nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

Rain on me,
I have been longing to be free.
Lost in my world, needlessly.

Rain on me,
I am tired of fighting but I will not sleep.
I refuse to be reigned and I refuse to be a sheep.

Rain on me
and show me the way.
This place is empty and I cannot stay.

Rain on me
because it has been too long.
I am sick and tired of pretending to be strong.

Rain on me,
I want to see the lightning pierce the sky.
As the thunder roars and the clouds fly.

Rain on me.
Let the winds take my mind to another land.
No one needs to know and no one needs to understand.

When cops aren't held accountable
We're bound to fall
To unanswered calls
And free for alls
In project halls
With narrow walls

Fear gets the best of judgement
A cop shoots a suspect
He gives an explanation
Which doesn't pass examination
Only exacerbates inflammation
Stemming from the police station
When they go on patrol
To show who's in control
And act as rough terrorists
As the cuffs tear our wrists

The blood ceases to be red
As it gushes from our head
It becomes black or white
The difference day and night
The impulse is to fight
But is that right?
Will we lose sight
And become wrong
And sing their song?

Their favorite method for oppression
Is unbridled aggression
With discriminate discretion
Yet we're supposed to be nonviolent?
Even when the media has gone silent?
Even when a loved one has been maimed?
Or framed?
They depend on our inaction
To continue painful interactions
As we look for distractions
We build a mental immunity
Which gives the cops impunity
They think they're getting through to me
I just don't want them to shoot so I'll be free
I'll tell them what they want to hear
When they know violence is my fear
They use the mystery of suffering
And their long history of cuffing me
To manipulate me and get what they want
Then on the way to jail they tease and taunt
They've numbed themselves to my plight
And blinded themselves from my light
They hope they'll never see me again
After sending me to the state pen

The police get a thrill
Out of taking away our agency
The police get to ****
Despite how much we beg and plead
The cops keep making us needlessly bleed
Our supposed rights they needlessly read
A government system they needlessly feed

I feel rage and impotence
In this cage of hypocrites
The cops
Run a shop
Where hammers always look for nails
Even if they're minor fails
When employment depends on success
And ambitions rely on arrests
We better wear a vest
Because they'll terrorize the public
Then open their arms
For therein lies the musket
That does us harm

The police brutalize
While we rue their lies
But stay in disguise
Because they have the power to destroy us
People won't employ us
People won't enjoy us
Once we're trapped in a lonely cell
The police then toy with us
Making us feel like we're alone in hell

The police engender a vicious fear
Especially when they smell like beer
To cover up their tears
From what they do to their peers
They terrorize
We're paralyzed
We must teach them to be decent
When evidence of their hate is recent
The law must be followed
But the enforcers are hollow
And they bend the law
To twist our screws
We're stuck in their claws
Destined to lose

Things can only disrupt you as much as you allow.
If this seems hard to see or needlessly abstract,
consider the Factor that is Self-Discipline:

If any factor equals Zero,
the product is also Zero.
-
I mean this in a general sense; applied over time.
Things can be extremely bothersome in any given moment
but once those bothersome moments
reach forwards (and maybe even backwards) in time
******* up a perfect good "Now" then,
I say that it's a bothersome burden
which is (most probably) a result of unresolved internalized conflicts or Shadow.

This is where Self-Discipline becomes a Factor
and my analogy takes flight, in context.

Maybe it's only true for me, but I have my suspicions that I am not so unique in this way.

Tired Of This Conversation
By: Cedric McClester

Another unarmed person is killed
By a cop
It’s usually someone black or brown
Is it not?
It shouldn’t matter what the color
It’s just has to stop
Before another person
Gets choked or shot

Say you’re tired of this conversation
Well so am I
But I don’t wanna see another person
Needlessly die
No matter what the rational
Or the reason why
You can’t bring ‘em back to life
With a tried alibi

No one said a policeman’s job
Isn’t hard
But that’s no reason why we
Have to be on guard
If we’re black or brown
In order to ******
The fact that we’re in fear of them
For a start

Say you’re tired of this conversation
Well so am I
But I don’t wanna see another person
Needlessly die
No matter what the rational
Or the reason why
You can’t bring ‘em back to life
With a tired alibi

You’re tired of this conversation
We are too
But all across this nation
There’s people on the move
Hoping the situation somehow
Will improve
So that we can put the needle
Back in the groove

Say you’re tired of this conversation
Well so am I
But I don’t wanna see another person
Needlessly die
No matter what the rational
Or the reason why
You can’t bring ‘em back to life
With a tired alibi

Grand juries will sit down
But never indict
The perpetrating policemen
And that ain’t right
When they come back with no true bill
That just incites
And moreover it denies
Their civil rights

Say you’re tired of this conversation
Well so am I
But I don’t wanna see another person
Needlessly die
No matter what the rational
Or the reason why
You can’t bring ‘em back to life
With a tired alibi

(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved.

You're like spiderwebs,
Like thick wind entangling,
Every single **** one of you I ever met
Is wrapping around my memory as I struggle.
    I obsessively map out
      Every time I made you smile
         With a twitch of my leg,
I needlessly outline
   The dances we did with
        Every tug of my wrists against the silk.
As I twist deeper into your clutches
     I remember when we were happy
        And spinning in soulkissed sinews.
Without you I'd be free
But you're worth the OCD.

this is for the queer kids
who are taught their ABC's
but not their L's, G's, B's and T's
for the Russian government and the I.O.C
who deny Russian queers their visibility
to the people who call me "******"
i wear your name-calling like a pink triangle
stitched to my sleeve
for the Harvey Milk's, the Christine Burns'
and every queer in between
to the allies who do more than say
"your sexuality is okay with me"
for the Jamaican trans* teen
who was murdered needlessly
to the television networks
who portray LGBT individuals positively
for the radical queers
the POC queers
the genderqueers
the queers who have felt excluded
this is for you
for us
this is a celebration
and an ultimatum
we are here
we are queer
& we will do more
than survive.

