Awarded a licence

I have been longing to be hers, and now she is mine.
I stand there underneath the sun of Africa.
I am there staring at her thinking about what is there to nurture...

The only egg that hatched was the licence I have.
I am licensed to make her smile till she laughs
I am licensed to hold her hand till she feels safe
I am licensed to hug her till she feels warm
I am licensed to kiss her till she feels wanted

I am licensed to gift her till she feels appreciated
I am licensed to help bring up the good in her till she feels important
I am licensed to talk to her till she feels like talking everyday
I am licensed to listen to her till she feels like she is heard

I am licensed to comfort her till she feels comfortable
I am licensed to practice what lovers do till she feels like never letting go
I am licensed, I am licensed
I am licensed to love her till she knows what love is
I am licensed

My Second Letter to Allen Ginsberg
Dear Allen,
Almost five years ago, I wrote you a letter, and in
That letter, I purged my drunkenly woeful cries
That seem so first-world now and naïve –
The things I grimed over with luxuries I didn’t
Realize that rubbed against my plump limbs
Like millions of felines poised at the
Tombs of pharaohs.

Oh, Allen, I’m so tired –
These politics, and poly ticks, so many ticks that
Annoy my tics. Allen! I smear your name so liberally
Against this paper like primer because the easiest way
To coerce someone into listening to you like
A mother
or predator
tugging or nibbling on your ear –
Swatches of velvet scalped from a ****’s coat
Are you and I talking to ourselves again?
Candid insanity : Smoky hesitance.

Dear Allen, I’m so tired –
Yes, I love wearing my ovaries on the outside like
Some Amazonian soapbox gem glistening from beneath
The iron boots of what the newspapers tell me while
I cough at them with the hurdled delicacies of alphabet soup.
Give vegetables a gender and call them onions, Allen.
Sullied scratch-hicks pinioned feet from slapping
Society’s last rung on the ladder.
Ignore the swerve of small-town eyes.
Scapulas, stirrups, pap smears, and cervical mucus – now do you know who we are?

That fingernail clipped too short, Allen. We’ve all got AIDs
And AIDs babies, haven’t you heard? Hemorrhaging from the political
****** and out – they haven’t reached the heart.  
Since when have old white men given a **** about some
13 year old’s birth control? I’m riding on the waves of the
Parachute game and I swear this abortion-issue is just a veil outside Tuskegee University
Being further shove over plaintive eyes, swollen and black.
Pay up and
shut up.

I still remember my first broken *****, Allen.
Can you tell me all about your first time?
The vasodilatation that made veins rub against skin,
Delirious brilliance : unfathomable electricity.
I made love during an LSD experience, Allen,
And I am not sorry. I see cosmic visions and
Manifest universal vibrations as if this entire world is
A dish reverberating with textiles and marbles, and
All are plundering the depths of the finished wine
Bottle roasting in the sink like Thanksgiving Turkey.
The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.
The opening, between you and you, occupied,
zoned for an encounter,
given the histories of you and you—
And always, who is this you?
The start of you, each day,
a presence already—
Hey, you!

Ah, Allen, if you are not safe, then I am not safe.
And where is the safest place when that place
Must be someplace other than in the body?
Am I talking to myself again?
You are not sick, you are injured—
you ache for the rest of life.

Why is it that I have to explain to my students that
sometimes what I'm spouting is prescribed by a pedagogical pharmacy --
but all they want to know is "what do the symbols on the television mean?"
I am completely aghast against the ghosts of future goners --
I am legitimately licensed to speak, write, listen like some mothers --
I am constantly cajoling the complex creations blamed on burned-out educators --
I am following the flagrant, fired-up "*******"s tagging lockers --
Pay up and
shut up.

Yes, and it’s Hopeless. Allen.
Where did we get off leaping and bounding into
The dogpile for chump change jurisdiction, policing
The right and the left for inherent hypocrisies when
Poets are so frightful to turn that introspective judgment
Upon ourselves?
We didn’t see it coming and I heard the flies, Allen.
Mean crocodile tears. Flamingo mascara tracks
Up and down : up and down: bow – bow – bow – bow
Buoyant amongst the misguided ******* floating around
In the swirlpool of lackadaisical introspection.
What good is vague vocab within poetry?
Absolutely none.
Would you leave the porchlight on tonight?
Absolutely, baby.

