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Lawrence Hall Aug 2018
A Votive in a Time of Disquiet
I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day
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Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto Apr 2015
“My Technology Nightmare”
My technology nightmare
Leaves me euphoric this morning.
Addicted, like drug trials,
I knew the risks going in,
Got hooked in The Cloud &
Now it always seems easier,
With diminished psychic chafing
Whenever I go with the flow, as the
Hipsters are saying again.
Yes, the hipsters:
Finally, some kids I can relate to.
At least on some level, their music e.g.
The first thing I did this morning,
Waiting for my laptop to boot,
Was put a CD on the stereo:
Matrix Reloaded: The Album.
I set the shuffle function,
Looping back between
Linkin Park’s Session &
Team Sleep’s Passportal.
You can tell a lot about
What kind of day it will be
By the soundtrack you choose,
Your infinite play list,
Don’t ever say these kids have no culture,
Or nothing to share with us old farts.
Old Farts: an apt, Baby Boomer term in 2015.
Kids’ music, some of it quite good,
Quite 60s-worthy if you catch my drift,
As we used to say while grazing in the grass with
Hugh Masekela & his Naai Mongoe-Swazi red,
Surfrikan homeboys & band mates, & that
ANC Kwa-Guqa Township posse,
Shadowing him since Sharpeville.
That’s right, Babaloo,
Go with the flow.
Don’t fight it. You’ve been spared the unintended
Consequences of government shenanigans &
Free market meltdowns.
Consider this a CEASE & DESIST NOTICE:
Cease swimming upstream Mr. Phelps.
Desist fighting tide & current, Michael.
A mariner’s distinction, yet serviceable &
Purposed for this narrative.
“And away we go,” croons a Gleason levitation;
Aloft we go into the wild blue yonder.
The Cloud: an exalted playground.
You are atop the slide,
Kindergarten lord of all you survey,
Sultan, Chinese Emperor & Venetian Doge,
A 90-caliber Duke of Earl,
You are euphoric, Mike.

The descent into the humanoid condition
(See Paddy Chayefsky’s Howard Beale),
Is slick and precipitous.
It begins when you first finger ****
A pocket calculator or touchtone phone,
Or use a Xerox machine.
From there it’s a quick slide down
The technology ****-shoot: video games,
Spreadsheets & word processors,
Emails, texts & tweets,
Laser projection keyboards,
Wi-Fi amplifiers,
GPS navigators, &
Apps for No-Strings *** . . .
By “****-shoot” I editorialize, of course,
In a state of future shock,
Resenting planned obsolescence,
Contemptuous of shrewd **** kids,
Wharton School sharpies,
Scoping out price curves & flowcharts,
Colluding at industry trade shows,
Powwows & confabs,
Releasing newer, more versatile
Models & spinoffs, according to a
Scheme planned three years in advance.

I salt the inevitable wounds of technology,
Taking my fight to the streets, realizing too late
My sole means of alerting the flash mob
Is by so-called smart phone,
*******!
Even the revolution has gone digital.
Poor Gil Scott Heron, dead last year at 62,
Poor Scott Heron, channeled into the
Harlem Renaissance by that loyal Chicago Defender,
Subscriber & reader, to wit: his Grandma,
A “Rainbow Conspiracy” co-conspirator,
Cooking ham hocks & collard greens for that
Mythical coalition of Young Lords,
Black Panthers & SDS.
Heron’s prognostication was wrong:
“The Revolution Will (In Fact) Be Televised!”
We’ve witnessed quite a bit of it,
Lately, prime time lately,
Live by satellite from once exotic places,
Places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria & Ferguson, MO.
I say “once exotic” because it’s hard to be
Visually intoxicated by images of screaming brown men
Sporting New York Yankee ball caps,
“Vote for Pedro” T-shirts and
$200.00 Air Jordan footwear.
Admittedly, the production values of
Revolutionary journalism have improved,
Action reported Hollywood-style,
Narrative arcs, scripted episodes,
Drive-by Potemkin villages & battle scenes,
30 or 60 or 90 day shooting schedules.
Spontaneous proletarian uprisings as Reality TV,
Riveting dramas,
High Nielsen ratings & $500K
Per minute corporate sponsors.
Let’s view the new fall line-up:
(1) “Mustafa Behaving Badly!”
(2) “Tunisian Tear Gas Talent!”
(3) “Gaddafi Gets Sodomized!”
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Matt Mar 2015
Camu and The Absurd
Philosophically, Camus is known for his conception of the absurd. Perhaps we should clarify from the very beginning what the absurd is not. The absurd is not nihilism. For Camus the acceptance of the absurd does not lead to nihilism (according to Nietzsche nihilism denotes the state in which the highest values devalue themselves) or to inertia, but rather to their opposite: to action and participation. The notion of the absurd signifies the space which opens up between, on the one hand, man’s need for intelligibility and, on the other hand, 'the unreasonable silence of the world' as he beautifully puts it. In a world devoid of God, eternal truths or any other guiding principle, how could man bear the responsibility of a meaning-giving activity? The absurd man, like an astronaut looking at the earth from above, wonders whether a philosophical system, a religion or a political ideology is able to make the world respond to the questioning of man, or rather whether all human constructions are nothing but the excessive face-paint of a clown which is there to cover his sadness. This terrible suspicion haunts the absurd man. In one of the most memorable openings of a non-fictional book he states: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer” (Camus 2000:11). The problem of suicide (a deeply personal problem) manifests the exigency of a meaning-giving response. Indeed for Camus a suicidal response to the problem of meaning would be the confirmation that the absurd has taken over man’s inner life. It would mean that man is not any more an animal going after answers, in accordance with some inner drive that leads him to act in order to endow the world with meaning. The suicide has become but a passive recipient of the muteness of the world. “...The absurd ... is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death” (Camus 2000:54). One has to be aware of death – because it is precisely the realization of man’s mortality that pushes someone to strive for answers – and one has ultimately to reject death – that is, reject suicide as well as the living death of inertia and inaction. At the end one has to keep the absurd alive, as Camus says. But what does it that mean?

In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus tells the story of the mythical Sisyphus who was condemned by the Gods to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain and then have to let it fall back again of its own weight. “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” (Camus 2000:109). One must imagine then Sisyphus victorious: fate and absurdity have been overcome by a joyful contempt. Scorn is the appropriate response in the face of the absurd; another name for this 'scorn' though would be artistic creation. When Camus says: “One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness” (Camus 2000:110) he writes about a moment of exhilarated madness, which is the moment of the genesis of the artistic work. Madness, but nevertheless profound – think of the function of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear as the one who reveals to the king the most profound truths through play, mimicry and songs. Such madness can overcome the absurd without cancelling it altogether.
www.iep.utm.edu/existent/#SH2c
#absurd #camu
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ConnectHook Sep 2015
¡ Viva el CHE !
☠☭☠☭☠☭☠

I ask you righteous Justice-lovers:
can it be that art uncovers
fiction passed as fact?
(is Cubism abstract?)