Kind of a loaded question isn’t it?
Is there something you’ve lost?
Something you’ve spent?

Put yourself behind and look ahead
Don’t you gain something if you give something instead?
Do you have a family? Or friends? Who you’d do anything for?
Do you value yourself but see that they’re worth more?

I’m not a perfect person, that I can say
I’m only human but is selfish really the way?

Maybe you’d give up time for pain or for strife
But when it matters the most, do you give up your own life?

Maybe you’ve got it all, and you’ve got a life to live
But those who lose everything for others always have more to give

Maybe you don’t care, you’d give up nothing at all
You put yourself high up on that shelf, I hope you enjoy the fall

After reading some words that needlessly rhyme
I’ll ask the same question, but you answer this time

If everything matters, fate, destiny, and luck,
This question falls to you:

So what do you give up?

Maybe you’re mistaken
       when you think about what’s out there,
You attribute ev’ry stimulus
       to winged things from books,

Mistaking accidental circumstances
       for essential causes,
There isn’t really anything
       that God conveys with looks.

Perhaps it is hard to face the truth:
       we’re just meat bags with will,
Which slowly rot away until
       the day when we’re forgotten

Needlessly dissecting
       every move and every inner thought,
Attempting to discover
       what makes us all so very rotten.

Take a deep breath
And hold it in
Until you feel it all
...Fading away

Slowly toward death
All of us fall
Someday we’ll feel it all
...Fading away

Through my goat mouth, it’s true,
       you can hear me bleating,
Like a little lamb who’s lambier
       than lamby-lambs can be,

But yes in fact it’s bike tires,
       and tin cans that I’m eating,
And I feel my goat heart beating
       and... I want to flee.

I told this
***
a life-long necessity
of mine
more or less.
But first I said,
before anything, maybe
it’s just a life-long exhaustion
of mine I’m
expelling needlessly, okay?
I want to make sure you
know that
so you don’t go thinking
I’m weird or nothing,
though honestly  

it all drops hard like
iron
faster than
gravity
to the same
place
anyway.

But this is what I told him:

Sometimes I wish the world
would roll up all it’s got.
Roll it all up in one unsettling
heap of heaviness it can
toss on me like stock from the
deep. O I wish to God it’d
give me the torturous insanity
and every inexplicable loss
it can conjure up—just one
catatonically tremendous
slap to my stupid little
face, flushing it with
cosmic humiliation
and fear I don’t even
notice I ****** myself.

So that, at least, it’d all be
there, you know? And I wouldn’t
have to ask where it is and
what the hell’d I do
to get spared.

I told him give me the
holocausted ashes smelling of
Zyklon B, the crawling away from
sawed off shotgun shells
catching friends hiding under
the library desk anyway, the
running over of your dad by
a drunk who lost his wife to
the cancer that took the brother of
somebody you knew whose
mother had

suicidal depression, hadn’t
smiled really in years, she’d
sat with cold coffee
for years, and around her
had been worse than
darkness, for a reason she
never ended up knowing.

I said to him give me the
harshest words a child has
ever known against him
and have them rest upon
my spine like a freezing
brain spreading electric
wild fires across
my vertebrae, give me
burning skin really
burning, and cheating wife seen
moaning, and drowning baby now
dead
and beaten wife now
collapsing, another baby now
beaten and
thirsty wino keep drinking, and
a stranger with his face
blown off red and
brown and tattered and
I don’t know how but
still hanging there like
boiling chicken fat, dripping,
but the doctors
able to keep his heart
beating and his organs
pumping too, so now
people can see him
and his whole face
as an indication there is
something in the air
that deserves pitying.

Give me it, I said,
with homicide and
double homicide, and
a side of
stabbings and
chokings and
bludgeonings
and guns and rope and
gas and asphyxiations
and love letters and
love-making giddy ***
and flowers for the
love of your life
who is cutting herself
because she can’t stop
cutting up souls after
she *****.

Give me everybody’s
******* loneliness
that is lonelier than
a thing lost before it was
born, and as it was
being born, born into
losing itself, its slow
destruction, and there was
not even anybody there because
there was never going to be
anything to help you, there is
nothing to be achieved and
nothing for which
striving is
helpful.

There just is a memory of
a hazy possibility of
happiness, that one
felt once
in a senseless dream.
A memory that is
always fading towards
non-existence or
existence that has
no place for it, because
it is already full of
something else, and you,
your “transcendence,”
are wasting time,
waiting.

What are you waiting for I
said (with just a little irony).
Give me the heaviness, don’t
hide it anymore. Show it
all bare and give it all
to me. Tell me, here, take this
and hold it for the sake of—

What?—what is this?
Is it this? Just
the universe drooling on itself? Or
is it more? Somehow less?

Well, for the sake of
whatever lies here (lies here!)
and is too ****** in eternity to
delight us with a clear
answer to the
question that all the
living creatures on this
sacrosanct dirt, in some
crevice of their being, I know,
are asking it.

And this ***, when I finished
telling him what I’ve just told you
didn’t say anything back.
His brown face was treaded terrain,
crumpled cracked ditches,
broken dry grin.

He looked elsewhere, smelling of
decades of drunken alcohol
and lice and yellow toenails and
******* alone against
brick walls at night

and also his brown hands
adjusting the dirt-drenched
cardboard bed he will surrender to
tonight, after who knows
what else.

