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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.
Kenneth Fox Oct 2011
Trip over the high density of our constant lies
We're all out to break and hurt the non-elite
Words and phrases they never meant a thing but to lure you in
This facade of love that we send soldiers like cattle
Down an assembly line to build and protect
A fake America, burning towers tumbling down
Bellowing the sweet sorrows of victims
Whose screams we replay the audio over and over
To divert you from seeing the real culprit  
We are sick minded human beings with the thirst for enemies
We'll kiss everyone we meet on the cheek
And continue to fake what we tell you we'll be
We prefer a stabbing to the back
Never a full frontal attack
And we have puppets
We'll always find someone to replace the current like the forty four before
The people's memories will fade and burn like corpses caused by the Enola Gay
We''ll drop a bomb to wipe out everything mankind has worked for
Because in the end we do not need peasants
We have everything and everyone else has absolutely nothing
And 99% will lay to waste and ruin in the ruins we leave to burn
We'll pity so we can mislead to false hope
Send small portions of rations to schedule feeding underlings
Flouride in the drinking water to better control
Corruption in the oval office classified, uncovered, never shared
Always kept underwraps, never revealed just a hoax.
Lips to ears do the whispers carry.
A promise for a better tomorrow but a date will never be set for peace
So we keep telling you that it only gets better
And we'll think apologies fix everything
Truth is we meant nothing in the first place
Because we'll keep remaking mistakes that we apologize for
Misery is our job
Eating and breathing and surviving on the pain of lower humans
Like clothed animals rampaging through a corrupt society
So we'll let the people let their guard down for a quick second and us, vultures
Will devour them quick in that moment
To find you are empty inside,
We've starved you of what you've needed
Because all along, and everything we've ever done
we never realized once you've all revolted
this 1% would surely fall to pieces.
One must admit the soul searches
high and wide for others to see
as sorrow weeps, small happiness creeps
remorse is afloat, in our silk coat
emptiness appears, silence leers
fading shadow, is falling far below
Begging forgiveness, with lots of emptiness, it seems............

Cemented dreams, gone to extremes
Song of despair, not knowing who cares
Tears grabbing, hands jabbing
Wisps of cries, light up the sky....

Soul searches but disappearing
cries please help,
Holding lifeless, so breathless
Sobs of redemption, seize upon preemption
Full fledged devastation, marks no exemption
Temptress aching, no remaking......

Soul Searching Indeed!*

Debbie Brooks 2014
vircapio gale Mar 2013
below the eyelid-waves,
another iridescence grows.
currents blur the view in pentacles of light
to rhythms of the waning breath
--warping what an artist's vision yields,
the canvas of the mind stretched taut
in hues to coalesce the old and new,
absorb the intertidal volumes
with keener intake,
firmest diaphram to lift the pressure out
and sink into pelagic origins finally,
imbue myself poseidonal,
renew the birth of "love"

i am soaking with it,
open mouthed my cry is swallowed by the sea
i am a kracken echinoidea
******* up the floor
of life exchanging me with joy--
of jellyfish and snail,
burrowed shrimp, eyeful gobies,
clowns in their anemones--
my spires swirling clouds of green
to carpet spotted sky with verdant wake
and springing there,
from crest to crest,
a body undulating foam, it rolls voluptuous to swell
the bioluminescent instant... taken in the vast, full span of time...
to see her born here,
'mid dolphin song and symbol crash of tide
protuberance of shore awash in seeming pleasure of the rhythmic act--
alive the goddess comes, into her flesh--
to widen eyes,
re-establish channels to the heart
as if an aperture of cloud
were opening again,
to end an ancient overcast
and usher down to earth
the lance of starlight that would reach beyond the wrecks of ocean depth...

