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NELSON MANDELA, NUMBER 46664 IS DEAD; EULOGICALLY ELEGIZING DIRGE FOR SON OF AFRICA, HOPE OF HUMANITY AND PERMANENT FLAME OF DEMOCRACY


Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's anti-apartheid beacon, has died
One of the best-known political prisoners of his generation,
South Africa's first black president, He was 95.
His struggle against apartheid and racial segregation
Lead to the vision of South Africa as a rainbow nation
In which all folks were to be treated equally regardless of color
Speaking in 1990 on his release from Pollsmoor Prison
After 27 years behind bars, Mandela posited;
I have fought against white ******* and
I have fought against black *******
I have cherished the idea of a democratic
And a free society in which all persons live together
In harmony and with equal opportunity
It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve
But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,

Fortunately, he was never called upon
To make such a sacrifice
And the anti-apartheid campaign did produce results
A ban on mixed marriages between whites and folks of color,
This was designed to enforce total racial segregation
Was lifted in 1985
Mandela was born on July 18, 1918
His father Gadla named him "Rolihlahla,"
Meaning “troublemaker” in the Xhosa language
Perhaps  parental premonitions of his ability to foment change.
Madiba, as he is affectionately known
By many South Africans,
Was born to Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa,
a chief, and his third wife Nosekeni *****
He grew up with two sisters
In the small rural village of Qunu
In South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.
Unlike other boys his age,
Madiba had the privilege of attending university
Where he studied law
He became a ringleader of student protest
And then moved to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage
It was there he became involved in politics.
In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC),
Four years before the National Party,
Which institutionalized racial segregation, came to power
.
Racial segregation triggered mass protests
And civil disobedience campaigns,
In which Mandela played a central role
After the ANC was banned in 1961
Mandela founded its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
The Spear of the Nation
As its commander-in-chief,
He led underground guerrilla attacks
Against state institutions.
He secretly went abroad in 1962
To drum up financial support
And organize military training for ANC cadres
On his return, he was arrested
And sentenced to prison
Mandela served 17 years
On the notorious Roben Island, off Cape Town,
Mandela was elected as South Africa's first black president
On May 10, 1994
Cell number five, where he was incarcerated,
Is now a tourist attraction
From 1988 onwards, Mandela was slowly prepared
For his release from prison
Just three years earlier he had rejected a pardon
This was conditional
On the ANC renouncing violence
On 11 February 1990,
After nearly three decades in prison,
Mandela, the South African freedom beacon was released
He continued his struggle
For the abolition of racial segregation
In April 1994,
South Africa held its first free election.
On May 10,
Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first elected black president,
Mandela jointly won
The Nobel Peace Prize
With Frederik de Clerk in 1993
On taking office
Mandela focused on reconciliation
Between ethnic groups
And together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
He set up the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
To help the country
Come to terms
With the crimes committed under apartheid
After his retirement
From active politics in 1999,
Madiba dedicated himself
To social causes,
Helping children and ***-AIDS patients,
His second son
Makgatho died of ***-AIDS
In 2005 at the age of 54,
South Africans have fought
a noble struggle against the apartheid
But today they face a far greater threat
Mandela he posited in a reference to the ***-AIDS pandemic,
His successor
Thabo Mbeki
The ANC slogan of 1994; A better life for all
Was fulfilled only
For a small portion of the black elite
Growing corruption,
Crime and lack of job prospects
Continue to threaten the Rainbow Nation,
On the international stage
Mandela acted as a mediator
In the Burundi civil war
And also joined criticism
Of the Iraq policy
Of the United States and Great Britain
He won the Nobel Prize in 1993
And played a decisive role
Into bringing the first FIFA World Cup to Africa,
His beloved great-granddaughter
Zenani Mandela died tragically
On the eve of the competition
And he withdrew from the public life
With the death of Nelson Mandela
The world loses a great freedom-struggleer
And heroic statesman
His native South Africa loses
At the very least a commanding presence
Even if the grandfather of nine grandchildren
Was scarcely seen in public in recent year

Media and politicians are vying
To outdo one another with their tributes
To Nelson Mandela, who himself disliked
The personality cult
That's one of the things
That made him unique,
Nelson Mandela was no saint,
Even though that is how the media
Are now portraying him
Every headline makes him appear more superhuman
And much of the admiration is close to idolatry
Some of the folks who met him
Say they felt a special Mandela karma
In his presence.
Madiba magic was invoked
Whenever South Africa needed a miracle,

Mandela himself was embarrassed
By the personality cult
Only reluctantly did he agree to have streets
Schools and institutes named after him
To allow bronze statues and Mandela museums
To be built
A trend that will continue to grow.

He repeatedly pointed
To the collective achievements
Of the resistance movement
To figures who preceded him
In the struggle against injustice
And to fellow campaigners
Such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli
Or his friend and companion in arms
Oliver Tambo who today stands in Mandela's shadow,
Tambo helped create the Mandela legend
Which conquered the world
A tale in which every upright man
And woman could see him
Or herself reflected,
When Prisoner Number 46664 was released
After 27 years behind bars
He had become a brand
A worldwide idol
The target of projected hopes
And wishes that no human being
Could fulfill alone,
Who would dare scratch?
The shining surface of such a man
List his youthful misdemeanors
His illegitimate children
Who would mention his weakness for women?
For models
Pop starlets
And female journalists
With whom he flirted
In a politically incorrect way
When already a respected elder statesman?
Who would speak out critically?
Against the attacks
He planned when he headed the ANC
Armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
And who would criticize the way
He would often explode in anger
Or dismiss any opinions other than his own?
His record as head of government
Is also not above reproach
Those years were marked by pragmatism
And political reticence
Overdue decisions were not taken
Day to day matters were left to others
When choosing his political friends
His judgment was not always perfect
A Mandela grandchild is named
After Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi
Seen from today's perspective
Not everything fits
The generally accepted
Picture of visionary and genius,
But Mandela can be excused
These lapses
Because despite everything
He achieved more than ordinary human beings
His long period of imprisonment
Played a significant role here
It did not break him, it formed him
Robben Island
Had been a university of life for Mandela once posited
He learned discipline there
In dialogue with his guards
He learnt humility, patience and tolerance
His youthful anger dissolved
He mellowed and acquired
The wisdom of age
When he was at last released
Mandela was no longer
Burning with rage,
He was now a humanized revolutionary
Mandela wanted reconciliation
At almost any price
His own transformation
Was his greatest strength
The ability to break free
From ideological utopia
And to be able to see the greater whole
The realization
That those who think differently
Are not necessarily enemies
The ability to listen,
To spread the message of reconciliation
To the point of betraying what he believed in,
Only in this way could he
Serve as a role model
To both black and white humanity
, communists and entrepreneurs,
Catholics and Muslims.
He became a visional missionary,
An ecclesiast of brotherly love
And compassion
Wherever he was, each humanity was equal
He had respect for musicians and presidents
Monarchs and cleaning ladies
He remembered names
And would ask about relatives
He gave each humanity his full attention
With a smile, a joke, a well aimed remark,
He won over every audience
His aura enveloped each humanity,
Even his political enemies,
That did not qualify him
For the status of demi-god
But he was idolized and rightly so
He must be named in the same breath
As Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama
Or Martin Luther King
Mandela wrote a chapter of world history
Even Barack Obama posited
He would not have become
President of the United States
Without Mandela as a role model,