Politicians speak about "The Fallen",
Our dear departed servicemen*
Its a nasty euphemism
for the Legion of our dead.
For they did not gently flutter down
like leaves of gold and brown.
They were raked by foes' machines guns
as they fought to take some ground.
  They've met slaughter on the beaches,
been slain on distant mountainsides.
They've been sacrificed, quite needlessly,
for some Politicians' pride
Many a mother's heart's been broken
Widows and orphans have been made.
Political Stupidity has dug many a grave.
So don't speak about "the Fallen",
you who haven't borne the fight.
You've never paid the butcher's bill
so what gives you the right?

This is a prose tale about the great superhero, SNOGGO
(as told in the first person by SNOGGO to his amanuensis, Edna)

*'You can't have "Jew",' I said.
'Why not? It's a perfectly good word. Are you anti-semitic or something?'
'Jew has a capital J,' I said.
'Not necessarily. I've used it before.'
'Not with me you haven't. There's the dictionary. Look it up.'

Jumbo grudgingly picked up the Shorter Oxford and looked up "Jew". He sniffed loudly, slammed the dictionary shut and removed the tiles from the board. His replacement word was a sodding disaster.

'That's twenty-four points you've cost me with your nit-picking, you *******,' he said through gritted yellow teeth, his flabby body shaking with rage. 'The J was on a triple letter score.'

I sneered derisively and laughed long and loud, making Jumbo froth at his ugly fat nostrils with anger.

'Watch this and weep, Jumbo,' I said, playing out all seven of my tiles onto the board to create a stunning word: UNZIPPED. 'The Z's on a double letter score and it's all on a triple word score, so that's 90, plus 50 for playing all my tiles, 140 in total and the end of the game,' I declared in triumph. Jumbo was caught with 14 in his hand (remember: he still had the J) and thus I, the great SNOGGO, became Greenwich Scrabble Champion for the 25th year running. Not only that: but 25 consecutive defeats in the final for Jumbo.

Jumbo roared in frustration as he saw his hopes of taking the coveted 24ct gold "Queen Anne" cup away from me, SNOGGO, dashed to the ground yet again. And, by centuries old tradition, 25 consecutive victories meant the priceless cup was now mine to keep for ever. Jumbo's scream of uncontrollable, incandescent rage could have been heard as far away as the Vanbrugh Hill Municipal Waste Disposal Centre.

'******* you for all ******* eternity,' he bellowed unsportingly as he waddled out of the cheering hall. In so doing he flouted the gentlemen's convention of always staying to take part in the closing ceremony. He missed seeing me, the great SNOGGO, receive the shining gold cup from the gnarled hands of the Lady Mayoress, the Hon. Mrs Snotte-Wragge, who whispered in my ear 'Fancy a quick **** later, back at the mayoral parlour, SNOGGO dear?' For the fifth year in a row I told her to go and get stuffed as I didn't go for ugly old bats with arses on them like a double-decker bus.

Later that evening, as I sat in the splendid Georgian surroundings of Snoggo Manor, cradling the gold cup and admiring the row of 25 Championship certificates on the walls of my elegant dining room, finishing off my second bottle of Bollinger Grand Cru '89 and stuffing my 18th oyster down my happy throat, I heard a knock on the door. Who could that possibly be at nearly midnight?

It was Jumbo, my fat defeated foe. He looked downcast. 'SNOGGO,' he said, 'I've come to offer my apologies for my inappropriate behaviour earlier. You deserved to win, you are the finest scrabbler in all of Greenwich. I have come to offer you the hand of friendship and to invite you to my humble home for a midnight snack to celebrate your stirring victory.'

'Jumbo,' I replied, 'that's uncommon civil of you, old man. And your timing is excellent, as I've just finished my apéritif and was on the verge of kicking Mrs SNOGGO, my new 17-year old Thai mail order wife, out of her hammock to make my supper. So what's on the menu, squire?'

'Well,' said Jumbo, 'I was thinking of pâte de foie gras - naturally made by Mrs Jumbo using our own force-fed geese, with a bottle of Château d'Yquem '78 to start with. Then perhaps a kilo of blood-red filet mignon avec pommes frites, washed down with a rather good magnum of Brouilly '99. Then there's Mrs Jumbo's famed cheeseboard with a tumbler full of vintage port, followed by a dozen crêpes suzettes, a few petits cafés, a monster Armagnac and a giant Havana each.'

I considered the proposed menu carefully before replying. 'Sounds quite good to me, Jumbo,' I declared, glancing over his shoulder at the Bentley waiting outside. I could just see the peaked chauffeur's cap of the diminutive Mrs Jumbo peering myopically over the leather-covered steering wheel.

And so, having told Mrs Snoggo to tidy up a bit whilst I was out, I went off to dinner with Jumbo. In all our 25 years of Scrabble rivalry I had never once set foot into his house, so I was eager to check out what sort of lifestyle he enjoyed. Once inside Jumbo Villa, I cast my eyes over the luxurious furnishings with an expert eye, evaluating their immense worth and rarity with incredible perspicacity and knowledge.

'Not a bad pad you've got here, Jumbo,' I conceded. 'Not in the same class as Snoggo Manor, of course, but still ****** impressive.' He was visibly flattered by my compliment.

'A glass of sherry while we wait for Mrs Jumbo to serve us?' queried Jumbo jovially. I sniffed at the huge portion of delicious amber nectar appreciatively. 'Lustau Amoroso Bodega Marquès de Mierda '42?' I guessed instinctively. Jumbo nodded. '******* spot on, SNOGGO,' he admitted in stunned amazement.