Behold the Caribbean glory –
pass the **** – uh, torch. My story
cries for sober ears
to modulate our fears.

Ask the ones who fled that island
why they left their tropic homeland;
if they think it’s cool
to glorify Red rule…

The noble face of Revolution,
CHE provides the cheap solution;
earnest young Ernesto
lived out the manifesto.

Martial hippie, beatnik butcher
bravely gazing toward the future
beams the brow of CHE
their shining knight of day.

Brand-new bloodshed – same old song
for guerrilleros of the ****
who rage against machines
confounding ends with means.

Such semi-informed fools display
a heady ignorance of CHE –
as if he played the bass.
(I hold them in disgrace.)

Though CHE was tough on Rock n’Rollers,
he abetted thought controllers;
jailing small and great
in Fidel’s prison-state.

Yet they’re convinced that CHE was righteous:
militant against injustice –
worshiping his name,
impervious to blame.

“Yo, CHE wuz for the PEOPLE, man.
(They’re not too sure about his plan…)
He died to make men free –
immortal – isn’t he?”

Vaguely Leftist youth display him,
not quite clear on how to play him –
Bearded god of Vision:
immune to all derision.

Ahem. A different Bearded One,
God’s other revolutionary son
borrowed from CHE – or stole
The liberator’s role…

Yet, let us not be blown off-course.
My words must gather rising force
to set the record straight
and hotter heads deflate.

The hairy Argentinian medic
left a lucrative esthetic:
****** meme of war –
his T-shirts rock the store!

Outworn by posing poetasters,
dreamers, thugs and hero-wasters
ignorant of history
and high on Marxist mystery.

He glowers with a lit cigar:
the noble hippie ******/czar
for kids who went to Kollege
emerging void of knowledge.

Now hailed by rappers, clueless starlets
Hollywood saints (and leftist harlots);
everyone’s a fan
of Cuba’s Magic Man.

What was his plan to save the nation?
Proletarian dictation!
Eliminating classes
while kissing Party *****.

Classic Leftist liquidation:
bathe the land in blood. Salvation
comes much later on.
For now let’s get it on !

(Let’s get his T-shirt on that is.
The taste is flatter than the fizz
of Revolution Cola;
go ask the Ayatollah).

One serious thing I beg of you.
Do NOT discern the truth. Just view
his face with pure devotion
to set it all in motion.

CHE was a merciless father-mucker
(translate THAT to Spanish, sucker).
Put away your ****.
My poem’s too long
(thus ends the song).
https://connecthook.wordpress.com/mine/various/viva-el-che/

☠☭☠☭☠☭☠
#revolution #marx #cuba #communist #che #vivache
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jessiah Sep 2014
Proletarian Pleasure
Dastardly shovel
Mine blister inaugurator
Hand twisting back blazing wretch

Oh, the oasis pool
Cool; are you crystal clean, heaven seem
To this pyramid bottom letch?

Dean swims jolly fat
Pharaoh tan lazy landlubber ham lover
Fat ****** life quite a catch

Shovel I should launch you
Waterwards rust absurd curb lust
To watch you bust in a watery death

Maybe not before a cannonball
Six-foot tall water wall a lot of gall
You got kid, did you learn to save your breath?

Hide away from this blue collar day
Backbreak reality returns, furnace fanfare
Sailor sweat jumping ship not a hand left
7/?/2000

Thought this fit a Labor Day theme if any
#labor #haves #havenots
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Queso Jun 2012
Ballade pour un jeune périmée
‘Twas but a rare, snowy day in Paris,
a January day, as all the lights of the city
rested, as dancers of the Moulin Rouge
fixed their make up during the intermission

And in the graveyard of Père Lachaise
there stood a solitary figure of an old man,
his hands gathered together politely,
in front, clenching on to a tattered flat cap

The man stood in front of a grey wall,
“a tomb without a cross or chapel,
or golden lilies, or sky-blue church windows,”
but with an equally lonesome little plaque
that read, ‘Aux mort de la commune,
21 28 Mai 1871’

He lit a cigarette, from which he took just one puff,
stuck it upside-down on a patch of dirt,
then notwithstanding the thunderstorm
of camera flashes from Japanese tourists,
he started to sing, with a hoarse yet firm voice,
“Debout, les damnés de la terre,
Debout, les forçats de la faim…”

As the wrinkle on his forehead began to stretch,
the dusty particles of ice piled higher and higher
on neighboring graves commemorating
French members of the International Brigades
and Spanish maquis of the French Resistance
-apparently the 3,400 meters height of Pyrenees
was merely a backyard *****
for ideas and fates to tread over barefooted-

His song was a ballad of unrequited passion;
when he got to the chorus about some final struggle
and the unity of human race in a silly hymn,
a song that was never played on a radio,
for which no cool kid would ever
spend $0.99 on iTunes store,
his voice started cracking in amorous choke

The old man was a lifetime lover
in the truest spirit of a Frenchman,
spent all his life trying to charm a girl named Emma Ries,
and whenever he dreamed of holding
the eloquently bruised hands of that sixteen years old seamstress,
his eyes swelled of nostalgic heart,

And he used to cry joyfully,
dropping tears of bullets back in the days,
whether by the guillotine in Place de la Concorde,
behind the barricades of Belleville amidst the cannonballs,
******* in front of the Gestapo firing squads,
or under the truncheons of gendarme in Quartier Latin

As the expired old ******* moaned wet dreams,
hallucinogic delusions of his bygone youth, however,
the chilly, soggy winter of 20th arrodissement piled on,
the ashen slums of Ménilmontant depressingly ugly as always
with brownish-grey molten snow spattered all over
the streets trotted by drug dealers and wife beaters,
and neither the fiery oratory of Maurice Thorez
nor the sanguine grenade of Colonel Fabien
was around to arson the frost into the proletarian spring

In the same winter that the old man sang
the first, only, and last lovesong of his life,
it had been more than two decades already
since the Berlin Wall had tumbled down
and the ruling parties in Greece and Spain,
both socialists,
had just driven 500,000 workers out of their jobs

-J.P. Proudhon, Marx and Engels, Jean Jaures, V.I. Lenin,
Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci, Leon Blum, Abbie Hoffman-
by the time the old man muttered an old pop-song nobody cared for,
all of those names were as relevant as some Medieval knights,
characters from an obscure chronicle centuries ago,
who died by charging horseback into windmills,
mistaking them for giants that held whom they thought as
a princess of an ugly peasant woman,

