I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.

I point to the stars,
you say they're in my eyes.
I laugh and brush it off this time.

We're here at night,
but I miss the sun.
You tell me you are looking at one.

I ask you what your favorite planet is,
and then you do the same.
My butterflies are getting harder to tame.

I'd love to go to outer space,
see all the planets and the stars.
It's time to leave though now, so you walk me to the car.

I remember sitting up with you,
trying to show you how the glow
on the screen could be you,
how you could stop saying her name
over and over again
if you wanted to,
how I would stay on the
other end and still be there
on the other side of the night.
How there were at least words
we could say, books to read,
at least soon it would be day
and there would be things to do
and it’s easy to move on when
you really need to move.

I remember you sitting up with me,
trying to show me that I
don’t need to be guilty,
that I can just be, and I can
like who I like
and it doesn’t have to be
the likes of you.
I remember sending you a picture
of a yellow bird on a telephone wire,
you sending me a song,
me sending you a joke,
you sending me a poem,
you sending me a wedding song,
your wedding song
from your wedding with her,
your signature on the divorce papers.

The way you looked right to me then
did not make me feel not guilty.

It is not my fault that I am
this far away, it is not
my fault that I befriended a bird of prey,
that your hawk eyes saw right back
to how little I knew of me, to how
much I hated myself yesterday,
it is not my fault that I am
this way,

it is not my fault.

I remember your children being born,
your wedding song and the wordless
music at the end of it.
I remember never thinking you were wrong.

I remembering sitting on my jacket
shivering
outside the door of the observatory.
My friends were up two stories
watching other worlds move,
and I remember listening to you, pulling back,
looking at the phone and thinking,
‘I am too.’

You told me that today I sounded happy,
I sounded me, less guilty, more free.
And you spun away slowly, thinking
that kind of friend is not worth having.
So you sent me to orbit some other planet
with some other sun
and I have to tell you it won’t be hard.
I can find my way to light from dark.

I will take a girl to the observatory some day.
I’ll walk her there, pull her up the spiral
staircase by the hand,
and over her shoulder I will point
to constellations you have never dreamed of
and I will tell her,
‘these are all the worlds we could go to.’
And we will start to move.

And we will take our friends with us,
up the spiral stairs,
and I will not stay at the door with you.
I will wrap my jacket around myself
and I will take what I know about the moon,
a glow in my hands,
and I will hold it out to them.
And if I move all over the universe
I will always come back to them.

Because that’s what friends do.

cellphone to heart, mobile to immobile, electric dead to living

you know that sleep and I are but passing acquaintances,
when it drops in, to heavy my lids, it is through a cracked window slivered, just enough for a Pan boy to grab me and away me to Almost Neverland

when the alarms sound that it’s sleepy time,
(quite like that quiet verse)
no time to delist the “those pre-shluffy to do things,”
cell drop upon my chest, like an open mic,
then the raging observatory tapestry begins!

the cell lies directly above my ventricular chamber,
and communication is live, the brain cutoff switch, well, cutoff

all manner of imps, devils, rejected poems, angels and
Greek gods and some Indian as well, stand in line for to make
free calls via a beating human message call center, utilizing my friends and family verizon plan to register complaints,
close out unfinished biz, or just contact, friends, family or other
mischievous imps or even you, in other time zone worlds

though my brain may not interfere, like the CIA, it records all
conversations and give me a list of new poem titles, notions, stories glories and wrenching heartbreaking heartbreak,
requiring “fleshing out” when I awake from my three fingers
of scotch, glass eye tears drops made me drunk,

damning this transmigration chorus of voices that offer up a treasure of divine humankind’s hopes and travails,
and the occasional call on the divine’s 1-800 confession line,
hear it all, my chewing out by one particular god of mine who does not suffer my criticisms well of his ungodly actions, nope not sweetly and

when else would he dare contact me, except when no edgewise
words of mine can appear to contradict his mealy mouth excuses

did you musty misty mistake  my poems  as the product of
the miracle water wages of my imaginary inspiration,
no, not, from the replaying of your desperate exclamations,
the cancerous shrieks of loss and prickly investiture of the aesthetics of soft whispers and solitary foot treads,
that is where my insanity is bred, and tumbling s-words, sworn

don’t consider it eavesdropping as there is no signed rental agreement, consider this unfair warning, if you should secret use my cellular line, your everything is now ******,
your genetic material is materialistic mine and my poems yours,
this bittersweet sentiment is a measure of our bloods commingling,
your tears and impish silliness, are shiny hidden within mine

somehow I feel compelled to state this unique statistic:

I love you

4:47pm on 3/11

who writes poems like this?
silly old boys with gray hair, standing on one left leg.  but you knew that, right?

In a dimly light corridor
She ran and I implore
Fear overwhelms her
I shouted and I warned her
Wary of the story
Of this abandoned observatory
Phantoms and ghastly things
Speak and panic they bring
She knows not this story
Of ghosts and their follies
Doing deeds for man
They did have a joyous plan
To study and create
A new era of sensory gates
They said five was ne'er near enough
So they sought the sixth in lust
What they did discover
Was the form of wanton terror
Driving them to insanity
Bringing this place dear calamity
She makes it to the door
And I become a ghost
     Of this dimly lit corridor

Are you the surge, triggering the flight of the transcending bird?
the  ultimate mystery, unspeakable, that liberates the seeker.
While awaiting the wingless flight, the moment of soul's effulgence,
you too are a mystery , like the all encompassing spirit, I am one with

The universe is not wholly cognizable,constant transformation
one to something drastically different, and the story never ends.
Known physics, could tell the story,only halfway, the rest is dark
I understand the helplessness of space observatory at Herschel
peering at vast Magellanic cloud galaxy, a mystery in the move.

