I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's Illiad and Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind
Apocalypses here to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Though Jesus is the "Word"
He never penned one).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk,
Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck,
Sherman Alexie's Part-time Indian tale....
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's  Illiad and  Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind,
Collin's Hunger Games and Dashner's Maze Running
Apocalypses enough to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Since Jesus is the "Word,"
Through men He penned).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour  and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

The list goes on and on, and will, I'm sure, expand beyond capacity.

a month's worth of a hiatus
and:
no luck...
   i try to remember whatever
presence in the comment
section...
  there was never any...
                how to stage a:
     dialectical experiment...
    none to my liking...
   will the fringe reading
the Dada movement
    of scraps of works of
arthur cravan, jacques rigaut,
julien torma or jacques vache
help?
         to be honest...
listening to the fringe band
like percival schuttenbach
will not help either...
  how the **** did i find
wooden shjips' album V
in the Romford HMV
on vinyl: i will never know...
last time i heard:
there were only 3 HMV shops
left in London - metropolitan
& outer...
       Doug Putman:
you're on mate...
    seriously...
     a music store used to be:
a culture of...
  well... talk to someone
in a shop that only sells
  mobile phones, or trainers?
back in the day:
you'd be hoping for
a coffee: and all that culture
of the busy bodies...
             can i get the counter:
that buying vinyl looks
less sad, "out-of-tune"
  than buying CD?
i had to ******* move into
the realm of the vinyl:
to kick myself out of the house...
i don't like this prison,
of everything being:
delivered to my front-door...
well: i will always look less
like a loser or a sad bore...
if i buy for a medium
without head-phones...
   that i take care of:
no the gramaphone is not
a car...
   but, ooh, a crisp vinyl
for the 20th century of
the late 70s...
something else...
big news throughout the week
though...
what news?
i'm trying to figure what
the news was...
i haven't heard the world
since,
  it cried something
for about two weeks,
   and i was like:
   and if that sort of propensity
is to ever make me
reactionary...
outside the internet village?
it's a ******* village:
get over it...
people are congregating
in village-esque
            scrutiny:
whatever the numbers,
     but for people who've
never lived for a month
in a city no bigger than 60K
(60K is exaggeration
regarding the city i was born)...
the internet is no longer
a "world"...
  i.e. there's no da-sein worth
to it...
   there's only a da-...
imagine my glee when Heidegger
was cited in the 2017
film call me by your name...
i was like:
finally!
       the sort of nonsense
i understand! and when people
would rather:
or rather would rather not...
spend 2 years of their lives
reading sein und zeit...
    or as i like to call it: sein und "da"
      und nicht...
niemand, aber ein leib,
                         heulend:     ja!
it was either that, or:
listening to people exhaust the video...
one eventuality was
coming, one eventuality
disguised as an: inevitability...
because what is writing
as a compensation:
oh not the number of any sort
to count according to:
ego, prospect,
                  conundrum, eject...
sure, it's stale...
but serious literature would
never even dare to appreciate
these intricacies...
just today i picked up
the Sunday print...
yes... a physical copy
of the newspaper...
notable articles?

rankin: selfie harm -
instagram...
does anyone really want to see
my face in how i countered
acne?
      i just figured:
catch a fly on your face...
and say: Belzeebub took
a **** on your face,
embedded your skin:
and every time
you pinch an acne pore
from your face?
  maggots wriggle out...
now...
you don't a ******* h. p. lovecraft
to make a cthulthu counter:
i just did!
https://tinyurl.com/y9bbrtuc...
i'd have to be...
really ******* good at
photoshopping a ******* fly
on my forehead...
should have asked me
how much patience it took...
to "ask" the fly
to sit on me, while i moved
from my bedroom,
into the box room,
turned on my computer...
sat there,
   and took the photograph...
the metaphor for Belzeebub
sending one of his minions
i.e.: ******* onto my face
so that i'd pinch maggots from
it was already there...

yet a physical newspaper
it was...
headline news:
   the suicide generation...
in under 15s: 17 in 2013...
                              31 in 2017 (an 81% increase)...
15 -19: 170 in 2013...
                       207 in 2017...
       my age category?
i.e.: 30 - 63:
                            4,322 in 2013...
                   3,842 in 2017!
well: aren't i so, lucky lucky?

