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.

Forty Days

A Season of Grief, a Season of Rejoicing

November 9-December 20, 2014

For Barbara Beach Alter 
It is Christmas morning in Saco, Maine, where today Bett, Aaron, Emily, Thomasin and our beloved cousin Marie find ourselves gathered to celebrate our first Christmas without dadima (our name for Barbara Beach Alter).  Brother Tom writes that already in India he and Carol with Jamie, Meha and Cayden (the only of her seven greatgrandchildren Barry never held) have celebrated.  Today Marty and Lincoln join us in Maine.

This gathering of documents—notes, drafts of memorial services, poems, homilies—is my christmas present to each of you.  It is a record, certainly subjective, of grief and rejoicing.

John Copley Alter
1:14 a.m.
Saco, Maine 
November 9

Loved ones,
Barbara Beach Alter died peacefully at 2:55 Sunday morning (today).  Bett and I had the good fortune to be there for the final beating of her good strong heart.  She murmured charcoal.  The nurse who was bathing her afterwards noted how few wrinkles there were, and it is true.
For those of you nearby you may if you want visit Mom in her room at hospice this morning (until noon).  Visit? Darshan? Paying respects?
Bett and I plan to be there around 11:00.
Much love to all. A blessed occasion.
John

 
November 10

Matthew 5:13-19
Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

yesterday in the early hours my mother died her saltiness
restored all that had through the months of her old
age and convalescence obscured the lens of her life cleaned
away so that for us now more and more clearly
as we hear about her through the memory and love
of so many people her good works shine forth in
their glory but it is to the days of her
convalescence the days of her dementia I would turn our
minds those of us who spent time with her at
Wingate long-term care facility remember that Barbara Beach Alter became
at times fierce in her commanding us that ‘not one
letter, not one stroke of a letter’ of the commandments
should be altered do you remember that those of you
and us who were given the work and gift of
spending time with Barry in those days in that condition

remember for instance how fussy she became about the sequence
of food on her tray how impatient with us for
our trespasses and violations how adamant that we look forward
for instance and not back at her how she would
say stop holding my hand and saying you love me
you have work to do o she was almost impossible
and certainly incoherent and demented in her obsession with law
and procedure fussy impatient imperious I do not forget being
scolded reamed out put in my place for having somehow
failed to do what the ‘law and the prophets’ demand

Barbara beach alter in the days before hospice in the
nursing home and hospital and even if we are honest
in the final years of her life found herself caught
up in the rigidity of her anxious desire to be
faithful to the laws and commandments of her life and
that made her at times extremely demanding to be with

amen and the epistemological confusion of course the clash between
her reality and ours it was all an ordeal for
her and for those of us who kept her company

and yet and yet through it all and now as
that ordeal for her is no longer paramount as she
dances in heaven all the wrinkles and discomfort of her
life removed and forgiven Barbara Beach Alter kept the faith
living in the midst such that those who cared for
her most intimately the strangers all professed your mother blessed
us


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.



So, brother and sister, here are my thoughts about the memorial service(s).
Let’s find a time when we three can be present; that’s the most important thing.  My life is currently the least constrained by agenda and schedule.  And then the grandchildren, recognizing that Jamie may not be able to come.  So, our work is to find our when our kids are able to come. Bett and I are exploring that with our three, each of whom has some constraint: Emily, the cost; Thomasin, the piebaking demands, Aaron school.  But we are flexible.

Much love.

John



Walking in my mother’s wake today some trees
a gentle breeze some dogs a little boy
the neighborhood and I took joy from interaction

we are at best a fraction in love’s
calculation after all heaven I realize is not
above or below cannot be taught comes naturally

as death does walking in my mother’s wake
I found new allies learned yet again not
to take myself too seriously to be caught

off guard as a matter of principle and
not to insist that I understand but live
in the midst of forgiveness


in my mother’s wake I am reading these books for
some way to continue to knock on her door Wendell
Berry he can tell me some things and William Blake
he can take me closer and I remember she described
me once as an unused Jewish liberal so I am
reading about protestant liberalism but ham that I am also
reading Carl Hiassen’s Bad Monkey and Quo Vadimus that my
daughter left behind and mythologically Reflections from yale divinity school
no fooling Denise Levertov David Sobel Galway Kinnell’s translation of
Rilke some wake
 
November 11

Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

this morning in the wee hours my mother died one
of the wise bridesmaids whose lamp to the end was
full she carried always the flask of oil that is
joy that is the love of the kingdom of heaven
and of the bridegroom a flask always replenished by prayer
by devotion by a humble courageous living in the midst

she expected every day the bridegroom to come in other
words and she was also one who would never refuse
to share even the last drop with somebody in need

and at the end it is so clear the door
into the banquet hall was not closed to her as
it is not closed to any one of us foolishness
is to believe otherwise to believe that the bridegroom will
not come today in the early morning in the wee
hours that is when he comes in the midst of
other plans is when he comes even when we are
doing what we assume to be good work when we
are doing what gives us pleasure our duty joy comes
then unsummoned unpredictable random even according to all our best
laid plans my mother loved so many things her pleasure
included dancing late in her life terminally unsteady she invented
what we loved to urge her to do namely the
sitting jig and we grew up with images of her
Isadora Duncan dancing with white scarves in an enchanted forest

Barbara Beach Alter aka Barry aka dadima bari nani aunt
and daughter wife missionary is now I know dancing a
rollicking boisterous jig on the shores of a lake that
is as her grandson once confided to her god in
liquid form spilly Beach of course also dyslexic executive function
compromised she was but one who loved to be always
in the midst surrounded by loved ones some of them
absolute strangers she shared her oil because for her it
came welling up from an inexhaustible source a deep eternal
well of such illumination and laughter such giddy divine chuckles

for her there was to be no exclusion she would
not find the awful idea of being one of the
foolish applicable to anybody but happily she welcomed into her
midst so many it is hard to imagine how many

so there she is now a bridesmaid dancing for joy
in such elegant clothing with such perpetual brightness

amen hallelujah rejoice


sometimes I think she pulled us all out of the
magic hat sometimes I think she knit us all into
one of her theologically impossible sweaters and then with a
wink she passes through the eye of the needle and
is gone and we are left to play in her
honor endless hands of solitaire sometimes I think we are
no more than the hermeneutics of her life the epistemology
artless she was not her heart like one of those
magical meals for her then a doxology praise then praise
she knows salvation

what is a life’s work it is like a landscape
dotted with oases and gardens for the thirsty and the
lost it is like scraping through dry barren ground and
finding there suddenly not only the theology of paradise but
such seeds your hands ache to begin the planting what
is a life’s work what has been shut for too
long opens what has been shut for too long opens

a life’s work renews itself then with death the kernel
of hope that dies in springtime sprouting is what a
life’s work becomes
 
November 12

John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.