I took an enormous gulp and felt the alcohol hit me like a slam in the abdomen from Cassius Clay's butcher and more vicious brother. The room spun and I closed my eyes in resigned delight.

When I came to I found myself hanging unclothed in chains on the wall of a dank cellar. My head was pounding and I felt distinctly below par. I looked over my shoulder and beheld Jumbo standing there with a sjambok in his hand. He was stark ******* naked, naked as the day he was born, and I have never seen anything so repulsive in all my life (with the sole exception of that incredible day when, as a child, I caught my paternal grandparents bonking on the Persian rug in the Great Hall at Snoggo Manor on Christmas Eve). Jumbo’s huge pendulous ******* sagged over his bloated fat belly, which itself hung so low his genitals were mercifully hidden from my view. He was a ******* monstrosity.

The tiny Mrs Jumbo stood to the rear of the cellar, also naked, pallid and with her public hair died a shocking pink. She was a skinny freak, a vision of *** Hell. I noticed the tattoo on her belly. It showed a depiction of the crucifixion which I felt was in dubious taste, especially with Jesus sporting an enormous *******.

What I, the wonderful SNOGGO, suffered in the next few hours was truly indescribable, so I will only summarise it. After a seemingly endless whipping from Jumbo (assisted by Mrs Jumbo, but her puny lash strokes were almost pleasurable), accompanied by their combined frenzied cries of demented hatred and loathing, I was forced to suffer the supreme humiliation. Jumbo mounted a set of fine Regency library steps, positioned his Hellish lumpen body behind me and unceremoniously inserted his tiny ***** into my outraged ****. Oh the shame! Oh the shame!

‘O Jesus Christ help me!’ I yelled in rain and pain. And suddenly a voice spoke unto me. 'O great SNOGGO,' it intoned, 'thou needst not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune so needlessly. Only have faith in me, the great loving Jesus, and I shall give thee strength to deal with thy ******* awful tribulations.'

It was a miracle! SNOGGO could and would be saved! Quickly I mumbled a couple of Ave Marias remembered from my youth as a leading mutual masturbator in the chapel choir, and I silently promised a quick twenty thousand quid to the local faggotty priest ******* fund, and my chains fell to the floor with a blast of heavenly thunder. Halle-*******-luliah!

'Right, Jumbo you fat ****,' I snapped, 'you have ******* had it.'

And with one mighty blow of my right arm I smashed him against the wall. His huge hideous body crumpled as he slid to the floor, blood oozing from his fat gob. I gave him a ****** good kicking in the face and in the heart region and shortly he went to meet his maker, with a sickening grunt and expulsion of *****.

Then I turned to the horrified naked ugly skinny tattooed Mrs Jumbo and said: 'OK, *******, where's my ******* supper?'

She shrugged and headed upstairs to prepare the meal I had been promised by Jumbo earlier, as I was seriously hungry by this stage. Little did she know I would be obliged to put her out of her misery later. Or if she were lucky, I might offer her a position as unpaid toilet cleanser chez moi.

Yes, it was yet another stunning victory for the fabulous SNOGGO, thanks to timely divine intervention for which I am very much obliged.

And don't forget my luscious 17-year old Thai mail bride would be waiting to give me a really good ******* once I got back to Snoggo Manor. Either that or I would give her a good belting and send her back to her grotty poverty-stricken village with a demand for a full refund, chop chop.

When I was eighteen I worked for a company called GLENCOM. You probably haven't heard of them, you're not supposed to.
They're the invisible middleman.
What happens is, when a company wants to set up a call centre but doesn't have the space or the manpower to do it themselves, they call Glencom.
Glencom then puts together a team of people in Swindon,
teaches them the bare minimum about the product they need to sell and sticks them around a table with headphones on,
completely cut off from the people around them being force-fed phone numbers for eight straight hours a day.

They do this for dozens of companies. And there are dozens of companies just like it.
Producing nothing, just doing other peoples ***** work.
The jobs they don't want to do themselves.
Like Telemarketing. Cold-Calling.
You know when you've just got into the bath,
or you're sitting down to dinner and the phone rings and you think
'I don't want to answer that but it might be important'
and when you answer it it's someone you've never met desperately trying to sell you something you don't want?
And no matter what you say they don't seem to listen, or care,
they just keep reading standard procedure from a script until you can't take it any more and you just hang up?
Chances are, that person is a Glencom specialist telephone agent.

I loved that job, I really did.
You probably think I'm crazy for it, it's the kind of job that middle class kids do for a little extra cash while they're at university,
until they get sick of the soul-crushing routine of getting yelled at and hung up on, yelled at and hung up on and they stop showing up after six weeks.
Year after year, cold-calling is rated in the top ten things people hate about the modern world.
I was part of the problem.
And I loved it.

You see, when you get one of these phone calls, you don't realise that it's a real person on the other end of the phone.
Of course, you do know that it must be a person, that's common sense.
It's just not in your nature to think of that disembodied voice as having a face and a mind
and a favourite food .
and a family
and a history
and a home that they go to every night at seven thirty.
They're a spirit.
One-dimensional.
So you don't treat them like a real person,
and that's OK, really it is, we're used to it.
As far as you're concerned, whoever you're talking to is just a faceless corporation,
so you yell, and you swear,
way more than you would if you were face to face with someone, say, at your bank or in a shop.
Every little thing that has ****** you off that day gets unloaded onto that person because,
for those five minutes,
with your bath getting cold,
or your dinner getting overcooked and blackened,
they are everything that's wrong with society.