Eventually, right before his voice cracked
into an embarrassing fuddle of choked-up tears,
impressive for a seventy something years old,
the man finished the song from his memory,
all the way up to the sixth stanza;
yet the curvaceously splintered palm of a seamstress,
it was still so far away from his hands that’s been pleading
since 1871 for that glorious *******
which once stood so proudly in the face of a Czernowitz magistrate

When the cigarette he stuck upside down on the dirt
burned all the way down, he reached into his coat,
took out a rose, laid it softly, like his own infant child,
in front of the plaque which golden inscriptions
turned grey from unwashed grimes of ages
and as the old fool walked away,
his back turned away from the solemn wall,
there was but one little patch of dirt in the whole of Paris
uncovered by snow, still hoping for the spring to come.
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Sam Bowden Mar 2014
Corporate Dem Brand Image VS Emarginati
If corporate Dems tell me about how 'We all do better when we all do better'...
Or about how 'It's not about class, it's about coming out for Dems'...
Or about how, 'No one identifies with the working class' or 'nobody wants to identify with the working poor'...
I say to you, WE ARE THE WORKING POOR.
Look at the stains on their clothes, listen to their words, look at the rugged callous of their hands, who amongst us can last a job loss, or wage cut, or a car blow out?
None of us, cept the 1%.
We are the precariat class, the proletarian class.
I say to you, the working poor and homeless are the 'emarginati', the literal marginal ones, the ones at the edges of society.
But who, honestly, isn't at the edge???
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate turned carpet-bagging Congressional goon, Bank of America executive turned-state-CFO Alex Sink embodies the centrist-right neoliberal dogma of 'business-rules', who cares about immigrants besides those who 'clean our hotels and do our landscaping'.
Brand-imaging, quaffed corporate Dems are why the two-party system in broken.
Both parties are sell-outs to capital, and they think we don't know.
We know, and we remember.
Neoliberal capitalism of 'Washington Consensus' imposed on the rest of humanity will fall.
I just hope we wise up as a republic in the mean time.
#class #capitalism #existentialism #warfare
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James Bradley McCallum Nov 2011
Little Read Books
Mao
wrote a
Little Red Book

an
at the ready

inexhaustible
arsenal

of
quotations

instant ammo

for bandoleros
of correctness

flinging barbs

more deadly
then a cocked
AK

virulent
vanguards

of screaming
proletarian
heroes

whippin em out

to shout down

the running dogs
of capitalism

sprouting
reactionary
bourgeois
schemes

a
sure
quive­r

of razor
sharp

ideological
stilettos

appropriate
weapons

of
respo­nse

for the
heated
struggle

against
incorrect
ideas

instant
revelations­

of carefully
selected
corrections

uncovered

by fevered
thumbs

*******
dog eared
pages

the
indexed
platitudes

uphold
the sacred

holy
dogmas

of convicted
minds

firmly
convinced

in the
comfortable
certitude

of their
derangement

In college
we carried

our
Red Books

in frayed
pockets
of dingy
flannel shirts

but
Lennon
unlike
Warhol
didn't
like
Mao

so we
dropped
Lenin
and
listened
to
Dylan
tracks

hysterically
laugh­ing
tickled
to death

with
Marx Brothers
Horse Feathers

Down
on
funky
Broadway

we
traded
our
Dashikis

for
coo­l

Che
emblazoned
tees

a weekly
special

at the
Silk City
boutique

whom
the
capitalists

cleverly
omitted

breast
poc­kets.

leading us
to displace
our Red Books

forcing us
to adopt

the
revolutionary
logos

of store front
entrepreneurs

Teabagger's
have

a little
red, white and
blue book.

They call it
the Constitution.