And so it is not so important
That Mandela is now portrayed
Larger than life
The fact that not everything
He did in politics succeeded is a minor matter
His achievement is to have lived
A life credibly characterized
By humanism, tolerance and non-violence,
When Mandela was released
From prison in 1990,
The old world order of the Cold War era
Was collapsing
Mandela stood at the crossroads and set off in the right direction
How easily he could have played with fire, sought revenge,
Or simply failed; He could have withdrawn from public life or,
Like other companions in arms, earned millions,
Two marriages failed because of the political circumstances
His sons died tragically long before him
It was only when he was 80 and met his third wife,
Graca Machel,
That he again found warmth,
Partnership and private happiness,
Setbacks did not leave him bitter
Because he regarded his own life
As being less important
Than the cause he believed in
He served the community humbly,
With a sense of responsibility
Of duty and willingness to make sacrifices
Qualities that are today only rarely encountered,

How small and pathetic his successors now seem
Their battles for power will probably now be fought
Even more unscrupulously than in the past
How embarrassing are his own relatives
Who argued over his legacy at his hospital bed
Mandela was no saint
But a man with strengths and weaknesses,
Shaped by his environment
It will be hard to find a greater person
Just a little bit more Mandela every day
Would achieve a great deal
Not only in Africa
But in the bestridden geographies
Epochs and diversities of man,

In my post dirge I will ever echo words of Mandella
He shone on the crepuscular darkness of the Swedish
Academy, where cometh the Nobel glory;
Development and peace are indivisible
Without peace and international security
Nations cannot focus
On the upliftment
Of the most underprivileged of their citizens.
Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.
Pearson Bolt Sep 2015
they say you'll never forget
where you were on 9/11
i was nine
i sat in the kitchen
and watched the television
play out the violence hour after hour
my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers
in Tolkien's literary fantasy
with these acts of misanthropy  
and i was taught at the dinner table
that very evening
that all of life could be reduced
to capital letters defining a
cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil

and yet
regardless of their affiliation
on this defunct
political spectrum of
left left
left right left
politicians canonize a legacy of
injustice and oppression and
in order to suppress
democratic expression
they propagate the notion
that dissent is treason

because the wars we wage are blessed
by the sagely insight of rich old men
who sit safely in mansions protected by
picket fences as white as their skin
while they play off our emotions and
turn us into thoughtless sheep
content to stomach the whims of
politicians propagating vengeance

i will speak this out even
when my voice shakes
because i have seen the hypocrisy
of this war on terror
that relies on terror
to cultivate more terrorists
in order to perpetuate the notion
that Orwell posited

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is bliss
isn't it

in my naïveté
i rejected the reality of
torture and murdered children for
i nursed a secret hope that
despite the pictures and videos
that served as empirical evidence
we were still somehow
the good guys and
they were the bad guys

but Americans rained white
phosphorous on Fallujah
dropped the world's first
and hopefully last
atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
we toppled democratically elected socialists
whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas
cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination
regime change is the name of the game
just ask the CIA
they'd tell you
business is booming but
then they'd have to **** you

so i switched off my TV screen
and picked up books
i read Slaughterhouse-V
and treasured the way Vonnegut
looks at the lives of even
bees and butterflies as valuable
intoning "so it goes"
every time a living thing dies

i read O'Brien's
recollections
of Vietnam
a month later
he said that
like white lies
tall tales and
fishermen’s yarns
every war story
has a bit of truth

and i've seen the proof
in the photographs of
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay
in the aftermath of drone strikes
that left pieces of kids scattered
across the desert sands of foreign lands

i see the toxic side-effects of
systemic violence in the eyes
of homeless veterans suffering
on the streets with PTSD
a flicker of fear livens a
deadened gaze at the sound of
every backfiring engine
as if they're a thousand miles away
on some distant shore

betrayed by their own
government once again
a Purple Heart is
a death sentence
when there are 22
military suicides a day
thanks for your service
now die in silence

like bad religion the phrase
war crime is rather redundant
and i testify not because i
aim to disrespect the
men and women in uniform
on the contrary

when i say
**** war
it is because i
cherish every brother
and every sister
who has perished in the
churning gears of conflict

they shoved tall tales of hope
for a collegiate education
and far-flung travel
down our throats
just sign here
right along the dotted line

we want you
to march into hellfire
we want you
to send missiles into
tiny huts and villages
tracking cell phone signals
we want you
to sit down
shut up and
just do as you're told

to every fallen human who
has been sent off to fight on
behalf of this
or any other
corrupt nation
i sincerely apologize
for not taking to the streets to protest
a vitriolic ideology

i regret filing my taxes
when 54% or more of our budget goes to
military expenditures so they could
stick an M-16 in your hands
and ship you off to die for abstract
and so often arbitrary phrases like
freedom and justice for all

you were robbed of your liberty
by a capitalist system that seeks profit
like a false prophet for
bank accounts soar in times of war  
and in my apathy i hammered
nails into your coffin

and i pride myself on  
being an anti-militaristic
non-violent anarchist because
i don't hate soldiers
if i did i would remain
silent and apathetic
and let the government
abuse its youth

i celebrate humanity
regardless of ethnicity and creed
which is precisely why i despise
this system that sacrifices
generation after generation for
conquest and imperial notions

pray tell
will we turn from the
error of our ways
wake up from
this terrorist daze
before it's too late
and say

the State can try to
whitewash history but
i refuse to let them
brainwash me
I wrote this poem when a woman walked out of the venue after I read a poem about overthrowing the government. She told me her son was in the military and said he had buddies who died so I could have free speech. I wish she'd stopped so I could've responded to her the way I'd have liked to. Guess this will have to do.
Tom Shields Oct 2020
Where do you go to when you are caught?
The Sandmen will pursue in your dreams
Do you ever give that a second thought?
For he is dutiful and loyal while relentless
The Runner will scurry, even risk us
Putting so many people in the way, he tries to hide
They all clear the way to either side
Francis Seven makes the **** and takes no small amount of pride

The odds for renewal you deny
When you are caught, you die
This is what happens when you run
Francis holsters his gun
Emotionless in the revelry of a crowd
Dead in a fountain, black blossom revealed, his job there is done
Spectators cheer for the violence, so loud
He finds Logan, admiring his son,
And reminds his friend of the balance: “One for one.”

On the way to the Carrousel, to bear witness, they enter Arcade
Where the cabinets burst with all sorts of debauchery and debts to be played
And pass their hedonistic delights, ******, drugs and surgery
Logan all the while curious, Francis cautious of his curiosity
It seems he has doubts of the system, this itself is living dangerously

Donned in white robes and masks, flames crawling up the legs
They stand on the red flower and ascend,
Exploding into dust, with uproarious cheers
The deafening roar for renewal, a spectacle, the question it begs
Is this how we all must meet our end?
Contemplating, the celebration of execution, the last thing anyone hears-
Renewal! Renewal! Renewal! Renewal! Renewal!