so too her visage strikes the darker corners of the heart
illumes all buried hopes
of bottom dwelling wretchedness,
and draws the tide above the line,
littoral tresses falling,
steep in pools calcareous and algal
worlds remaking worlds within the contours sexing there
imagined limestone in your many perfect forms,
marble softness swimming in my eyes
awaken appetites of newfound youth again.
the ochre lines that stripe along your curves
let hidden ripeness waft across my passion-eye
and with the grassy dunes i lie, doze in wrack at once--
as arches of my sight are pierced with rays of inner sun
my seabreath muse purveys, inhaled;
i would see you as you are entirely,
disperse myself into aesthetic mist,
become the spray on coastal loam
a sundog floating in and out of forms
become your mullusk lust;
sipuncula embrace of benthic dust
and slip along the textures
of your progenation's flood--
emerge as one and many lives
becoming me, this vision
in your suds, your divination's scree
--the salty rooting of the coastal trees,
the sand, the wave and moon
upon the dancing kelp forestal out at sea...
shining in the winking foam and symbiota sand.
crevice and the length of dyads simulating one,
phallus, *****, and none--
egg and **** bed..
diatoms  flourishing  again...
in you i am the ****** my own gestation obviates
i am effluxion of all lives in balance
on an ever-swaying crestline of irruptive suds--
diaphanous array upon your porous *****'s heave
weaving in and out, continuing to blur
in riven sight and empty heart to fill
the blood containing rapid urgency
to feed, to taste and seek its nourish-all
when after having given up the possibilities of love
and having worn the incompleteness raw,
the obverse affirmation cracks the sky...
at last they burst surreal into the now
and lacking practice courting glory
stumble over habits long attuned to falsities unveiled
and drawn into your undertow,
all cravings wrung into the novelty of merging without end--
arrive, horizonal, and echo from the dawn of being more than one




.
littoral: of or relating to the shore
wrack: masses of dried seaweed, kelp found on the beach
sipuncula: marine worms
benthic: relating to the bottom of a sea or lake or to the organisms that live there
diatoms: algae or phytoplankton essential to ecosystems
effluxion: a flowing outward
JJ Hutton Dec 2010
I eyed you from across the room,
Tim was yak-yakking about some drop D heavy metal band
he was drumming in,
But I was tired of socializing,
I had only come to drink,
yet I was overtaken by you.
I'd seen you prettier, livelier.
You looked so blue
decked all in red,
in your worn out ****-me-shoes.

I think my mouth was still agape,
when your gaze turned my way.
We both were locked.
Getting headsick from the smoke,
waiting for the flame to catch up.

You'd never seen me so unkept.
I hadn't shaved in a couple months,
my hair was to my shoulders, and
my body was drowing in wrinkled,
secondhand, early 2000s high fashion.

I walked over. Leaving Tim talking about
fusing dubstep with his metal ****.

You were working at a bank,
making three bucks more than minimum.
You changed your major.
Your relations got too public,
so you're shooting for journalism.
Haha me too, or something like that,
is what I said.
Your smile became parasitic to my clumsy words.
You said we should hang out for old time's sake.
"I won't take no for an answer."

"I'm too sober for this."
I walked off, grabbed the flask from Tim,
spent the night strolling under streetlights,
and hoping to have a revelation.
But all I had was a dwindling buzz,
and a divine gravity pulling me
away from remaking the same
mistakes.
Copyright 2010 by J.J. Hutton
Toyo D Dec 2022
Metamorphosis from the start of the day,
January’s promises,
had so much to say.

The beginning of the cycle,
to the end of the new.
The remnant of the spring morning dew
moves summer breeze
into leaves of a green hue,
and the Heartache of July.

The sun rose and set with You,
until it rained
and the skies once again turned a somber shade of familiar blue.

Metamorphosis of the self,
turning like a snake.
Shedding the skin of heartache and
remaking myself, again.

Metamorphosis I bloom and break,
I wither and wake
through the hardships of the year,
taking a new found shape
of me-

The moon wanes and waxes,
while the heart mends and sax’s
continue to play sweet melodies from the month of May,
and we are reminded of the day
that breaks and dawns.

The body yawns
from the weight of the year.

Yet still, the metamorphosis blooms and births
a new beacon of light,
preparing herself for the thirty-first night
and the turn of the calendar, again.
Austin beard May 2012
In my defense , 
I'm not building this fence...
trying to keep you out ,

I'm walkin around ,
The same patch of ground , 
Retracing my steps , 
To cypher the sound ,
Remaking the mess , 
While Making the rounds ,
Hoping to hear
A familiar pound

Walking around the same patch of ground 
hoping for sound , 
And reason. 