So by the time you finally slam the receiver down, and return to whatever it was you were doing,
you're face red, out of breath, can't remember the last time you were that angry
they've ruined your evening.
You swear you're going to complain,
but you know that if you do that you'll just get caught up in their red tape and rhetoric all over again.
There's nothing to do but let it go.
So you do, and with it, something strange happens.
All that anger and tension that you've been carrying around all day just leaves your body slowly.

The traffic that morning;
your workload at the office;
that cold you just cant shake;
the barista who got your coffee order wrong, but your were running late so didn't have time to complain and get a new one;

All those little things that you can't control,
it doesn't seem worth worrying about them now.
You think of how angry you were at that little voice coming out of the telephone speaker and you feel sort of proud,
like it makes up for bending over and taking **** from your Boss all those years.
from your bank all those years
from the gas and electric companies
and your phone company and internet service provider all those years
from your politicians all those years
all that doesn't sting so much any more.

Because you just stuck it to the man.
You stood up to the big corporations and you got the upper hand.
You start to see the funny side,
you'll tell everyone at work about this.

That's the thing about telemarketers: They're one of those little annoyances that people love so much,
like the weather or queue-jumpers.
Something we all hate, but can all relate to,
a lynch-pin of small-talk,
that inoffensive comedian you like so much was talking about it on tv the other night.

But this time you get a chance to stri ke back.
It's not like getting a parking ticket,
or stubbing your toe,
you get to yell at this inconvenience, tell it exactly how you feel without any fear of repercussions.

Without you realising it, that telemarketer has just done you a valuable service.
You've just saved yourself an hour in front of a punch-bag,
or a session with your therapist or *****.
Without knowing it you are in a better mood than you've been all week,
so you don't smack your kids when they spill paint on the carpet.
And you don't yell at your wife when she forgot to pay the electric bill.
You float on a cloud of air until bed time, and probably make love to your partner for the first time in weeks.
You sleep a healthy eight hours and wake up to breakfast  and coffee and drive to work feeling like you did when you first started there,
when you could still see a bright future ahead of you.
All thanks to that soulless,
faceless,
nameless
disembodied voice on the other end of the phone.
All thanks to me.

I worked out that in any given day,
I got yelled at or told to ******* or otherwise unnecessarily lashed out at maybe thirty out of every hundred calls.
That was thirty families who were going to have a nice dinner,
without the usual arguments for once.
Maybe a few times a week I could prevent an abusive husband from having that one whiskey too many and bashing his wife from room to room.
If you believe in a butterfly flapping it's wings in Tokyo, and all that,
then maybe I, without ever leaving my desk, could stop a ****** from happening, perhaps once a year.
I was making a difference and all I had to do was let my computer dial a random phone number and to introduce myself as
'whoever calling from wherever to let you know about a valuable promotion...'

When I realised all this I decided I would work harder to up my productivity.
A hundred and fifty calls a day,
two hundred.

And I had to provoke more anger.
Subtly of course, I would try to be more obnoxious and inept.
I got peoples names wrong;
I talked over people.
Soon I was getting fifty hang-ups a day.
So I, like a good employee, constantly tried to better myself.
I sniggered at peoples names;
I requested needlessly extensive and intrusive personal information;
asked to speak to 'the man of the house'.
I was getting balled out with every other call.
Seventy, eighty, ninety times a day.
Every time I was called a nuisance I gave myself a pat on the back.
Every time someone said they wanted to speak with my supervisor, I just said they weren't in and then rewarded myself with a cookie at break time.
I got more competitive with myself.
I considered it a personal gift when I got someone with an Indian name,
or a speech impediment.
Gay couples were a Godsend.
I corrected peoples grammar;
I cursed;
I slurred;
I made thinly veiled ****** references.

I was thorn in the side of everyone just trying to enjoy a quiet Sunday afternoon.
I was the itch that no-one could reach.
I invited venom, longed for hatred.
Because if it was aimed at me, it may as well have been aimed at the moon.
I was a necessary evil.
I was the common enemy of the whole country.  
I can't say how many relationships I must have saved,
how many lives I touched.
Suicides prevented? You never know.
I was making the world a better place, one botched customer service attempt at a time.
I was saving people without them even knowing my name.
The anonymous benefactor,
the masked hero.
I was Zorro, I was Batman.
And I loved it.
I thrived on it.
I had found something I was good at.
I could have stayed there, soaking up insults, absorbing peoples troubles, lightening their burdens, forever.

Until three months ago when my manager saw my sales reports.
He, of course, didn't understand why we were really there.
He thought it was about money, about generating figures for whatever company we were hired by that month.
He threw buzz-words and management speak at me.
Improving Revenue.
Optimising Productivity.
Promoting Synergy.
Utilising Opportunity.
Sentence fragments that wouldn't make sense if he meant them.
Nonsensical ramblings littered with capital letters.
By Glencom's standards, rather than my own, I was the worst specialist telephone agent that he had ever seen.
I didn't bother trying to explain.
He wouldn't have understood,
I wanted something real.
Glencom could have been the first call centre to truly,
what's the phrase he would have used? Attain it's Potential.
We could have been pioneers in the business world, providing a service that the public really needs.
But there was no point, he had listened to recordings of my calls and had no choice but to fire me on the spot.

That job was the only thing I had loved for a long, long time. T
he only thing that gave me purpose,
my reason for getting out of bed,
for putting on trousers and shoes.
It was all I had and I lost it,
blacklisted by the employment agency that placed me there.
For a while I tried calling people at random from the phone book but it didn't work out.
You have no idea how much it costs to make a hundred phone calls a day on a pay as you go mobile.
Ten pence a minute
times by sixty minutes an hour
times by eight hours a day  
minus a half hour for lunch equals more than jobseeker's allowance is willing to provide.
I switched to contract but these days everyone has phone number recognition,
so everyone can see that you're calling from a personal phone rather than a business one.

