooses gold.
This is not antisemitism,
This is the brainchild of capitalism
and the Occidental colonization
Of our minds lands and cultures.

Bob said prophetic things and he
sang revolutionary songs that
resonates to this very day.
We see the zion train every day
but it delivers nothing to us.
It comes empty but leaves
With tons of our resources.
But we ain't got much to say.
We see the smogs from the
Burning coals from its exhaust,
We hear the tots of the soul train
as it comes our way. we see
nothing but gushes of blood as
It seeps into the soil the Dutchmen
Stood on to decapitate the sons
and daughters of Congo.
Courtesy of King Leopold of Belgium.
Bob was right, A thousand years
Of history will not be wiped away!

#IvanBrookspoetry © #Bassapoet
Bob said a lot. ..some remember only  the *** he smoked.
Marieta Maglas Jun 2015
Khadjibey was controlled by the Ottoman Empire
As part of Yedisan in the Silistra Province.
To build a fortress named New World was the Turks’ desire.
Carla said, '' This meeting has been chosen by Providence.''


Carla concluded that Geraldine was American,
And Geraldine did not understand the confusion.
She learned Spanish from the Jews, who were Spain citizens
Coming to the Empire to avoid the conversion.


''My father lost a lot because of the plague and disaster, ''
Said Miguel, ''half of my wealth was gone in the warfare.
We thought to immigrate to a new world moving faster
Than this one in which we were living as lost in a nightmare.''


Cruz asked him, ''Why didn't you try your chance for a new life? ''
''I wasn't strong enough, and my son died in this war made
For the Spanish succession after the King Charles’ death; my wife
Still grieves for her unique child; our life cannot be repaid.''


'' In Gibraltar, the property that had been taken
By force became British; we moved to Barcelona.
The power balance mirrored those widows standing forsaken.
Let's cheer this Grand Alliance! It’s as the sun's light corona.''


'' The Anglo and the Dutch kings used the navy to open
The Strait of Gibraltar needing the naval power
In the Mediterranean.'' '' Guess what was broken.''
Said Bella, '' our transatlantic economy shower.''


''By the Treaty of Constantinople, our Russian
Forces had been withdrawn and Zaporozhia lost all
The army protection, '' said Ivan, ''then, our discussion
Was to sell our goods and to leave a life that apart could fall.''


''In the Holy League, Russia joined Austria and Venice
To drive the Turks and to sign a treaty with Poland, ''said Cruz.
''Those horses have never met the steppe, '' spoke Ivan with menace,
''Leopold I helped by the Turks that Partition could refuse.''


(Geraldine and Erica were talking on the deck.)


''His father was a soldier coming home after many
Years of serving the czar; he found that his wife was dead and
Ivan lived with an aunt spending money but not having any.''
Geraldine was speechless for a few minutes and stunned.


''Erica, why did his mother die? '' ''She was the wife of a serf.
She was a subjugated slave labor for a lord.''
''Was she beaten? '' asked Geraldine while dampening her scarf.
''She had been ***** before she took her own life with his sword.''


''Who's sword? '' ''The lord's sword! He was drunk when he beat and ***** her.''
''It was a matter whether she overcame the pressure
Of the peasant village where his mother lived not to err.
She died, but I'm sure she loved Ivan with no measure.''


His father took Ivan home and worked a part of that lord's land
As a serf, barely leaving time to cultivate
The land allotted to him while taking care of his child.
Ivan didn't go to army, but asked me to immigrate.''

(Erica, Ivan’s wife, ended the conversation while starting to cry.)


(to be continued...)

Poem by Marieta Maglas
Donall Dempsey Dec 2016
INTO THE INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE INELUCTABLE VISUALITY

Leopold Bloom
tousles my hair.

Tells me I'm a
"...grand little fella altogether!"

His large black eyebrows
look as if they will leap

off his face and land on mine
chew my mind.

Of course he is
only Milo O'Shea.

Actor extraordinaire
from Strick's ULYSSES.

Some concert in the girl's gym
has mad him appear here

before me
quaking in fear.

He is the first man I see
in a tux.

Our class is to recite
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

Was I not nervous?
Jaysus I was so I was!