Its more of a
totem

a convenient
fetish

the Koch
Brothers
believe

empowers
them

to
pursue

the liberty
of

an unbridled
id

and the
freedom

of banksters
and oil companies

to swallow
anything

that they

can sink

their

insatiable
fangs

into

laissez faire
tolerance

for their
gluttony

is codified

by the grand
celestial
ledgers

of a greedy
God

down with
capitalism

Qadhafi,
has a
Green Book

he holds
it like
hand
mirror

peering into
his vanities

infatuated
with the
beauty
of terror

the
perfect
reflection

of his heinous
malevolence

the fiat
of his
ad hocracy

the
repressive
rules
of totalitarianism

are all
spelled out

the gory
details of

corporal rule
and capital
punishment

suggestively
enforced with

the stern
mutterings

of dictatorial
diatribes

the certain
cruelty

of whip
and stick


Morning Joe
has a book

the incessant
suggestions

of righteous
Reaganisms

a self serving
rhetoric

a stirring
oratory

of narcissistic
prattle

the banal hum

of feigned
wisdom

egoistic
affectations

cuddled and
encouraged

by star stricken
Mika

the critical
thesis

its first rule

thou shall not speak
ill of any other
republicon

the infallibility
of potentates

is always
self evident



Oakland
2/27/11
jbm
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softcomponent Feb 2015
The Asterisk
It was six in the morning**: I sat in a cab dangling on small-talk with a middle-aged white male cabbie basted in the demeanor of the over-friendly uncle. He asked me about school—I'm hyperawake, paranoid, body pulsing, feeling loose, depersonalized, and lightly psychedelic—my vision wavering as if someone had entered my skull to punch raw brain. I did a gram and a half of ******* that night; mixed lines with ketamine to simulate a proto-psychosis, but am convinced I may very well have driven myself past the point of no return. I'd been doing this strict mix for over 2 straight weeks, landing myself in out-of-body experiences and coked-out drawls on the floor like a sad, puckered monkey chewing on a lemon it mistook for an orange. Why I led myself to this existential precipice is both beyond me and totally within my rational sympathies if I pretend I am on the outside looking in.
When I was 18—drawn, for the first time—away from smalltown Powell River and into the Vancouver suburbia of Port Coquitlam, my only successful job-find was a McDonald's arched inside a Wal-Mart. The double-insult this presented me as a teenage anarchist pushed me deep into my first true emotional crisis which I only turned to accept after a particular phone call with my father in which he appealed to me to think of this stint as a 'temporary social experiment'; a chance to learn and breathe this proletarian experience from the inside out. During the pre-Christmas night-shifts, the only customers we ever had were the dark, apathetic silhouette-people Wal-Mart hired to greet the absolutely no one's walking through the door. I incessantly cleaned what was already a mirror-wet floor and made sad conversation with Rosario—the slightly autistic shift-manager with a prickly-shave of a face and an awkward sense of humor I could never come to appreciate and yet always managed to humor in polite obsequiousness. Regardless, it was a form of spread and endless boredom that began to fascinate me; it brought me to a darkness I had never quite known. It was an experience—like all experiences—to be had at least once, to the fullest and truest intensity. To be pushed with reckless sincerity.
Ever since, I have found myself pushing every limit to disembodied extremes—on occasion, to points of such profound irresponsibility or feigned responsibility that I break a particular streak and wind-up on the other dichotomous side of whatever line I unintentionally (or intentionally?) crossed (or broke?) because everything is a social experiment and I've touched the multifarious lives of overworked modernity, residential care aide, dishwasher, Christopher McCandlessesque wilderness jaunt, melancholic Kierkegaard, psychonaut, and now: a short-lived ****** inspired by the excess of Burroughs and the early beatniks all willing to **** their darlings for the sake of blood-stained posterity.
And yet meanwhile—in the cab—I can feel my headache grow perceptively wider from my left temple. Almost like a mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll I am watching from as safe a distance as the physical body can withstand, according to some calculable hypothesis drafted by Oppenheimer himself. I am constantly amazed at how lucid I am in conversation with this friendly cabby; given that I feel as if I'm about to go ******, focusing so deftly on the way the streetlights glide across placid puddles moving only with our tires intervention—and the way I keep imagining insanity in the form of a zombie-likeness of myself strapped into an electric chair, skin melting and eyes rolling back in my head as I seizure to metaphysical death—I still laugh away short quips about the blind-leading-the-blind (he has no idea how to find my destination, and keeps pulling over to check a book road-map for 4143 Hessington Place). The only reason I am with him now is that I am venturing to see my girlfriend at her group-house past Uvic where the door is always unlocked for friends and friends-of-friends, she being the only solution to this crisis with her stash of .5 Xanax pills.
I remember those tense moments—with my body and brain as taut as a bow—he would pull over or pull out and my entire existence seemed to move through space and time as if against a wind that was perpetually in resistance—as if my entire consciousness was going to capsize into some form of overdosed darkness. Even when I exited the cab and waved a friendly goodbye to the old man, I could feel my dopamine receptors attempting to fire on empty. This caused a latent buzz that was only solved with two milligrams of alprazolam and my eyes wide shut until my head shut down.

I held her close. I knew she thought I was an idiot.
originally written as a project for my Creative Nonfiction class, Jan.2015
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Auntie Hosebag Feb 2011
2 Chairs & a Rug
Bernie frames the TV
between his feet--
left hand remote,
beer bottle balanced
by his right—
clicks through half-time shows,
clicks like shooting a gun, a Fazer,
a death-ray secret weapon,
clicks just to do it, an idiot’s
smile faint on his face.

he sees only noise

Emma tends her stamps,
perched on the plain board chair
she upholstered herself—
its arms worn, warm,
warmly welcoming—
her back to her husband,
her life as wife and mother
coming to a languid close.

she tastes some regret--
yet spicy with passion--
where life has had its way with her.

The rug’s bright stew of colors
can’t hide everything
children spilled
when they were young--
juices, milk, soup, sauce, tears;
little dreams,
tiny heartbreaks,
minor crises
ground into the weave;
all the gooey pastries, cookie crumbs,
blood and sweat and nightmares congealed
into solemn patina--
I see protects it from time.

These solid objects—
stout, no-nonsense chair
wearing gouges, marks,
discolorations of use
and years like badges;
fat, chunky, cigarette-burned
BarcaLounger, drunk
from drink spilled
on every surface,
handle supple
as a young girl’s wrist,
swirling a territorial aura
around its microscopic
sphere of the universe;
and the rug…
unassuming, proletarian,
handmade and honest,
each scrap of fabric
chosen by the weaver’s hand,
now useful again,
reveling in redemption—
these solid objects
invade,
infuse,
invigorate
otherwise empty space,
squeeze meaning from the world
around them,
same as the hand of the artist
sculpts love from her heart
to give them life.

The children have moved away
Old friends are dying every day
Stamps no longer can be licked
There is no way to interdict

The Jets are losing again
This is an example of ekphrasis (look it up on Wikipedia).  The artwork this is drawn from was done by a UAS student--don't know who--and consisted of exactly that: two chairs and a rug, no title, about 1/3 size.
Continue reading...
Fernando Del Valle Oct 2014
Cheap Coat
Delightfully force thyself to a cheap coat
Frayed winter shelter
Sworn fre-nemy of millennial style
Who kills itself in gale
While the master keeps cozy within your skin
Wonder if you’ll ever be so disloyal to dare ask for a bath
Then, in irony,
Loved and wanted by the living freezed
And the envy of the proletarian blanket
, shining in its absence-Your presence.
Under the carless hands of the master
Buttons drop and thread spills as solid blood
Doomed to fulfill the unchosen goal
Depletion will not be salvation
Just a mute shriek
living decomposition
Hope thy ist warm.
Most of the weirdly written words are on purpose. I know it may need some work, but it's something.
#first #cheap #clothes #coat #weirdwords
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Edna Sweetlove Oct 2015
Memories of Bracknell New Town
Ah! 'twas so many moon ago
When I met young(ish) Diana
- Known as ***** Di to her friends
Because of her willingness
To gaily **** almost anyone
Provided he was well-hung and sweet-smelling.

Ah! Delightful Bracknell New Town,
Dormitory zone par excellence,
And home to dear little ***** Di,
A paradise where I fully intended
To sleep with her (and much more)
On our very first romantic date.

I felt a bit of slight extravagance
Would ensure a good bunk-up
So I checked out the GFG
For a reasonably priced
Candle-lit Italian restaurant
Within a 10 miles radius.

After a rather tasty nosh-up
We repaired to her proletarian home,
The very first time yours truly
Had ever been in a Council flat,
(and I was a bit anxious about
leaving my Audi A6 Turbo in the street).

As we headed for the bedroom
She asked me conspiratorily
To keep my ******* voice down
As her eleven year old ******* son
Was hopefully fast asleep, doped up
On a generous dose of paracetemol.

O how lustily we two copulated!
Indeed more than merely that;
How I took full advantage of
Her other delightful apertures;
One could safely say that
No holes were barred that night.

We were just in the middle of
Session numero quatro
Involving a vigorous *******
Bit of backdoor love-action,
When the bedroom door opened
And in walked little Reginald.

He said naught but only gaped
To see Mummy in flagrante delicto
(mercifully we were in the good old days
before mobile phones and iPads,
or else our ***** coupling
would have made the rounds of Year 5).

Oft times have I wisely considered
What impression that visual treat
Might have made upon his growing mind:
Was he emotionally scarred to find
His dear Mama was a total slapper
Who liked a bit of uninhibited botty-fun?