I know my mother very much enjoyed having breakfast with
god and that the meals of her nursing home drove
her nearly crazy and that when at last she found
hospice o she again could imagine the feast of heaven
at which Jesus breaks bread with us and speaks with
such clarity do you love me more than these I
know it was questions as simple and overwhelming as this
that dominated her final days do you love me love
being  one of the last five words she attempted to
speak do you love me she wrestled in her last
months with epistemology and psychology and theology and all had
to do with whether she could answer unequivocally you know
that I love you and that she could say of
her life that she had broken bread with god we
all remember in her life those moments when there was
a great gladness an innocent acceptance of what lay immediately
in her presence now those months in the nursing home
tormented her in precisely this fashion that it was hard
to accept to be in the midst of such mediocrity
and woe to be innocent and accepting but now praise
god there she is a happy guest at the great
feast and we left behind bereft can acknowledge that she
loved god in her own fashion as best she possibly
could and do you remember being with her there in
hospital or nursing home and she commanding us to move
beyond holding her hand and saying we loved her and
to feed the sheep to do that work which will
make of this earth this here and now an outstation
of heaven Barbara Beach Alter loved god in her own
fashion as best she possibly could we remember that and
that memory is today like a great network a web
of love and inspiration o we would gladly one more
time hold her hand and say I love you but
we know also clearly I think today what the work
is to love our neighbor as ourselves to work for
peace and justice I think of my sister with her
colleagues in WEIGO and how her sisters have understood her
grief  let us break our fast together then glad for
the worldwide web that in these days is reading the
gospel of the life of Barbara Beach Alter praise god


feed
tend
feed
in exchange for his three denials Peter is given three imperative verbs
feed
tend
feed
this is the commission Jesus after breakfast on the shore of the sea of Galilee gives to Peter
twice he says feed
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts 700,000 people are hungry
1 in 6 americans are hungry
living in uncertainty about their daily bread
more than 18,000,000 in Africa
842,000,000 around the world go to bed hungry


Marty and Tom
The thinking about the memorial service is taking this slow and cautious turn, namely that we have three services (at least), one in Sudbury, one in New Haven (allowing Stan and Chuck and others to come) at First Presbyterian (with Blair Moffett we hope), and of course one in India.
The date frame appears to be somewhere between December 17 and 20, unless you have other thoughts.
The actual cremation happens tomorrow.  Lincoln, Bett, Alexis and I will attend, and then of course there is In the Midst on Friday.
Love you more than tongue can tell.
John


the thing with a life well lived is that many
people have partaken the way let’s say a river moves
down through any number of different lives all the time
sedulously seeking the shortest path to the sea to steal
a line from somebody or other meandering a watershed within
which so many of us find a way to live
our own lives nourished and for each of us the
river distinct and different white water the slow fertile meander
the delta and we say to each other this is
the composite river


sometimes I feel like a sleepwalker trying to run a
marathon sometimes I feel like a speedbump in a blizzard

an arrow in a wind tunnel sometimes I feel like

a hazard sign in an old age home sometimes I
feel like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to ride a tricycle

and sometimes those are the good days when identity is
strong like an icicle in a heat wave is strong

I try to read wisdom literature at happy hour scotch
and Solomon can’t go wrong I think and sometimes I

feel like crying
 
November 13

four days ago we were left alone there with your
body after your breathing ceased and the proud stubborn beating
of your heart and in those four days beloved mother
so much I would love to say to you and
share the antics of the squirrel late leaves on the
neighborhood trees music Orion the network the atlas of love
your life has left behind and all the words we
are the gospel of today and I would sit with
you there then in silence as I sit now four
days later vigilant insomniac aware that the kingdom of heaven
is not more complicated than singing than love than dancing

we are all dancing the dance lord siva teaches and
the s

†           †           †    

A quorum of biblical scholars
turned their doubts into thousands of dollars.
Armed with Document Q
they revealed nothing new
but the dirt neath’ the white of their collars.

A proud “health & wealth” Oklahoman
was renowned as a gospel-tent showman.
While the scriptures he twisted,
their tithing assisted
his rise from poor hick to rich Roman.

A sexually diverse professor
(assured he was not a transgressor)
spoke only of openness
glossing sin’s brokenness;
rainbows and tolerance—yes sir.

A Mormon, who lost his own ephod
Realized he was running quite slipshod
and invoked Joseph Smith.
(Yes, it may be a myth—
but it’s not like misplacing your I-pod…)

A Christian whose faith was prophetic
held to views that were truly pathetic.
This crazed Pentecostal,
not quite an apostle,
had taken an End-Times emetic.

A sober and staid Presbyterian
was distrustful of thoughts millenarian.
After smoking some bud,
he awoke with a thud;
in his sleep he’d become Rastafarian.

A preacher who fleeced his disciples
overdrew his own balance of scruples.
He was finally captured
(defrocked and un-raptured)
and rent by his destitute pupils.

A sister who waxed Pentecostal,
mistook herself for an apostle.
Speaking pure glossolalia
she sure could regale ya’
with prophecy; crazy—but docile.