Her mind is an observatory.
A really fun one. You know,
With rock candy at the entrance,
And a gift shop full of unique keepsakes.

Like compassion.  
And warmth.

And when you step inside,
Her constellations are painted upon the dome ceiling,
Telling a story only visible
To those willing to connect the dots.

A story of glowing blues
And scattered specks
Of burning red,
With a dark void
Occupying the gaps
You so desperately wish to fill.

She has an entire solar system
Inside of her,
Hidden within the stars.
A heart as gold as the sun.
A soul as old as she wants.
And when she speaks,
You fall in love.
Because you don't have a choice.

Her voice echoes amphetamines
Along the walls of my skin.
Her smile shines
Like the crooked panels
On every straight paved sidewalk
I've ever known.

And when I look into her eyes,
The universe stares back.

I think she's a goddess.

Two Syrian women on Friday were locked in a cage full of skeletons in punishment for violating Daesh’s strict dress code in the militant group’s stronghold of Raqqa.

The London-based Observatory for Human Rights said one of the women fainted in the cage and had to be transported to one of the hospitals in the northern province, which became Daesh’s headquarters in Syria after the group took the city in 2013.

A spokesman for the local-based activist group “Raqqa is being Slaughtered Silently” also reported Daesh’ latest scare tactic against women found to have flouted the draconian rules.

Daesh recently locked a 19-year old woman in a cage full of skeletons, driving her to the point of madness, according to Mohammed Al-Salih. The spokesman did not specify whether the incident was the same as the one reported by the UK-based monitor.

Salih also said that there were “similar cases of women locked in cages with skeletons or forced to sleep overnight in a cemetery” for not wearing what Daesh deems as appropriate. More serious violations are punished by the amputation of limbs, or execution.

Video reports as well as accounts of escapees show that Daesh forces women living in its areas — whether in Syria or Iraq — to don head-to-toe garbs.

Meanwhile, the Observatory said Daesh has recently stormed homes in Raqqa and arrested 10 men suspected of spying against the group.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com

I yearn to gaze into a lens
to view the outer space.
What my eyes will see all depends
on how I view this place.

Alive and well, stars burn with life;
while others, growing old,
will view these orbs with growing strife
until themselves are cold.

An asteroid falls across the sky
to find its resting place
in the minds of observant eyes
then die without a trace.

A satellite reflects the gleam
of our colossal seas-
vivid as a child's first daydream
to journey where they please.

I yearn to gaze upon these lives
in space that's all but void,
but I open my sightless eyes
where space is none but void.

There is somewhere
I have never gone to
yet I have
always been.

There is blackness there,
but there is light too;
the candle dance
of ubiquitous stars
untouchably far away.

There is a moon,
thought I do not know it,
and the pearl of strange nebulae
yet to become friends
to the soil bound.

The days and nights
shuffle
as I wish
space
time
like fields and oceans
instead of roads and rivers.

I can see the moment
those first stars
opened their eyes
without a hint of hubris.

An endless mosaic of years,
eras and eons
captured in a moment:
like pebbles of sand
slipping through an hourglass,
waiting to turn again.

I observe,
a fish in an endless bowl,
yet I am still on the inside
of nothing.

There is a dais
and a small helm
which calls for a captain's hands,
waiting
in the center of nothing.

I turn it
with eager reluctance
past two thousand nine hundred and twenty ticks
of days,
sailing back past seas of stars
I've already seen.

I start
the celestial clockwork
going again;
the planets, comets,
suns and moons,
all the movements, crashes, and orbits
from the night my father died.

I weigh my anchor
at the crux of my small life,
and sift through
the universal indifference,

Combing through the indexes and atlases
of the heavens,
searching for some sign
of a flitting or fleeting light
called out from our Earth,
which seems to be heading home.

November 6
this day
Brought me a feeling inside
Of deep depression seeping in
How I witnessed too much
How she cried over the ring
Of her parents broken marriage
Tears forming in her eyes
tilting her head up so they wouldnt fall
To reveal the pain she felt
But it radiated towards me

And how saftey pins and beads
Ment so much to her
An unknown meaning
But I felt her emotions gravitating
Towards me

How the boy
With rebellion tattooed in his mind
Had a quiet face
That showed how angry he was inside
But his smile was something
Rare and special that I had barley seen

how the girls
Could claim
To be my friends
But swiftly leave
And isolate me
Without a care
loneliness was something
That occured each day
more *often
The the day before

How I have to see
you
The being I once deeply cared about
That I gave my all for
With someone else

How that boy
Stared at that girl
In a way I envied
No, not with lust
But with a love
Searching for every
Perfect thing in her

Observing
All day
is a habit
Which I hate
I discover
Things That
I should
Not know