Dear Allen, would you grow amongst the roots and dirt
At the knuckles of a slackjawed brush of Ever-Pondering Questions
Only to ask them time-and-time-and-time-and-time-again.
Or pinch your forehead with burrowed, furrowed concentration upon those
Feeble branches of progression towards something that recedes further
And further with as much promise as the loving hand
Attempts to guide a lover to the bed?

Allen, I wish to see this world feelingly through the vibrations of billions of bodies, rocking and sobbing, plotting and gnashing like the movement of a million snakes, like the curves collecting and riding the parachute-veil.

Ah, Allen! Say it ain’t so! Sanctified swerve town eyes.
And everything is melting while poets take the weather
Too personally
And all the Holden Caulfields of the world read all the
*******’s written on the walls and all the Invisible Men
Eat Yams and all the Zampanos are blind and blind
And blind and blind and blind and blind
Yet see as much as Gloucester, as much as Homer,
As much as Oedipus.

Oh, Allen, do you see this world feelingly
and wander around the desert?
Colored marbles vibrating on the curtailed parachute paradox.
Lamentation of a small town’s onion. Little do we know, Allen,
That what you cannot see, we cannot see, and we are bubbling
Over in the animal soup of the proud yet weary. I can see,
However, how the peeled back skulls of a million
Workboots and paystubs may never sully the burden
Of an existential angst in miniscule amounts.
Pay up and
shut up.  

My dearest Allen, there is always a question of how
The cigarettes became besmirched with wax to complement
What was once grass, and
What was once a garish night drenching doorknobs.
The night's yawn absorbs you as you lie down at the wrong angle
To the sun ready already to let go of your hand
As you stepped, quivering, on to
The shores of Lethe.

At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.

The Sight of Black Stockings on Pale white Legs
Framing and showing off the Thigh, That Begs
Softly to be touched, in gentle Admiration
Women in Silk, Lace, and  Satin for Excitation

Camisoles of Lace, Garters and Penoirs
Corsets Laced up, and Short Babydolls
Lace Demi Cup Bras, with ******* Adorned
Without the Pleasure of this, life is Forlorn

There is a Certain ****** Passion
For these Fine Lingerie Fashions
Lust and Loved for Centuries
It Brings forth ***** Sensuality

Curve and Crevices tease the Eyes
Releasing ever Passionete Sighs
Until Entwined they Finally Find
The unyeildings of Motions Devine*

All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack

Tendrils of Alien Anime Lunge
Wide Eyed Innocent gets plunged


All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-**** clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity.
He who torments the chafer’s sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.
**** not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer’s song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist’s jealousy.
The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar’s rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant’s faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.
He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour’s iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket’s cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The ***** and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate.
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s winding sheet.
The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Dance before dead England’s hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.

Examples of Jim Crow Laws

Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which ***** men are placed. (Alabama)

Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for white and colored races. (Alabama)

Railroads: The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to assign each passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a partition, designated for the race to which such passenger belongs. (Alabama)

Restaurants: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectively separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.

Pool and Billiard Rooms: It shall be unlawful for a ***** and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. (Alabama)

Toilet Facilities, Male: Every employer of white or ***** males shall provide for such white or ***** males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. (Alabama)

Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a *****, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. (Arizona)

Intermarriage: All marriages between a white person and a ***** person or between a white person and a person of ***** descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. (Florida)

Cohabitation: Any ***** man and white women, or any white man and ***** woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars. (Florida)

Education: The schools for white children and the schools for ***** children shall be conducted separately. (Florida)

Juvenile Delinquents: There shall be separate buildings, not nearer than one fourth mile from each other, one for white boys and one for ***** boys. White boys and ***** boys shall not, in any manner, be associated together or worked together. (Florida)

Mental Hospitals: The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together. (Georgia)

Intermarriage: It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. (Georgia)

Barbers: No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls. (Georgia)

Burial: The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. (Georgia)

Restaurants: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license. (Georgia)

Amateur Baseball: IT shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the ***** race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. (Georgia)

Seven years. It has been seven years since that day.