But they are called away again, and **** Doyle Ten
With his possessions, they return to headquarters, to report
The mastermind of all time,
The computer, infallible, whose Megalopolis is sublime
Does he care one bit?
These rebels threaten society
He clocks them out with apathy
A servant to civility
Idyllic, perfect, too perfect
A top secret mission, unusually
Called to locate the Runners who have escaped the city,
Confounded by the computer, every moment owed to technology
LOGAN FIVE, FIND AND DESTROY SANCTUARY

One thousand and fifty-six refugees purportedly escaped beyond the wall
Logan’s flower has been activated, his questions answered, there is no renewal,
He slips out to contact a rebel, who can help him escape the city and **** them all
Jessica, who posited this machine was malfunctioning; the object of Logan’s desire
They run together, Francis chases, unwilling to believe until he sees
The seeds of distrust sewn and falsely confirmed, the rebels believe Logan is a killer and a liar
Then their eyes meet, Francis Seven, the unrelenting predator
He hesitates, takes a shot at Jessica, but Logan saves her
In panic and fervor, the fox and the cat, certain they’re done for
Hunted in the ruins beyond the walls, the Sandman turned Runner

What evil irony the pair endure,
To have hope renewed in their travels
Only to find it frozen, killed by a broken machine
One thousand and fifty-six humans, stored in ice
Looking to add two more, before its store collapses
Amazed to be alive, they flee, meeting the old man and his cats
The only other human they’ve seen in their retreat
Better to be stored by Box or shot by Francis, who finds them,
Gone mad with his obsession, his grief and frustration, his desperation serves his defeat
Unwilling to listen to reason, to see through the lies and illusion, these two who were once like brothers now fight
All of the ******, the time and the ruthless, mindless divulgence of decadence, all comes to a head over a blinking light
Logan kills Francis, holding his head in his arms, fitfully delirious ramblings, Logan tries to keep him calm
When he starts up one last time, to say look at your palm
The blinking red and black now clear: “Logan you renewed!”

In the city he reveals the deception of their structure
You can live past thirty! The Carrousel is a lie! You can have a future!
Captured, confronted, questioned and caged, probing his mind
Six spinning heads anger the computer who demands, WHERE IS SANCTUARY, WHAT DID YOU FIND?
Six spinning heads all repeat, that one truth was always so near,
There is no sanctuary here!

The computer shorts out, and soon the Sandmen are destroyed, Logan shoots his way out, the city empties in chaos and fear
Standing on the steps of this erupted crater of truth, Logan and Jessica are looking out as a pair
All people are free, they gather around the old man, something they never imagined they would see
Some touch him, in awe, some simply stare
Sometimes there’s no time to run, no time to live; it all hardly seems fair
Something is certainly different when there is hope, there is a change in the air
Somehow alive, the Sandman who ran to the finish and managed to survive, Logan Five has time to spare.
write
please read and enjoy
I once slept
with a few sophisticated rats,
5 to be exact,
on a pull-out couch
from a garage sale
in corona, queens

they had ivy league IQs;
double majors in
evasion and skullduggery,
and a crush on my left thumb....

the  one you ****** on as a kid...,
posited dr diaz,
my shrink with an md
from the lesser antilles

like freaks,
they came out at night,

in indian file...

as the raging moon dipped
below my cracked glass window,

and  a cimmerian shroud
swallowed its receding light,

and I snored...

on the couch,
left thumb hanging loose
near the floor
where a heavily highlighted
textbook lay wide open...

cued by the dipping moon
or the rhythmic rasp
ripping through the room
like a stihl chain saw,

the curious 5 whisked
over the persian rug,

or was it soiled chinese?

like I said
they had ivy league IQs....

thus my heavily cheesed
wire traps
remained engaged

but cheese-less...

as the curious 5 converged
around the couch
for dessert...

~

I skipped mgmt 301 at 10
and dr diaz gave me
a rabies shot:
4 doses ig,

a sterile bandage
for my shredded left thumb,

and a referral
to his realtor...

~ P (Pablo)
(8/8/2013)
Johnny Noiπ Oct 2018
An art movement is a tendency or style in art
with a specific common philosophy or goal,
followed by a group of artists during a restricted
period of time, usually a few months, years
or decades or, at least, with the heyday of the
movement defined within a number of years.
Art movements were especially important in
modern art, when each consecutive movement
was considered as a new avant-garde;

According to theories associated with modernism
and the concept of postmodernism, art movements
are especially important during the period of time
corresponding to modern art. The period of time
called "modern art" is posited to have changed
approximately halfway through the 20th century
and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art.
Postmodernism in visual art begins
and functions as a parallel to late modernism
and refers to that period after the "modern" period
called contemporary art. The postmodern period
began  during late modernism, which is a contemporary
continuation of modernism;             and according
to some theorists postmodernism
ended in the 21st century.       During the period of time
corresponding to "modern art"
each consecutive movement
was often considered a new avant-garde.

Also during the period of time referred to as        "modern art"
each movement was seen corresponding  
to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it,
concerning the visual arts. Generally
there was a commonality of visual style
linking the works and artists
included in an art movement.                      Verbal expression
and explanation of movements has come
from the artists themselves,
sometimes in the form of an art manifesto,
and sometimes from art critics
and others who may explain
their understanding of the meaning of the new art
then being produced;

In the visual arts,                           many artists, theorists, art critics,
art collectors,                                     art dealers and others mindful
of the unbroken continuation of modernism
and the continuation of modern art even into the contemporary era,
ascribe to and welcome new philosophies
of art as they appear. Postmodernist theorists
posit that the idea of art movements
are no longer as applicable,                    or no longer as discernible,
as the notion of art movements
had been before the postmodern era.
There are many theorists however
who doubt as to whether or not such an era
was actually a fact;
or just a passing fad.

The term refers to tendencies in visual art,
novel ideas and architecture,
and sometimes literature. In music it is more common
to speak about genres and styles instead.
See also cultural movement, a term
with a broader connotation.

As the names of many art movements
use the -ism suffix, for example cubism and futurism,
they are sometimes referred to as isms
wikipedia
refresh mesh Mar 2018
nobody likes the full name.
the class is known simply as "Cell."
stephen king is just as lazy with his titles.
that fool fears blood.

i was listening to rain washing out the gutters
when our teacher called on me,
asking me to explain in my own words:
"How is molecular transportation so highly organized?"
i posited that organelles are not organized.
they are only civilized:
self-governed by apoptosis and a blueprint of proximal culture,
their manuals inefficient, but honed for cooperation through trial and error.
"I'm predisposed to disagree," he said with a tangible glee.
knowing we all adore his berating honesty.
his question stuck with me.
perhaps because i was working
for the office of sustainability
becoming regularly incapacitated
by the shame and exhaustion of preaching.
leading an uprising through the power of teaching.
i decided the only organized transportation
is an axial conduit to the electorate's war,
always social and hierarchal
because that's what culture is for.
at 19 i was loaded up with a sticky elixir
to be protected from being called a *****.
i will never forget how I spotted lightly for three days
-stopped for one week-
and then for two straight months, it was a downpour.

we are only tearing apart the bitty ants
and there is still blood on our hands.

i believe blood looks best on our hands.
but we were taught to meticulously detach
and to prepare our matching bargains
beneath the atmosphere's volatile dance.
poison is in the body and the air
ready to be bottled and batched.
even when i find my friends
whole and happy in France,
my key stays clotted in the latch.
birth control, women's health, world war
Ken Pepiton Aug 2022
The work words have to do, I do as well
leaving being as having been begun
ghabh-
also *ghebh-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning
"to give or receive."
The basic sense of the root probably is "to hold,"

Able comes from this, thus
ability  

8 billions, say
- the ob-servant says,
half are breathing in, as half
were breathing out,

certainly a few were out of sync,
so some of us sneezed, one would think
to effect the fectuality, unawares,

stutter steps, bridge march, aware
smell the honey suckle smell, no,
discern a subtle dif-fer tle,lit-tle
bit
literal not sames, similar sense, smell
seeming
how more aware have we all become,
we who lost taste and smell, while
experiencing a pandemic in our time.
Eventually endemic.
How rare are we in history? First wave.
Mindful, some how, now
my taste and smell
systems are back,
on.