Recorded off the cuff: https://soundcloud.com/user4081486/the-observatory

...You remember doing that with me?
Sitting on the couch or just standing around
Watching TV
Playing darts
You remember talking about shooting stars?
The size of the universe
Where we came from
Where we'll go once we're dead
Dead...hard to accept, but we'd talk about it
You had your views and I had mine
I found yours to be beautiful
And remember how I wanted to take you
To the observatory?
I never got to take you on that date
I doubt if anyone ever will
But I wanted to see you look at the stars
Or look at the planets with your own eyes
Just how you'll do
After you die

I see everything from up here
I am a watcher
I see disagreements in the streets
I see the remnants of war, and the flickers of the past coming back to life
I see a couple kiss
I see the calm this action has on others
I see the absolute strength of love trying to overpower hate
I see it in the mother’s eye
I see it in the musician’s chords
I see it the city move along
Without a clue of what I have seen.

( while taking a tour through those poems readers are requested to keep in their hands,  a feather from the pea-****’s tail )

Volga - 1

there might have been some provocation
on the part of the  rat’s bible  

it is not known when and how
every piece of sleep that spatters  
from the oesophagus of the dip-swimming  
has stick to the c-sharp
of the newly-purchased tooth-brush

the air within the wish-bicycle
figures nothing less

how much is it necessary now
to ****** the blue-hue  with the study
that can be saved by the depression of the Ganges-basin
to develop the snap-shot of the garland-exchange with the
antiseptic cream

would you think it for some moments
my lord
the lord of the market

before sending any secret e-mail
to the cyclone
residing in the room
behind the stair-case
let the Volga be read once more
with all its clothes
and hair-styles

Volga - 2

the winter of the water-canon
oxidised by the fireflies
wants to touch every bamboo-flute
of this soil, it seems

as if it plays
in the body of every cauliflower
the total memorising-skill
of  the blue and yellow pyramid

and if some lines of changes
in the planet be added
the birth-day of the bolster
that goes to the sea
may learn with a lesser effort
the pollen-efficiency of the nail-marked walls

how much should I scold the squirrels
who don’t want to swim
in the still-water of the black-board  

Volga – 3

the green-circuit of the fried-almonds
that was submerged
in the open-hair of the afternoon
the whole-night workshop
has taught
the thumb-impression is to be put
how far below it

if the autobiographies are planted
into the drawer of nature
the solubility of the river-reed
gets it done too late at night

all the plus-signs around
from their etiquettes
come down  

so many foot-notes
caused by the season-changes

so before planting life
to the address of the wall-lamps
it seems the cotton-flower
written by the oceans
began yawning

Volga – 4

to the homoeopathy phial
standing on the traffic-island
why it appears
within her womb
the number of germinated nights
stolen without a kiss
is too little

is then it true
if all the chanting of Harinam
can’t be withdrawn from the alcohol
the body-odour of the running tamarisk-shrub  
will enter into the circuit-house

and that devouring of the parchment
brings to the feelings of the non-veg ant-hills
the let’s-go-cure
gathering in the sauce-island

Volga - 5

coming to this ironed canal-side
every auto-rickshaw  
wants to know and let other know
the mystery
behind  the rice-rain
from the cirrus                                                

the shame in the eyes of the seal containing signs
supplies the whole-sale dealership
of the civil disobedience movement
to the locality

the role of the hammer also
wakes up early in the morning
to put under its own tongue
an antacid

is it possible that the spits
used in the observatory
be made a little more fast-moving

manuscript of the basement of a well

the biography of the pond-heron will be scripted
even-then the productivity of the merry-go-round
wouldn’t be uttered for a moment
no sir, such has never been expected

in the liquefied banana-blossoms
too many hot breads resulted from the season-change
continues to bat  vehemently  
and climbs to the peak of heart-throbbing runs

they in a group will go to the
aqua anetha of the mole hill
to organise a folk-song

to understand this
no arbitration of the cactus is required

notwithstanding
it is heard that the thread was pulled
by the violin of  the wife of the moon-god
from behind the screen

here in the eye-front
is the basement of the morning-well

on its one page lies the faulty  crow-caws
and on another some sun-shines
swinging on the hanger
after some pages in recurring …the chicken-pox … the boot-polish …

within the two covers of the dance-drama
also comes the creepers and herbs
grown around the melting point
of the arm-chair
whose legs are broken

if each pore on the skin of the river-lily
becomes so much known
then in the background of this low land

let us have one game more

The thundercloud parking garage swallows me whole
and drains the authenticity from my smile.
The descending escalator sends me to my personal hell.
All I can think of is my counterfeit countenance
or the carefree singing voice of my mother.
I grasp at the sound, the long lost curl of her hair,
the sun of her eyes.  It's like trying to catch smoke.
The tears before security tell me I'm not alone
though the final embrace of my mom disagrees.
She disappears, fades into the metal detectors.
I'm alone.
I float through the crowd, past half-machine men,
their brows furrowed in stone as they slice through lines
without one last look at the family they wish they had.
They race to winged robots that autograph the sky
like the parting at the end of a letter.  The goodbye.
The stain mochas of Starbucks beckon me.
The neon magazines cheer at me from Hudson News.
Together, we watch the clouds gobble the planes,
mourn the farewell of the familiar, the leaving of love.
Rain pummels the windows like tears down a face.
Again, the machine men, the magazines and mochas
comfort and reassure everything will be alright.