am i still drinking?
and when r. d. laing was not,
i was feigning to sleep
in my reading schedule...
any interesting news from
the newspaper on
a Sunday?

            just a week or so prior,
in the sunday times style magazine...
a dolly alderton
citing being an app-Onan...
    while for the past 10 years...
i don't really know what
a mobile phone looks like...
i hardly call it: hunched in a chair
over a keyboard,
with a whiskey handy
on the windowsill:
   screen time...
   you mean the erotica of
the 1st 5 minutes of a horror movie
soundtrack
when i lie in bed,
in pajamas (sleeping naked,
not good, not good...
pajamas are the way to go)
     having just turned off the lights,
and the opening-crescendo-choir
lullabies me to sleep?

- to be honest i'm ******* surprised
i've written this much,
given the sour news...
but this sort of news is...
hardly even accurate in my world...
i am tired of having
to invest in having opinions
that... i probably do not even have...
that's the beauty of
not caring for a "freedom of speech"...
i wouldn't like to have to prop
opinions...
   i might have them:
but as the fleeting of the day...
    i find it: actually hard to have
dogma...
             sure...
"freedom of speech":
   i already have that -
   when buying a pint of milk...
           i just find "freedom of speech"
to be a playground for
pseudo-dialectics these days...
           because: this is just pseudo-dialectics,
by the time a dialectical
moment happens,
the retort is prescripted, heavily edited,
and... there is absolutely nothing
of a friction, of coercion of
   the opinion, in argument,
toward a consolidation...
   what was a no-man's land to begin
with: is a no-man's land to the end...
     and if i fall prey to the lexicon of
the "culture war":
   i will simply have to re-state
my position...
    i am "manufacturing being:
                                       opinionated"...
and i do not have to even
     make a worthwhile concession
to...
           whatever opinion there is...

within the existence of the internet,
i've had one, yes, one
dialectical experience in my life...
on "foreign" soil:
yes, not with my dementia-ridden
grandfather:
   who's always prone to opinions...
on a bench,
with also an elder gentleman...
about...
    the delayed speech of his grandson...
and... about
rayleigh bicycles
and their cost...
     he supposed that his grandson
might be autistic...
    and might have to be medicated...
maybe: non verbatim...
i might have said:
   and no crushed pulp of
the vine is wine in the first
week of the fermentation process
having began...
whatever...

            an old man might say this...
but...
i have, no, contemporaries...
i don't have any...
primarily because:
i don't have a ******* video
camera and a mic.,
   just... itchy fingers and...
enough
     of a comfort to not have
to hear myself speak...
                 which: god forbid i will
ever do...
                  only blind-men
would bellow for
            a freedom of speech...
                    perhaps then i am
inclined to appeal to deaf
people...
          yes... all these conversational
overtones...
   borrowed, or rather expanding
from what was conversational
overtones in poetics
as instigated by frank o'hara...
        but hardly a real conversation
in what has become:
   a connected world
but also a congested
                replica of: the village life.

here's to my face,
becoming the new horror...
of the Instagram photoshopped
beauties...
   like the Cthulhu...
                i invite upon my face:
Belzeebub's ***!

p.s. oh... and there's only
something akin to
   da pacem domine (ensemble organum),
a templar chant
  in the background...

            a vision: less sinister,
and more... entombed
in a proud yet morose stupor.

you sit there with a blank page or screen
wanting to be the next Rowling or Rankin
words fail to come, you write words but nothing seems to make sense
then at midnight, words flow more freely

It was just past 2:00 am
on a lonely new year's eve.
I drove across the Rankin Bridge
and noticed a gold flame dance
atop a stack at the mill.
I stopped the car
in the middle of the bridge
and walked over to the rail.
In the darkness above the river,
the suffering didn't exist.
It would return
with the sun.

-Ron Gavalik

They prefer if you don’t come in the normal entrance,
Where your actions and demeanor may generate
A semblance of disquietude and anxiety for those clients
With simple dislocations and the de riguer colicky infants.
Instead, you are directed to an inconspicuous doorway
Around the back by the dumpsters and empty pallets
To an unadorned room with to fill out the requisite paperwork
(Which proves quite difficult because you’re shaking;
Most likely because the room is so cold,
Or the folding chairs prove ancient and unstable),
Upon receipt of which they allow you
(Although this go-round
There’s no inked footprints or photo provided)
To take your baby back home.

