The fundamental phenomena in nature are symmetrical
with respect to interchange of past and future.* --- Richard Feynman

                 Millions for Defense

In the Cabinet room of Monticello, clutching Decatur's letter,
the President removes his wire-rimmed glasses ---
Frigate Philadelphia has been burned.
Decanting a bourbon, he pours and quaffs.
Outside in the piazza the cicadas' din is unbroken.
The Pasha of Tripoli has his tribute!
In three short hours warm rays of sunlight
will greet the outstretched arms of Earth,
but for now the bourbon scintillates.
Ink splatters on the blotter,
as he pounds a clenched fist upon the desk.
Not one cent!, he pronounces to the wall-clock.
Cicadas hold sway in the Charlottsville night,
but on the Barbary Coast a fire is raging.

I jumped on a freight in Monticello,
Didn't know where it was going - you
Had given up on me, baby -
So, I'd given up on you.
A rumbling song as the train rolled on,
I had plenty-a shine to drink-
I was trying anything I could,
So I wouldn't have to think.

Few and far between
Are  the hopes I'll ever have
Of loving someone who's loving me.
I've been taken to pity,
Like surely others have.
All of my dreams
Are few and far between.

I could still remember how
You said you wished that I would leave.   
I'm giving you what you wanted.
Something you can believe.
You won't hear from me, anymore.
I know that to you I'm dead.
I won't ever haunt you,
Like your words that won't leave my head.

Few and far between
Are the hopes I'll ever have,
Of loving someone who's loving me.
I've been taken to pity,
Like surely others have.
All of my dreams,
Are few and far between.

The boxcar slowed in the railway yard.
I jump off - the gravel cut up me knee.
I heard them barking, so I took off a'running.
The dogs were closing in on me.
I made it to the Vieux Carr'e
Before the St. Louis clock struck three.
Tell the children I love them.
Or better, tell 'em not to think of me.

Few and far between
Are the hopes I'll ever have,
Of loving someone who's loving me.
I've been taken to pity,
Like surely others have.
All of my dreams,
Are few and far between.

I'll always wish it was different.
I hope you find somebody new,
Hope you find the kids a daddy
Who's good to them and you.
I hope you know that I really tried
To be the man you needed me to be.
I couldn't keep you from happiness,
You couldn't keep me from being me.

Few and far between
Are the hopes I'll ever have,
Of loving someone who's loving me.
I've been taken to pity,
Like surely others have.
All of my dreams,
Are few and far between.

Elder gentlemen crave the past like
nicotine infused black cherry smoke ,
riding puffs of chilly October morning
park scenes in my hometown etched
in gray day period couples struggling through
leaf covered sidewalks , followed by beggar
birds , those canopy filled blackbirds commanding
the audible forefront of greeting , courtesy
and old folk innocent chatter
Smiles and laughter as automobiles circle the
city center of Willow , Water Oak , granite monumental
reminders , window shoppers , price hawkers huddled
in a little brick town no one ever hears about , lost
on the tip of the newsroom tongue , in conversation , this 'black and white village' where townsfolk forever scurry about

This is the story of an aching love.
A hopeless schoolgirl kind of thing.
He was a basketball star player on
The Monticello Mustangs team,
Not showy, but quiet and a little shy.
He was glorious to look at
through the lenses of my brown eyes.
I had to work to learn his name-
it was Finnish, spelled Laulainen.
I said it lots of different ways until I heard
somebody say it right-
Ed     Law lie’ nen
All the bells rang out and bluebirds sang
As I crooned and whispered that magic name
In the quiet of my room.
I never had a class with him-
he was a year ahead.  
He wasn’t part of rowdiness
when passing in the halls
from one lesson to the next.
If he walked past I turned into
A pillar of salt dyed crimson
From the blood that burst my heart.
I don’t recall now how I came to have it
But I had a small creased snapshot of him and
I slept with it under my pillow every night.
I touched it and looked at it and imagined
him touching me.  The thought of him
kissing me was far beyond my wildest dreams
I suspect my mom knew it was there,
but she never said a word
And I guarded it like my virginity.
And my best friend had no idea.
He never knew I was alive-
he didn’t know my name.
I was one of the nameless girls
That are present but unseen.
One day I was sent to the cafeteria
For something the teacher needed.
Standing by the now closed door
Was God Who Walked The Earth,
Ed Laulainen in the flesh.
The shock of standing next to him
paralyzed my tongue.
I dared not look at him
and finally only said “Is anybody there”.
Did he answer - I don’t know.
I was terrified and in paroxysms
of ecstasy. I was sharing the same air he breathed.
He left Junior High for Senior High and I lost track of him.
But I loved him with ferocious fervor and wishful longing
If desire could have made him mine, Midas would have
been poor by comparison.
OccasionallyI think of him and the plain little girl who worshipped him.
Where did he go - how did  he grow - what kind of life did he live.
In ten more years the little girl could have most anyone she wanted
but the crinkled photo stayed in a trinket box for a long,long time before
it washed away on the tides of new loves, real loves, and living.
I wish I could see him once again to tell him the story of
the little girl who chose him to love with all her soul and first flush of emotion.
                                   ljm