Walking around this familiar ground
Hoping For change and treason
judy smith Apr 2015
After months of preparation — sketching and making patterns, finding and fitting models, cutting and sewing fabrics, arranging makeup and accessories — Cornell University senior Ellen Pyne this weekend will send her fairy-tale themed “Crimson” line down the Cornell Fashion Collective (CFC) runway in a matter of minutes.

Anticipating their moment to shine, Pyne and 35 other student designers have been laboring since last fall to perfect their creations for the 31st CFC runway show, Saturday, April 11, 8 p.m., in Barton Hall. For first-year designers, the event allows them to present a single look on the big stage, whereas seniors like Pyne plan a full collection, hoping it will launch their fashion careers.

“I eat, sleep, go to class and sew,” said Pyne, whose showstopper is a seamless Snow White-inspired dress made entirely out of hand-felted wool. “The collection is a statement of my artistic aesthetic and the culmination of everything I’ve learned over the past four years.”

Working just as diligently are show planners, led by senior CFC president Megan Rodrigues, who are remaking the cavernous Barton Hall field house to host a night of glamour. Since shortly after the curtain closed on last spring’s show, Rodrigues and the CFC executive board have been organizing ticket sales and a heap of other details, including a new runway design will give the expected 2,500 guests a better view of the Cornell student models on the catwalk.

“Through this process, I’ve learned a great deal about leadership, learning to delegate and being able to inspire others to a common goal,” said Rodrigues, who hopes to work in event planning after graduation. “Mostly, I’m excited to see the growth of each designer leading up to the show.”

Designers come largely from the fashion design major in the College of Human Ecology, but students from the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences will also contribute pieces. A multidisciplinary team will present “Irradiance,” a wearable technology collection that uses sensors and luminescent panels to detect and respond to audio—glowing and dimming in sync with surrounding music. Lead designer and junior Eric Beaudette said that team, which includes Lina Sanchez Botero and Neal Reynolds, doctoral students in fiber science and physics, respectively, hopes to inspire a vision for smart clothing of the future.

In the sesquicentennial spirit, the show will also include a nod to the past. Recalling campus styles dating back to 1865, Denise Green, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, will air a short video about an exhibit, “150 Years of Cornell Student Fashion,” currently on display in the Human Ecology Building.

Inspired by art and culture she observed studying abroad in Paris last fall, junior Linnea Fong will present “Infatuated,” luxury evening wear she described as taking on “individual obsession with physical perfection and how that manifests in the fashion industry.” Just days before the show, she’s still modifying parts of her collection, noting that “you just have to figure out how to make your ideas come to life, which is the fun part.”

Concluding the show will be a line by senior Blake Uretsky, recipient of a 2015 Geoffrey Beene National Scholarship from the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund. Her “Crested Butte” collection of women’s outerwear, a modern twist on vintage 1950s ski clothing, includes “distinctly wearable, yet visually exciting pieces,” she said. Presenting 10 looks, Uretsky’s line incorporates classic silhouettes and wool, corduroy and denim fabrics embellished with laser cuts and other modern techniques.

“Ultimately, I want to design clothes that people love and have a desire to wear,” Uretsky said. “The show will be such a wonderful experience with my family, friends and the Cornell community all supporting my work.”Read more here:marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses
vircapio gale Feb 2013
when that hopefully ecofriendly R.I.P becomes my final home
whether bios urn
or spirit seed
or any trendy tree from corpse to copse,
from dust to leaves
or better than
a crematorial commode --for fresher air and fuel for brighter flames
transplanted into other selves
redressed in mushroom spore-suit
seeded with the genes of generations hence and past,
piercing veils to fruit above again,
a mycophile to the last--
i will have lived with growth in mind,
that firm amorphous
ground opining green
to kindly live and die in kind
foment another view,
encompass monumental evanesce
supernal tablets branching neo-dolmen ethernexusnets beyond the r00ts
barking technoshaman psychic rings about a fiberoptic rosey,
perhaps a sappier refrain for finer silica domains
to sing along and echo Dryads doting long ago,
in threaded tones the make-remaking fold
of earthenborn rekindled kin of stars
decided to invent to cater otherworldly themes
Our life puts the "Sh..." back in
"Chicago."

This pulse could race, slow to a dull thud or stop and curdle like the residents of a container of milk who've been left out, and still you will never love me.  