I doubt it - but I shall ne'er forget his cry,
So revealing was it of the mores
Of the aspiring lower classes:
*"For Christ's sake who's banging your fat **** this time, Mum,
Can't you keep the noise down, for once?
I've got ******* school in the morning."
#explicit
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Rad Tad Mar 2015
The man in the moon
Once
There was an ephemeral man
Precariously balancing on the ephemeral moon
That choleric moon
Always coughing and sneezing
Knocking off that precariously balanced man.

That parochial moon
With its offspring jogging and frolicking about
Maybe one day, that ineffable cough
Will be stopped.

The right thing
What is it?
I wonder
If you do the right thing--
Does it really make
everybody--
happy?

The proletarian moon child
Cogitated this
Along with a myriad of others
While gazing at the ephemeral stars
From the ephemeral moon

Apocryphal writings claimed the answer
But the child couldn't find solace in it.
So he jumped off
To join the vacuous inhabitants
Of the Earth below.
Wow this is amazing. This is for Mr. Reese's TOK class block 5.
Continue reading...
ConnectHook Feb 2017
Burning Berserkley
☭ ⛧ Ⓐ ⛧ ☭ ⛧ Ⓐ ⛧☭ ⛧ Ⓐ ⛧ ☭ ⛧

Incensed by mighty Milo, you act brave
then rage and bludgeon, shutting down dissent
while Mario Savio shudders in his grave.
Behold: another shameful sad event.
Youthful useful idiots on the attack,
pawns of global capital dressed in black:
Bernie's Berserkley: raze it to the ground
and Donald will be twenty-twenty bound.
Georges Sorel, amused, looks on in silence
at your half-baked proletarian violence,
infantile intifada, civil war,
a glimpse of what the future has in store:
you are the fascists you've been waiting for.
Mario Savio was an American political activist
and a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.

Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher
and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism.
His notion of the power of myth in people's lives
inspired anarchists, Marxists and Fascists.

from: wikipedia.org
#presidentrump #berkeleyriots #miloyiannopoulos #mariosavio
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Peter Christian Ness Jun 2014
The Boy in the Zephyr
Linking the ritual chronology of the past few days in accordance with 'The Boy's' 21st birthday. No longer a boy, but not quite a man, but unsure if that was the ambition at all. Linking the rites of spring with the rites of summer, endless summer, indian summer, endless ******, no longer sure, were we ever, and did we ever want to be?

The seasonal threshold coupling the brutality of summer freedom. All those years on the bench in systemic education, waiting, counting the days until the breakout of summer, the breakout of the nation-wide epidemic of drips of sweat rolling down foreheads, cars racing up and down the highway going anywhere but home, if only for a few minuscule hours of freedom. Not really knowing what to do; the only certain knowledge; that doing anything is better than doing something, whatever that means.

Proud proletarian patriot, hating with every inch the structure and the scaffold, the zephyr swishing and swooshing over the surface of the storefront, while the air condition whirrs away, in a little town on a little island in a massive inlet in a vast sea, tossing and twisting, raging and blistering with the toils of work, throwing rhetorical fists in the air like-you-just-don't-care, with drops of Digital Ink. –with that strange symbiotic disharmony that emits from the boy's fingers, fuelled with every every-day stimulant, caffeine, nicotine, THC; Trembling Hallucinogenic Creation. The ongoing tremble of uncertain fingers, searching for a certain certainty he knows he'll never see.

And therein lies the tragedy
But also the beauty.
To my friend Kyran Paterson King on his 21st birthday.
Happy birthday, Kyran!
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Alicia Harger Nov 2011
I much prefer the realm of my mind
In my mind I am a dancer,
Gracefully pirouetting.
My lithe body painting a picture on the floor,
Slender arm extended.
So enchanting that gravity gives up it’s hold on me,
and my leap sails like a ship among the stars,
and I might never fall.

In the mirror I am a fishwife,
Dully hawking.
My thick body smelling of the rotten wares,
Meaty arm extended.
So proletarian that dreams deny me,
and my eyes deaden like a *****’s among johns,
and I might never look up.

In my mind I am champion,
Boldly crusading.
My strong body leaving a sea of blood upon the field,
Sword arm extended.
So formidable that fate fears to tempt me,
and my cuts fall like the wrath of God upon the sinners,
and I might never be vanquished.

In the mirror I am a *******,
Feebly waiting.
My broken body seeming more useless everyday,
Emaciated arm extended.
So inadequate that movement massacres me,
and my lungs constrict like a boa around its meal
and I might never survive.
Continue reading...
Aztec Warrior Oct 2015
POEM 64 (Changes)
CHANGES

.....”and if the elevator breaks down,
go crazy!”
--Prince, from “Purple Rain”
~~~~~
Is it possible to
hear the rain whisper
to the forest
as it falls between
thirsty trees;
as it converses
dark oboe concertos
with musky,
leaf cluttered earth?
Or to follow
water’s cycle
from the calmness
of the hurricane’s eye,
seeking each molecule
as it links with
oxygen green skies?
~~~~~
Impossible?
But, these random acts,
riotous developments,
are common place,
hum drum, every day
rainbow dreaming
compared to the
possibilities of human
creativity
interactions
and conscious probabilities,
of touching inside
subatomic flows,or standing beside
Jupiter’s cyclops eye
as it penetrates into the soul of
a wicked Miles Be-Bop note
exploding the myth of
humanities inhumanity!
~~~~~
****!
Genghis Khan,
Attila the ***
were angels
gleefully dancing
on the head of a pin
compared to the atrocities of
“human nature” fables
of “selfish genes”,
“bell curves”,
Broca’s brains,
or some god fed, bred
morality of “original sin”,
and “semper fidelis”.
Even Alexander,
slaughtering only hundreds of thousands
in his conquests
built libraries and
stood “enlightened”
compared to today
“****’em all, let God
sort it all out” mentality;
or a more accepted version,
“why, some of my best friends are...”
~~~~~
Have you ever dreamed
a different reality?
Of feeling the wind
in a Van Gogh wheat field?
Or, flying on his “Starry Night” beauty?
Have you ever hoped of being a “Centennial Person”?
Human,
not the robot
powerless automaton
making a handful prosper
while we bleed
nuts and bolts of
everything for a price,
everything for sale.
While for most, we need
need, just to live.
And they say
I am insane
crazy
out of my mind!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!
Excuse me as I laugh
in your face,
as I look to create a place
to take off my hat
relax, and call home.
Like the black Panther,
Quetzal, or Leopard
I too seek the musky
earth and canopy
of verdurous rain forests;
to bath in crystal,
sun reflecting mists
of mile high water falls;
to drink from mineral rich
mountain streams.
~~~~~
Like sister Elephants
raising their new generations,
discussing the re-emergence of Kalahari
after a Spring thunder storm,
I seek the unfettered
creativity
collectively
voluntary comradery
of human minds
working for the common good,
sharing in the common efforts
of a world made better
as future generations
discuss blue green
oceans where we all
first emerged so many
millennium ago.
~~~~~
I am ready,
still fairly young.
Proletarian sisters, brothers
hand me a gun,
hurry cause
I can see the
Revolutionary People’s Army
storming old
**** encrusted
bourgeois citadels.
What force can stop us?
We are the mountain wind
sweeping down
thru valleys,
over plains.
We are irrepressible,
irresistible.
We have a world to win.