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
--this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free, it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic
handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there
does one see abled wooden houses
painted that awful shade of brown.
The other houses, the bits that show, are white.
Elm trees, low hills, a thin church steeple
--that gray-blue wisp--or is it? In the foreground
a water meadow with some tiny cows,
two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;
two minuscule white geese in the blue water,
back-to-back, feeding, and a slanting stick.
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray storm clouds.
(They were the artist's specialty.)
A specklike bird is flying to the left.
Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?

Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!
It's behind--I can almost remember the farmer's name.
His barn backed on that meadow. There it is,
titanium white, one dab. The hint of steeple,
filaments of brush-hairs, barely there,
must be the Presbyterian church.
Would that be Miss Gillespie's house?
Those particular geese and cows
are naturally before my time.

A sketch done in an hour, "in one breath,"
once taken from a trunk and handed over.
Would you like this? I'll Probably never
have room to hang these things again.
Your Uncle George, no, mine, my Uncle George,
he'd be your great-uncle, left them all with Mother
when he went back to England.
You know, he was quite famous, an R.A....

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--"visions" is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art "copying from life" and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

I thought the ***** would make me stop feeling it
But instead I just felt it more intensely.
I kissed a girl and I liked it
Not like that Katy Perry song describes.
I am not some **** straight girl with a boyfriend
Who is trying to impress other dudes at a washed up bar.
I just don't get it
Maybe I never will
How I can be some Christian child of God
And feel this simultaneously?
I will never understand
How some will continue to harp on the idea
That this whole spectrum is a plea for attention
And does not exist.
What the hell are they talking about?
Do they think I like walking around every day
With a stigma attached to my chest
Even though most people do not even know the truth?
Do they think I enjoy
Lying to my parents, day in and day out
Saying I am this pure, straight Presbyterian teen
Who's secrets are all out in the open?
There is a ton they do not know
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Do they believe that I find pleasure in
Hiding a huge part of who I am
From my school, my church and my community?
They cannot judge me
That is God's job.
These are just a few of my classic gripes
About being a closeted bisexual
In a conservative family.

Fashion designer Dame Trelise Cooper is holding her first show in Wanaka to help raise funds for the town's planned hospice.

The September 30 Theatre of Fashion event is being organised by Wanaka fashion store Escape Clothing owner Lucy Lucas and the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust and organisers hope to raise up to $30,000.

Trust fundraiser Bev Rudkin said the show was "such a coup for Wanaka".

Wanaka hasn't had anything like this before and we know Theatre of Fashion will be an exciting event."

The event will be held at the McRae family's Glendhu Station Woolshed and will showcase the Trelise Cooper Summer 2015/16 collection. It will also feature three Trelise Cooper 1950s-inspired installations.

The event includes an auction of donated items, with all proceeds going to the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust.


photo:www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses
Lucas lost her mother to cancer two years ago and says the hospice facility is especially important for the local community.

At the moment, Wanaka cancer patients and their families travel either to Clyde's Dunstan Hospital or Dunedin Hospital for hospice care.

The Upper Clutha Hospice Trust will be a tenant in the Presbyterian Support Otago and Mt Aspiring Retirement Village's proposed aged care/dementia facility on Cardrona Valley Road. Construction is scheduled later this year.

The trust is raising capital and operating costs for its patient rooms within the larger facility.

Lucas stocks Trelise Cooper in her shop and approached Dame Trelise to see if she was interested in helping the trust.

"Dame Trelise is incredibly generous with her time. She does a lot for community causes. Wanaka is so lucky to have her agree to holding this event, and for her to attend is even better. Guests are in for a treat. Trelise Cooper shows are always fantastic, with plenty of 'wow' factor," Lucas said.

Dame Trelise said she was only too happy to help: "Giving back to the community is something I have always believed in. It means a lot to me that my passion and the work that I do can be put towards something that really makes a difference . . . I have some very loyal customers in the South Island who have supported my label right from the beginning, and it feels great to be able to bring an event like this to them."

FAST FACTS

What: Theatre of Fashion inaugural show

When: 6.30pm, Wednesday September 30, 2015

Where: Glendhu Station Woolshed, Glendhu Bay

Cost: $65 per person or $75 for front row seats. Tickets from Escape Clothing, Ardmore Street, Wanaka, or the Upper Clutha Hospice Shop, Ballantyne Road. All proceeds to the Upper Clutha Hospice Trust.

- The Mirror

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses

These are poems for the victims and survivors of the Nashville Covenant School shootings.



Nashville Covenant Call to Love
by Michael R. Burch

Our hearts are broken today
for our children's small bodies lie broken;
let us gather them up, as we may,
that the truth of our Love may be spoken;
then, when we have put them away
to nevermore dream, or be woken,
let us think of the living, and pray
for true Love, not some miserable token,
to command us, for strength to obey.



For a Nashville Covenant Child, with Butterflies
by Michael R. Burch

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails, when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream while winter scowls
and nights compound dark frosts with snow?
Where does the butterfly go?

Where does the rose hide its bloom
when night descends oblique and chill
beyond the capacity of moonlight to fill?
When the only relief's a banked fire's glow,
where does the butterfly go?

And where shall the spirit flee
when life is harsh, too harsh to face,
and hope is lost without a trace?
Oh, when the light of life runs low,
where does the butterfly go?



Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this—
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live nine artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...


Epitaph for a Nashville Covenant Student
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



As springs’ budding blossoms emerge
the raptors glide mercilessly.
—Michael R. Burch

I wrote this haiku-like poem on 3-27-2023 after the Nashville Covenant school shooting massacre.



This poem is for mothers who lost children at Nashville Covenant and in other similar tragedies...

Childless
by Michael R. Burch

How can she bear her grief?
Mightier than Atlas, she shoulders the weight
Of one fallen star.



I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

for the Nashville Covenant survivors

I pray tonight
the starry light
might
surround you.

I pray
each day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.



Nashville Covenant Call to Action
by Michael R. Burch

We see their small coffins
and our hearts break,
so we ask the NRA—
"Did you make a mistake?"