Gobs of waiter phlegm we never detect in our bowls of soup and teapots beg our forgiveness and howl for our affection, and are invisible.

But where is the crime in not loving
when we are not loved?
How could there be a crime in not loving,
when we are loved poorly?
Loved so poorly we cannot afford
to ask ourselves where is the crime,
thus implying innocence.

We put the "mice" back in
"monogamous."

tip-toeing, silent but for mere squeaks, nearly inaudible whispers,
furtive looks, and how we run away, screaming,
or, like mice and Chicagoans all, we freeze.

Aquiver with fear, iced up in the Polar Vortex, hands raised in the policeman's spotlight.

But where is the crime in not loving
when you are not loved, or loved poorly?
Loved so poorly we cannot afford to stand up straight,
We scurry close to building walls,
trying not to be seen or see each other as we curse our fate.

Where is the crime in not loving those whom we hate?

There is no crime, but still, not loving is the heart of all crime.
To feel so deeply unloved we wish to destroy ... you name it.
Blot out, ruin and erase them; our enemies, our families, lovers, and even the world herself.

Jab a knife into her verdant hide and twist until black blood flows.
Gouge out mountaintops seeking iron for our towers.
Remaking her grace to build our graveyard.

These vibrant phosphorescent tombstones, overpopulated pillars of mutual isolation reach up into the clouds.
Announcing to the universe, we trumpet a loneliness as profound as it is absurd and ugly.
Zulu Samperfas Jul 2012
I was the better half to the whole, he said
To our friends, it's the polite and preppy thing after we wed
And when it came to and end
That slice down the middle was pain
And I limped off, half empty
Waiting to be filled again

Eight years later
some romance, a few letters
A lot of work, remaking my life
Can't tell you there's been no strife
OK, there's been plenty, it's been a struggle
And often, I'm in a muddle
But I noticed something yesterday,
That makes me want to shout out and say:

I am a whole person rising
maybe not complete yet
But I'd put money on it, I'd bet
That I'll finish the job one day
Yesterday
Walking in my old 'hood
Down on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk
On the beach, trudging through sand
Listening to the melody of a day as I can
People having fun,
Their work is done
And I felt fine
I wasn't about to pine
for someone's witheld love
or untimely absence
I felt good, not sitting on a fence
watching a world go by
of whole people, living high
I was one of them I swear
Listening and breathing and really there

We listened to "Modern English"
Remember that band?
And people started dancing in the sand
When they played their hit from 1983
And I remember it, mercy me
I was feeling good, perched on a bench in the crowd
Sipping a foamy Boardwalk beer, eating fried artichokes, the  band was loud
And I felt complete like a total ecosystem
Fully functional, and happy, just one of the crowd and with them.
Bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity
And are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--
Is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic & optical white rooms,
Cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations
Manned and ready,
Standing at attention, saluting
British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click,
Ramrod straight and cheerful:
“Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous,
Lusting for something,
Anything to process.
Any memory or image,
Lyric or construct, be they short-term
Dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all
In deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious,
Most vaporous; others--the scary ones—
Eidetic: frighteningly detailed,
Extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts;
Recollected so richly, rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, & olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.
The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless places & things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma
Enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from cloudy storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral
Repositories and vaults, all the while,
The entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that servile British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data,
In batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working
In seamless syncopation, self-referential,
At times paradoxical and infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but
There’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
The curse & minefield for the cerebral:
Metacognition.

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

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

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

(Excerpt from "Confessions of a Hopi *** Israelite")
Kelly Rose Jan 2015
It is Lady Winter's
time to shine
Swirls of snowflakes
covering the world
Remaking it
into a Winter Wonder Land
Icicles glisten
sparkling like
Diamonds in the sky
That hushed
Reverence
that envelops
my world
Showing me the
beauty of Silence
in this Winter Wonder Land
1/27/2015
Missing the Blizzard
Jersey girl now living in FL
storm siren Dec 2016
I write word after word after word
Backspace backspace backspace

Not good enough.

Needs to be

Better.

Isn't that how it always is,
Though?

Wanting to be better
And better
And better than that.

Nothing is good enough,
Right?

You rewrite and rewrite
And change your clothes
And change your clothes again.