I saw Monticello
A foggy Appalachia
And learned that day
Thomas Jefferson owned slaves

Those angered spirits
Hallowed howling souls
From within the worm-torn earth
Left low-vocalized debt-cords
Tied around a guilty frame

Two centuries ensconced in brick
A time fondly forgotten
When the radicals sung their starling songs
To a land of gin and cotton

There will probably not be another Whisky Rebellion
With the **** beat out of Dixieland
Instead
Watch the T.V dinner-pan out
A Social security check
to every Pioneer.

Down go the statues and mountains
There will be no old memoriam here
It’s time to return these borrowed things to earth
Now that their end draws near.

Off the spoon with your smooth-ground peanut butter! I'm the sister
of a lean-cut brother. I will bear your brats in our queen-****'s color,
because the coal oil-broiled cur is mine, my slap-happy mutt seller!
I gather lather for shavers shaving with mayo & peanut-butter ooze,
because after you've lost a nose to frostbite you cannot snort *****.
Yawalapiti chicks are mongrel Mongols! They sleep until 2:45 like
I do. I don't know why they wring the hydrogen cyanide acid out of
raw mandioca, ½ chew viperfish or use slimy seaweed as shampoo.
Menstruating Emmanuella lived on little mountain Monticello with
Thomas Jefferson, the dead president fella. They had a lot of clean,
Jeffersonian fun each day & night, eatin' corn dogs, watching *****
fight. 1 day while Emmanuella was washing her ******* in a stream
the evil wraith of wormy Sally Hemings appeared like a bad dream.
School girl Isabella lived on little mountain Monticello with Mister
Thomas Jefferson, the ex-presidential fella. They enjoyed healthful
cholera vaccines, ****** feedings & blood-letting, kissing & petting.
One time, while Isabella was scrubbing her ***** in a filthy stream,
Negrita Sally Hemings rose up like skim milk minus its rich cream.
I'm weary of being a meat-bag for *** whale hunters who scarf ran-
cid squid & chicken, or any Mississippian ***** wanting to sink his
hick in. These ******* only stretch to my lower ribs, beyond that we
will need O.S.H.A.-approved, California-******-pink lobster bibs.
Maybe a higher high-grade frequency's needed to contend with new
vessels forming upon the bark where a cholesterol-deficit shrinks to
seize, a statin-toxin man with doctor Aloysius Alzheimer's disease?
I think so, after asking Vy's left-leaning toe. There ain't much and it
is plenty; enough to freeze the breeze & to knock gigantic monkeys
from trees with a sneezy, queasy wheeze. Please Joe Biden: Coax a
coke snort from the Man's Country men Barry Soetoro's been ridin.'
The bummed-out drunken doctor recommended that the very nervy
******-polyp patient eat 5 peanut & butterfish-belly sandwiches ev-
ery day for 6 years, & have his fangs waxed along with his jug ears.
Since you abandoned me, & our player piano moving business, I've
been herniating myself twice per day. To herniate myself less, I de-
cided to move lighter pianos and to I hire a criminal to ****** you.
You crashed my Russian helicopter into a parked helicopter when I
needed it most. You stole my toaster so I can't make toast. You kiss
strange women because you say it is thrilling, without a care in this
queer world about the murderous feelings that I'm normally feeling.
When it comes to ***, all that I have are my ******* memories. Let
me alone. I am going to the **** where real's real & no one pays an
**** bill. It's time to put up or shut up & to tuck in hot, curly fringe
that makes your ménage à trois ****-trio puke up phlegm & cringe.
Initially I could crap without laxatives while thinking of: P.J. Proby
with P.P. Arnold accompanied by B.J. Thomas over the complaints
of T.S. Eliot, H.P. Lovecraft, B.B. King, F.W. Woolworth plus J.C.
Penney, G.C. Murphy, B.F. Skinner, H.H. Holmes & D.W. Griffith
who is dead, deaf & dumb & off the toilet seat that dented his ***.
There is our moon this foggy night that's warty like a nice pickle &
hotter than a green cheese icicle. I will fake a trip there like masons
do, with duct tape, roofing felt, curtain rods & model airplane glue.
“You ******-lipped my stick” seems like an obscene observation to
make but it's not. It's a complicated dental procedure that has saved
the teeth of millions of chiggers. So, the next time someone exits the
dentist's treatment room crying, “That mother-******' quack dentist
just trigger-lipped my stick!” you'll thank Lord Jesus on your knees.
I was drinking beer with a mentally-******* woman in a bar near a
garbage dump 3 years ago, 21 days after Valentine's Day in Ohio or
some other place when for no sane reason she handed me her purse
because she was going to become a man. I bought another beer and
punched her in the ****. “Why did you do that?!” She demanded to
know. “You know why!” I exclaimed. “Yeah” she responded sadly,
“soon my **** will be turned into a huge *****, larger than a school
bus.” Even though I didn't see her or her **** again I'll never forget
this mentally-******* woman whose **** I punched, 3 years ago in
a bar near a garbage dump, after Valentine's Day in Ohio, probably.
Here is a query from Negroidal Africa's Gold Coast: “Could a wild,
intra-****** hemorrhoid, under neo-C.I.A. remote control, free itself,
wriggle up to the pulsing throat unfelt & throttle its sleeping host?”
What is that? Let me taste it. It is not peanut butter and it's not dog-
****. I have a cat. Oh, then it must be cat-****. It's such a great joy to
solve a baffling mystery like Sherlock Holmes did when he was not
shacked up with crapped-out Graham Chapman. It was David Sher-
lock, not Sherlock Holmes! Sherlock Holmes was hitched to young
Shirley Temple before her ***-bags exploded & killed Buddy Epsen.