And now here they were in the alfresco of that overrated café, with the man sitting across the lady: he was sipping his black coffee and she, her jasmine tea. The scenario almost seemed impossible in the past, but for someone with her tenacious personality, something ‘impossible’ just meant ‘a little later’ than ‘never at all.’ This moment played by fate was comparable to the persistent rainstorm that forced them to stay together a little longer in the coffee shop than planned.

“I’ve been thinking,” he sighed into his coffee mug, “About leaving this place and heading to the States. Study more on film and acting from the professionals themselves. Get into showbiz of the global standard. Be a real director. What do you think?”

She straightened her posture and settled her cup down on the table, nodding in acquiescence at his idea of endeavors that appeared promising for his future.

“Well… Why not? I say go for it. I support you in that decision.”
He diverted his eyes to hers, trying to read the gaze behind those wide eyes. Though wide and nonchalant they may seem to be, only a few can notice and genuinely understand what swims in those dark depths. Their staring game ended as her voice surfaced once again through the sound of rainfall.

“I support you. If you’re ever wondering why, it’s because I had to make a decision just like that—seven years ago.”

This time it was his eyes that widened, and he placed his mug alongside hers.

“What kind of decision was it? You definitely weren’t aiming to be an actor like me, considering you’re a licensed interior designer, not to mention writer, right now,” he chuckled, leaning back onto his chair.

A soft smile of nostalgia emerged on her lips as she remembered what she wrote on the night of the sixteenth, a day before the significant seventeenth.

April 16, 2017; 11:15 P.M. — I’m satisfied of this unrequited love. I’m happy this is all one-sided. I’m glad everything is ending before it can even truly begin. It would be easier for me to leave him who doesn’t even have the slightest knowledge of my existence, who doesn’t even know my sentiments, who doesn’t even miss me, yet alone think of me. It’s all good; perfect, even. A broken heart is better than two. At least there will be some times when I might let him and his strong hands put my weak heart back together and restore it to me. I’d rather have that than us both losing and scattering the pieces of our mutually shattered hearts. He must never be broken; I need to protect him from being so—I will take myself away from him. I’ve never been any happier to be in a love that’s unknown and unreturned. He will be happy, and I will be too. In the end, his happiness will always be mine.

“I had to leave the places and people I love, to be where I am and who I am today,” she exhaled. “It was tough, but thinking of those moments and people I held onto and appreciated… all of that kept me going.”

“Was it a happy one? I mean, did you find the happiness or ending you were looking for?”

“If I were to be dead honest, yes. More than happy, actually. I’m not just relieved, or satisfied; I’m overwhelmingly grateful. I earned the careers and lifestyle I aimed for. I managed to travel all over the world and see the places and people I’ve wanted to see. My soul roams free, finding home in the many corners of this earth. I’ve finally come home, and this time I know I’m not alone.”

The man was a grown man in a smart-casual attire, but he sure maintained the curious eyes of the child that he furtively kept in himself. Being under his scrutinizing eyes, she reminisced of the same intensity he gave back when they were still twenty-one and on the verge of growing up.

“But what about ‘him’ whom you left behind? Did you come to know him this time, maybe love him too, again?”

She picked up her teacup, providing a little wall between them both, and swallowed the remaining aromatic drops along with the thoughts she wanted to tell him ever since then.

I came to know him—you—but I don’t love him ‘again’. The feelings, which I harbored for you for all these years, never left me even when I left you back then. I know I was told to reach for the moon that I may land among the stars even if I failed to reach it. But I realized I had to reach beyond the moon—the sun, the Milky Way, the entire universe—because I wanted and needed to be worthy of my existence. I wanted and needed to prove myself to myself, to you and to everyone else.