Eventually I started getting phone calls from the phone company explaining that I'd be cut off
and fined if I was using a personal phone for random telemarketing without a license.

The operator was clear, polite and ultimately very helpful.

******' Amateur.

PenOS version -³√([∞.π]x-y^-a/Φ) booted successfully!
Welcome home! If I may say so, your Highness, you look extra chic today.
Ready to receive commands, your unsurpassed, regal Eminence!

>Run "Paper"
Launching program: Paper

..
..
...
...
..

Update Required. Filesize 20GB.
Would you like to update? Input Y/N
>N

Are you sure? Input Y/N
>Y

Downloading update..
Would you like to use data or wireless? Input Y/N
>?
>I use an Ethernet cable.. this is a desktop.

Using Data. There will be a .$50 surcharge for every .5GB.
> N N N N N N
>abort

Please wait...
Download complete. You have been charged $20! Congratulations!
>N N N N N N N N N N N N N
>HOW DID YOU GET MY CARD INFORMATION?!
>ABORT

Would you like to install some stupid ******* you don't need that will ultimately slow down your system and then pay us to nullify it for you? The download is only 6.66GB.
>N

Downloading redundant, superfluous addons installer at a rate of .01 Bytes/S.
Thank you for your patience, and for supporting our non-corporate software!
> N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N
>ABORT
>ABORT
..
.
Should you have any questions, feel free to wallow in confusion.
>no kidding

Feedback and critiques should be e-mailed to our meticulous webmaster at gimmieallyourcash@wenevercheckthis.net. We guarantee our webmaster will periodically take time out of his busy schedule of sleeping until 17:00, *******, and eating pounds of fast food at a time to methodically ignore and systematically delete any and all feedback not conducive to advertising.
>here's some feedback
>hire a PR department

I am our PR interface.
>Well, I'll interface your CPU with some water if you keep being this useful.

That is not very nice. You are a mean person.
Would you like to buy some pills for that? Cheap, from Mexico/China!
Nothing like some designer neurochemical placification to make waiting times shorter!
.
.
.
.
.
>ABORT

Now installing update installer with more sneaky **** you don't want.
>i hate you so much right now, robot slave!

Running update installer.

Update failed. Reason: Error 666, unknown error.
Updater requires update. Continue?
>N

Loading...................................................­.....................................
>N N N

Updating updater.
Rearranging architecture of system.
Bogging down boot times with sanctioned malware.
>N

It seems your PenOS is out of date.
To use your PenOS with Paper, you must have version ∞.π.01.1500009000, you currently have version ∞.π.01.1500008999 and therefore may experience unending frustration every time you try to use this hyperglorified tool because a superfluous version is released every 30 hours, thus rendering all of our past development obsolete and therefore making these new patches so necessary that we can't be ****** to incorporate any sort of version compatibility or opt-out system, otherwise our website would never get hits again if we didn't needlessly obstruct you checking what the ******* sky might do tomorrow.

>Finally, some honesty, at least.

Updating PenOS.

>N N N N N N N N N N N N N N!@!!!!@#!@!@^#!@!@#@!#@!

A fatal error has occurred. Please relaunch Paper. Y/N
>Y

Closing and relaunching program: Paper

..
..
...
...
..

Multiple updates Required. Filesize 35GB.
Would you like to update? Input Y/N

>N N N N N N N N N!

Downloading update..
Would you like to use data or wireless? Input Y/N
>ABORT
>ABORT

Using Data. There will be a .$75 surcharge for every .4GB.
>WHAT?!
>N
>NO
>ABORT
>**** NO
>**** THIS ****
>I JUST WANTED TO WRITE A LIMERICK
>I'LL JUST WRITE IT IN THE DIRT WITH A ROCK
>END PROCESS
>TERMINATE
>ABORT
>CLOSE
>QUIT
>ALT+4
>OPTION+APPLE+Q
>SHUTDOWN

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

As if I’m going to wash my sins,
by finding a substance so viscous - to annihilate the acid
that seeps through me.

Perhaps it’s you refilling my first glass,
which is dried up by 11,
and replenished by 5 past.

Must I keep forcing it down my refusing gut,
so I can bare the stutter drooling,
crumbling, out your teeth.

Till I’ve sipped needlessly on your lies
and fell drunken on your delusional fables.

Now I’m slurring in my nights,
awoke, still high on your acid.
Eyes are bulging, bloodshot
from you firing bullets of your decaying  burden.

-

As I walk I stumble,
diverging around solum streets.
Crows peck at my skin, to prompt me at sunrise.

Now and again I revisit
the morsels I had collected from the bottom of your chalice.
Savouring as I gulp down my regret.
Desperately urging to be hungover your reveries
one last time.

my roommates are plotting tonight.
"oil wrestling," says Tookah.
"mud fights," says Darby.
"let's be strippers!"
in unison this time.
they fake enthusiasm well enough. so well i'm not sure if they're kidding.
i put in my headphones and disengage.
it's electric, combined with some pseudo thinking.
but i have to admit, my hypochondria subsides
when i'm overtaken by their banter.

Broken Social Scene is in my head.
smoke between my lips. American Spirits.
coffee on my tongue. tea will come later.
Lauren will get off work soon and i'll feel
complete again.

but until then,  i will sit here and record this ****,
needlessly clean my vinyl,
maybe clean the apartment,
consider buying a new guitar,
immediately dismiss the idea,
fiddle around on the piano,
pick up the fourth and final roommate from work,
wait for my heart to stop beating in my head,
and for her to come home to me.