And we vow to save the next child
for sweet love's sake,
but also to protect ourselves
from such heartache.

The lives, safety and happiness of our children depend on our ability to persuade the NRA and its political lackeys to stop exalting money and political gain above the life, liberty and happiness of innocents. What is the cost of banning assault weapons, compared to the ultimate price innocents pay when they are used by madmen playing Rambo in classrooms and theaters? Ironically, just hours before the Sandy Hook massacre, in a weekly column that I wrote for the Nashville City Paper, I pointed out that right-wing politicians are not just demanding the "right" of citizens to bear loaded handguns into restaurants that serve alcohol and bars — a combustible mix. No, people who call themselves "conservative Christians" in collusion with the NRA and its gun lobby are demanding the right to carry assault weapons everywhere ... which "logically" means into universities, high schools, grade schools, kindergartens, pre-schools, Sunday schools and maternity wards. When I wrote this, I was speaking ironically — I thought — but then a few hours later the NRA and its political minions made me seem like a prophet.



Sandy Hook Shooting Gallery
by Michael R. Burch

If we live by the rule of the gun
what can a child do,
but run?

Sixteen of the students who died at Sandy Hook were six years old; the other four students were seven. I wrote the poem below for another child gunned down by a madman. While we cannot legislate sanity, we can be sane enough to legislate away the "right" of serial killers to purchase assault weapons so easily. We can defend many small victims from such carnage, if "we the people" have the wisdom and the will to defend them.



Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who was born
on September 11, 2001 and died at age nine,
shot to death ...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm — I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring — I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the brutal things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short ... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here ...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bear them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings left 27 students and educators dead, and question our nation's sanity and resolve to put children's lives above money and politics.



This haiku makes me think of the students and teachers of Sandy Hook, who were trapped in a war zone:

War
stood at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
—Watanabe Hakusen, translation by Michael R. Burch



Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for.

It seems to me that the NRA has declared a war — an open season — on our children, by insisting that assault weapons must be available to every Tom, **** and ***** Harry. But what will we, the people, say and do?


Whence Now?
by Michael R. Burch

Grown darkly accustomed to grief,
will we ever turn over a new leaf?



Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

The three students shot and killed in the Nashville Covenant School massacre were all nine-year-olds. They were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney. Three adults were also killed in the shooting: Cynthia Peak, Mike Hill and Katherine Koonce. It is no longer good enough to talk about loving our children and praying for them to be safe. We have to protect them from mass murderers armed with assault weapons. The alleged serial killer, Audrey Hale, was reportedly armed with an AR-style rifle and an AR-style pistol. In more civilized nations citizens cannot legally purchase such military-grade weapons. The Nashville Covenant massacre marked the 19th shooting at an American school or university, so far in the first three months of 2023, according to CNN.

Keywords/Tags: Nashville, Nashville Covenant, Nashville Covenant Presbyterian School, school shooting, shootings, massacre, children, kids, students, child abuse, gun control, America, United States, USA, death, deaths, ******, serial ******, massacre, bereavement, class, classes

1591

The Bobolink is gone—
The Rowdy of the Meadow—
And no one swaggers now but me—
The Presbyterian Birds
Can now resume the Meeting
He boldly interrupted that overflowing Day
When supplicating mercy
In a portentous way
He swung upon the Decalogue
And shouted let us pray—

(A message to you
Inspired by the THR Family)

You came to us sick, frightened, confused
What happened next became international news.
We saw you so ill, with everything to lose
Our goal was to help you because that’s what we do.
Alone in a dark ICU room
We fought for your life, our team and you.
We cared for you kindly
No matter our fear
You thanked us each time that we came near.
As each day pressed on, you fought so hard
To beat the virus that dealt every card.
No matter how sick or contagious you were
We held your hand, wiped your tears, and continued our care.
Your family was close, but only in spirit
They couldn't come in; we just couldn't risk it.
Then the day came we saw you in there
We wiped tears from your eyes,
knowing the end was drawing near.
Then it was time, but we never gave up
Until the good lord told us he had taken you up.
Our dear Mr. Duncan, the man that we knew
Though you lost the fight, we never gave up on you.
All of us here; at Presby and beyond
Lift our hats off to you, now that you’re gone.
You touched us in ways that no one will know
We thank you kind sir for this chance to grow.
May you find peace in heaven above
And know that we cared with nothing but love.



~  postscript.

this poem is not mine; it was penned by a nurse who wishes to remain anonymous. it spoke to me of the passion with which so many, many caregivers serve, so i wanted to share it with you, and in so doing salute each of those who serve us all in the medical community.  

the following was published by ABC News on 10/20/14:

"The last nurse to leave the hospital room where Thomas Eric Duncan died has written a poem about the Ebola patient, penned during the sleepless days after Duncan's death, a source told ABC News.The Associated Press. The source provided the poem to ABC News, noting that the nurse who wrote it asked to remain anonymous. Duncan, the first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola, died at the Dallas hospital on Oct. 8. Two of the nurses who cared for Duncan -- Nina Pham, 26, and Amber Vinson, 29, have been diagnosed with Ebola.(Editor's note: THR refers to Texas Health Resources, the company that owns Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.)"

When lightning has struck me
eighty-two times
I want to hear everything
and on the eighty-third
hear nothing but
the most precious of memories.

I hope I can recount stories
of our embarrassing proposal
and the angry Presbyterian ministers
performing the ceremony

because in twenty-two and a half
years I have never once believed
my grandparents loved each other,
but last night the second Julian
recounted he and Lavern's saga
of a marriage that ended in
four ****-ups and decades of
disappointment
with the most agreeable disposition-
even for a man dying
of too much salt in his diet.

I only hope someone will love me
enough to eat bland food
and our grandson's vegetables one day.

Forcing an alignment of corporate resources
for some theory of best fit correlation
doesn't work on Kingdom People
when using an unspoken method of tabulation.