As children, we learned those truths we needed to know
At the feet of claymation wise men
(Proffered to us through the good graces of Rankin and Bass)
That under-appreciated misfits will receive their reward in due time,
That Mommy and Daddy will sit,
Smiling as without a care in the world,
At the kitchen table with brother and sis
Over a piping hot breakfast forever and ever, amen
Before they adjourn to the shiny tree
Surrounded by legions of dolls, brigades of fire engines
(For Santa shall never disappoint any good boy or girl),
That children shall always bury their parents.
I now know that the snowman lied,
And that when he is removed from refrigeration,
He shall not reappear as the strong, substantial man of snow,
But become merely a puddle,
Then mist rising from the sidewalk,
As invisible as the ditties children sing
While jumping double-dutch,
As fleeting as a hug in the dark
After you’ve chased the monsters from under the bed.

On black ground Pennsylvania coal miners obey admiralty laws for
hidden within the walls of malls lives a Roman deity of ***** *****
Upon hallowed plots Pennsylvania's ministers praise common laws
but far below the stalls in malls are 666 patron saints of ***** *****
Above ground coal miners obey admiralty laws but underground in
masonical halls mit dolls are U.M.W.'s patriotically-red cruel claws
Parkinson's hypokinetical rigid syndrome pulls Linda Ronstadt free
to fire hospice ovens on diesel fuel, polystyrene & tinder constantly
Since hefty Linda's condition was mildly diagnosed as syndromical
she's maintained a stiff upper lip for farting at crap deemed comical
'cause Hershey Highway-ridin' Jerry Brown ******* hetero-erotical
like the time **** Jerry Brown **** behaved vaguely hetero-erotical
like when queer-praisin' Jerry Brown **** schtupped hetero-erotical
like the night unwiped-*** Jerry Brown **** ****** hetero-erotical
like the time raunchy **** Jerry Brown **** ****** hetero-erotical
like when queer-baiting Jerry Brown **** schtupped hetero-erotical
like the time tricky-**** Jerry Brown **** schtupped hetero-erotical
for ***** enemas made Bill McKinley's state more cryptographical
from a bad case of diarrhea that trotted towards the nympholeptical
in sing-along songs longer than over-done operas overtly operatical
that somehow draw parallels that ain't Manson Family congenerical
I hurled puke as churlish, Polynesical squaws vomited spoken lines
from monkeyhood to manhood via monkeyshines for broken spines
Sue wouldn't mistake my army boot for a tennis shoe nor repeat the
Ted Bundy snafu: I love you & want to bury you, I mean marry you
Bad train derailments are too common where an icy rail jogs whilst
Alaskan searchers can't find Earl Warren Commission's Hale Boggs
whose airplane crashed 'cause he didn't like cereals called Kellogg's
Special K that constipates whales so as to stiffen inner whale clogs,
intestinal obstructions & Nile fever among thoroughbred male dogs
& grade-A Cornish CX meat kings, Wagyū cows & large, pale hogs
that forage like Pinoys through rancid garbage & gnaw on trail logs
in a drunken torpor, stupefied from cheap-skate, Cebu bar ale grogs
served by Turkic, skinny-dipping gals in whom a red-love well sogs
as the aura of heaven brightens & clarifies, the haziness of hell fogs
& toxifies quagmires & streams killin' mountain toads & vale frogs
in a world that forced Joan Crawford to fight tough guy & gal trogs
wainwrights know hubs'll spin freely for folks who do not nail cogs
down while steadily puking egg triumphant nogs over egg fail nogs
My bones are big, metabolism is slow & prostate is retention-proof
on this structurally-sound, adequately-trussed, high-suspension roof
After a busy Sabbath-mistaken Sunday I beheld lunar-dead monday
like would a college student slaughtered by electrocuted Ted Bundy
in the presence of a priest diseased from a Loredo beet-red-nun date
America worships the highest-rankin' Catholic like an unfed prelate
who howls Bud Abbott rabid & acts more dumber than **** Cavett
whose attenuatin' emotions are their strangest in bakers' bun classes
beyond the old-dirt-road remissions of a patsy in fakers' sun glasses
among true adherents & sad congregants poking Quakers' fun *****
while disseminatin' heresy to gun-grabbers at the pope's gun masses
like heretic John Pope had at Bull Run's Second Battle of Manassas