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,—
Nature's observatory—whence the dell,
In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
'Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

“If you or someone you know
Has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s . . . ”
You can tell a great deal about UNLV,
My Vegas morning, easy listening
Radio station of choice,
When I first sit down,
Sit down to work in the morning,
One can surmise from the
Target demographics of so dire,
Such sober pronunciamentos, by
DJ Mueller, 91.5 The Source»
Live from UNLV/KUNV
Las Vegas kunv.org/KUNV
The Jazz Lounge with
Frank Mueller, Thursday, 7:00 am-11:00 am.
So don’t say I never
****** your ****--metaphorically speaking—
Herr Mueller, my good friend.
And while we’re on
The subject: WORK.
They never tell you that
Writing is such ******* hard work,
Which explains my need to **** up &
Lubricate the mechanism,
Before I start.
But I digress.

Just in case you haven’t noticed,
In case you had not been taking heed, CNN:
There’s an exciting new, radical ******,
Left-wing personage & presence
Making a play for the main room,
Center stage, center ring
Global Palace & Amphitheater.
I refer, of course to
Pope Francis:
Media-savvy, media mensch,
Crafting his own image,
Playing to the masses,
Choosing the namesake--
Francesco—right outta the gate,
Zip outta some Franco Zeffirelli
“Brother Sun, Sister Moon,”
Saint Francis di Assisi,
Talent show.
Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio,
In Buenos Aires, Argentina,
He worked briefly as a
Chemical technician
(Read: “bomb maker”)
& Nightclub bouncer
(Read: “sadist”)
Before resuming
Seminary studies, 1969.
(Tribute PSA: October 29, 1969: Happy 40th Birthday to a Radical Idea! Bill Duvall, SRI computer room. Late 1960s, the evening of October 29, 1969 the first data travelled between two nodes of the ARPANET, a key ancestor of the Internet.)
Pope Francis is a master at technology,
As any aspiring Global Wizard must be.
He has a special web site:
“Papal Bulls & Other *******.” Palabras del Papa Francisco - News.va www.news.va/es/source/vatican-va Translate this page PAPA FRANCISCO. AUDIENCIA GENERAL Miércoles 13 de mayo de 2015. [Multimedia]. Queridos . . .

Francis: Pope in Rome,
Signing international treaties again.
The Holy See himself—that
Wacky Argentinian--
One of many Lefty Cardinals,
Pulls off upset ordination in
Vatican City, God’s little 110 acres,
Our world’s smallest city & sovereign state,
Patrolled by a wacky-striped
Swiss Wackenhut Swat Team,
The Vatican: former playground for Nero,
**** Command Central for Caligula,
Construct of Mussolini’s $92 million
(More than $1 billion in today’s
Ever more worthless,
Ever more inflation soaring money!)
Lateran hush money,
Vatican monopoly money,
Seed money for colonial expansion,
Il Duce signing on behalf of
King Victor Emmanuel III,
Remembered today
Mainly for his short stature, &
Exile to Alexandria, Egypt,
Where he died and was buried.
“Vic the Man,” as he was known
Here in the Principality of Monaco,
“Vic the Man in Monte Carlo.”
But I digress.

Just the other day, Pope Francis
Signed another international treaty,
Recognizing Palestinian statehood,
Generating praise from Palestinians, &
Criticism from Israelis, who said:
“The move does not advance peace efforts.”
“Even this Philo-Semitic pope,
This pope who cares about the Jews,
Even he doesn’t get it,” said
David Horovitz, Editor,
The Times of Israel,
Which is what one would expect from
The guy who wrote the book:
A Little Too Close to God,
Still Life with Bombers:
Israel in the Age of Terrorism . . .

It is tempting to ignore the
Sheer ego, the colossal megalomania
That is Jorge Mario Bergoglio,
Truly a personage of great moral suasion,
Whether he’s cleaning the feet of the homeless,
Dialing up strangers for late-night chats or
Convincing the self-described atheist,
Raúl Castro to give Catholicism a second look . . .
This pope who took the name of a
Nature-loving pauper,
This Pope in Rome,
Francis:  Transformative,
Revolutionary gust.
Pontiff, from Latin: “a bridge,”
Spanning the God-Man divide.
We are talking about a brotherhood,
That survived both Borgia & Medici,
And other assorted kink-fests for centuries.
Just what bizarre peccadillo
Required the resignation of
Benedict XVI, in itself, a
2,000-year first?
Francis:  the first Jesuit Pope.
Francis: the first Pope from America.
Francis: “The circumstances surrounding
Benedict's decision to step down
Will titillate scholars and the journalists alike,
For many years to come,
Given his resignation came so soon
After the “VATI-LEAKS” revelations:
Vatican bank corruption,
Pederast-priest cover-ups, &
Other ignominious fiascos
Requiring significant damage control.

One would think that an institution
With their own royal observatory,
The Papal See’s inter-galactic,
Night-vision telescope, Mount Graham,
Southeast of Tucson, Arizona,
Could steer clear of faulty stars.

O solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
     Let it not be among the jumbled heap
     Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature's observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
     May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
     'Mongst boughs pavillion'd, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
     Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd,
     Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
     When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

a twinkle in my mezzo
is a wrinkle in this forte
where flatulent is an eggplant
but virulent is my phone

that screamed from my soul

as she'd walk in a box of rings
that made me sing her too
With sheet of tears did blanket
Around her bed of posies alas

if heart truss sung to their content  
tonight the hour grew dark in Jodrell Bank
as this virtue of love did radio a Lovell
and sealed my fate in spite of her again

I kneeled on the polished wood floor, panting and sweating. My body was writhing in pain, having been mercilessly beaten two masked men; I knew not who they were or why they had come for me. Nor did I know where I was now. I didn’t know anything anymore; everything was drowned in a rising sea of confusion. There was nothing but my battered body, slowly letting forth blood and the wooden floor, gluttonously sapping the heat from my hands and legs and hoarding it within its cold, polished surface.
My ears perked as I heard a noise outside of my elegant prison. As I strained my ears to their fullest extent, I almost grasped what the sound was. Soon, there were several noises and they were louder than the original one. After an unknown period of time, I recognized the sounds as speech even though I could not understand it. Fear swelled within my heart. I feared that the goons who had battered me and sealed me in this room were among those who conversed in the hallway and what horrific things they would do to me if they returned. I prayed for the voices to stop, for them to leave. I waited for the worst, but prayed for the best. I silently and fervently prayed to a God that I only halfway believed in.
Silence. My prayers had been answered. I let out a sigh of relief. It was the first unrestricted breath I had taken since my troubles began. I savored this breath; I inhaled solace and exhaled fear. I rose to my knees and straightened my weary back, feeling the bones crack several times. How wonderful it felt to be upright again!
The doorknob clicked. My eyes darted toward the door. Almost immediately, five men entered, all of them splendidly dressed. They walked with elegance, like kings. Two of them stood at the back of the small room, their eyes watching me like those of a bird of prey pondering ******* a rat. A large man approached me, slowly but menacingly with his great girth shifting with every step. I felt my body tense as I waited for him to strike me. Even with this, I noticed the other two men standing in the corner, continuing their conversation. I tried desperately to listen in. Perhaps they would mention why I was here? But no understanding was to be gained as I could not understand a single word. I recognized the language, however, was Mandarin. Without a moment’s notice, I felt a shove and my chest and face came into an abrupt and painful contact with the floor. It took me a moment to realize that the fat man had kicked me. He shouted at me, in an unintelligible anger. I rose back to my knees and hands and looked into the face of my assaulter.
He was massive. His body was that of a great pig in an elegant, well-tailored suit. His skin was a very tanned yellow and his hair was combed back. He had an upturned nose and small, accusatory eyes glistening with ire as he looked down upon me. He stood before me with a sinister smile as my eyes wandered to his hands. I watched as he ran a fat, jeweled hand over a gorgeous cane. As he continued to stroke the cane, I wondered how he would abuse me next. He circled me once and stopped at my side, his patent leather shoes shining brightly. I could see nothing else of him but his shoes. At that moment, he shouted something at me, and beat me with the cane.
I could not understand his question. Had he asked me about drugs, embezzling, money? I knew nothing of such matters, for I was a simple person. The second I replied “I don’t know”, he struck me again and again, over and over. He soon began to kick me simultaneously, until I collapsed back onto the floor. My stomach and legs had had about all they could take. I was already bruised and I could feel my bones aching. I began to cry. I thought of my husband and my daughter and wondered if I would ever be able to return home. Surely they would wonder why I had not returned home by now and would worry. I somehow believed that I would not ever see them again. It was a terrifying thought.
The pig man began to giggle hideously, his voice gurgling and unpleasant, sounding simple-minded and unrefined. He then began to **** my shoulder with his magnificent cane as he began to tease me, like a demented child. I thought him to be a savage, uncivilized and impolite. For some reason though, I could not completely fear him; I could only hate him. One of the two men in the corner addressed me, and scuffled to my front. His plain face addressed me with a cool and aloof manner, showing neither disgust nor compassion. His spoke to me with a tone that was calculating and observatory and it made me long to know what he was saying even more. But somehow, I welcomed his presence. He was so much less offensive, not striking me or adding to my confusion. He turned away and addressed his companion, who was now seated at the beautiful mahogany desk at the front of the room. His gestured to me rigidly and spoke smoothly to the man.
I could not see the other man particularly well, as the room was dim and most of his form was hidden from me by shadows. How I wished they could have hidden the pig man as effectively. The cold man then knelt to my level and my eyes rose to meet his. I was afraid of what someone so stoic would do to me. I knew not what he was thinking. His slender lips parted.
“Do not fake ignorance. We know it was you.” he said slowly, the words slipping from his lips like water. I was relieved to discover that one of them spoke English. Perhaps he could help me understand why I was brought here.