If Life is about true spiritual growth,
then why do ministries attempt to pigeon-hole
not making any allowances for us
to develop, expand and break our current mold?

Despite multitudes of outcome possibilities
the Church seems to suffer bouts of paralysis
from the continued mashing of talents and gifts
resulting from unexplained Presbyterian analysis.

There are many ministry leaders who speak of vision -
Their tone indicates that the laity is completely blind and numb;
their message is clear - the Body is not interested
to reach the Earth before Kingdom Come.

We are souls with great, untapped potential
and not just elements of an array.
Despite our abilities and life experiences,
our dreams and desires we're not allowed to convey.

For a failure of Church motivational tricks
comes from cramming God's People into a human matrix.



Author Notes:

From the book: Reaching Towards His Unbounded Glory
The ISBN is: 1-4196-5051-3

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2006, All rights reserved.

I stared, stupidly, at his head
and the pool of red he bled
from the brass rail down onto
the barroom floor.

Had it been a half an hour
He, so cocksure of his power,
had first set foot
inside the barroom door?

I'd been alone but for the Doc
a Presbyterian Scott
who just come from
a hard delivery.

Mom and child were doing well
but the Doctor looked like hell
so I sat him down
and gave the man some tea.

I 'm the Pub man's assistant
and my job that Winter's morning
was cleaning up the place
for this day's trade.

Had I been out in the snug
I'd have never met this lug
who is lying on the floor
fit for the grave.

I am Irish from Tyrone,
He was from Lancaster-shire.
To his thinking I was
a blight on English soil.

He was spoiling for a fight
which he started with a right
that sent me sprawling
on the barroom floor.

He said "Get off the floor,
and I'll treat you to some more."
"You stupid ****!"
His boon companion smiled.

I'm not one to shun a fight
when I'm firmly in the right
and these arms were toned
by years of quarrying stone.

Was it surprise I saw
when He learned I'm a southpaw.
Satisfying was the sound
of fist on chin.

As he commenced his trip to earth
It was the foot rail caught him first
He cracked his skull
and then he was no more.

His friend ran for the police
as his pulse and breathing ceased
Doc looked up at me and said
"This won't go well"

" Take my bicycle and flee
Off to Scotland , listen to me,
unless you fancy
dancing on the wind."

So I rode like one possessed
on the narrow winding roads
Early winter darkness
coming down.

After, I worked on dairy farms
and spent three years in the mines.
Eventually, the case grew cold
and went away.

I emigrated to the States
where they too have
their loves and hates
but the Irish are accepted in a way.

I don't believe in God
I'm sorry
I'm not actually apologising
for the fact it's just what I've been conditioned
to say by society

Sorry?

Don't get me wrong
I was shackled as a child
to Sunday school after Chuch
and my informative
young woman years were left dead
by Girls Brigade
didn't make me less wild

Mother was Presbyterian
Father was Methodist
(You don't think I was messed up by this?)
Christened as Chuch of England
Raised as a Baptist
I think, all of the above
fall under 'Christianity'
but I'm not sure of this

So many secular emotions
under one umbrella
I'd bet, someone's gonna get wet

Then there is Islam and Hinduism
Sikhism and Judeaism
and spiritual beliefs like
Bhuddism and Druidism

How do all those different Gods compete
for our favour? To get us to lay down
as followers, to be the mat for their precious feet?
It would have to be a pretty mean feat!
I imagine them as Gladiators
fighting for the right for the masses to cheer
Winner takes all but, Losers get the non believers

What do you think the Ancient Gods
think of their petty squabbling?
The Eygyptians, the Greeks?
who simply stated humans
were to worship them religiously
and it was done, because they can
They seemed more fierce to me
sitting on Mt Olympus and coming down
occasionally, at least they had a face
What's been touted today to the human race?

I don't know enough about Religion
to make choice or want to learn
I married a Roman Catholic
that opened a whole new can  of worms
An Irish Roman Catholic
Yeah, I see you nodding your heads
Suicidal, I think is the term

So I decided my children would not
be burdened by my religious ineptitude
They can choose their own beliefs
for I surely won't intrude
on their individual right to make
a decision based on their own feelings
I know I'm probably wrong, I just want
them to believe in something
Anything that makes their day better,
that helps them sleep at night
I won't choose their religion for them
I don't think that's right

Nyack, NY: a naked man sits cross-legged in the middle of a road
with a dead dog sprawled across his lap, next to him there is a woman
with an empty mouth (no ice & no teeth). Nyack, NY: I am not one of them.
At night I hold scissors to my feet the way bottles were once held
to my young newborn face. Mother, Mother, in 1995, 19 years later,
did you think I’d be in a hospital?


White Plains, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division: there
is a boy there who loves football & tells me that the two of us were born like twins.
I have never seen a football game in my life.

White Plains, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Westchester Division: there is a girl who at dinner time hides the bread rolls in her fleece, her fleece is purple like my father’s face was the day he proposed to my mother in a restaurant
in Woodstock, NY.  

Upstate NY I do not cry. Upstate NY I am folded into mountains
like the comforter of a child, it is summer & my stomach expands
like boiling eggs. During the egg toss I break the egg in my hands
like a crack of thunder & my partner gets mad at me & I do not move,

like a boy I do not move. I kiss five boys in 12 months, & for each one
I feel like I am kissing my hand. For each one I feel like I am kissing
sidewalk or a magazine & I want to apologize. I let each one of them
bite my tongue until I can’t feel my stomach. I never want to feel my stomach again.

This year I am deer this year I become barbecue this year I am Christ I do not
go to church & until tonight I forget to remember my grandmother.

The Church in its awesome majesty
Looked down, from over the hill,
From faith, to hope, to travesty
It stood, and is standing still,
So proud in its fine regalia
Its ritual, and never the least,
Its potent God who would wield his rod
Deter the jaws of the beast.

The Bishop of Saint Ignatius Church
Was a proud and holy man,
Who wouldn’t suffer the jibes of fools
From Rome to Afghanistan,
And certainly not those down the hill
In the new Masonic Lodge,
That beastly, secret doctrine that
He advised his flock to dodge.