The spotlight a Medusa
turning us to stone.

An audience a many
headed monster.

I...I...I
petrified.

I throw my voice
out into the dark

like throwing a mad dog
a bone.

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky."

Guy beside me starts to cry
wee running down his left knee.

Now it's over and I
am returned to myself again.

Meeting Mr. Milo
is just a happenstance.

Later he will will become
Durand Durand

trying to **** Barbarella
with sheer pleasure.

Now,  Zeffirelli's kind friar
in ROMEO AND JULIET.

But for me
he always blossoms

into Bloom
tousling my many many curls.

"A wink of his eye and
a toss his head.

soon gave me to know
I had nothing to dread."
Donall Dempsey Jun 2023
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

( Philomena her name is)

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.
wordvango Mar 2016
take into account the entire picture
of the world, men being cruel and inhuman
on the large scale, wars, nuclear annihilation threatening,
genocide most recently in Syria,
in the history looking back
that is what I see, the gas chambers in Germany,
the Congolese under the rule of Leopold,
the Seminole, my peoples the Cherokee mostly dead,
mass murderers, such as
Stalin, Mao, Islam and Christianity,
campaigning slaughter, inhumanity to man,
like a wild animal, the beast is us. Then
let us look at us. We, in our actions, our wanting at all costs to win, our
genetic makeup our striving to survive,
all bred and taught into us just continues it all. And we ask why?
Look at Hello Poetry. For a year a war has been fought. And no one is winning.
But both sides are unable to say enough. To say you too are of my kind, human, And
here, we are supposed to be the best of our kinds, the empathetic feeling ones in this crazy ****** up place we call Earth. ******* it.
Poets fighting each other as reckless as one sided as ISIS against  Bashar al-Assad .  Or Kim Jong-un threatening the world.
I am beginning to like animals
more than people.
They love unconditionally or **** for food.
There is no mistaking, no middle, no rationalizing,
it just is nature. Man is different. He kills because of words and mistaken ideals, no animal does.
Poets , in my ideal, are to use their words for love and peace.
Not mirror the rest of this ****** up world!
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE

red door of No.16
North Frederick Street
slams behind him as he

enters into this newly minted
morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it
sunlight spangles

a tiny puddle
turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of
the visible."

he turns right
into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes
the false teeth

then turning left into Eccles Street
giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES

here in its run down state
though still shining
in its fictionality

soon they will knock it down
and what will the tourists
do then poor things

sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble
and the door

will live again
some streets
away again

ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of
the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly
(Philomena her name is)

a cottage cheese
with pineapple
on a Weetabix base

it is a 16th of June
somewhere
in the 80's

as I retrace
my own earlier
Joycean footsteps

rat-a-tat-tat
on Bloom's door
"Are ya there Leopold?"

but the bold Leopold
doesn't answer
the 16th of

forever I am
"...walking through it
howsomever."

the sun smirks
at such
Joyceisms

"I am, a stride of a time
very short space of time
through very short times of space."

a horse and cart as if
from the past
saunters by timelessly

ahhh "...the ineluctable
modality of
the audible."

my Molly
who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert
into her

and yes she says
mmmm...yes....mmmm
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*

Fo­r Jemmy de Joist whose day the 16th always us and the words give him their gifts. This is my little bit of living in his moment and walking the streets he walked.
The Chav Poet Feb 2019
In the spring of 1945 the allied forces found them,

Thousands of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and romanians,

Starved, beaten, unrecognizable as human,

With Millions before them gassed, prohibited from breathing.

Thrown in to ovens.

Their humanity already scorched.

Their dignity already torched.

Their personhood pawned for a system

That fault the world in the thought that the world would be better off without them.

And the holocaust was the logical conclusion

Of centuries of how the European had behaved until then.

Shakespeare spoke of the treatment of Jews and the Moors right before when

Those ships with decks that kept Africans beneath them

Sailed from Africa to America to Britain to the Caribbean —

The slaves had their langauges stolen they were robbed of their being,

And murdered for fleeing,

Nat Turner did nothing wrong — ask what you would do if you were forced to be him.

And for years we all falsely pretended

That this all ceased when slavery finally ended.