Off, again, try to remember the smell,
of linden trees in Helena,
and wonder, set a mind on wish to know
will wonder, the worth of which we know

but fail to consider until… un til, tilling soil,
un
I think, et I'm y conjoined, to reconsider you.

At my bitterest root,
my jealousy and rage,
- alleluia, you know the drill
my will to act like some ancient god.
Cursing all I ever was.
-disconfabulating my own legend… uses
time, in points made.

May I guess we know each word,
writ and read, in this medium sprouted from
science with held from those
limited access faith confirmations, holy secret
ways out of paying for all the idle words,
never taken for the sense intended,
foremost
sense
posited, as a point in time,
we agree, I can, we did

--plea, please explain, make it seem
as real as any dream, we can't handle the truth.
-pointless-
- why carry the weight of knowing
think of nothing
in a word,
yet
not in time/
-- a spirit from the mortals fearing death
lives in this lie, cultural *******, fear of measure,
spit an image, imagine a nation, from dragon's teeth
spat, shat, splat, all the same, fat rain sound.
-- crack of the gavel, give us rapt attention---
order, order in the court, when, in fact,
judgement begins where Jesus says God is,
in his forever state, in me, of we, who
took him at his word, be true, live.
the way
courtesy commands, as judgment begins
in the spirit
of the man,

The right hand ignores the left hand clapping
-present the feeble fable

Discord sown among brothers-
hate the owning fact of life, only one breath,

- listen to the retold old word tale
- endemic demes enforced knowledge
- from **** to last told tale… we are this
- this is epic in each occurrence… we realize
smoked ribbon winds around in
form,
the long winter mind, all hearing ears, feel
from our gut, we obey. We join image-e- nations.

We dare ante-cipitate the motion in the dance.
All public opinion re
arrives at one point. We have no reasons for war,
we are not the users of others, we give, and
have been given unto, in some inexplicable way,

peace in time to rest in it, dabbling in old lies, left
binding cultural ties, as all reason for stiffness wilts

We listen to the Wendigo,
who wound the ******* greedy winding wake,
when the forest was aflame, and the wind had no cloud
that did not poison rain.
- meandering progress, not steam ship progress
sense posed reason aitia, to the t/
spirit and image in the idiom/
sublime

Now, the teller, looks to me, reminds me
of light perceived as punctual, flashing,
aha, waves in passing
understood.
Effectually.
- we stand as one.
- In the ready written mind.

All but he who takes a knee, ala George Washington,
under the leafless tree, in the olden vale.

The point of any thing, is made for, f-word for or fore
before, forsaking, one must make for some sake,
no relationship to four, for some reason, get
as a service, do what you do. Right.
Why would one enabled to do good,
do otherwise?

Ignor the answers you ask for.
Pretend poetry never makes
sense in terms of poetic good, exhaled, relieved,

passing coolness in the air.
- as gentle spirits some say do
Orderly arrangement, left mind, right or most versatile hand,
point at any thing,
bend that finger,
as on a trigger,
we can, we
know not how, we know, we have, we hold certain
positioning words as one mind may, I know,

I just got my smell back.
Like that, but after using your James Webb visualizing augments.
The wheel galaxy, just as imagined… we see

In effect, this is science, this is history,
this is art and language, holding sway,
we all know earth produces on a cycle, right,
greed breeds and brings forth famine,
famine finds us eating our corporations…
Jubilee, reset
-ship, shape, worth-shape, sense make,
peace where war was, one point
at a time.

Hold that thought, this is intended for

an audience, as the Terminal List,
was made to entertain military minds,
mental peace enforcer traits, keepers
of the secret, duty to the concept,..
live free, or die- for no reason,
save the Platonic essential lie.

Peacemakers were not intended,
we want valient warriors, at the core,
not the passive resistors increasing
capacity
to have the whole world sneeze.
And blink,
To sell words redeemed, mercurial recovery,

as from first people stories, branching away,

chaparral, between the salty sea,
and high reaching pine

fishing in a sea of social forgotten schemes/

Self govern, but in these days, not the future,
self govern now, participate in the present,

NPC over sight, non intervention-invention,
installed when you agreed, you watch,
do not rewrite the ending/

So, story being told.
Story being made up to conserve,

serve a certain truth we know, winter comes
some times for too long,

so we consider the ant, and remember Wendigo.

greedy gut, cheater, long time ago, we know,
we all can be the hungered beast.

Wait, and see, some day, we see the peace pass
for understanding, and we wonder into a we,
state of awe, as a we aware, we think

whole worlds and only words, at once.
Making peace from confused principle things.

We can, others have, agree; we are the best/

--------
Welfare, fare thee well, we said

we are as rich as ever was,
but we live a quiet life.

Pressure from some outside source,
begins be gins beginning to squeeze,

and pull and stretch, who needs the show
shown every where,
there, those other people, who own
no means to make a living form we are
reality personality types, all observants
become familiar with,
predicting winners, if it happens

I coulda been a contender, the audience
always know,
just how it feels, to be on your own,
a compleated unknown enfolding old Dylan licks,

Wendigo, there he go,
lickin' his chops, BG words are all I have
to take his breath away,

soft, and gentle/ sub-tility, wait, as sufficient

seed becomes something, never just a seed again,
and then just a seed a million times, in the wind.

-------------
3:55
I've driven myself to reflection
point,
observation con services ob
scene, objects mis directed, rect-
ify, io I mean, finger mover, on demander
I, free, willing, hunting wendigo from fantacy
conforming to hate manifested, abhor evil,
-never rests, never
rest in stranger's peace of mind,
find plain old apples in the tree, free, no fines,
no charge, non sense, an-tic

click onoma-tope -- under all of history, we know,

scribes, alone, found time to write, after reasoning
in the agora all day… ancient minds, WWSD?

--- listen, I am ashamed to beg, so, what does
your tab say, listen, I'm thinking

that's too much, here, take your ledger, wipe the debt.

Clean, no remnant from which revenant wrongs make claim,

first story told was told as lies, intended to deceive.