“What was me? I have not done anything! I promise you!” I had no earthly idea what he believed I had done. I was completely ignorant. I wracked my mind, hoping to think of any obscure reason as to why they had apprehended me and what I might have done to anger them so. His eyes never left mine. He slowly blinked and reopened his eyes. They were cold and unforgiving, shining brightly like black, polished beads. I felt shivers travel down my spine and into my legs. His blank stare somehow felt like a death sentence. He rose and continued to speak to the man at the desk, who was shuffling through papers, and rummaging through what I believed to be a cash box.
With a quiet emission of speech from the man behind the desk, the room grew silent. He rose from the desk and floated over to my limp body. His feet glided gracefully, always stepping perfectly. With only a short phrase, the cold-eyed man walked away. I panicked. He was the only one who could understand what I was saying. I scrambled after him, grabbing onto his leg, begging him to allow me to accompany him to anywhere but this frightening room. Without so much as a glance at me, he shook his ankle free and departed. I felt my only chance at freedom leave with him. A chill passed through my body as I submitted to silent desperation. I lowered my head and cried.
The man gestured me back to him, calling to me in his exotic language as he switched on the desk lamp, allowing me to see him. I was nervous from having seen the two goons at the back of the room. His appearance alone was a relief. As I crawled toward him, I felt that I was meeting a god.
He wore a red silk jacket, embroidered intricately and elegantly with gold flowers and calligraphy that I wished I could read. His hand bore a simple ring, silver with a round stone in the middle, obviously jade. His face was no less impressive. He had smooth pale yellow skin and pleasing brown eyes, large and misty. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail. His smooth lips were wrapped around a long and slender pipe. I watched him inhale and exhale a dancing little cloud of smoke, admiring how gorgeously his chest rose and fell. He looked somehow lukewarm, neither kind nor cruel, not gracious or threatening. He spoke briefly to the two men standing steadfastly at the back. I immediately knew that the graceful one was the leader of this group.
One of the two men grabbed me by my arms, shocking me while the other proceeded to unbutton my ripped and sullied shirt. Why were they removing my clothing? Were they planning to **** me and dispose of me afterward? I feared the worst as they removed my shirt and bra, revealing my upper torso and proceeded to roughly remove my pants as I struggled to free myself. Once I was completely naked, they released me and I crouched upon the ground and cried. Soon, they would have their way with me. One of the lesser men picked up my clothing and inspected the pockets as if he was searching for something. Whatever he was expecting to find was beyond me. I looked back up at the beautiful man, wondering what horrors he had in store for me. His eyes met mine and we both stared for a long time; our gazes were only interrupted once we heard the crumpling of paper.
The both lesser men were inspecting a sheet of paper that they had found in my pocket. One of them waved it about triumphantly and handed it over to the boss. He too examined the paper as an expression of mild confusion overcame his round face, like a moon as it waxes and wanes. Once he grew frustrated with the paper, he handed it to me speaking in his foreign tongue. I did not need a translation, he wished for me to decipher the paper somehow. I inspected the paper with weary eyes and gasped. It was a shopping list! I tried to explain to the boss that the contents of the paper were merely what I planned to purchase for tonight’s dinner. I could tell that he did not completely believe me. His eyes grew suspicious and uncertain. I felt that somehow, this man’s displeasure would be enough for him to end my earthly life.
He took the paper from me and twirled his pipe in the fingers of his opposite hand. He picked up a piece of paper from his desk, comparing the two papers as he delicately balanced his pipe between his teeth. The look of confusion vanished from his face, looking as if he deciphered my language. Perhaps he would set me free? Surely, he could not draw a valid conclusion from a shopping list. He spoke to his subordinates with resolve and confidence, seeming somehow certain of something. He spoke like he uncovered a key detail that unlocked a great mystery. I knew not what he was speaking of, but I knew that he had decided what to do with me. I was somehow more afraid than ever, thinking that he would somehow ****** me, despite my innocence. He kneeled to my level and took my face into his hand and plunged his hand into one of his pockets. I feared that he would pull out a gun or a knife. I snapped my eyes shut, and was afraid to open them again. He spoke a benign and gentle-sounding word and immediately, I felt something graze my face.
Against my better judgment, I opened my tearful eyes, and saw that he was wiping my face with a handkerchief. He wiped my tears away from face. After my face was clean and dry, he swept my hair from my face. I tried to decipher his eyes, looking for a twinkle of kindness of a glint of malicious intent. He gave no such signal. Instead, he placed the handkerchief into my hand. He rose, looking mighty and fearsome and rose his pipe to his lips, but not taking a puff. Even though he looked non-threatening, his lack of emotion baffled me and I was somehow more afraid than ever, despite his fleeting moment of kindness. He rose an elegant and slender hand and waved dismissively toward me. He gestured to the two men and pointed toward the door. He was completely silent. I was about to be taken away.
The two subordinates grabbed me by the underarms, one on each side of me and stood me up clumsily. I watched as the gorgeous boss began to inhale slowly, savoring the flavor of his tobacco. I somehow felt that his breath was connected with my life, that I was doomed to die the moment that little puff had been expelled. The men began to drag me away with my bare heels dragging along the ground. I watched the boss desperately, praying that he would say something that could save me as the goons dragged me over the threshold of the door. One of them placed a bag over my head just as I saw the boss emit a thick smoke which masked his face, the way that clouds hide the elusive moon. I was blinded, but knowing that I was about to be killed. I did not need any clues to be sure of it. The boss had exhaled and I knew that by the time the smoke had cleared, I had vanished from his view.