He’d stand at the steps of his church and stare
Down at the barbarians,
He hated Lodges, he hated Mosques
And Rastafarians,
‘There shouldn’t be anyone else but me,
I hold the eternal God,
What gods they worship could never be,
For they’re all distinctly odd.’

While down at the Lodge of the Masons
They were cool with their golden rule,
They had to believe in a god as such,
But how, it was up to you.
For some would practice the Baptist faith,
And some Presbyterian,
While some enrolled in the Primitive state
Were a type of Wesleyan.

There was only a single Catholic
And he wore a glued on rug,
He wanted to still be young at heart,
Was known as the Grand HumBug,
The Antidiluvian Mason’s Guild
Was the name he’d chosen himself,
The others differed, but he was keen,
And he was the one with wealth.

Their God was known as the Architect,
They carried the masons tools,
The set square set them apart from all
The disbelievers and fools.
They worked on their secret rituals
And kept a goat at the back,
For leading a blindfold novice in
And guarding the Lodge from attack.

The Bishop heard that a Catholic
Was leading the Masons there,
He fumed, choked on his rhetoric, but
Was heard to firmly declare,
‘I will not shelter a wayward sheep
Who has taken to ways I hate,
The only fate for a traitor here
Is to excommunicate!’

He gathered a dozen priests to march
With candles, down to the Hall,
Surrounded the base heretic’s Lodge
And named HumBug in his call,
Sprinkled his holy water ‘til
It fizzed, and gave off a smell,
Doused his candle and closed his book,
Consigning the man to Hell!

But Humbug patted his glued on rug
Went out, untethered the goat,
He let it loose on the dozen Priests,
It butted the Bishop’s coat,
They ran in confusion up the street,
To the church, set up on the hill,
While the goat was hard at the Bishop’s heels
Like a demon released from Hell.

It butted the Bishop’s altar and
It charged, knocked over the font,
Scattered the pews for the devil’s dues
In a hellfire sacrament,
While HumBug muttered he might end up
In Hell, with his Mason’s sect,
But the Bishop’s God, had failed with his rod
In a clash with his Architect!

David Lewis Paget

.oh i don't know, why would i have a "problem" with christianity... where and whence it went into the new lands like some conquering reject... i'm all still hot & bothered that so few people read the counter mainstream: **** me... the atom bomb didn't wake them up, why would the discovery of the nag hammadi library wake them up? st. thomas' gospel: like... jesus playing chinese whispers with thomas, who wrote, after hey'zeus took him aside, told him something, upon returning to the other disciples they inquired, and thomas replied: if i told you what he told me, you'd stone me... back in hey'zeus' time... sure... social ostracism: b'ah b'ah black sheep says: wolf! the clown cries, the theatre burns down and everyone enjoys a night out... back to basics i guess: we're not talking about outright social ostracism... we're talking about psychological ostracicism: is it me... or has cogitans per se reached a zenith when it was to tickle the traits of calustrophobia... it's no longer ego cogito... it's... ego cogito: superego noose quasi- / semi- "thinking" and the unconscious id aspect of ego... whenever attached to "thought": short-circuits and goes into an epileptic spasm of: what to do?! what to do?! what to do?! *******: you have your new freudian pseudo christian trinity: mental gymnastics provided by the israeli co-op to teach you to count pythagoras via spaghetti curly-whirly... fun! fun fun fun! i once lived alone in my head, having only one body... now i have one body, but many paranomal "telepathic" insurgents living with me... who do not concern themselves with the concept of space... ego, head, toe, does it really matter whether a manicure is to be exacted? i don't like smoke, i don't like mirrors: i rather melt in the fire... i am the son, i am the heir... of a shyness that is criminally ******... probably the best lyrics in the world... i am human and i need to be loved, just like everybody else does... magic, par excellence... please... jesus basish died when it left europe, now a h'american resurgence... happy people happy sheep go to sleep without question... happiness is an act of levitation in terms of existentialism... and when it shatters... it's not a nervous breakdown... even on the scale of the individual... the fall of the tower of babel comes with the fifth horseman of the apocalypse... riding a ******* unicorn... well... he's actually the sixth... the fifth is already riding... ha ha... horseman... he's riding a donkey to the site of execution... who needs drungs when you can measure what the co-op convenience stores are selling as a liter of whiskey... they're actually selling 1.425 liters of whiskey... i measured the sloppy herring slitherings and salmon high jumps... see... the atom bomb was dropped... but the mainstream christian never mention my angst... the nag hammadi library is never mentioned... why isn't the unearthing of the nag hammadi library never mentioned? the hebrews are all over the discovery of the dead sea scrolls, their dissociation simulated with their 2000 year old the penance for unrightfully sentencing the prophet isaiah to be cut in half... and he was a courtesan (isaiah): so what?! did he speak truly? 2000 years of jewish history... summed up by the unjust killing of the prophet isaiah... lesson learned... the lawful killing of hey'zeus: well, 2000 years of masochism of willing converts to "appease" the god: coincidental shared "circumstances"... why am i not a christian? if love is what is and what is the cross: sorry... can i decline having a fetish for a latex ******* *** fantasy?! or... you know that story of the perverted dog? the one that is so ***** is latches onto your leg and starts to ******* you, imitating the **** of you with a curled hand to propose the **** itch-tight simulation? oh no... we hide the socially ostracised... so we wheeled out the retards for full display... and monger... the critique has become elevated... it's harder to pick-out the knitty-picky intentions of people who want to differentiate before the grand c.c.t.v. altar of the omni-unus watching via the terms: proselyte... pharisee... sadducee... baptist mongrel presbyterian... honestly... spew me all this post-atom-bomb *******... oblivious regarding the nag hammadi library... mainstream h'american christianity: honestly, with this amount of reading even atheism doesn't suffice! atheism doesn't suffice! the antithesis yet to be explored by the masses is my curriculum motus... mea motus vitae! h'america is yesterday... yesterday being late 90s early 00s... now it's a quasi-balkan paranormal export cultural affair of tarantula bit-frames of former convo... it's like watching a regurgitating boa constrictor snake rather than an ingesting boa constrictor with 2 weeks spare of waiting in smog for the next meal... why didn't i follow the catholic bureucracy and be confirmed? well... why don't mainstream h'american "christians" come out and say: yes, the emergence of the nag hammadi library is problematic for us... it's sure as **** problematic for me... and what will come later, and reach the mainstream... with be the sort of explanation associated to the clarity of depiction of a human face, as close as picasso came "close" within the framework of cubism... hellish contortions and exponential deviations... imagine how hellish the human face is depicted in cubism... now imagine that same face smiling: within cubism.