Knowledge is truth's gift, we live and learn
and pass it on. One point, inevitably crossing now.
And leaving a ripple, no marks

Yet, behind all that, this peace in mind, as a state, mindstate
timespace space time

taken, for granted bequilement does not disconnect,
knowing from known, and proof from pudding,
true rest,
reason for peace taken, in knowing, some body
had to believe, if it feels good, suddenly,
you know, every thing we eat
turns to ****, unless we learn…

that is good. Deal with it.
Homework, listen again to Braiding Sweetgrass.
Bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity
And are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--
Is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic & optical white rooms,
Cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations
Manned and ready,
Standing at attention, saluting
British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click,
Ramrod straight and cheerful:
“Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous,
Lusting for something,
Anything to process.
Any memory or image,
Lyric or construct, be they short-term
Dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all
In deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious,
Most vaporous; others--the scary ones—
Eidetic: frighteningly detailed,
Extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts;
Recollected so richly, rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, & olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.
The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless places & things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma
Enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from cloudy storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral
Repositories and vaults, all the while,
The entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that servile British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data,
In batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working
In seamless syncopation, self-referential,
At times paradoxical and infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but
There’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
The curse & minefield for the cerebral:
Metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
It is the information technology of thought
That baffles me, adaptive & profound
As any evolution posited by Darwin.
Beyond the wetware in my skull
Dwells an entirely new operating system.
My mental & cultural landscape are now one,
Machines connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:

"It is the information technology of who I am. It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape. It is the machinery connecting the two."

This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition—your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear.
LISTEN: the machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or
Not connected at all.
Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools
I’ve been using to shape & make
Sense of my environment, have reared up,
Turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain,
Remaking my central nervous system.
Turning me into something simultaneously
More and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin, septic now,
A cluster of implanted sensors.
Content: currency made increasingly
More valuable as time passes,
Served up by & serving the interests of
A pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human;
Simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn:
HUMANOID

(Excerpt from "Confessions of a Hopi *** Israelite")
Shawn Feb 2012
i've learned from scientists
the miracle of magnets
and from magicians
the secrets of tombs aztec
and though i've learned
from anatomists
every muscle of your smile
while exposed to my
retina and optic nerve
there's no explanation
for how this heart stirs...

regardless of posited
hormones or neurotransmitters,
textbook figures, controlled exams,
flow charts, histograms,
there is no quantifiable
measure of the distance
my heart jumps
when in relation
to you.
Onoma Feb 2015
Unforeseen flowers bobbing a wind's forever heyday...
submerged as if coral.
I could fit my valley into the shadow, and shadow into
its death with such balance.
What's overcome is sworn to secrecy...formulaic, rotund
and malignant what was prayer...even by all the loose
interpretation it suffocated the uneven, as unknown
factors of the life it's put to.
Here, as here is always concerned--it seems fruit of
Garden variety grows as to confine its worm.
It is here, as here is always concerned--I turn worm-ward...
to ultimately reveal nothing--linger coolly and repulsively.
We've an aversion to things that burrow and avert grasp--
a reward goes out for the head, or piece of such a thing
from the selfsame head.
Why is it our prayers are sent forth to expel the evils
we've gathered?
Prayer's construct is meant to be singular as it stands...
heartfelt--airtight in its sentiment.
Thus, by such definition I believe prayer is no longer
prayer--as it is here, as here is always concerned.
If you were to visualize such a prayer, the object of
devotion would become the objects of devotion to
overcome, conquer the God appealed to.
As an egoist is devoted to the objects of his/her nature...
as it were, an object may slip, avert the worm of such
prayer.
Hence, what does prayer become when its clasped
fingers curl under the spell of a blackening ******?
Power lust, the bending, curling of will in prayer form
shape-shifts, and is submitted to God as prayer.
A loathsome possession of plummeting powers feeling
for themselves in adoration at every odd, and odder
angle.
As prayer was meant to be the prodigal son/daughter's
offering to the disclosed, yet undisclosed infinite...
here, as here is always concerned, the line lies to its end
to forego what is endless...unforeseen flowers
bobbing a wind's forever heyday...submerged...as if coral.
Of prayer, now--clasped hands die upon one another,
come to separately...without even the capacity to unify
such experience.
O hands of duality--meant to meet of prayer...kiss of life,
for kiss of death.
Such hands are fit for a prayer viewed by a shaman upon
the deepest cave wall, fireside.
As if two serpents deeply kissing, open-mouthed...world
to world experience is offered up...volleyed, interlocked
by and by...till God intuited as to appease such intimate
impossibility.
Who, or what could wish to keep at bay such words of
being...thereupon to release them to The Word?
Why...none other than we, so cherished by our
incomprehension it's founded us...and thus we must pray!
These two hands taken as token...as it is here, as here is
always concerned--I could fit my valley into the shadow...
and shadow into its death with such balance.
CR Jan 2013
Lo
heartbroken, housebroken
I lost your nuance, pray remind me
redness across my chest, heat and too many voices at once

heartwarmed, housewarmed
big sweaters, his sweaters on your shoulders, no makeup
the basement with gray fabric trees, and baby kisses, and baby steps.

the milk-foam and the let’s-meet-again espresso hiding untouched posited tomorrow
among banana peels and pearls and tissue

and after, cranberry stains on teacups piled in the kitchen
(a very narrow human interval between two tiger heartbeats)
and tight sweaters, grown-up make-up
that same basement, blank before morning

and the Philosophe, my favorite couched villain over us
too many voices discussing horticulture or eternity
I Do Not Recognize Eternity, is what I told you

tigers slow down for the night, sometimes
--the quickest change of heart, is what you thought