Aztec Warrior 10.4.15
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Oct 2017
Sorting Out Russian Poetry
Sorting Out Russian Poetry

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms
This is perhaps an appropriate occasion for asking why a little poem entitled "The Dreaded M-------- 10 Security Alert Popup of Doom That Won’t Go Away" has been consistently rejected as a purported error.

But you can find it at:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8991877327185463528#allposts
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Jan 2017
Borodin's *On the Steppes of Central Asia*
Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.
#of #the #on #central #asia #steppes #borodin
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Kush Apr 2018
The girl in shadows
They told us the news this Friday noon
That her desk was empty, much too soon
said, tomorrow theyd take her to stone
And that the reasons were still unknown
She was a good girl, got good grades in school
Was well behaved and wasn't ever rude
What took her would never be found
She had buried it deep and covered it around

I don't see her when I enter the same old class
She was always on 2nd bench from last
Doing her thing, drawing a doodle too good
There was not much to see in her mood
Must be a proletarian, I had thought
Cuz so was I, just not so lost
All the conversation I had was 'hello Miss"
"Hello, Mr." She said. " Drop the miss, if you please"
That was all I ever said, I regret it now
I don't know why but I miss her somehow.
#death #girl #hello #depression #proletarian
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Shane Coakley Jul 2014
Creatures
I am beset by boorish, bloated, behemoths
who broadside benevolent busboys by the boatload
I do not pause to stop and stare
With indifference and despair
Do I circumnavigate an indifferent globe

I am surrounded by salacious supplementals
who  stand silently still in streaming sunlight
I do not return their glare
I run my hands through thinning hair
and wince at ignorance made flesh

I am besieged by bracingly belligerent bumblers,
The kind of verbal tumblers who fail to jump through hoops,
These self-proclaimed acrobats, put to shame by pussycats
All too often follow circuitous routes
these pitiful proletarian ponderers, as little more than wanderers
On a plane that reaches no destination
They do daily buy their ticket, but to me it's just not cricket
For we are here and then we die, go to the ground not to the sky
and now I lay me down to sleep, in a wooden box that wasn't cheap
and all the while the bleating sheep hear no-one but themselves
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Feb 2018
Sorting Out Russian Poetry (a Russia series, 19)
Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Nov 2016
Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"
Borodin’s  "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.
Continue reading...
ConnectHook Apr 2017
Sandalistas
☭ ♡ ☭ ♡ ☭

You posed yourselves (in radical English)
with fellow-travelers on the barricades.
recalling bygone barrio fusillades
though you speak only red diaper Spanish…
Beholding the party cooperative
where ****** tourists are shown Cuban truth,
you cherished the lies of your leftist youth,
half-informed, predictably progressive.
Stuffed full of radicalized rice and beans,
flatulent, dreaming of ignoble Che
you charmed the sultry proletarian queens.
In your new Guayabera, bonafide,
you hailed the revolutionary day;
pale thorn in the suffering People’s side…
Sandalistas really exist !

NaPoWriMo #4
#napowrimo2017 #sandinismo #sandalistas
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matthew scott harris Apr 2018
DONALD TRUMP MUST BE PERMANENTLY BARRED AND FURLOUGHED
FROM WHITE HOUSE

I ham aghast at increasing banality, deviltry, ferocity,

   imbecility, liability, obscenity, rapacity, ugly

   offal popularity witnessed by Donald trump

hence aye aerate thoughts,

   how *** a nine his banal, demoniacal,

   egomaniacal, fanatical, guttural, and hurtful


   culling frightening insight, where portentous more deadly than

   sport ugh guise Man 'o War debacle

   doth crowdsource, flickr, and indeed long foster

   my plenti full over active imagination


   to induce writhing expressions of fearfulness

   proportionate burst of haughtiness) while he doth stump

would animate mine rear i.e. rather noxious flatulence

   expelled from outward doppelganger of ****

pull stilts skin cuz this chap haint Noah fan, but wood vouchsafe

   tub be a jimmy neutron n sponge bob squarepants


   Ark n saw wing enemy against da dull don dat pumps

swaggering bravado with fist swelling ego

  analogous to his body infected with severe case of mumps

that brazen denizen hurling and spewing volcanic fiery spittle


   with incense against others – to him mere lumps

of protoplasm heckled as inferior to himself

  boasts as proof of favoritism, that enervating, fawning,

   gabbling feverish arrogant mania for him jumps

higher than expected,


   while he commits faux paws which bumps

his ratings higher, he gleefully endorses

  pandemonium toward gloating gump

  shun from the uproarious. querulous

  and populous madding crowd!


throughout launch of his campaign,

  banally, devilishly, and fiendishly

   character assassinating those opposed to his views -

inducing me to harrumph and dump faith

   in humanity, wondering what ruse

smart democratic pol mongers can conjure up


  while pacing in soft shoes  

woeful sentiments sans his attempt did render

  competitors to drop out in ones n twos

whom he purportedly considers apostates,

   and heathens cons heed Make America Great use

all manner of bullying (determination whose occipital pupils

coalescing into searing grape nut size wrath poisonous daggers)

   forcibly silencing any jeers

when necessary plagiarizing neo **** play book with a "who cares"


attitude closing in on pinteresting

  for United Stated chess board foursquare,

which deliberate intent to foment n wrought prostrate -

music to those hoteliers billion dollar ears


   sans defeated apprenticing contestants hearing sobbing tears

with vitriolic violent bilious inducing jabs of his a will full spears

   reputations of personalities (men and women politicians

  his especial flavor of scathing, scandalous, scabrous sordidness


   spewed squeamishly to grab by the figurative crotch

   the hello kitty 2016 presidential election),

   whether liberal, conservative, heterosexual or queers

thus this middle-aged mwm abject psychic fractal shears!


the following poetic addendum composed way buff fore

(in my mind) atrocious, cretaceous, enormous, ferocious,

garrulous, hellacious, indecorous, malicious nemesis,

pernicious, querulous, rapacious, specious, tedious,

unrighteous, vicious, dangerous demon

must BE STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS ASAP!