there you have it, automated phone service,
the pinnacle of the national health service,
the surgery got rated 1.7* (stars),
1 for the fact they exist, and 0.7 for the service
they provide; god almighty i hope you
don't fall ill in england these days,
it's like trying to buy a ******* turnip at
the butchers or fishmongers...
dial the number... a robot answers
'hello, thank you for calling the north street
medical centre... please note that we do
not deal with repeat prescriptions over the
telephone; please press 1 to book or cancel
a triage appointment; press 2 if you have a
query concerning a prescription...'
2...
'thank you, if you have an urgent query
concerning your prescription please press
0 to speak to a receptionist...'
0...
'hello, welcome to north street medical care
multiple choice questionnaire...'
oh for ****'s sake...
what now?
when was the battle of Hastings?!
1066                    yesterday               mm, maybe tomorrow?!
there i am with a simple need, just write
the ****** prescription and i'll be off,
it's not like i'm asking you to do 7 hours of surgery on me;
no wonder they got 1.7 stars...
there are more receptionists than actual doctors:
ooh spooky spooky ****** doo in the bag too,
ooh look at me, i am Microsoft word proficient,
i'm the cream of the crop... fair enough,
and i'm a ventriloquist in my spare time -
pour me a pint while you're at it,
my throat's dry from all the cursing...
because why the hell do you even have a contact
number for a surgery... if it just cuts you off?!
might as well return to the antiquity of using my
legs and seeing you face to face,
because that's what i seem to have to do...
go for a walk, come back with some poor somali
girl who walked 5 miles for a bucket of water.

It is early Sunday morning
at St. Luke's Hospital. In the maternity ward.,

Where I adored this beautiful face ---
What a wonderful, amazing, astonishing place.,
With such a pretty smile and face.,

Before I could cry out to your pretty face.,
An angel in a blue coat took you from our place.,

I began to cry out:
Where are you taking this pretty face?

I cried, cried and cried.,

Next. The angel in the blue coat. Took me from our place.
Can this angel be taking me back to your pretty face?

But no!

This angel took me to another pretty face.,
Everyone kept calling this pretty face, “Mommy, mommy, mommy...”

For the next twenty-three years.,
While I did my growing and learning.,
Mommy was my only pretty face.,

It is early Sunday morning at,
St. Luke's Presbyterian Church.,
Sitting there, in the church pew.,
I see a pretty face.,
I cry out, “Have I ever met you in another place?”,
The second day we met!



© 2012 - 2014 Ronald J Chapman All Rights Reserved.

God was seen wandering around unattended
On the second floor  
Of the downtown Presbyterian Hospital
In the issued opened-back faded mint green gown

God had been admitted to the Hospital, after being picked up
Due to a spree of drunken debauchery.    
God suffered symptoms of memory laps
And an ‘inflamed’ mind
God’s fright paralysis and hyperarousal were also in the mix

Much like the Ouroboros who slays itself
And brings itself back to life
God lives, still, on an endless recycling,
On the second floor of the downtown Presbyterian Hospital

God mingled with the staff and the residence
Making funny coincidences and disorienting reality
Eating ice chips and drinking stale coffee
God looked on carefully to distinguish followers from foes  

Making God’s own sort of rounds
God went around asking family if they’ve got ‘God Conscious?’
Kind of like the slogan ‘Got Milk?’
In those who did not respond to questioning, it was obvious
They did not hear God even ask and clearly did not have this
God Consciousness
That’s OK, God would think quietly, “you soon will.”  

Most did not recognize God as anyone other than a patient
God’s beard and bare feet gave not a clue
There was one young child however, in room 202
Who looked up and saw what she knew to be True
Her monitor stopped and right there and then she joined in God
That young child in room 202

Honest Presbyterians
acknowledge Luciferians

Prudent Presbyterians
break bread with Luciferians

Proper Presbyterians
preach Christ to Luciferians

Fragile Presbyterians
sing hymns with Luciferians

Gentle Presbyterians
give place to Luciferians

Milquetoast Presbyterians
soon yield to Luciferians

PC Presbyterians
include the Luciferians

Rampant Presbyterians
make fun of Luciferians

My secret
Will it jump out of me
Before I can catch it with cupped hands
And rock it back to sleep?
All I want to do
Is tell them
Tell everyone I love
Everyone who I so desperately want to accept me
That I like girls
And I like boys
But somehow the two seem to
Invalidate each other.
I will be ostracized in the conservative community
Of my small republican county
As well as in my very Presbyterian church and home.
And yet,
I would not be accepted fully among the queer community.
Sometimes I wonder
Why don't I just make my life easier
And ignore my feelings for girls?
I wish it was truly that easy.
It struggles and squirms in my body
As if to scream
"Get me out of here!"
If only coming out
Was actually an option.
But at this current moment
In my household
In my school
It is not.
So I guess I will continue to be
Bisexual, pansexual
Whatever the hell I am
In the comforts of my bedroom.