Really?

Twelve million Africans were then killed by the Dutch,

It doesn’t take much just to look that up

But it remains one of the world’s best kept secrets,

That these African men, women and children

Were murdered by King Leopold because he thought them too subhuman,

Backwards and ape like, so reasoned it was better to just not feed them and (or) **** them —

Like how Churchill viewed the colonized Indian.

How Columbus viewed the Native American,

How black men are viewed by white police men,

Why Malcolm’s militancy was a rhyme to a reason,

Why when the Nation of Islam rose, people believed them,

Why some Jews see slight on Israel as moralist treason,

Why for black men the only way out is as a sportsman or musician.

I admit — I’m white, so at first I was alien to how Kaepernick was feeling.

I admit — I’m straight so when gays told me their feelings, I didn’t believe them.

I admit — I’m poor, so when the right wing said they’ll being back jobs, I found it relieving,

I admit I’m ashamed of it, but I took that me, educated and killed him.

Talk about white genocide and cultural suicide

But it’s just a ****’s way to fantasize of a reality in which they’re victimized

But wait for the drop, the crescendo, the realization

That black men, Jews, gays, transgenders, the poor and lesbians

Are here, and really mean something.

If I was a white nationalist, **** right I’d be worrying,

Because I can feel it, do you hear it? The fire is rising.

Scared of Muslims? Soon you’ll really know what it’s like to be fighting

The people you’ve subjected to your fears, your hate, your propaganda and lying.

Feel the “Bern”, but Sanders ain’t who’ll be the cause of your metaphorical frying

It’s the one’s you’ve oppressed, the one’s you detest,

You’re a wound on society, they’ll be the zest

Of the lemons coming to cleanse you.

We want you broken and smashed, **** trying to bend you,

Or hear you or understand you, I’d much rather politically end you

And send you to the depths of hell.

Punch a ****, bash the fash, I can’t and won’t incite that

But I can and will say it would please me, believe me it wouldn’t displease me to see the movement of white supremacy

Ended.

Forever.

To quote Malcolm X: by any means necessary.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2022
better than any hallucinogenic ingestion: whether that be acid or magic mushrooms... head traumas... ooh: those brain-"freeze" rattlings, like licking ice... like eating post-accident scabs... hmm... peanuts?! black-pudding?! oats?! i don't know... it's a mix of all... dry blood...

turns out we're all pink underneath...
even me: copper-neck sun-tan boyo come summer
turns pink skinned once he falls spectacular
over: face first: Lucifer's birth... stars dangling
awry out of constellation patterns...
moving... stars roaming...
             we're all pink underneath...
as i can attest: picking at my scar tissue / scab...
subsequently eating it...
   no... i don't care what the scientists might say
about eating your boogies...
i heard that one before... i also love the taste
of nails... i love the taste of female genitals...
esp. that of female genitals that have had
many ****** partners but are also ****-hygienic...
****-hygienic?! oh... right...
the types of girls you can have unprotected ***
with... knowing full well that they are prostitutes...
and still not contract any STDs...
             you put a ****** on my phallus
you might as well choke me during ******...

she wants to dance like Uma Thurman...
  mmm hmm... 4th day running... one song on repeat...

so the boiler buy comes round on time:
around 2 and 2:30pm... i switched on the t.v.
to watch some SW19 (Wimbledon, tennis,
i'm not going to be cryptic, let's leave it in the open)
my next door neighbour shoved a note
through my door... Dear Matthew...
scribbled like someone might with a crayons...
could you feed my baby tomorrow, Tuesday...
Bella... an white heterochromia beauty-freak...

so the boiler man came: handsome worth of
a **** and a ring attached to a ring-finger...
      £80 for about 15 minutes worth of work...
thank god he left a receipt...
    but my neighbour approached him: can you check
my boiler?
   her house? i love her to bits...
but... she? and Ed Gein... yeah... on par...
every time i go into her house to feed her cat
i'm actually trying to find myself...
oh... i know where the sink the cat food is...
i'm just trying to find myself,
   i.e.: i couldn't live like this...
              and i'm being: seriously generous...