You make a cup of tea,
But there's too much honey,
So you drink it and make it again,
This time there's not enough.
I swear the only reason I stay hydrated
Is because I keep remaking these cups of tea.

And I go and change my clothes,
And I rewrite and rephrase that sentence
And then that scene
And then this stanza,
And then I change my clothes again
All in hopes
To be better
Than before.

When will I be good enough
For myself?
Enough that I am even
Good enough for you?

Too casual, change into something cute.
Too cute, change into something ****.
Ugh, why bother?

The fear of never being good enough
Eating away at my brain,
And my brain screams and cries
Striving at perfection
That I'll never
Achieve.
Billie Marie Feb 2022
I live as a vessel of pure light.
Shadow does not rest with this form.
I see the world as an expression of my own self.
Love abides as all being.
We come only to discover this One Truth.
All the longing and movement of life
serves only to highlight the Divine within.
We are One.
1.28.2022
Graff1980 Nov 2023
Everything is pure imagination,
colors pulled from the mind’s
massive palette,
as new dimensions reveal themselves
in swirling abstractions
of curling rainbow action.

The colors she sees internally
are multi layered and 3d,
rapidly releasing childlike energy
and remaking her inner existence
into a safe fantasy,
as she takes that imagery
and makes it her waking reality.

She takes the power to paint and reshape
a poorly formed life of pain
into a playground of
crimson, purple, yellow,
pink, and blue
for everyone to view.

Everything fades to background noise,
and there is only art unfurling,
as the unconscious writes its own story,
as time moves at its own pace,
letting awe and intense focus
color her sweet cherubic face.
.
Lad, so strong and fresh,
My arms stretch in surrender,
Your eyes are drowning mine.

Man, of stone and flesh,
My softness itches, aches for hard,
Two bodies found entwined.

Your touch is remaking my soul,
Tied in the knots that are we,
Your lips are the waters that cut,
The fertile glens that are free.


Dear man, remote, so alive,
Break my locks without cold key,
Free my being with heat, my kind.

Your touch is remaking my soul,
Tied in the knots that are we,
Your lips are the waters that cut,
The fertile glens that are free.


Strange, what species enjoin,
In the darks ever unwinding us,
We are but spirits passing time.
.
jack of spades Feb 2015
i kind of hate poetry, like,
i'm sick of flowery words to avoid straight-up honesty
i'm sick of the deception and the depression
and the predictable rhyme schemes.
i mean, there's that kind of poetry
and that's the kind that i kind of hate.
a lot.
i'm a poet, okay? i'm a poet who likes
flower words with flowery lines
used only to cover up lies about
how much dinner i ate last night
and sometimes i have to admit
that i do kinda dig talking in rhymes.

but i'm really sick of that kind of poetry.
i kind of hate it.

give me poems that speak past their words,
give me poems that fill the air,
give me poems that breath and decompose.
give me girls with dark marbled skin whose voices break out of the cages they're trapped in.
give me boys in high heels.
give me revolution and remaking.
give me poetry.
give me songs.
i'm sick of the romantic stuff.
give me poems pieced together with discontent,
give me poems picked apart by nervous hands,
give me poems that will shatter all former concepts of reality,
give me poems that declare platonic love to an old best friend.
give me poems that have meaning.
real, tangible meaning.
i'm sick of looking at perfectly-formatted pages
that have to use set-up and textual ranges in order to be considered proper poetry.
i'm sick of verses with well-measured lines,
because those are the ones that i can't whisper to myself at night because
i ramble the poems.
i ramble the words.
give me poems that i can fill a room with.

i kind of forgot my first line, but that's alright
see, i don't know where exactly i'm going with this but
that's just how it is.

so give me poems that aren't pre-conceived,
give me poems that aren't thought out for the sake of their beauty.
give me poems that will hurt me.
give me poems that will hit me.
give me poems that will **** me.

i kind of hate poetry,
but not all kinds of it.
just the kinds of poems
that don't seem to notice
their true ability,
cause i like the kind of poems
that have the power
to change a society

(or at least someone's mind about something).
Jade Jan 2013
who shall I be
at the end of transformation
this painstakingly
beautiful
miracle of remaking

the wisp that morphs
to modify perception
deceptive
reflection
that masks the truth

she must die
for the butterfly
to emerge
with wings that are exquisitely my own
Sorrow weeps, small happiness creeps
Remorse afloat, in my silk coat
Emptiness appears, silence leers
Fading shadow, far below
Begging forgiveness, lots of emptiness............