The recycling plant burned last week
fire consumed acres of unprocessed scrap.
Flames licked at pieces of metal scrap,
burned the rubber tires and melted plastic.
Undrained gasoline and oil added to the smoke.

Tuesday morning a black mushroom cloud rose in the sky.
No worries, though.
The wind carried the smoke into the other county
Monticello will suffer but Becker lives to pollute another day

Wednesday morning the black mushroom cloud rose in the sky
The weather is cold
icicles grow on useless car bodies.
The firemen need dry socks.
Families live in safe hotels, upwind

Thursday morning gray clouds rose in the sky.
School is cancelled to protect the children.
The fire is controlled.
Protection is superfluous.

The recycling plant burned last week.
The fire is out.
People return to their homes.
Time for investigation and clean-up,
place some blame and show concern.
While Becker lives to pollute another day.

O Brother Where Art Thou? in Charlottesville
Ulysses not Thomas Jefferson

A man of constant sorrow
I walk the pedestrian mall

Never been to Monticello
Don't want to see that fraudster's home

But I have been to Italy
And I know that All Walls Fall

The hope: a fine madness.
The fear: diarrhetic.
Beautiful sunlight today
Indoor soccer at the Y

On the Altar, placements:
The Hemings of Monticello
The Batman
Life of Pi

Cliff Pickover in Taipei
The philosophy of math
Lesotho photographs
Right after Sandy died

What I want her to know
Seattle Cedar Snow
La Florida feeling flow
I tried. I truly tried.

Struggling these past few days
Just cannot relax
Try to watch some movies
Anxiety attacks

Heath Ledger quite an actor!
The infinite power of belief
Preachers way down South
Milwaukee's own Sidney Moncrief

John Brown's Body
The Hemings of Monticello
Vincent's eyes were green
His stars a glowing yellow

Ruby in the park
Coincidence again
Francis in the diner
San Francisco Zen

             3710

One life only
Then disappear forever
Sacramento Mark
Sacramento Heather

In the time that still remains
Take care of my sons
O you future folk!
Please give up your guns

I read American Cosmic
The Hemingses of Monticello
Stars burning bright
Vincent saw them yellow

Nothin' much to do
Sleep. Wake. Sleep.
Dream of 72
Susan Darlene Meek

                La Florida ...

There is great power in a name
She says in a book on
Monticello's Sally.

Yes, indeed! I feel the same.
And when I'm down
They help me rally.

The Kabbalah
Knows 72 names
For the mystery we call God.

I'm Thomas Donald.
But my parents call me Todd.

                        Odd

Driving Me Crazy on the Way to GC

Outside Monticello, Utah
I pass a sign
posted on a fence
in front of several sheep
in a pasture adjacent to a farmhouse.

The sign reads For Sale.

What’s for sale?
The sign?
The fence?
The sheep?
The pasture?
The house?
All of it?

I remain perplexed
as far as Blanding
when I pass another confusing sign,
this one reading Yield.

It's time to pull over to rest.
This lack of specificity is driving me crazy.