DONALD TRUMP – RE: DUCKS --

this portion dashed off (while dry ving an open white hearse slay

so many months back before sale him slotted the most coveted

Casino biggest win - before the political imbroglio

   much more upsetting than today


Axe the old don

A trump peter n piper of incredulous hellish crud - be gone

With the ha air brushed pompous ****

  so Macy jackal hound doth run

After public outcry yelps for his hide and proletarian discord won!


Donald Duck Trump ™$ - a pompous ***

makes war with his big brass

knuckles and bucket of crass

maligns vis a vis character assassination with bro kin glass

inciting banal deathly hallowed expletives toward lass

sees – especially Fox Television

   news anchor woman Megyn Kelly


   inducing said personality to bear grizzly brunt of brutish mass

of vitriolic n vile insults from incriminating verbal pass  

   so…ex post facto viz mine NO VOTE from me

   thus this digital screed to disallow him

   to accept the oath of office, cuz he will hurrahs  

   from such a snooty arrogant simian with sass!


I van a try to describe while sitting on me ****

How he oh bomb in lee rages with gnashing teeth

  while back a slump

Blasting Democratic nomination as a sham –

  From special interest bro and sis turn pump


He, the epitomy of crass bloviation, a malignant lump

Whose rants sans presidential sham rocked outcome

   lets him trounce, pounce, denounce

   liberal Democratic stalwart efforts bolstering middle class

   to blitz total mortal kombat like a rabid red bull

   in a China shop with his millions beds this,


  That and another woman to ******* jump

Disseminating gene pool – Obama null lee birthing

   more quackery and additionally doth ****

The mass media as some foolhardy charade


   characterizes abominable (MORE FRIGHTFUL THAN YETI):

   culpable, deplorable, execrable,

   et cetera of a frazzled grump, This arboreal clothed ape

   Erecting Taj Mahal ******* symbol where players dump

And gamble away hard earn cash


   For his hello kitty, as if cachet to grind and bump

Lambasting with that maniacal leering pout

   while hair *** runs rampant with red bulls

   In a China shop atop his bulbous

   aerosol sprayed heady measly shaped


  ulterior motive aimed his sights to become Pastor of Muppets

  Dis eased cranial hologram

   Of cretaceous, facetious and insidious mump!


By: Baron von Ivan Mal N. Ya.
#out #with #the #loutish #oaf #full #schmuck
Continue reading...
trf Dec 2016
Give
A dandelion allures an essence of the innocent,
Distinct from a ****, once puffed flurries offspring of homogenous descent.

Proletarian by nature, now **** without seed,
That puff propels my wealth and now I can lament.

Bees harbor resentment, “You can’t pollenate me!",
Enticed by sinuous poison and overlooked by the Bourgeoisie,
Cautiously creeping like honey’s viscosity in vain,
Synchronicity is cut short swiftly by A Coup de Main.

_TRF
Continue reading...
matthew scott harris Jun 2018
Pesky Poppycock Payback! Please Prepare!
Prevarication permits pretend perception, presenting
piquantly piqued, pimply pimping *******, plucky
pulchritudinous previously pusillanimous, prevalently
puckish, psychic packman, pokemon playing proletarian

puppeteer pygmy, peevishly *****, plummy, plumy,
pompously pushy, pampered, prefabricated pinchbeck,
pokily plying plowshear, plodding peregrination, pied
piper pitifully peppy pornographic potato pealing,

parsimonious paradoxical protagonist, proposing
preposterous panicky pacification plots, prioritization
pertinent penultimate peroration, perhaps perceiving
perjuring, perplexing, perverting puzzling pronouncements

projecting pulsating pixelated pulpy pinball pinging
packets prompting pacific, poetic, phlegmatic purplish
psoriasis plagued, plumbum pallor pallid, Paleolithic
protuberance pronounced, psychosomatic prohibitionist,

polarizing perfunctory peculiarly progressive, patriotic
postmodern pathologically proud paternal panache,
peripatetic panaceas portraying prescient perfidious
puerile president, predominantly proposing parochial

principles, plenty public parking, purposefully
promoting pharisee phalanxes, pilates practicing
paragons, perennially peaceably proficient protesters,
profitable polygamy, pugnacious pitbull powerball

players, pandering polyandry, propagating professional
palindrome pensive peeping people, peddling,
proselytizing predicating prostitution, proliferating
phenomenally, populist persona promulgated peyote

phased physicians pioneering prescription promoting
paradisiacal pricey photographic pictures, placating
phrenetic physical perturbation partaking place
purchased (paid paltry pennies) por palatial piazza.
#playfully #punishing
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Apr 2019
Choking on Aspirational Hyphens
Our straw boss, now, she hyphenates her name
And there is something frightening about
Those faux dashes stapled between the nouns
Her proper nouns, as if they might slip loose

And fall onto the pages of Debrett’s
As isolated bits of DNA
Dropping their aitches and their gees, oh, please!
So tack that Burberry hyphen back again

Let no proletarian taint be seen -
Made in China becomes Fabrique en Chine
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Nov 2017
Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia
Borodin: On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:

While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,

Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:

A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is glorious with victory.
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Nov 2017
Heaves of Gas - a lapse into free verse
Heaves of Gas

I sing the bodiless electronic
Manly working man blank verse flannel shirt
All gone now
Pajamas and video games
Cupcake competitions instead of schoolyard tug-o’-war
A gap-toothed grilled-cheese sandwich singing under the sea
Bi-polar bears alt.yawn Revolutionary Proletarian Art with    
      Selfie  Sticks
Banana Daiquiri Republic
Must be nice to be a thinker all great
Adored by all, and subsidized by the state
Made in Nicaragua by free-range artisans, I think
Re-Presentation
Rhinestone tattoo flipflopped knee-pantsies and a cartoon tee
Die, Webinar, Die
Up the Revolution you can’t make me clean my room
Machine against the rage on the cosmic app
Renewable green sanctions
Double-double boil and bubble a froth’ed mocha decaf with a
      tinkling of Cinnamon
We are the drones we have been waiting for
Sometimes ya just wanna babble incoherently...
Continue reading...
matthew scott harris Apr 2021
Whoami? Within following figurative nutshell:
Yours truly just a fluke of the universe
worming his way hook, line and sinker
thru the meandering time stream,
which current speeds up the older I get.

A garden variety (generic) agrarian wannabe
antiauthoritarian, bookish antiquarian bloke,
antitotalitarian, well mannered barbarian
disestablishmentarian, egalitarian, futilitarian,
grammarian, quasi hereditarian, latitudinarian,
libertarian, majoritarian, nonsectarian,
nonvegetarian, proletarian, sexagenarian,
Unitarian.

