It's a big mistake
That we do ..

We always remind himself
Every thing has a replacement
In whole life ,we  heartily learn this lesson...

"Lesson of replacement "

Any person ,any desire ,any thing have a replacement in itself

If you failed to get a some precise thing
Replace it ,into one more thing

If you failed to fulfilled any desire
Replace it ,into one more desire

If you can't  achieve any goal
Replace it into one more goal

But
I must say
It can be a good timely formula
To betray himself

In the recycle of replacement ...

There is no replacement of every thing

Love ,respect kindness ,
sensitivity, care ,attention,
humbleness , sentiments...

Yes
Our emotions don't have any replacement .

FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

Dear J,
   I may be at a loss for words half the time, and the other half I might have too much to say, but I can almost always say this; I love you. I have felt fear and I have felt bravery and I have felt loss. I can look pictures of us and I can recall everything we did that day. I can listen to videos of you and I can tell what you felt. And I know that you didn't think I was paying attention, but I knew how you looked when you thought something was unfair. And I knew the look in your eyes when you saw the light just right in a sunset and you knew that nothing could ever be recreated quite like that. I felt the same way about you.
   Wherever you are, know that loving someone isn't a matter of feeling something or not feeling something. It's a matter of knowing what you're feeling and when you need to let go.
   I think that people know that letting go involves unfurling your fingers and watching something fall from a great height. It's the act of following that objects downward motion that gets to us. That once it meets the ground or whatever surface it is deemed to hit, it's gone. What was there is gone. And once you think about that you think of what could have been there. That one last touch, that one last feeling of bliss that comes with knowing that the moment you wake up the sun will be shining in rivulets through fingers that tangle in hair fresh off the pillow. It's sad to know that nothing like that will happen again.
   The sun won't shine the same way. Instead it may simply fall. It won't cascade, it won't flow over the edges of noses or smiling lips. It's the same way water may lose a stone from a riverbed and from there on after it doesn't run quite the same way. But another stone, another pebble will fall in place because replacement happens.
   I guess what I'm trying  to say, is that letting go is letting someone else take a spot. In order for something else to happen you have to let your joints move out of their grip and unfold from their hold on something that wasn't meant to be held by you anymore.
   Sometimes you have to let them land somewhere new.
I only hope that it's somewhere even more beautiful than before.
            Claire

Initially she began contacting me over the course of a year or so and increasingly over the last few months she started visiting me, helping me, caring for me and occasionally employing me in different ways.

She’d just had a break up a few weeks before, explaining that things hadn’t been right in the relationship for some time!

She presents herself as respectful, thoughtful, gentle, kind and considerate and after what seemed to be a very short length of time; unexpectedly declared that she had feelings for me; regarding love, admiration, desire and some other adventures.

She then began to bombarded me with love talk; occupying around 70% of my time gaining my trust, I was swept off my feet; she took a great deal of interest in me, learning everything about me, what I liked, where I would go, always asking what I was thinking feeling, how she could help and I was flattered and she was charming, though a little awkward at times.

As our friendship grew she started sharing her back story, including some tragic life experiences; she vilified her past lovers, and ex-partners and branded them as crazy, or bitter liars and troubled souls; slowly gaining my sympathy, whilst securing my allegiance, and keeping me on side; keeping me close; drawing on my compassion loyalty & trust!

During intimate moments she would sometimes seem a little awkward, false, over enthusiastic or a little insincere, and I made allowances for this given my knowledge of her backstory.
Re: (tragic events & experiences)

She began to choose and buy me clothes; outfits, take me shopping, gradually altering my outward image and appearance.

She introduced me to her friends; but was careful to keep me and them at arms-length, I realise now that she was building an alternative profile of me in their minds and that the people she introduced to me rarely exhibited the behaviors or characteristic that I was led to expect.

She soon started to embroil me in her own rituals and compulsive behavior's, explaining that tasks needed to be performing in very specific ways to prevent her getting distressed!

She made many promises : ‘The hook’ It was my expectation i.e. waiting for some of those promises to materialise that kept me hanging on; This increased her control and exited her too.
(None of her promises came to fruition!)