and I, again, chose the stars.
Cosmogony of My Emotions: Teleological Theosophy of My Personal Theology
Death cannot defined. Being of ultimate consequence it is above causation, yet reigns supreme as an effect. It can only be affined: Aqua, Ignis, Terra, Ventus , Umbra, Lucem/ Hydro, Pyro, Gaia, Aero, Erebus, Aether, all swirl in dead languages spoke a thousand years ago yet they all have been read by our generation in our youth.
The veil of death is a tabernacle in which only the high priest returns from walking, all others are drug back rope around their solar plexus. All paths of death are two fold.
First, from the feet of the Teleologic Cosmos of Emotion we grow towards the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. From the abyss we stare at the knees of the concave exterior of healing. Like the twins of June, hate and pain, are the two closest modes to death, but not the most direct. I feel fear is the ultimate neighbor of death. The flow of Consciousness lies first in the womb. Concealed from the light, darkness sheilds us from the illusion of Illumination. Hate feeds into pain as Pain feeds into hate, like a sibling rivalry. The knees (pain and hate) bend not to cushion the feet (death) but to stop the pelvis (fear) from shattering under the weight of the back bone (Stillness).
Adapted to the new ways of my mother's demon of lust wedding sloth and gluttony. Sin is the seat of unconscious control, or lack there of like a drunk blacked out asleep, already anticipating his next drink. Hate is Ache followed by ate. Pain and hunger are two sides of the same page. What can I say, everything happens for a reason. Even if I feel it was treason yet I'm no regal prince, nor a Mercury lying closest to the Solar, I drenched myself in my own masochism: physically mentally spiritually, and had done so for years. The basis of your emergency alert was quite founded, yet not without ignorance. Yet to me, you felt i was going to rise through fear to descend into pain and find my new year 25th, death. But the beauty is in my birth with one hair on my head I left the manger a man, no wig, feeling for the first time while the police speak to my mother searching like the warriors dispatched of Herod. My blood spirit is free, having saved Adam through the pyramid  I dethrone Satan by the sip of the crown of the feathered serpent. Yet you hate he who fell. I fear the vile nature of the burning fields respecting the ignitor of the flames as the sole cause of err that lead or Savior to accomplish who no one else could. For without the fall of the unholy, wingless, cut from tip to tip, Iesus-Yeshua-Judah would not be your most beloved. Without the pain of Christos (the annointed), Khristos (the enlightened) would not achieve ideology of the cosmos. Pain rises to fear shortly, and shifts into hate in confusion as siblings squabble, as I had done internally for a decade. Yet through the gift of the heart heavenly Saul is able to see the life lesson to use the lower part of our mind to find the Big Blue. Pain ascends into love if and only if death can bounce like glue. If you aim for the Sun and the Moon you can only be a child of astronomy, yet you showed me my dreams to buy you a ring of Saturn and hand it to you on a Sunday. I believed my pain laid plain and bare could convince you of you're convictions. My mission in the deepest recesses of body was for you to give into your fears so we could slip into the underworld of sin sipping red wine until the mounring in my heart rose Rex by the fading starlight. I dream to live a lye, basic as alkaline, I wished to be a battery. I saw myself freed of my woman battering heritage ceasing the cyclic self fear that posited the ferocity of my fore fathers, due to the love of a woman most beloved and true. I felt you could be the instrument to my Burning Lyre, my love Plutonic I felt my crow caw. As I held you in my arms singing with you in harmony, setting the bond between the viscous cycle of Pain, paying dues with Hate, to rise like smoke to face fear starring death in the face like a shadow below. The night sky black with how to Know, twinkling with the star light of Love. Only above the vault of heavens clung Joy, Hope, and Live.
Without poeticizing further, what I term the Basement of Abasment consists of Death at the roots (red inverted triangle) rising into Hate (orange w/ red center) and Pain (tan w/ red center), with the connection of Pain and Hate forming a cross with the direct bond between death and fear (yellow w/ small red center).
Proceeding up the towards the chain of being, leads to what I call the equator of emotions. Cling/stillness/resolve is the grey region connecting all body's of feelings as the Moses, the leader of the Exodus and the appellation of the celestial globe. It binds Love and Know laterally to one another, while connecting the Vault of Virtue to the Basement of Abasement.
Seranaea Jones Oct 2020
-

i took no pleasantries in that adjustment
from the top shelf of Pastry Perfection
to the wicker-wire dust bunnies at the
"sole" level of humanity

after i mistakenly thought —you—  took
some element of freeverse i had posted a
couple of years ago at one of the more-read
poetry sites on the internet-

then i realized something, Poet..

that for all those sleepless hours you
spent cramming for the SAT—

i posited on how many welding rods
could be burned down during a two
hour period of trade school

and with respect to those thousands of
words diligently packed into your
undergrad dissertation—

(including that humorous description of a
knitted strap you used to keep the pencil
from rolling off the table
)

i wrote a brief essay of commonalities
on how much Gerald R. Ford and
Elwyn Brooks White
actually disliked
football,

and to those thoughtfully crafted lectures
in front of scores of distinguished
scholars and senior staff—

i was projecting shadow puppets onto a
screen during a slideshow while the
teacher excused herself to the restroom.

basically this;  

as to the volumes of books
you have published
over the decades—

i have a few thousand words of
amateur poetry posted online
inside of a few years.


That Said,

for those carefully-placed words
(of mine)
you incorporated into your
latest masterpiece,

realizing poets will not always
happen upon the same instant
at any given intersection,

i recognized that most familiar sensation
we Both get when having correctly
delivered the punchline to the funniest
joke of the evening.

we —in fact— have only the readings
of fellow writers to blame for each
other's blending of creative impulses,

that during these miraculous,
yet humble birthings of verse—

i have it now on good authority,
that we all could possibly exist
within this capacity

                                      as mere equals...



"The Lanyard of Amateur Poetry"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved


.
my regards to Billy Collins..
Travis Garcelon Sep 2010
Here 'I’ am, at ‘this’ place in time at ‘this’ posited location.
Here ‘I’ write, at ‘this’ time; ‘this’ time is ‘Now’, but what is ‘Now’, and what do I mean when I say ‘Now’?
Did I say ‘Now’ now or after the ‘Now’?, videlicet is ‘Now’ after the ‘before’ or before the ‘after’?
If today was tomorrow and tomorrow was yesterday
Where would I be 'Now'?
As Hegel would say:
"Now is a plurality of 'Now'"

Perhaps then it was 'He' who suggested that we just go with the flow of things and live for the moment.
'O sense-certainty... you make me smile...
'Phenomenology of Spirit'-Hegel
I would have posited longings ago
this short-shrift to-do over such a curt list undone
was inconceivable
outside
the pages of deceptively practiced perceptions
published in a pop-up book smirk,
or beyond
the canary-yellow frames of a cartoonish
distortion relishing its mired but spongy giggles

A
Been-here-all-along,
you’ve-never-bothered-to-look­
lake sleeps implacably
at the bottom of an irascible ocean

Be
Whatever it may,
you can’t deny the wantonly
watted life teeming pretty as it pleases,
untroubled by a hollow-core belief
or the extremest demands of our foul temper

See
How I could have,
if I’d only swallowed
those bubbled-up blurts
ring-wronging the tip of my wriggling tongue,
never been audibly
landed by one alluringly barbed certainty

There are supine bodies—
stagnant, quicksilver pure—
no material ship navigates
and no intentional intruder can swim
without
emerging atypically
unsettled by the caustic exposure

Tread lithely
when you go;
this shoreline bites.
Its clustered rocks will snap shut around you
after digging in below you with a protruding toe,
and its carmine stalks will sting you
as they writhe past you
to mime a part-less goodbye

Here be where
the monstrous cold seeps
and a hellish hot vents
in compliance with this centuries-old complaint:
too-short was the time we wept
for those wiggly wonders
we could have kept
if we’d only octopus-arm embraced
the inevitability of their bandy-legged escape
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Fortune Cookie Maxim Minimizes
(alternately titled “markedly welcome matt and luke warm john.”)  

i agonizingly dutifully didst wait
to distract anticipatory anxiety,
(analogous to an expectant father)
while protracted procedure promised
nothing short of a millennium,

whereby echoing thru the corridors of time
olly olly gluten free ranging NON GMO, oxen
oiled lubricated cloven hoof
nsync cup aided toot tune to clacking choppers
activated after this chap dialed up favorite eats
using latest vaunted communications device

(forced to shout over din o'er
loud grumbling within bowel
of abdominal anatomical beast)
commenced manifold upon ordering repast
magically appeared, low
and behold an appetizer tete a tete

via tony Apple iPhone X ‑ 256 GB ‑ 
Silver Verizon amazing piece de resistance, 
sans technological fetes
with CDMA/GSM ring tones,
where a pleasant fecund female bot tilled voice didst greet

prepping, priming, promoting
Crowded house special of the Green day
dis "FAKE" kin lister eagerly
awaited: salivating, simulating ****** soothing
sans savory souffle
the first culinary ******* savory dish,

after aye parked, positioned, and plunked gluteus
near swinging doors leading into kitchen,
where this word maven strategically
dip posited said maximus to attempt
futile gastronomic endeavor
tum maximize tempering torturous tenacious
devastatingly deadly assault steaming enemy

disarmed disguised, and dismantled,
resplendent redolent redoubt
digitally remastering nondiscerning indistinct aromas
to supper esse overwhelming paroxysms to gorge
putting a ritzy lid on heated fiery dogged
craving powder milk dog biscuits