He tells me of his problems.
His job, his girlfriend, his friends, his home
life.
And I nod and I listen.
And I interject sometimes with a cliché or a suggestion, with as much compassion as I can summon.
And he sighs
and takes a long drag from his cigarette, and paws the ground with his Nikes, and hands me the can of beer we are sharing.
And he inhales
                             deeply
as though the air itself can fumigate the scribbles crisscrossing his skull
and with a wisp of smoke
he starts to say something
I don’t know what but
instead, he
                      pauses
in mid-breath
and he turns and looks at me
with sad eyes
But how are
                        you
he says.  
And I pause
just
       long
               enough.

Just long enough for me to look around and sigh;
just long enough for the American Spirits between our fingers to smolder
and for me to weigh the pounder of flat Tecate in my other hand;

just long enough for an overripe lemon to drop
or for a moon flower to blossom
or for a pair of black wings to beat back the wind
or for a bead of dew to skate down a blade of grass;

just long enough for the streak of a lone meteorite to span the sky;

or just long enough for our bones to vibrate in time with the rattle and sizzle and sputter of spraycans in the dark streets behind us
or for the clarion anguish of a million and more homeless to be drowned out by the wail of one sole siren;

I pause
and the world
                           persists.

the earth lurches its creaking bulk sunward for one more day
and the dawn establishes its circumference like a gold aurora;

the desert wind whips down the slopes of Hollywood Hills, past the observatory and Mount Olympus and down Sunset
and its hot dust scours the sidewalk and and slams into our bared and chattering teeth;

And I feel Brian edge

closer to me
concerned
but I have no
                          sense.

The fuming crescendo of space pulses in my head.
My heart is gored through and through by a billion billion whistling neutrinos.
An avalanche of fire from the hills and an inexorable nimbus of smoke advancing on this scatterplot city, apocalyptic-like.

And Brian feels
it now
            too.

A stifled convulsion of thunder.
A muffled ignition of time.
This
         city
an explosion and implosion, expansion and contraction, all thermite and naphtha in its nucleosynthesis, fission and fusion simultaneous;

this pause
just
       long
               enough

for a thousand people or more to grasp for a final breath, their gaping mouths in awe of the energy of one moment;
for this dying
                           place
antenna of flesh and metal, to transmit its final static into the boiling background of the universe until its spiral arms flail no more.

And I contemplate the effect of gravity on a ghost
and the time it takes for the geology of the self to schism
and the fault line in my soul to displace
and the resultant tremors to ripple
through my body and into my epicentered eyes

but I already
                          know
and so does Brian.

He wraps me in his arms
until my trembles subside
and I think
I have paused
just
       long
               enough

to learn the meaning of friend.

The beginning of the end.
A sandstorm made a huge 400 floor library sink beneath the sand.
At times a tall tower can be seen sticking out of the sand.
There are wolfs bringing information from across the land.
The library overseen by a spirit of an owl.

Many have tried to find the library but they threw in the towel.
The library has a huge ancient observatory.
A huge telescope looking at the stars tells a story.
There are parts of the library that has been untouched for a century.
There is an extremely huge card catalogue.

It even owns books from ancient babylon.
The library has various gateways.
The bookshelves looks like endless hallways.
There are parts that are inaccessible. 
The libraries knowledge is unsurpassable.

A huge staircase that is broken. 
The timepiece on the wall is broken.
A Lot of travellers got lost. 
The library is filled with snow, sand, moss and the one room is filled with a forest.
The library is full but it still has a lot of storage.

the hardest surgery is the one you perform on yourself.
Steady?
Ready?
No anesthesia but a chuckle of nervous humor
the first incision across your heart.


When you finish (many months later)
you put the scalpel down, wave weakly
to the clapping colleagues hugging each other in disbelief
from the observatory, sterile and eager
you give them a wan grin
and hope they've watched closely
so that now they know how...
how to do this.

At twenty-something, I was taught by Fear
who said nothing matters
and then at twenty-something-else I was taught by Faith
who said anything matters
And she wasn't the Sunday kind of Faith that you find
clasped between your palms, clasped like you're afraid
that if you let go the Faith will just tumble out and break.
No, she was the Faith that was bigger than God and so intimate
that sometimes I was the Faith, sometimes you were the Faith,
and sometimes the Faith was me.
So really, Faith doesn't have a name.
But Faith and Fear, they both breathe, they're each lung
and when I fill one, the other billows, after all
you need two to breathe.

And so then I, feeling bold, learned about Bravery.
I had heard about it in newspapers and history book indexes
and in our local volunteer firefighters.
Wondered if I could buy it.
Wondered how much it goes for.
But I couldn't find Brave until the moment I gave up on it
and said, ***** it, I'm so scared but I don't care anymore,
I'll just do it, Brave be ******.  
And surely enough, it was hiding beneath the tremors.
So really, Brave was the Siamese twin of I'll Just Do It.
which, by the way, wasn't in the glossary of this or any history book.

Everything changes, you know?
I'm changing, you're changing.
Oh, it storms me like the sea!
I secretly raise my glass to stasis, my faraway frenemy.
Don't tell the other Sagittarians, they'd exile me surely.
Change, letting go of my old faces
feels too close to dying,
feels too close to leaving you behind.

And I'm not ready to leave you behind.

Oh the West, keep your Mountains.
If only for a little longer.

I've excised my soul again and again
transplanted and sutured
but there's just no time.

Even with these visions from under the knife-
there's just no time to heal
before I'm laid on the table again.