My terrifyingly-terrifical reality warps under therapies psychiatrical
& psychedelical like no Atlantic tuna fisherman's scale pentatonical
upon oceanically-flat, perpendicularly-level sea planes capitalistical
while birds fly lower in an arid-zoned Arizona that's deterministical
& esoterical as men push thumbs up girly ***** for hikes strategical
after circle jerking to shows that're less proctological than athletical
but rarely & lamely ever, hungrily-raunchily-anorexically bulimical
I fork pitches into threshed alfalfa hay bales like I am pyromaniacal
and susceptibly prone to no ills local nor core diseases xenotropical
Hey largish woman, let us fish for warm regards at Cold *** Harbor before our freshest blue turds are totally stolen by a bold **** robber whose pushers are burned crack hoes with clap & an old **** jobber
fishing for the corpses of Frisco floaters with a *****-slotted bobber
off the Golden Gate where gag-happy girls have sold spit as slobber
while each ***** pukes peat & tosses penicillin as a mold-pit lobber
on leave from a Georgia chain-gang as a queer, unshod clod hopper twice demoted from flat-ball spotter to broken Hoboken hobnobber
who, like Hillary, survives on gray, vomited Hoboken squat cobbler
in gay museums & ***** ***** houses as a snot-clobbered shopper
resigned to tease, displease & nonviolently seize Herr Alvin Toffler
Pay more at Mary Tyler Moore's fish store on the floor of the shore,
with Al Gore on his global-warmin' tour to make wealthy men poor

He will allow, if you press him on the point,
That it can be a hard go sometimes;
Holsteins have no concept of weekends, he will say,
Or Christmas, for that matter,
But all that being said
With a smile practically gushing contentment.
He has, for thirty-plus years now,
Worked some four hundred head, dairy and beef
In this cold, flat valley where low-pressure systems come to die,
Bringing the detritus of low clouds and snow flurries in tow,
Sometimes even into the middle of May.  
He is not unaware the outlook for his homestead is hazy, at best;
He has consciously blocked out how much he is into the bank
For feed, the re-built corn silos, the new Case tractor,
And both of his sons have long since fled south,
Preferring the comfort of powerpoint presentations and cubicles
To a cold, dark milking house in the middle of January,
But he has seen the future come and go,
Dwelling in the misbegotten debris of the recent past:
Huge, slightly Fifties-space-movie-flying-saucer satellite dishes
Pointing forlornly directly at the horizon
Outside shuttered and foreclosed upon houses
Which litter any number of the back roads,
The yellowing signs promoting cheap internet access
Taped to windows in small, half-empty strip malls in Gouvernuer,
All cause enough for him to opine at virtually every opportunity
I have seen the future, and I can confirm
That it clearly ain’t what it used to be.

He could have, if he had of a mind to do so, gone in another direction;
Unlike most of the farm kids,
Who were packaged as a unit into the General Ed track,
He’d tested himself into the College Prep classes,
Where several of his teachers made it a point to tell him
Virgil, you need to understand that you’re a bright kid.  
You can do other things, go other places,
And one or two of his instructors were downright offended
That he chose to take over the farm immediately upon graduation,
But he knew at an early age—no, had always known
That he would remain in this place, on this patch of land,
Even though he could not even begin to explain
The whys and wherefores of his decision,
Language being the ungainly
And wholly inadequate instrument that it is
(This is why, he would say every Sunday morning
At breakfast with Gerald Glass and Earl Tiefenauer,
The both of them rolling their eyes in tandem,
Knowing exactly what came next,
The Akwesasnes went hundreds of years without a written language;
They were smart enough to know that all words do
Is just get in the **** way)
But he knew that what was in the gentle, serene chugging,
The rhythmic pop of the ancient machinery
At the  Karsten place over on the Heuvelton Road
Flinging another squared-off hay bale into his jerry-built wagon,
Or in the blue sky which stretched, impossibly cloudless and glorious,
From the St. Lawrence up north down to Fort Drum
And onward for several forevers either way besides,
Was greater and weightier than anything in the cloth-bound red Bibles
Which sat in the pews at the Presbyterian church in Madrid
(Not his father’s church, but the blustering, cocksure Baptists,
Sure as death itself as to the absolute inambiguity of the Word
Were simply not his kind of people)
Which he had begun attending some half-dozen years ago,
Not because he was a particularly spiritual man by any means;
He had simply been unable to sufficiently convince himself
That all of this could happen strictly by accident.

I am writing this using a pen that was oh-so-kindly gifted to me by a kind old lady. She also gave me a cookie, but that’s beside the point. I think she knows that the best way to bribe college students is through food. I’m standing at the table beside a girl who I THINK is in one of my classes, but I still am not quite certain. She is the kind of athletic and strong that screams “this is the confidence that you’ll never have”. We’re both being shown a piece of paper with a minimal amount of writing on it, but an infinite amount of pure heart. The paper says a sweet word about prayer and doing well on finals and all that, but my focus is on the excessive amount of exclamation marks at the end of each sentence. I guess Presbyterians really are the Oprah Winfreys of religion. I forgot to mention that the old lady is Presbyterian. She is advertising a fall bible study led by college students, which, if I were not plagued with the constant assumption that I’ll never know how to socialize or make friends, I would be absolutely enthralled by. The truth is that I’ve been trying to get “plugged in” for a while now, but how can I get plugged in when my wire is frayed and everything I touch seems to smoke and burn at some point? My plug is a circle and the outlet is a square, so I guess it’s like that saying, “A circle can’t fit into a round peg”, or something like that. Anyways, I didn’t mean for this to become an analogy between being disconnected and electrical outlets, but it turned out that way. The old lady at the booth was nice. I hope to someday be that lovely. Although I was around her for a total of thirty seconds, I saw what it’s like to live a life not shrouded in a black cloud of fear. So, thank you, lady.

Normal childhood    

As I receive more rejections
Of my nostalgic poetry
I must apologize
I wasn't molested, neglected
Or abused in any way
Well maybe I got spanked a time or two
And sent to my room a few
Yes I had my own room
We went on great family vacations
My brother and I were taught right from wrong
Family went to church some
Mostly Presbyterian or Lutheran or such
It was just important to listen

Copyright 2016
Richard L Ratliff