She gradually had a hand in almost every aspect of my life i.e. my home, my work, my friends, family, my finances, the way I dressed, the food I ate and many other things besides, much of which I didn’t realise until our relationship was finally over.

She often took immense pleasure in duping, individuals or companies out of something through theft, shoplifting, or getting something for nothing, a profiteer, a chancer!

To question or challenge her authority would result in seeing her facade slip and watch her decline into meltdown. It's at that point, she would lose composure, and I would see her irrationality come to the fore; revealing the real person underneath; childish, contrived and very fragile; It’s as if control is the glue that holds her together, without it she just falls apart, during this time she can’t be consoled and it’s impossible to calm this escalating situation; in fact; at this point that she would attempt to regain control by ‘gas-lighting’ me, she would distort the truth; who said what; in an attempt to damage my self-esteem, to make me question my own mind, my words, my intention and any actions, apportioning blame, pointing fingers, making me feel guilty, use rejection, or using hurt, sorrow, tears, shame and even threaten liable or legal action, and then use *** to pacify or regain control over me and my actions.

These episodes would appear often; though irregular and without provocation, I would always be deemed at fault!
I found silent compliance was less stressful than engaging in discussion.    

She never took responsibility or made any apologies for her conduct.

She would set me tasks, and go out a lot, and lie or bend the truth, as to where she had been; I never challenged this behaviour!

When the relationship was finally deemed over; I was both devastated and relieved.

I began to see my new position in the cycle; as she immediately begin to vilify me in order to give credence to her new backstory, I felt very confused, disorientated and emotionally fraught, shell shocked! questioning, how much of our relationship was true and how much was a lie? For everything I thought I knew was now knitted together with a very complex web of loyalties, lies and half-truths.

Her pattern of repetitive and controlling behaviors have seemingly remained unchanging throughout all her relationships;
(I was contacted by many of her previous partners and various other casualties since leaving her, sharing familiar experiences.

Within two weeks of being apart she informed me that she had fallen in love (My replacement)  some-one she admires, someone kept just within the circle, a mutual acquaintance and she thanked me for bringing them together.

The grooming of her new lover will have commenced some time ago; her M.O. (Her pattern of behaviors, her techniques have remained fixed.)

She’s incredibly self-conscious, her biggest fear is that other people will find out about her true demeanor, her image and appearance is everything to her. She's afraid that people will shun her for being so very different. She is a wolf, that’s not a malevolent creature par-say; and quite beautiful and beguiling in her own way but you don’t want to be her pray.

Full circle:
I too have joined the ranks of the discredited; labelled a liar, troubled, bitter and crazy; she contacted members of my, family, friends and some fellow musicians; and a few folks shared these conversations with me.)
I suspect that she may even attempt to vilify me with authorities or threaten some form of legal action; as she has to others in the past.

I'm still drawn to her charismatic boldness, her awkward ****** power, her intelligence, and so I've blocked all means of contact to curtail my own almost pathological interest, for despite everything that’s transpired, her lies, her infidelity, her deceit and appalling behavior, I feel no malice towards her; quite the opposite, I'm still drawn, intrigued, bewitched, beguiled by the person hiding underneath the façade.

Now the dust has finally settled; I’ve somehow remained sound of mind.

I don’t feel guilty anymore; I’m aware that I’ve been manipulated into thinking and acting in ways that don’t truly represent my character; and that I’m just one of many people seduced by a sociopath; another natural human variant, a person devoid of empathy for others, that’s developed a narrow set of skills and mirroring behaviors, that allows her to blend into mainstream society in order to feel safe, secure and in control.

She would have preferred to keep me hanging on, like many other dependents, adding me to the hareem; a bank of beguiled individuals that she occasionally calls upon to perform simple tasks, or to monitor and re-assess her clever handwork.

The last time we met she opened with nervous politeness and finished with veiled cruelty, I left feeling drained, uncomfortable and quite fazed.

I’ve written this diary account to help further understand what had transpired during this complicated relationship.

Her next lover will ignore any pre-warnings as just bitter ramblings, as most individuals are driven by the natural pursuit of love, *** and romance rather than following advice of some seemingly bitter ex.