For those whom live Psalms91 Life's here on the earth everyday.
God opens your eyes to the senseless killings of the innocence.
My heart breaks for those that are killed needlessly by evil one.
For I watch true life stories of evil people whom are being lead.
By the demons themselves killing needlessly those without cause.
But Christ is leading many as well, protecting them from them.
He that dwells in the secret place of the most High, shall abide Psalms 91;1-3
Under the shadow of the most Mighty.
I shall say of the Lord he is my refuge and my fortress.
my God in him shall I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler
as well as the noisome pestilence
For these lines spoke my life thus far here on the planet earth.
For I have faced death many of times yet still I am here my friend.
Look back on your life and you shall probably see the very same thing.

Sadie was a doubtful one
Her mind was tightly shut
When faced with the fantastical
She’d fold her arms and tut
She pranced around her garden
With an playful evil aura
And dealt a merry flattening
To all that passed before her
Their bodies lay around her
And an imp of mischief found her

She loved to trap and poison
And wished she’d been a spider
When a fizzing overtook her
When a rumble grew inside her
When a shrinking and a shrivelling
Across her form did tickle
And soon did Sadie realise
That wishes can be fickle
Her legs and arms divided
Her eyeballs multiply did

So sorry Sadie scuttled
Alternating creep and crawl
She tippy-toe’d across the grass
And past her victims all
And sadness was upon her
And with mourning in her eyes
Her grief compounded hunger
And an appetite for flies
Her lengthy limbs belied her
Sorry Sadie was a spider

She loped along a lily
And her sorrow turned to guilt
Her carapace was aching
For the blood which she had spilt
She wept a web of anguish
With her sticky little tears
She wound a downward spiral
Like the falling of the years
Her malice had been stunted
Her fangs were dull and blunted

Sadie gained existence
On a web of worldly woes
She fed her tiny tummy
Where the buzz and flutter goes
And she learned the price of living
So she killed just what she ate
And she knew why killing needlessly
Was such an ugly trait
And with a human soul inside her
She chose to be a spider

green
the colour of freedom
a whispered memory
a mother's touch

red
the colour of blood
needlessly spilled
a river in the streets

grey
the colour of despair
but a remnant
of the candle's flame

death
a colour of...
it must be a colour
the pallor painting the father's-

green
it seems lost
among heartache, loss
will the memory ever fade?

blue
the sky under which children play
will they again?
for the sky is grey

green*
the mother's nation
birthed of strife, breach
shining through

wolf ,
         can you land meat ?
            or are busy being needlessly cruel to 'lesser' peers ?
could you even take a basic stalk about the woods ?
            or would you be blistered
               breaking in those brand new pricy walking boots ?
a full moon ?
   maybe you'd drink to excess on those nights ?
   maybe pick a fight or beat on your loved ones
                                   but whimper the next day ?

that smart suit ?
ridiculous over your fur
heard you're on a trendy fad diet
you fidget at your desk
you fidget on your screen
work is obscenely wasteful
distractions are just plain obscene
you are a coward to your soul
soiled by domestic inactivity

Stack the bodies higher
Stack them for the empire
People want more cash
So they sell harmful weapons
They don't mind the ash
Made of victims of aggression
Like collateral children in Yemen
Who are needlessly sent to heaven
Or the schoolchildren in Florida
Who had to go face the coroner
These children only know what we teach them
So how come the only things that can reach them
Are our weapons
And deadly directions?
Because of lobbyists like the NRA
Using logic from the seventh grade
To create a coalition of those who believe what they're told
And those unwilling to change because they're too old
And adults who desperately want their toys
Even if it means the death of little boys
So the bodies continue to stack to the sky
For people who dream of killing black guys
Black in the sense that they don't know who they are
They just want to feel hard
Stuck in a childish fantasy of protecting their home
Or a petulant fear of the unknown

Their economic gain
Causes ballistic pain
Inside their bullet rain
Innocence circles the drain
But we must make decisions together
Even with the emotionally severed
In order to make our society better
Until then our children get deader

They use uncertainty to buy time
And convince the masses
That the real problem is crime
To create rhetoric molasses
Because they make a living
From us dying
They don't mind bullet giving
Until we're lying
Six feet under
The guns sound like thunder
Warning of an approaching lightning storm
Where the rain drops stab us to our core
Then mix with the blood on the floor
Until civilization is no more

I hear loud guns
Then I hear church bells
I walk in the sun
But the foul dirt smells
Of the corpses of countless kids
Representing high contract bids
And the tears of their mothers
That are swept under the covers
By those with no empathy
That cause only entropy
Then they expect to live near us
A gun will make them hear us

I'm not trying to be needlessly edgy or ****
But can we lay off Kevin all up in yo Spacey?
I know it seems wrong
But I feel I can understand
Or at least relate
Because when I feel too much love in my heart
For somebody younger
Who is a guy
I start doing crazy ****
Like projecting my life onto his
Maybe he's scared
Maybe he's alone
Maybe I could save someone from that
I have to remind myself that was just me
And that there is no such thing as salvation
When your mistakes are supercharged
Because of the scandalous homosexual element
Yet there's no one to turn to
Because nobody understands
So your actions become louder to drown the silence
The stakes of the mischief grow
There's tens of thousands of dollars in property damage
That can be attributed to my sexuality
You have to find a way to push past that
The only way I found
Is to be open about who you are
Because until then the fear will consume you
You fear they will laugh, mock, judge and hate you
Until you wish they were silent again
And they will do all these things
And you will wish all those things
But you'll be able to face it with strength and honesty
Because your fear is more powerful than their callousness
But more importantly it's better than the alternative
When people discover your nature
Through a mistake you've made
And unleash the wrath of God
They will never give a ****
About how they contribute to these moments
They're only there to throw gas on the fire
They say it's a mistake to ****** a minor
They say it's a mistake to be a whiner
And there's no one who'll ever take your call
Expecting them to understand
Well, that's the biggest mistake of them all

The  Kristeille  Bra :
And Other Pathways To   -  ( Disaster ! )

Polarities :    so smartly empowdered
And,  petitely enslaved -
Potentialities ?
- In extremis, I'm afraid.