Cemented dreams, gone to extremes
Song of despair, not knowing I care
Tears grabbing, hands jabbing
Wisps of cries, light up the sky..............


Eyes pleading, heart bleeding
Passion is no more, try to ignore
Breath held, try to expel
Life is gone, not so brawn............


Holding lifeless, so breathless
Sobs of redemption, seize upon preemption
Full fledged devastation, marks no exemption
Temptress aching, no remaking.......


Oh Disillusion Me....*

Debbie Brooks 2014 @copywrite..
Through sorrow, through death, life is gone, holds no tears.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 20
long after these thousand days of
passing years, the eyes will feel a
sparking, I will remember you,
my dear old friends, reviewing
the where, the when, which will
flush, outing the whys
from my
memories

more than the poetic liturgy composed,
but what felled me to my knees,
yearning,
for the soup of love and passion,
pain+no gain, euphorias rising at the
trenching lows of depths
newly explored, hope returning after a
long time abandonment, the
excruciating ecstasy
of creating, the killing tedium of
months of no inspiration but the
glint of a possible tomorrow

but you knot all this,
so come to tell you,
long after the poem
encased in yellowing
emerald unwrapping
aging megabytes, more
than any old poem itself,
I wil remember what you
wrote in return, with insight
all we are, we are an interaction
a petrified yet living petri dish of
creatures re/anew,
r e n e w e d, and I am
young again

and the tears of yore no more,
fresh flowering droplets of
a longer than believable age,
factuals of the sweet,
you will move once
more, remaking me
your lover devotee

       and I wil stumble;
       the woman enquirer
       am I ok, whimsy
       respond never,
       never ever better
       my darling

and I lift a tissue
to erase the evidence
of my happy melancholic
existence, and start another
conversation with you, but no!

one of us long gone, name
erased, poems left behind,
orphaned children, them
and me left alone while
I will be remembered,
by remembering you,
our second of union

as it
reverberates, our amour
reunion is a wetting,
giving forth a burst,
a fluid sac,
again
9-20/20~24
7:29an
Holly Salvatore Jul 2013
Men with rambling fever
Are born not bred
Their diagnoses are terminal
No cure but to go
And they sell their souls to the devil
For a train to hitch a ride on
And they'll die along the highway
While their women stay home
Remaking beds
That have never been slept in

I slept in this morning
Even though I didn't need to
I stretched my limbs
Out into the ocean
Trying to stay afloat alone in my bed
And through my spyglass
I still couldn't find the edge of it
No body of land to stand solidly on
I concluded that beds must be round
Orbiting microcosms floating through apartments
I got up and didn't tuck the sheets in
I got up and didn't make it

I didn't make it through college
Because as soon as I got settled
Into my air mattress
I un-made it
Everything called my name
I tried to ignore the voices
I tried to avoid them
But the mattress deflated quickly
The sails inflated cleaner than a cloudy day
The maps on my wall needed navigating
I had too much exploring to do

I've read about explorers
Men who made their fortunes
Hunting gold and looting temples
Never returning home
Because the beds they left, they had already met
Men who mapped the oceans
And gave their names to continents
Practically for free

I will freely admit that I'm like them
Unable to stop myself
From risking it all
For a chance at nothing at all
Unable to stay in one place
For long enough
To make my bed and lie in it
I will freely admit that rambling fever
is not ladylike
I will freely admit I'm an
Unsettled woman
I will freely admit
I shed lives and beds with purpose
I shed lives and beds like skin
So this happened after work yesterday. I don't know what to make of it really. I don't know if it's done or if it's edited right or not.
Eriko Apr 2018
the waning sunlight
strikes a ray of brilliance
once more
blanketing the air
in thick strokes
of burnt oranges
and yellows so rich
they speak of gold

the sky dances and dazzles
and sparkling blues
underlay the patchwork
of oncoming dusk
caught in a twilight,
in an inexplicable in-between
of settling day
and waking night