so she approaches the boiler guy...
CAN WE STOP WITH THIS BICYCLE ACCIDENT
CRAP?! YES... IT'S BEEN A WEEK...
I'M HEALING LIKE WOLVERINE...
BECAUSE I'M A HYGIENIC-****...

but outright she calls me a sadomasochist...
PROMPT...
      i just need a girl to rest her head on my shoulder
sigh into me and i'm off... like a racehorse...
**** myself into her house...
meet her son...
  tell him: drop the Spanish... choose German...
it's more grammatically aligned to English...
he's on board... bring her homemade wine...
homemade banana loaf... cycle to her house at night...
drop her a Valentine's card through the box
and leave flowers on the porch...
          but in the end get rejected and feel like
i might have a heart's worth of a tonne of pebbles...
perhaps sand... i think sand trickles better
with the aid of a shovel when spreading it...
actually: no... better moving a tonne of pebbles
than a tonne of sand...

sadomasochist? am i thinking out-loud?
i know i am... but the question is...
it's actually a good question...
not Heidegger questioning history via historiology...
that's his buzzword in the black notebooks...
historiology this... historiology that...
no no...
                it's a chicken and the gg... egg story...

a e i o u M u o i e a...
                   a e i o u N u o i e a
     a e i o u R u o i e a
               a e i o u P u o i e a...

(we'll come back to this "problem" later on;
what has it to do with anything?
well... why do the Greeks have names for
their letters... while the Romans don't and didn't?
they "sang" their wording... PIZZA...
PAPARAZZI! AMORE!
    but i'm pretty ******* sure that if
the Romans plagiarised the Greek deities...
how Zeus became Jupiter... etc.
   then i'm pretty sure the Greeks plagiarised
the Roman way of the abacus -
how? how?! how could you use letters as numbers?!
erm... weren't the numbers already hidden in
the letters?! 8 in B...
                          Z in 2...
                                       7 in L or gamma before
a mirror...
                    1 in I...
                                   6 in miniscule beta b....
    5 & G are not facing each other...
II + III = V
                  shake shake shake III in Cyrillic...
3 otherwise... (

i lost the plot... hence the (          open to question:
where did i leave of off?!

ah... right... sadomasochism...

  the chicken and the gg... i.e. egg...
i know who came first historically... Marquis de Sade...
as i know that leopold von Sacher-Masoch came
later... historically... but... ontologically?!
ooh... that's a tough one...
well... no... it isn't...
             the inner drive of a youth in me that
once was... i found Marquis de Sade literature prior
to finding Sacher-Masoch...
            i learnt from a sadist what i couldn't learn
from a *******... because?! i guess i was inherently
*******... but not of a ****** nature...
to hell with being shamed sexually by a woman...
Venus in Furs the Velvet Underground sort of *******...
no! nein! niet! nie!

so... what came first? the sadist or the *******...
i know that historically the sadist came before the *******...
but within the sadomasochist complex:
S comes after M...
it could easily have been a maso-sadist complex...
compound of words...
never mind...

i think i first have had to experience sadism...
born with a hernia...
with a Chernobyl birthmark like someone clipped
an angel's wing... now a Cain's mark...
a nurse at the hospital tried to
choke me... enlarged me heart...
that's the myth...
        i was born as an abomination...

i love hurting myself... i'm sort of immune to
pain... immune when it is spectacular,
spontaneous... a Pollack / Kandinsky / Bacon
moment of contortions...
an implosion of time being undifferentiated
from space and space being undifferentiated
from time... relativistic squadron of magpies...
or... lonely seagulls flying in the night
trying to perch and be at ease
inland... on lamp-posts... looking for the hush
and hum of the battering waves of sea...

so who came first? the sadist or the *******,
ontologically, not historically?!
personally? i love to give myself pain
while giving others pleasure...
           leniency: even at work...
i like giving someone a 1h break while i only take
a 15min break...
and then watch... i love watching the guilt trip...
and falling into line...
ergo? i'm a passive sadist: i don't need
all the kink and ******* of ***-tripping...
i need subtle queues...
just give me a NIQAB and i'll work with it
like an artist with a canvas...