“I did. And I’m happy with how we are right now, even if it seems like we’re back to zero this time round.  Though I’m not sure how my feelings are for him now, if I seek him as a friend or as a potential love interest.”

He seemed doubtful of her response hence did he hesitantly express his last thoughts: “So you’re happy now because you left him previously. But what if he’s the one who leaves this time? Would you still be happy?”

The clouds were emptying now as the pouring rain concluded to a light shower; likewise the people they were surrounded with under the alfresco umbrellas. She knew that she was prepared to answer this question. For the past years, concerned individuals would ask her the very same thing, and for this was she thankful. She herself would recite the words to her reflection every day, much like a prayerful mantra.

He caught a faint twinkle in her eye, a proof of which her answer would be echoing with conviction and it made him realize that those particular words to be said would be one of those things that would remind him of her.

“It won’t matter if he learns how I feel then or now, and yet doesn’t feel the same way. If leaving me would direct him to his happiness, then so be it. Perhaps we aren’t meant to love each other in this lifetime, any other lifetime, or even in parallel worlds, but I still am and would be happy about it. What’s greater than this feeling of being able to love someone so much? Like I said: in the end, his happiness will always be mine.”

there's a guy
sequestered
someplace in a
secret location

his job is to keep
****** alive

since the purported
death of mein Fuhrer
this has become the
most important job
in the world

with ****** alive
and well, we know
what evil looks like
and it sports a
funny mustache

compared to ******’s
lip growth even
old Beelzebub’s
goatee looks
kinda cute

with ****** alive
nations churn out
industrial strength
collateral damage
on the scale of a
Fortune 500
sausage maker
wholly blessed
with the
moral impunity
of profiting on
the war on
terror

assembly lines
manufacturing
the stewed vats
of pink slime
soylent green
lays a wide grin on
Henry Ford’s face
watching happy
Chinese proles
grind through
the day’s
bleating stocks
grateful to have
a wage paying job

we are
the righteous
dudes,

hanging ten on
Malibu pipes
water boarding
the terrorists

pouring waves of
umbrellaed  
Coolattas down
the desert thirsty
gullets of
dead enders

and they don’t
even have
the decency
lay a tip on
their earnest
servers

freakin
barbarians

we are the
empowered
heavies
licensed to
dispatch
immediate
fast food
have it your way
justice,
with
drone strikes
on reprobate
Americans who
spent their last
bill of rights on
a Happy Meal
of Freedom Fries
leaving the
executioner
begging for nickel
change so he
can pick up
a dime bag
of the best
Afghan horse
after laying a
bullet between
old Osama’s
cross crooked
eyes

when civilized men
begin to wonder
if the modus operandi
of intelligence
gathering could be
construed as torture,
we point northward
to scurrying Koreans
sneaking briefcase
nukes over the the
southern border
cleverly disguised
as Chicano grape
pickers heading
for Napa.

in national
tantrums of
undulating
shock and awe
we launch
cruise missiles
to deliver the
news of a well
considered
Bush Doctrine
self conferring the
sweet liberty
to detonate
bunker busters
in noble strikes
of preemptive
interventionism

we hate war
so much
we initiate
warfare before
a war breaks out

we reserve
first strike
blitzkrieg
prerogatives
as an exalted
strength to
alleviate the pain
of enduring
the weakness of
protracted peace

we are firm in the
belief that the blasted
dust from our bombs
form the cornerstones
of future democracies

to serve the greater
global good, America
has dispatched a
humanitarian team of
Navy Seals to East
Africa to get Kony

we’re rooting out this
bad guy whose
trying to implement
his twisted version
of a Santorumish
10 Commandment
based paradise

Kony is living proof that
Islamo Fascists don’t
hold a monopoly on
terror and though
Kony’s got some
powerful supernatural juju
Seals got motion sensors
that can spot a
cantankerous poltergeist
through the darkest jungle
canopies

it also will minimize
the risk of friendly fire
casualties

they’ll have to be careful
not to wander into
the disputed oil fields
of southern Sudan
and they’ll need to
be mindful of Chinese
engineers building
pipelines and refineries