Yours truly amazingly
chronologically, enigmatically,
gracefully, interminably weathered
despite malevolent mental maelstrom,
linkedin with extinction of **** sapiens
in tandem with many flora and fauna
populating planet Earth
courtesy Manhattan Project
when Ernest Rutherford split the atom.

Fiendish and gruesome
phantasmagoric denizens
dwell deep inside subterranean vault
perform an evil dance
haunt psychic landscape
with imaginary (yet realistic)
gargoyle visitations cast macabre trance
nocturnal unconscious invaders
cavort and gallivant
disturb quiescent sleep with
devilish and sinister prance.

Apparitions crept stealthily
into peaceful slumber receptacle
repository whence illusory
landscape of dreams
take place to rejuvenate exhausted
body, mind and spirit triage
rent asunder blissful sleep
with a startled fright
cold sweat drenched
nighttime garments and bedding
teeth chattered uncontrollably
heart pounded loudly inside chest
nightmarish phantoms wrought
an awful ghoulish sight.

Mushroom cloud anniversary
triggered frenzied gargantuan hallucination
since 6 August 1945, at 08:15
inauguration into atomic age took place
one country after another sought
to acquire demonic and destruction devices
maintain self-preservation in
surreal atomic weapons race
impossible to escape the dark threat
that looms and threatens life on Earth
one launched missile spells extermination
across entire global space.

No escape from humankind military machines
munitions march mean madness
and guaranteed demise to all life
**** Sapiens violent history of
bias, intolerance and/or prejudice
characterizes vicious warfare
and chronic species strife
unaffordable legacy for future,
(and perhaps alien) archeologists
who will sift thru civilization debris
with delicate knife.

Artifacts buried in heap of pulverized
and radioactive ash
civilization monuments
and hedonistic symbols
gone in a blinding brilliant flash
irksome flotsam and jetsam
spewed into outer space
alien nations light years distant
collect miniscule bits and pieces
offer object lesson as extinction
for beings that become excessively brash.
Continue reading...
matthew scott harris Apr 2023
Glory to thermodynamics in general...
and generation of heat in particular
cuz yours truly
spoiled with trappings
of Western Civilization.

How ideal I imagine
to dwell in a self sufficient domicile,
where thrum of the central heater...
automatically activated
upon advent of twilight,
or self adjusted/regulated
based on outside temperature
since writer of these words
thankfully linkedin to PECO grid,
(counts CAP and LIHEAP programs

for low income earners a dogsend),
subsequently scribe of Schwenksville
not resident within "smart home",
nevertheless manually pressing button
invites emulation of
Donald Trump zippered smile,
when mechanisms set in motion
to spark convection currents
warming cockles and muscles
versus skin feeling cold and clammy.

One anonymous **** sapien appreciates
basking, and luxuriating,
within climate controlled environment,
whether bone chilling
deep freeze when/where old man winter
furiously blows frigid air
into lovely bones of mine
sets indentured jaws chattering,
as on this dreary
and rainy April 30th, 2023,
or contrarily when sweltering
hazy, humid and hot
dawg days of summer
necessitates setting air conditioner
at refreshing sixty six degrees fahrenheit.

I could never survive
alone in the wilderness,
which dependence on creature comforts
inured me since birth,
but all the more power to people
(such as **** Proenneke
pronounced pren-icky)
who lived off the grid,
and minimize their carbon footprint.

Truth be told, a non impactful lifestyle
tantalizes, teases, titillates...
yours truly, a garden variety generic human
dependent I vow woolly admit
on consonant contrivances
and conveniences conditioned
courtesy capitalistic consumeristic credo
decrying his dependence
upon flow of electrons,
whereby flip of switch
(rather than fight)
when systems of a down fully functional

instantaneously allows, enables,
and provides electricity
with absolute zero ability
to stave off blackout
attributed to sudden disruption
regarding power outage
linkedin with severe
kickstarted meteorological phenomena
or terroristic machinations
(possibly even homegrown unrest)
worst case scenario signaling the end
of the webbed wide world

reducing to rubble
(think being bombed
back into stone age)
annihilating comp fur table trappings
of twenty first century civilization
forcing survivors to learn basic skills
cooperation, integration, proletarian
and utilitarian virtues
altruistic, democratic, humanistic,
mechanistic, and socratic zest
begotten, distilled, and forged
nsync with opposable thumb.

Angst crimps existence
generating dystopian thoughts
despite countless factorial permutations,
differentiations and combinations,
this cyber surfer avails two alms
boot Grinchian genes snatched such balms
when tethered in utero umbilical connection,
etched bromide, which hankering calms
embryonic sensation this corporeal being lacks
constantly subjected to exams
from the school of hard knocks,
which I bewail sets back and gloms

mine aim to revel in blissful contentment
but circumstances decreed otherwise
cursing this chap tubby haunted
exhibited by sweaty soles of feet and palms
by veritable elfin grotto dwelling phantoms
hovering over sweet clover dials a mirage
where dreams comprise psychedelic qualms
yes...Iris sieve blurbs from gals and guys
that spans the world wide web, and exude
premature ejaculatory ecstasy, puzzled if fie
totally tubular trod a tedious trek
along the boulevard of broken dreams.

What happenstance oft finds thyself to flail
amidst difficulty to maximize
optimal opportunities
searching for Holy Grail
or whatever constitutes such lofty
personal objective, perchance being hale
and hearty of body, mind and spirit
spurs the furies of fate tut test this primate
while he aims to gallop with mighty industrial
vim and vigor leaving a virtual cloud

of dust, though mindfulness helps
to pass go, and chance avoid jail
time, then maybe monopolized
feedback offered and accepted
to this married caucasian
nasty and shortish brute
with one percent Neanderthal
toothless though I possess gumption
pseudo quasi-vegetarian
enjoying poetry stone soup,

yet also subsisting
on supplementary vitamin
and mineral packed glue tin free
NON GMO fruity tall tales for a male
thirty six years shy sans bing a centenarian,
which span of life best cut short
acquiring tetanus courtesy
rusty nine inch nail
hammered into faux coffin,
cuz this impossible mission

(aery faced nincompoop) doth turn pale
at the prospect to fill up a space of land
best utilized by twittering
and tweeting birds - such as quail
mongoose, or ibis (though aye ne'er saw
one), where cremated ashes sail
across some verdant plain under
cerulean skies putting to rest every travail,
which thoughts of dem eyes spells
the main impetus explaining

this rambling spiel
warp and woof ova gauzy veil
imperceptibly looms closer upon
turrets of my digital sea faring gunwale
unwittingly capsized courtesy
Moby **** sized whale,
and thus desperation
finds me pleading for salvation
while swinging from vestigial yellowtail.
Continue reading...
Lawrence Hall Feb 2018
Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia (a Russia series, 28)
Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is bright with victory.
Continue reading...

— The End —