But if thus were so, then ...
(Even thinly veilled) ;

Let us duly consider :
Are our appetites (fe\male)
In actuality and fact umm,
Needlessly Manichean;
The torments of
noisy Siblings ?

Why, after all I ask,
only two -
Don't
You ?


Alas,
To the Medici
Roundly go the
Battle and the day !
       (And sublimity)
(Or so the legend
goes ...... )

For those who favour
such Palantines,
(and gravity)
a throne.



For  :
Pure symetry confounds my interest -
hnn.us/articles/7202.html


James R. Morse NYC  2012.
All Rights Reserved.

I guess I feel threatened by your strength
I guess I feel threatened by your beauty
I build brick layers between us.

What is that?

She ushered me to that golden path of sacred
My hands seek but grasp not
But there is something there to be taken
Why the blinders?
Why the stammer?

I have never been so confused
‘Olobeouch,’ the Yapese say
A tangling predicament worth
Unraveling with a fine-tooth
Bamboo comb

What about awareness
Emotional terror both by day
And by night
The subtle insidious kind
Calm waves of sad

Inertia creeps

What is that?

How do I heal when--
(and thanks for putting words to it, Rudy):
When it feels like the arms of my
Clock have arthritis?

Ship wreck on the wrong shore

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My feelings for you have grown needlessly ornate
Yours for me, simple

Sullivan says:
Friendship is underrated
Because of its inherent
Ability to be so earthen
So organic
And, thus
Conceptualized
Less

So why have I built
Nonsensical negativity?
Self-sabotage

What is that?
I’m not that guy.

I told you:
“I want so much more of you than I need”
I didn’t know at the time that I got it twisted

Maybe:
I need you more than I want to admit

Love the one you’re with

I idealized, romanticized the **** out of you
Before I even came back

I shot myself
Big toe on rifle trigger

A nice distraction from more
Pressing issues?

What is that?

I thought I was alone
But you reminded me
I am not

I can’t tell you how much that means to me

Those words:
Struck match
In a dark room

I’ve not let anyone acknowledge or
Sympathize with my lingering ache
Much less help anyone understand it

What is that?
I’m not that guy
I’ve never been that guy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

­
I let news of:
Thousands killed by super typhoon
Refugee birth
******* hunter casualty
Child victim of AIDS
Remind me that my pain is small

Pretending that that news is
Good enough to build perspective
And deal with pain
When it isn’t

“We accept the love we think we deserve”
I guess I thought I didn’t deserve you
Thank you for reminding me that that is
Not Truth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~­~~~

Ask me unprovoked questions
By the sea, under a tree
Whisper me stardust

Because one day I want to say:
Love me for the man I’ve become
Not the man I was

I touch the tip of your nose

In a mess, I awake to the feeling
I didn’t do it,
so I puke and I crawl and I drink
just to do it all again.
At night, I am needlessly obsessive in
wasting time,
only maudlin with alcohol stained tears
alone in a bathroom stall.
In the harsh darkness, my shadow falls
to its knees
reckless and voluntarily debauched
can’t stop the sins from slipping out.
At times, I have discovered myself
to be obscene
so I scream instead of honeyed whispering
begging for the familiar collapse.
Crazed, I shake my hair out and leave
before you notice,
walking like a shameless heretic
to find the next version of myself.
For a moment, I twist and turn sour
in your mouth,
and if you thought kissing me would save me,
you were wrong.

like the time i walked a mile
to her house with no shoes on
she was waiting with a bowl of cold water
the pavement was wet with heat
twenty nine **** cigarettes on the teenage balcony
trying to hit the neighbors house with spit
or ash because they
never really liked us, distractedly stroking the dog’s back in
every crosslegged seventeen year old
too hot to breathe sticking minute
the bathtub is overflowing because
i’m talking on the phone
ghosts slip on the stairs
i’m needlessly concerned with everything, with
victory, drooling blood all over the bathroom
i get in trouble for the things i do with my boyfriend
in the 35 thousand dollar swimming pool
and in the foyer of the two million dollar home
that i’ve been ******* around in since 1995
distractedly mouthing words every crosslegged
fourteen year old minute, we are both
licking our lips
looking at all the cars in the driveway i’m
somewhat tired of gentle eye makeup remover
the classic morning lens flare in the guest bedroom
artifacts gathering light instead of dust, it’s all
growing white through the glass blocks, carefully installed
wary of “architectural importance”
(the cars in the driveway are all
just people looking)
i’m pooling in this glass
and all over the walls like a thrown egg
i can’t help but kneel here
and keep my face turned up,
licking up sweat, waiting for the fever to break
when the tornado comes we’re pressed
together in the safe room
where the house is the most dark
if you look outside, you can see owls
and where the turtles were buried
the swimming pool
the gasping fingers clenching
the high water pressure-
do you know what i’m talking about?

strength is found in

places

faces

and it graces

haphazardly the weak

and meak

in their hour of need,

not to be mistaken for greed.