a sliver of transformation
a destined evolution of time
I race and embrace
I ache for it to stay
yet in vain I hail
in its temperance
it shall remake
Poetry by MAN May 2014
My poetry is broken
No words spoken
I want to write
I'll keep on hoping
Need some inspiration
To peak my imagination
I want to be real no imitation
Emotions I'm taking
Constantly remaking
Mix it all up time for baking
Tasty and yummy for the mental tummy
As a fool I'm true..mama didn't raise a dummy
I usually can go all night till my pen starts smoking
Hang a sign in my mind "My Poetry is Broken."
M.A.N 5-19-14
ShhHoneyBea Jan 2014
Shh
The fluttering of her mind began to take hold again,
this time not allowing the medicine to do what it was meant to.  
His voice finally abandoned her head
and the sound of his name
no longer
made her heart creep up into her throat.
Each day began fresh
leaving behind the waves that yesterday left.
In turn this left him nowhere near the picture frame.
Her eyes were glazed,
letting the world claim her.
She was no longer his…
So who was she?
The thought of remaking herself to be
her own being,
and not merely just
one who lives in the shadow
of whom she loved
seemed to be forever daunting.
She asked God if he could do it for her.
He slammed the door in her face
after taking notice of
her soft pathetic plea.
For it was not his job
to recreate her.
Billie Marie Sep 2021
The mind - it is nothing.
Only just a coded gram.
Dots and lines and circles.
See you use it.
See THE CIRCLES AND LINES.
See the web laid out on the web of no web.
Head aches.
Back aches.
Belly aches.

We were never here.
No one will ever know.
Who will ever see?
None will never hear. Why?
Why should I keep doing and caring.
like matter is a thing for real?
This ... It's over.
It is the remaking of the world.
We are all amazed. Who wants to see
this drama unfold?
Who thought of a juicy story?
I am the story.
I live the dream.
If it is real it will endure.
See the web laid out on the web of no web.
I am,
Sorrow that weeps,
A little bit happiness that creeps
Remorse afloat, in my silk coat
Emptiness that appears, as silence leers
Fading a shadow, far below
Begging forgiveness, lots of emptiness~

I am
Cemented dreams, gone to extremes
Song of despair, not knowing I care
Tears grabbing, hands jabbing
Wisps of cries, light up in the sky~

I am
Eyes pleading, heart bleeding
Passion that is no more, trying to ignore
Breath held, trying to expel
Life is gone, not so brawn~

I am
Holding lifeless, so breathless
Sobs of redemption, seize upon preemption
Full fledged devastation, marks no exemption
Temptress aching, no remaking~

The Disillusion Is Me~

Debbie Brooks @ 2016
Maman Screams Nov 2015
Running away seem so inevitably
The same old drive by and exits
Its sad to see you're remaking history
Tripping by fears and of misfits

Im sorry,
no longer can i take you for a ride.
As the path I'm heading spares no retreat
Im living to breathe on my selfless pride
As this life isnt always helloween,
We can't be knocking doors asking for
Trick or treat
Goodbye my dear love. Only can i pray the best and only the best for you. If god permits us together then We'll surely be together at the end of our journeys
Austin beard May 2012
In my defense , 
I'm not building this fence...
trying to keep you out ,

I'm walkin around ,
The same patch of ground , 
Retracing my steps , 
To cypher the sound ,
Remaking the mess , 
While Making the rounds ,
Hoping to hear
A familiar pound

Walking around the same patch of ground 
hoping for sound , 
And reason. 

Walking around this familiar ground
Hoping For change and treason
She did not find the grim
in falling apart. For
every time she found herself
to be broken, she knew
she was brutally remaking
herself, and collapsing
to be reborn like a
rioting star; haunting the
dark sky.

**© R.M. Drake
Found this
Lily Priest May 2021
She wanted to travel
Unravel the world
Like famous explorers
Who's wandering was all the will to ask
If there was anything beyond the horizon
That they could see.

Now shes everywhere -

Frozen stare, pigtails and grey red uniform,
Tie needling south with the straightness of a compass
And shes lost.

Where is she?
Everywhere anyone turns
Trapped in the undergrowth
Where cans and cat **** go to pasture
Her wrinkled smile
Is caked onto the branches
Paper machet - ed and as brittle
As an old map.
She breaks apart like bread crumbs
That will never lead her home.