(an impossible mission), where oozing,
licking, insinuating filaments
commingled as cutthroat nemesis cooly whipped
devastatingly weeknd x2c;
wickedly wafting, seducing, satiating, and salivating

courtesy olfactory foramen, deflecting incessant onslaughts
induced famished fellow to reevaluate, relinquish,
and revisit his Weltanschauung soup per bowl, 
while simultaneously commandeering cutlery
to attack, besiege, conquer

condemning delegate of China ware without tea zing,
thence indiscriminately marshaling choppers
to set up base camp at Oral-B
(heeding flying pie warnings, where shewing
should desserts foe ment Hunger)

eggs sauce er baited onslaught of herbaceous,
fabulous delicious culinary cuisine aromatic eats
thoroughly teasing growling stomach
steeping interminable suspenseful,
seven star Michelin magicians

empowered to transform most anything (such
as bilge water, road **** or septic tank)
gourmet experienced huckster longingly *****
doubled as famished Norwegian Bachelor farmer,

equating odoriferous garbage truck
on par suckling swollen teats
patience caved to restrain noshing
impaling his strict credo on dustbin of his story
never again *** chew gnawing
even knuckles sandwich of fingers or toes

squishy human digits texture of imported dates
which hunger pangs lesson,
do justice doth minimally satiate afterwards,
a restauranteur hoof hall hues highbrow opinion,
hence a short survey about ambience, yours truly will rate

perhaps unwise of an every Jimmy John Joe gourmand
tubby biased after an apple ala carte blanch
preceded with delicious hors d'oeuvre high marks
more nerve wracking than going on a blind date.
And of course with enticing forkful of flagrant food
Beep ping Update complete disrupted first mouthful.
Originally coined in response to Phanerothyme  [manifest & spirit],
Psychedelic  [mind-revealing] is etymologically derived from
the Greek psychē and dēloun. Psychedelia is music, culture, or art
based on the experiences produced by psychedelic drugs.
(Cyberdelia is immersion in cyberspace as a psychedelic experience.)

Some peoples feel there is a spiritual dimension to these experiences
and as such have developed a suitable terminology to reflect this view:
Entheogen,  [generating the divine from within]
denotes "a generator of spiritual experience", from
Entheos  [god-within], meaning
full of the god, inspired, possessed.
A spiritual experience is defined by its significance
to the host/subject. Entheogenic has been posited as
an alternate descriptor of "the psychedelic experience"
(in lieu of hallucinogenic) though this is a subjective term.

The Psychedelion is the analytical dimension of the psyche,
The part of the mind through which information is analysed
and thereby assigned meaning which is therefore significant.
Psychedelos is the existential manifestation of said dimension,
It is expressed through the medium of a language.

Absurdus  [out-of-tune] is the nonsensical dimension of the psyche, a part of the mind comprised of uninterpreted data, proportionate to our own limitations rather than lacking in "actual meaning". If a noumenon cannot be processed in The Psychedelion then it is consigned to Absurdia wherein we accept the inability to understand/rationally analyse it at present, given the current context.

Entactus  [touch-within] is the physical dimension of the psyche, the part of the mind through which sensation is perceived and remembered. It is responsible for the conception of our body and it's senses.

An Aeon Dissociative negates Entactus to deduce Absudia.
A Seraphic Deliriant posits Choler to induce Absurdia.
Psilo-Cybrans navigate these dimensions lucidly.
I may or may not be:
a posited feline absurdity
curled up on comma paws
inside Herr Schrödinger's *****-trapped box.

Its flask is uncertain
whether to smash-poison my mighty mews
and spew a gray-mouthed cloud
that inky clots neither's sharpening quill.

Entangled buts become
stranded as knots of fuzzy pink yarn, to send
either-or careening
arm-and-arm down imperfect pictured paths,

where Epimetheus
stands, ready to wed Pandora anew,
and doom-birth our many
worlds with the lifting of my thousand lids.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
PK Wakefield Dec 2010
stand tall stupid arbor meats
peacefully deadened pursuit
of apathy grandly posited
a smooth unmarking
the soil goes
plunk",
Lewis Bosworth Jan 2017
You may not want me to tell you about
The Galilean thermometer,
But I’m going to tell you anyway:
[It will improve your life!]

The GT is colorful – its rainbow
Of glass bubbles sparkle
Slowly as they sink and swim
Buoyantly in liquid.

Signor Galileo was savvy for his age
[Late Elizabethan],
Even though he didn’t shoot an
Apple off anybody’s head.

GG was one step ahead of Einstein
[Alphabetically]
As his popular theorem posited that
If  D↓, T↑.

This can be seen by ogling the GT
[Note the dog tags]
And checking to see if the blues
Are higher than the reds.

In Galilean terms the colors of the
Glass bulbs are unimportant
Since D is a function of the dog tags,
[Ma Nature dictates the T].

GG invented the GT because he had
A dream one day that
The climate in Pisa was warming up
[The tower began to lean].

Rising and falling as a result of density
Isn’t new to science:
[Jump in the neighborhood pool].
Ethanol in water.

GG’s heirs haven’t profited much from
the GT, nor has it been widely
copied by entrepreneurs of note:
[“slow and lazy”].

The verdict on the GT is still out, but
Early reports suggest it won’t
Exceed the popularity of the Chia Pet
As the holidays approach.


©  Lewis Bosworth, 6-2016
Ken Pepiton Mar 2021
The event, perhaps
advent, first ever any thing,
where nothing had  been, not a thought.

I think.
Then, when nothing was over
and everything we know now,
began, light
was not the first thing, the idea was.
Be for
Yes.
Word one. Hmmmmm or um or am
it may have been, I heard from
a transcribbled  myth
or a legend as old as any
meme-level memory mortals have
made-up from remaining
tidbits taught to any next gen thing.
Look.
Assume light is as fast as the expansion,
couple of Planksecs,
and it is at the edge of ever,
never before,
never busting beyond the bubble we be in,
dead center,
the physical middle of ever,
continuous now,
nothing to stop us imagining we,

disagree, now, after all's been said and done,
and things run on,
de iffing chaos as the live evil force itself,
ever teaching any mind co-operation
in time… swirling beauty in bands of invisible
galaxies, barely seen even now, we
see what we are told we see,
enhanced
and expanded to
original intent, at the scale of precision, which
now requires
of those who wish
to know truth init's entirety,
faith in the wits who invented the lenses
we imagine we see through into-ity ever
………..
This day began this way. Everything already,
readable, as it were, once, with us,
before our story folded,
stapled and refolded and bent to allow
the data-based
mass enlightenment I deal with now,
mere data,
knowledge, knowns known more
than I may think or ask,
available on our distant viewing apparatchik
network of nova sensorium's newest equations
that balance at perfectly predictable
infinity… or do not work.
Pop. Bubble after bubble falling
through the quantum foam.
Come on home.
Live and learn, do the math.
Or wait to see
somethings never mattered
up to now, and now, you know,
you did, some how. That's good.