But thank goodness
that guy has kept
the touchstone of evil
alive and well.

we’ll always
recognize it
when we see it
and get hot
on the trail of
******’s latest
incarnations
when they
show their
ungodly face

civilized people
demand justice

and we will not rest until
Kony’s head is displayed
atop a spike on YouTube
buzzing with the hum
of ecstatic flies joining
the chorus of happy
tribesmen singing
kumbaya with
stirring gratitude
from the aboriginal
comfort of their
mud and
grass huts

****** lives
Osama is dead
Lets get Kony

Music selection:

Smash Mouth,
Walking on the Sun

Oakland
May Day
5/1/12
jbm

Banshee screams echo in the icy, crackling gloom
Warm, freshly pumped blood spatters a pale moon
reflected in dilated pupils
whose freeze-frame focus seems fixed on steam
from that memorable last breath
slowly dissipating

Menacing, gutteral snarls
Tarmac demoniac sniffs her ****
snaps drooling fangs
at a scythe wielding spectre
snatching stunned
souls from twitching corpses
Now she packs them in pecking order

Splintered crystals of falling glass
mournfully ****** ****** the last post
Distraught, upended armco barriers
hold their freeze-frame salute
and Babylon thrums a bit louder

May I see your license please

Clay Formed and Molded.
Spun in the cycle of life



All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack

I've recently fallen into an elite group of individuals: youth diagnosed with depression by their mothers.

I can't argue with her; she is licensed.

But I can't help but feel that my case is different, minor in comparison. I'd like to call it loneliness but it's more developed than that.

It's like a cancer that started in my fingertips when they realized there was nothing to hold on to, and has since spread to my heart or my brain, whichever is responsible for the distribution of numbness to my bones and vital organs.. I'll call it 3rd stage loneliness. I'm saving calling it the 4th stage for when it starts to feel terminal.

"Lonely" is kind of a **** of a word, like "love," or "beautiful." I think people like to use "lonely" like teens use cigarettes. It taste good when it falls off the tongue. And by my observation, they both cause cancer.

Everyone wants to be "lonely" but no one wants to be alone.
So I've put it upon myself to separate loneliness into subcategories, based on mortality rate.

If you're wondering why I'm lonely, don't bother. I'm wondering the same. I have friends a family that loves me, and the rest of the chemo-esque **** that's suppose to nurture you back to health. But
I've still got that tumor buried under my skin where no one cares to look.

I ain't got many friends I can talk to.

I've concocted a list of side effects of 3rd stage loneliness, if you're interested:
1.) Insomnia - the inability to completely shut the third eye on your skull because it persists on looking to the future.
2.) Selective Hearing - the inability to listen to supposedly happy music and instead sulk with the sounds of Bon Iver or Bright Eyes ricocheting through the canals of your brain. Music your friends "probably haven't heard of"
3.) Loss of Appetite - Don't worry, you still crave food and other survival necessities. You simply lose the appetite to expand through the universe. Loss of Ambition, as the form would say.
4.) Improved Acting Skills - You'll eventually learn to manipulate the stringy muscles in your face to pull up the corners of your lips when you feel you are expected to. Not all side effects are bad.


I am not one of those darkly dressing teenagers that complains with visible angst about being misunderstood. But I do have the hair for it.

I am not suicidal. Maybe I would be, but I seem to have been struck particularly hard by Side Effect #3.

But at first mention of depression you can see their faces squirm and contort to resemble a clumsy soldier tap-dancing through a minefield, while simultaneously conducting open-heart surgery on himself.

5.) Exaggeration.

This poem is not meant to sadden, to depress. It is simply for the public awareness of 3rd stage loneliness. If you know someone suffering from this disease, please call this hotline:

1-800-462-5663
(1-800-IMA-LONE)


The more you know...