Have you seen her?
Not tumble weeding her news
Across the m2
Or pinned to a lamppost
Weeping her ink into the missing
like a watercolour.

Have you spied her?
Not tied with weak ribbon
to brown stalks who's little
Notes speak of hope
And other things, like Angel's and innocence,
The innocence shes frozen in.

Can you find her?
Not hopefully
Flying her flag of the forgotten
On the tv
Budget crew
Remaking her last seen
With shaking cameras
And discount queens of the smaller screen
Hoping for Hollywood.

Is there a tangible
Left to her name
Thrown as it has been across
State lines, and small places
That only the locals know.
She has Columbus - ed the globe
And she only left home
Walked down her drive
And disappeared.
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2014
your beauty does not fade,
your self, remaking, and remade,
you see empty,
we see refilling,
seeking, dreaming,
but make no mistake,
isolation is not your condition,
no, instead think permutation,
you are skin shedding, evolving
the newer new, substance over
lip gloss of surface
and the voyage of transition
is wondrous to us.
Behold!
Behold, a
Kelly Rose!
Jan 25th, 2014
Postscript:

Tho the central sun warms the unfolding,
It is the bitter winded cold of the northeast that
Queries, what is the stuff of your composure?
Where artists litter the pavement, some rising,
Some falling, but all teaching by watching
You pirouette.

So when the inner quest is not sufficient,
Come to where the weather's central quest,
Is a reminder constant that there is no answer,
For humans are seasonal creatures,
Forever changing their skins or else
Slow dying under a tan that hides
No change

The postscript came to me later, obseving the snow flurries and and the NYCB dancers performing Concert Barocco (music by Bach) at the ballet now
Maman Screams Feb 2014
I ran far beyond my wildest dreams
Cutting traces from this cruelty
Weighing choices are made from within
Throwing options away indubitably

Is this how we all choose to breathe
Reeling lies in our deadliest sleeps
Digging trenches deep so low beneath
Waiting silently in hope for fate to leap

Is this how we're suppose to breathe
Who are they kidding in the beginning
Applying scientific fictions rotting pleas
Infusing chlorine in their brainwashing scheme

Is this how they have always breathe
Remaking history into a theatrical comedy
Relinquish hopes for a cinematic filth
Draining youth of their liberties

Is this how we should continue to breathe
Or shall we rise above towering castles
Chasing infinity throughout the universe
Owning our rights
To love...
To hope...
To dream...
To *BREATHE
Kimberly C Brown Oct 2010
These solar winds blast through me
gamma rays break through my flesh
leaving me atomized
separated into ions.
My soul remains behind
as yet to reconnect with that one light
as I explore this universe
forever destroying and remaking itself.
I witness stars come into existence
while galaxies crash into themselves
leaving cold space behind
and a hole that almost ***** me in

I wonder then where would I be?
Hayley Neininger Mar 2013
Often I feel all I really am is a pile of embers
Pieces of burn paper collected
And swept into a pile
Awaiting the shovel
Awaiting the trashcan
But I was once a flame
I held the afterglow of something powerful
Something that only man has ever touched
A promethean myth of promise so
Potent its future begs to be clutched
And as much
As I could love to be that flame again
My role as the after math is just as important
The pile of rumble that before a bomb was a building
Can be seen as material for something new
And the lot of something as raw as me
Can stand for hope, rebuilding for remaking
Things only exist from piles of ember and of rumble
And from me I can build an army
My fortune has not yet been set
My goals have certainly not yet been met
But I show promise
Now please tell me how will you make me?
JMo Jan 2014
Pressing limits knowing that going far beyond influences dreams,
Within the eclipse of media surrounded by stereotypes constantly remaking themselves,
Simply understanding life takes two different colors while making a new,
Deeply ones heart wishes in hope with dreams to one day Love one another,

Creation will become when we bond with submission to each other for life,
Beginning the first day eternity drew our true Love forever,
Creating  children while changing lives with Beauty beyond understanding even angels will dream,
Forever together a song will be sung as a picture is drawn while both pairs of feet dance together,

As the sun rises filling dreams with hope together a new dream will be created everyday!!!

— The End —