i already spotted the "agenda":
Muslim girls peering into a blonde moustache
and a brown beard... ooh... ooh...
why? how?! they're not looking at my eyes...
they're looking at my lips...
perfect mayhem! perfect!
   rubber-band stretching agitation!

of course they're fuckable... anything that moves
is... is...
                 Somali, Bangladeshi...
you name the hue and i'll compare that with
Caramel White Choc-Blocks...
         it's only the white girls...
that highest prize arrogance...
            the dilution "liquid"... of what? *****!
we'll all be Brazilian by the end of "it"...

lyrically: it's so wrong...
she and you...
i can't get YOU...
   what a pronoun confusion....
i can't get rid her HER...

new term:  TERRIBLE-ENGLish...

i love the song... but the language is the pristine
example of native-neglect...
well... it's H'american Ing-leash...
so... it's going to supposed to fail...

like overhearing two black guys talking
about racial stereotyping: how if you use
racial slurs in England at work you'll be excused...
how H'america is dangerous...
how England is salvagage ground
for racial minorities...

*******! you're pink just as me when
you bruise! what?!
      
i ******* hate the H'american accent...
it's like making a spaghetti Carbonara with
phlegm and snot without
any cream eggz or parmesan cheese...
no... like in Iraq or Libya:
your "empire" is not welcome here... *******!

great for culture... your culture is great...
your politics?! no, not so much...
sorry...

    why is it that we have ALPHA?
but only A in the Latin script?
why isn't it ebb but be for (B)?
why do we have gee and not egg for (G)?
err and not Ra for (R)?!
              el and not La for (L)?
why do so many consonants begins with vowels
rather than end with them,
when isolated?

that's why i adore Heidegger...
he always suggested: what is worth being questioned...
exactly!
         i already made a question:
why is the alphabet sorted so?
why not a e i o u b c... etc.?!
why are the vowels randomly placed among
the consonants?!
  the alphabet unravels into words and sentences
in the end... why not cook-up a revision
of QWERTY as an ability to type without
looking down at the keyboard?!
i'm sure the GP that retired that was
"curing" me was typing like a crow pecking
at crumbs of bread... digit-index finger...
look down: digit-index finger... peck... peck...
who the **** needs to learn the alphabet
when you have QWERTY?!

oh sure, sure... sure sure... the people are "literate":
no they're not... they are just about
able to read STOP and GO signs...
associate the colour RED with STOP
and the colour GREEN with GO...
thank god we're not trying some Mandarin experiment...
you get to look at enough people you
know that individuals beside the herd...
but when dealing with the herd: there are no individuals...
we're not talking about a wolf-pack...
we're talking about herding mentality...

on my QWERTY?
the A is completely eroded... it's the most used key i
apparently use... then again...
it's all about hand-placing...
so that you utilise all your fingers... including
you thumbs...
*** is typing... i can't imagine writing this much
having to scribble death-end-notes with
undecipherable handwriting...
                
digit by digit... letter by letter...
        because in the 1800s i wouldn't be a part-time poet...
i'd be a lumberjack and a a shepherd...
or: thereabouts...
          mind you? from what i've checked?
the supposed professional poets
on gate-keeper sites of poetry?
mmm hmm... they're sort of pretentious / ****...
aren't they?!

oh... right... now i know why the A is scrubbed out...
i've lost a lot of poems...
my fault... i forgot to
ctrl+A / ctrl+C / ctrl+V...
lesser lessons for the greater reasons.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2018
oh sure sure, because Burroughs
didn't exactly celebrate his
****** addiction in his writing...
what's there, not to celebrate?
alcoholic or not,
              i enjoy the masochism
involved in the recuperation period
of, the next day,
for about two hours,
before i come to my senses and
retain some form eloquence...
my English verbose plush...
              of a tangerine, or a plum...
but hey...
        no one says to a painter:
too many colors, or...
  not enough colors...
    but i'm pretty sure that
         Mozart was criticized...
in that film: Amadeus...
         by Emperor Leopold II...
too many notes... too many musical
notes...
          ****... well...
let's just listen to the ambient music
of the refrigerator's drone hum,
snooze, buzz and frizz.
johnny solstice Jun 2019
At ringend on june sixteenth nineteen hundred and four
                                                                     Molly opens her door
and Literate Leopold plonks his kosher black pudding into her hand
                                                                                        Isn't it grand
                                                                 to be remembered this way?
Walking the streets and ******* the teats of the sow that eats its children
Searching for meat on O'Connel streeet that has the tang of scented *****
The well known literate degenerates
long to have  their hot-dogs stroked by baaaaaaaaaarnacles
whilst sellin' knick-nack Paddywackery of dear old ***** dumpling
                     How do they walk with her sausages
                                  and inner organs  of beasts and fowls?
their shanks ****** dry of whuskey on Denny's big breakfast show
                Well **** your ****! With a flame-grilled
                                                                       samuel
                                                                                 becket burger
                                                                             and a side order
                                                                       of oscar wilde fries

"warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yeilded amid rumpled clothes.
Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments.
Armpits oniony sweat .
Fishgluey slime.
Feel!
Press!
Crushed!
Sulphur dung of lions
Young!  Young!

                 In the petri-
                               Pish
                               Pish
                               Pish
                               Dish
spitoon culture
           the illiteraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaati
                                      hold a party
                  
                "I'm a tiny tiny thing
                     Ever flying in the spring
                       Round and round a ringaring
                                                  Long ago I was king
                                        Now I do this kind of thing
                                     On the wing, onnnnnnnn the wing!"
                                                    Bing!

Professor Latelate Lateshow Late review
Was talking to ME……..        about yew
What do yew think of that aesthetic crew?
                                  The opal hush poets?
                                   The master mystiks?
The wanz thit
       *** to me
          in the sma' oors
               o the mournin'
                    tae ask aboot
                       plains o consciousness?

They're all Barbers, says he, from the Black Country that would hang their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses!

In Dublin's fine city
Where the wine bars are pretty
You can't find an ashtray
You must smoke alone.

                                                                                  Isn't it grand
                                                               To be remembered this way
Walking the streets and ******* the teats of the sow that eats its children?
Glenn Currier Sep 12
Hallelujah from the heart of Leonard Cohen
just took Leonard and his old scratchy voice
into my heart. What a gift my music app
just slung into my afternoon
to wake me from my late afternoon fatigue.

I do not take these tech gifts for granted
remembering when I would have to get the LP album
from off the crammed shelf and play it on a turntable.

Here in a moment of peace
I look up and see the trees
and the neighbor’s garden
beyond my windows.

And I thank God for this lovely peaceful moment
thank my old piano teacher
and the conductor of the Houston Youth Symphony
where I sang before my voice changed
and my parents who carpooled me from our suburb
to the old auditorium downtown
where my young mind and soul were nourished
by adults who cared for our young minds and voices.

Who knew that the gifts of these people
would spring up in my mind eight decades later
and mental images of Leopold Stokowski who directed us
at a grand concert in the Houston Music Hall.
He loved children but delivered high pitched hell
to the symphony players at rehearsals.
Author’s Note: Thank you for reading my reminiscences, lovely thoughts and feelings on a cooling evening in Dallas, Texas USA.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2020
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE.

The red door of No.16
North Frederick Street

slams behind him as he
enters into this newly minted

morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it.

Sunlight spangles
a tiny puddle

turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish.

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

He turns right into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes the false

teeth!

Then turning left into
Eccles Street

giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES.

Here in its run down state
though still shining in his fictionality.

Soon they will knock it
down and what will the tourists

do then
poor things.

Sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble

and the door will live again
some streets away again.

Ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly

(  Philomena her name is )

a cottage cheese with pineapple
on a Weetabix base.

It is a 16th of June
somewhere in the 80's

as I retrace my own earlier
Joycean footsteps.

Rat-a-tat-tat on Bloom's door.
"Are ya there Leopold?"

But the bold Leopold
doesn't answer.

The 16th of
forever I am

"...walking through it
howsomever."

The sun smirks
as such Joyceisms.

"I am, a stride of  a time.

A very short space of time
through very short times of space."

A horse and cart as if
from the past

saunters by
timelessly.

Ah "...the ineluctable
modality of the audible."

My Molly who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert

into her
and yes she says

mmmm...yes....mmmm

Yes.

— The End —