Faith hold me-
Fear teach me
so I can...

Steady.

Please- stay with me.

*Ready?

Two eyes that swivel round on stalks to watch the lady as she walks and a heart that jumps through rings to see
beauty,
the beast in me grows deep inside,
the saint died long ago.

She makes reflections envy her
her beauty shines from everywhere
the beast crawls deeper in his lair and
on the first step of the staircase
another saint appears to me,
a heart that jumps through hoops to see
beauty.

“However long we live, life is short and however important man becomes, he is nothing compared to the stars. There are secrets, dear sister, and it is for us to reveal them.”

The world was against her, right from the start,

Wrong time and wrong gender; a mother’s hard heart.

Typhus as a child, fever and chill,

And though unlike many, recovery from ill

She never grew much beyond four feet tall

Perhaps this is why she rose above of it all,

To become a groundbreaker, a real pioneer,

Caroline Herschel – the woman once here.



Denied education, trained only to serve

It was going to take some dedication, some dare and some verve

To get the hell out of 18th Century Germany

And join her brother William across the wide sea.

He was already the talk of the town,

With his songs and his concerts and his wig and his gown.

She joined in the singing but never did blend

Into life, society – no status, no friend.



But now was her chance to start to learn,

And now was her chance to start to earn.

A sibling as your tutor is a real mixed blessing

For algebra, geometry, trigonometry lessons.

He also taught her to sing like a bird,

But she felt trapped in his cage, and refused to be heard,

At any concerts that weren’t his own.

Blood thicker than water and loyal to the bone.



Soon the sky became William’s wanderlust,

Astronomy called, leaving scores gathering dust.

And although she desired to still share her own voice,

She worked to support him, did she have any choice?

She referred to herself as his “well trained pup”;

Doing as he commanded, as they both looked up,

To the stars and recorded whatever they found.

Through the telescopes he built and the lenses she ground.



In March 1781 he was victorious!

His superior telescope discovered Uranus!

It meant one last concert and then her voice no longer heard,

As he became court astronomer to King George the Third.

But it wasn’t just her singing that she felt had been taken,

But her own astronomy practice, as she was always making,

The parts for his scope – hours of polishing with care,

And climbing to fit them, fifty feet up in the air.

“I am much hindered in my practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various astronomical contrivances.”



This Celestial Cinderella was told to ‘sweep’ the sky,

She found she had quite a flair for it; she found she had an eye,

For nebulae, comets, hundreds of stars no man had seen,

Sitting for hours in dark frosty fields with no other human being.

Then after years as his go to girl, events begin to change,

William fell for rich widow Mary Pitt – Caroline’s life was rearranged.

He moved in here, they moved her on, she’d lost her role, for now,

But when William died her nephew John took her back to The Observatory in Slough.



The first ever woman in the world to be paid,

For the contribution to science that she made.

Honorary Member was bestowed on she,

By the totally male Royal Astronomical Society.

They awarded a Gold medal in 1828,

The next woman had 160 years to wait (Vera Rubin fact fiends)

And in her 96th year, for doing her thing,

A Gold Medal for Science; from the Prussian King.



Buried with a lock of William’s hair,

The headstone of her grave declares:

“The eyes of her who is glorified here below

turned to the starry heavens” – yet though,

where other mortals just have granite to be remembered by,

Caroline has markers in the sky:

A place on the moon, ever dancing with earth;

A Comet of ice with a tail of fire bursts.

A remarkable woman, an inspiration to us

Who made her mark on the cosmos, without any fuss.


But there’s just one thing that’s getting me down –

Remembered in this universe, but not in this town.



I’ve minded the heavens, but now I must,

Return to the universe, once more to star dust.

A century of this life for me is enough.

The cosmos is within us. We’re made of such stuff.



anna jones ©2016

Black cylinder, clear skylight creamy center
rasberries or cherries, frozen strawberries
this is a color for winter
red cheeks coming in from the cold
mini switchblade with the blood of my enemies
this is the girl at the party happy alone
stubby legs stuffed into tight jeans
the observatory's great circle lens
the last stick of gum in the bottom of a purse
and at the same time the ruby the queen wore
twelve dollars for .15 onces
the weight of five quarters turns into a dime

they observed the world
like it was to end tomorrow.
from people
to plants
to kittens roaming the streets
to them.
them: feelingless boys.
boys of no observing nature..
passing by like unwanted pulp.
whispering about them like no end
only to have another observe them.

In the heart of the cavern, light
that stands ancient behind time, beyond
phenomena, the observer of melodies;
This is where it all began,
those aeons lost when the mollusc
heeded the call to man.

Inward, stalked by worry and loss,
an inversion of the lines of time:
beyond the zero point of recollection,
where zoom microcosms of possibilities
a realm not realm, but like that
an existence beyond existence.

Here, arose an affliction, in
curled expanses that exist as some among
an infinitude of potentials,
worldlines, some dark and featureless,
others growing and meaningless
and some like here where sentient,

observatory, a shadow grows around
the probing ray of infant awareness.

and so the ascent, from light to light
through alleys of darkness. Vast,
the beginnings and interludes
between phantasmagoria; What
accedes of in slumber, the knowledge
of things and nothings.

And up even until the day when
the babe says 'mine'.