------------------

here we are, after all.
On course, of course;
here has more spectrums to be on.
here has more curves to miss,
here has
turns that twist us back to
now,
sudden- seeming
now, still
wow
is near the only value add
we ever hope to hear.
Cold or hot or just
right, fine
sifted patterns from the echo, wa wa wa

did we get so serious we lost the place
we held
positive on a negative pole,
an aberrant position
erring ever from
the straight point to point pattern
of pro gression to non
aggressive agreement in the we we were
- per haps, as babies we were thought
coyotes, little devils of trickery wu,
so we were swaddled in goat' wool,
to provoke this itching and pre
vent this whole idea, you
thinking wild,
unpacked
unglossed abnormal canine thought…

like a dog, dreaming of the chase.

------------

----------------------
Only chase real rabbits, that's
Greyhound wisdom.

Pookas are always worth the chase,
real or otherwise, if you see one,
chase it.
--------------------------
On the bus,
or off, Cassidy was a character,
sure as any in literature,
an archetypical untamed man,
crazy,
by most accounts, possessed
with a wish to die young,
and be famous for ever having been
a penniless drunkard's form of a man,
an unnatural scion of lost and beaten men.
------------
So, that spirit lingered… in my past that
ran to catch me here
today, in the pattern recognizant

aha, I know
this voice… I knew that spirit,
merry prankster splashing in Burro Creek,
before the bridge existed,
oblivious to quick sand my mother
warned me to be aware of,
as she had learned the hard way,
…remember
there is solid rock below the mud,
hold your breath.
--- a new me --
Burro Creek, survivor of the crossing,
since ever was.
------------------------

Survival is always good news.
Mission accomplished, it is finished, fini.
Peace on earth, good will
to ward men {wombed and un}.
That is a message, an angel, judge it.
They call that
The gospel, in my realm.
It is finished is considered grace.
The truth makes free, grace makes useful.
Infinite grace, with a bit of funny math
for making nextifiy tests, t'
keep the kids sharp.
-- slow lane -- this is…

The good spell, I tell my self I know.
News,
from nearer than we can imagine
possible, posited
in a place called here, at that
point, nearer than we
thought, here
where I exist, the ego me, floating
on that same old ocean of opinions,
lapping at my shore.

This must be that sea, they think
is where all eventualities
congregate to wait
for everything
to finish the pattern, to the nick
in the stick that told us when
to begin, this
once, once more.

I was convinced.
I was never invincible, to my defense,
I built the wall that hides my best
from pride's envaluing scheme,
best of the lot,
without spot or blemish,
make this the one we take,
leave the ring-straked, spotted and speckled.

Holy is pure. Pure is white.
Uh-oh.
This is where we find the stragglers,
carrying the cross of Jesus,
while marching,
as to war.

We sang that song in public school,
when music was a given need
each allegiant took to heart,
Onward Christian Soldiers,
-- mind wanders
----------------------------
7  trombones, and 10 clarinets
led the big parade, with one bass drum
marching as to war,
to destroy what Jesus did not finish,
followed by the lesser corps,
of boy scouts,
with only fife and snare.

Then came the grand equestrians,
all who owned a silver saddle,
passed as knights from when
our fathers stole this land.

My family had the contract to follow up
with shovels and barrows on wheels.
We were the signal for
next phase, of hell's a-poppin-days…

the Burro Barbecue in Bullhead City.

Long ago, there was one red light across the river,
a porch light on a trailer, behind Laughlin's first bar.

---------- Faux Nostalgian
algia alegian re alegian  pain of-
pain felt,
fear of-
fear felt,
---------------------------

Great line in the movie, Boss Level…

geek says "Childless by choice."
Hero replies, "whose choice?"

--- Badfinger - half of them chose death over survival.
--- if it matters when you know
--- I skipped the 70's … so the soundtrack's new…
I heard about you…

looking back in time on a line I never walked,
as it were,
on first pass through the realm of ever afters
flashing
past lights shone, blinking,
settings seeming chaotic in tri-colored quarks
insisting
it all works out.
Rock 'n'roll f'ever, a post-pubescent poets dream.

First, learn the game,
then learn the rule it rode in on. Who is teaching
whom
the next best
move. Ai do believe my loop expanded now
you are here with me
in the mix
confused as reason for knowing quarks come in colors.
Love comes in colors, too.
Could be coincidence.

--- Old Osiris, man, he hard t'****.
Ham 'n' Evans, not so hard. They lost the will to live.
The seventies ate many couldabins.
Freewill or fate, knowing was a factor.
Money had a finger init right, bad, the whole unbitten apple
idea attempting to tweak the future
from the past…

how long did those trips last? Radioman,
can you imagine,
all along its been this one song
?

Taste, and see. know you know.

sapient (adj.)"wise," late 15c.
(early 15c. as a surname)- {eh, a family name?},
from Latin sapere "to taste, have taste, be wise,"
from PIE root *sep- (1)
"to taste, perceive"
(source also of
Old Saxon an-sebban 
"to perceive, remark,"
Old High German antseffen,
Old English sefa 
"mind, understanding, insight").

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=sapient>

Nothing eastern in the idea. Makes me think
what if,
long ago, knowing was a given, not a taken thing?

Isha, you may call her Eve,
or Mito-mom;
she's our most recent common ancestor,
after her,
as a species, we
came to be namers who knew, sapient sapient,
the dominant multicellular life force
on earth. We are her mitochondrial line,
there are no others.
Users of new knowns,
conscience guided
**** Sapien squared, that's us,
tuned to a thought that better
is never worse,
try… learning to talk with no one to talk to.
Imagine that.
… back in garden after the trick,
she knew…
--- C'mon, taste, you've no idea what death is.
She persuaded him to taste.
And there the story verges from the one you know.
It is a book, it wont shut up. No, it's a river. No, a plane word realm...
J J Jun 2020
Comatosed with open gaze insinuating
Morphine daydreams,
With bristling hairs along arms
Before she had the chance to shave
and the folicles deactivated;
It is her womb she has devoted
For the public eye;
How it slowly rots, from incarnadine
-as the historical pictures aside her show-
To it's current viridian swelter;
Like an ugly robust bruise too tough to die.

Rupturing outward a torridness
Of legs and crooked fingers stuck to half-grip,
Scanning southly one notes globules of goosebumps
Haunting up her thighs,
Pricking cloudward and shivering implying that,atleast,
For a second whilst living she was aware of this—
Her impending fate.

Red,red,red lips
bud close to form a cute,poppish image,
Honouring those photographers who come and go—
Her tiny hands are posited to corner her tiny *******
As not to stir any further controversy.
The lady in the jar awaits the usuals,while blind
to her own doing so,

Mind overrun and on display like a faulty calculator
Via that dull, happy, gaze.

She smells up the room of exquisite perfume and
Quixotic trees and fields and roads and too much more to mention...

The fee these stranger's would scavage from their pockets
Just to be awarded a chance to touch
The fair lady’s skin and determine a better verdict
As to whether or not she meant all that much to the world
at all.

— The End —