I am barely a mineral now, not yet a woman in the ground,
not yet growing gardens and begging people to cook my peppers.
My home is dizzy from my constant re-entry, which helps me to cheat,
in life I am looking for the harvest in  people. I am a thread of cotton pulling
every word like it is more porous than the next, which helps me.
I summersault through conversations rather read in sharpie,
on the last corner white space of bathroom stalls,
alone and blushed. I remember love like a tagline inviting a smile
and messages to strangers. When I look in the mirror I am always inhaling,
my mouth says O, O I am out of excuses. I tell everyone I’m tired of working,
which helps me to hide in my comet ways. I am tight-lined,  
which is to say I feel love on the hairs of my arms, the wind,
the blades of fans speak to me at night when I have nothing left to say.
I am licensed to moving. In the dark in the cities public spaces and
also in alleyways I am soft like a moonbeam. I am convinced the world is a sewer,
which helps me to explain the exchange of waste and skin and the secrets hidden
in tunnels of shadows. When I move the world blurs with me like a heartbeat.
I am underground like the sewer, rotten in negative spaces, which helps me,
to hear the echo ripple swish of every piece of trash call my name.
I have no response. Some days the world is too *****. One day I will learn
to quilt and stitch together every important face, which will help me
to remember my grandmother and how she loved to balloon to the sky.
I dream she is a large magellanic cloud beaming out of the universe, the force
of believing is the word Hallelujah sung from the lips of Leonard Cohen.
It is midnight. It is noon. I close my eyes for a second and I see myself as miles
from the moon. I am running every day now and there is nothing left to see. My heart
is a kitchen door swinging and it does not want to stop.

Most people don’t know
That two halves don’t necessarily make a whole
Half a shoe plus half a butter knife makes something
infinitely more useless than either halves alone.
Or it makes something much more interesting
But still, whatever it is—it is not whole.

Most people want more
Than only half of things
I wonder: is it greed or just a desire for completion
And if something is complete, is it also whole?
And if someone were to search for long enough,
would they find the missing half to everything?

Unstructured Musings by Nicola Em is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

They're dividing up my grandmother's jewelry,
An act that feels more final than death.
I like to think she rests easy as she watches
The women she loves wear what was once hers.
They ask me to choose my top 3 pieces,
And how do I?
How do I choose which pieces of her I want to wear on my body
Like armor, like memories of made of gold or silver?
How do I choose between her trip to the Met Museum
Or the pin with the propeller signalling she was the
First licensed female pilot in the state of Kentucky?
What does it say about me this is the one time I wish she hadn't gotten her wings?
I want to wear her artist spirit.
I already have her poet's blood running through me.
This woman, in all her fiery, tender ways
Touches my life.
I hope she'd be proud I'm wearing her jewelry.
So many decisions to make.

I pried the Words off the Wall
Rearranged and used them All
Stacked upon each other in
A sentence Said with Style

Coco Chanel And Ert'e Flaunt
Lesbian Fashion In chic Paris Haunts,
In the 1920s, While Albert Camus
Late Night Parties Extistentialist Claims
Amid ****** and Champage

Django Rienhardt Played Jazz Guitar
To the West Bank Artists in Bars,
Toulouse Lautrec had Drank
With Prostitutes, in Art Deco

Frank Loyd Wright Praised
In Architect Circles
How He has Designed
The Unfolding of the Future

The Camera Has Brought
Sharp Images to see
While emergence of Psychology
Has driven Art into the Abstract

Paris in the 20's scent of*
Hedonist Creativity
Cultural Gravity
To the Inclined

De rien, entre amis
Prende un jour a la fois



All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack

out side my window is a willow tree
windy days, if I set quiet, it whispers to me
some days it talks of life, and last chances
some days it talks of love, and romances
another day it whispers of just, this and that
there are days by myself its nice for a chat
on days I am feeling bad, it whispers sad
and it tells me that things will be alright
it whispers in the day, it whispers in the night
I listen often in bed as my head lays on the pillow
happy that I have, a whispering willow*...JMF

All the Work here is licensed under the Name
®SilverSilkenTongue and the © Property of J.Flack