Good kind or exciting people further enhance the image and status of a sociopath and they will orbit your small shiny star, tapping into your  valuable energy before  slingshotting into a larger, more attractive orbit; sadly love, *** and desire is simply a tool for manipulation and gain, it's all about prestige.

I wish her well, like every creature.

Expect high drama.

I get scared easily.
And I always have persisted to allow my mind to be torn out when I let it affect me.
They say, "Worst case scenario is rare." in most situations.
I have yet to seek why they ignore worst case, become it, leaving nothing left for the worst.
Habitually it creates an aggression with associates: replacement and correlation.
Without me noticing inevitably.

Behind.
This shadow that follows, desires its personification;
Consequently the main man must fall,
He will dissipate towards the rock where the one before him stood.
Rather take a spot of one greater, it is that of less higher.
A demotion of sort.
In order for it to transpose into progression, a compromise is of order.
The compromise of time, itself, playing the waiting game - (let us back step)

…replacement…correlation…

The understanding of this is of which I no longer feel that emotion;
It is configured by the other, making a statement which is unrecognizable.
So much, not even I, the speaker, can do anything to prove to you what I mean.
--For keeps sake--
This is no where near a poor pardon for my actions.
They are far from a credible stature. Far from a pity fete;
Indeed a fare apology is in par.
Yet this is a means of report to say in far value: worry.
It is of pure arrogance that I state this claim. Keep this in mind.
That I fear the replacement emotion shall take place in fair time once more.

As the tail is coming back again, second time to be specific.
And your steps in self-fulfillment climaxes,
The steps to which I take are mimicked to that of the first tail.
(The apex forms and your entitlement proclaims its spot.)
I wish it not, to be furthered in my rut.
As of the annum before, was explained by dis-valued ties.
This is not to which I think.
It is your confidence which speaks and separates your feet.
Placing one foot in one path, far ahead from the other.
As I stay with the other, while the other one is altered.
Being free as it walks along with out I.
I wish for an ignoring of replacement, and to this I will forcibly try.

For you, my love.

I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
      around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
      America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
      was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two children
have replacement value. In China is it each couple or each adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
      grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.

.how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...

)            that's all i wanted to disclose...
what comes now,
is all the unnecessary details
that would constitute a prose piece...
albeit in cascade - for the ease
of the eyes bunddled up in a
claustrophobia of a paragraph:

i know: the mere word 'dignified'
seems rather obnoxious...
but... how dignified it is,
to take a walk at night...
esp. when one is recycling leftover
bottles of whiskey, whiskey,
beer... whiskey...

after reading Knausgård vol. 1 -
with his father strapped to the house
with his mother drinking himself
to death...
perhaps i'm also akin...

but... there's "****" to do in between...
good god! mein gott!
greta thunberg! run! i said run idiot!
run to the recycling center with
those glass bottles!
success though: cutting the ingestion
by over a half...

current bank balance?
nearing 2 thousand pounds...
and there's the garbage to sort between
the recyclable and the non-recyclable...
there's the tending to keeping
the house clean...

there's a remnant spark about giving
a toss about some sporting event...
there's cooking a dinner...
but... it seems i miss the man who would
find about an hour and a half
to walk the streets at night...

somehow i missed it -
but... i imagine the sight of a week's worth
of empty bottles in the wardrobe...
i've had enough and...
i call the dog that's the dignity to take
a walk at night...
to never overthink anything except
thinking - that i can leave in the basket
of nothing...

sometimes the ego-automaton jumps
in and makes my walking meditation
fuzzy... that's where i find this mythological
ego of psychology -
ego the anti-narrator...

which implies: not myself... reflexive...
not my, self... the reflective circumstance...

and there's no familiar presence
of an mp3 player (broken, ****** lasted
for 3 years, good enough lifespan)
and no headphones...

perhaps i was anti-radio some time ago...
i've amassed a decent personal library
of audio... but now i rarely use it
having made a discovery of the gramaphone
and vinyls...
and being the late 20th century colt...
i should still be ripping c.d.s onto
mp3... but...
i just wanted to check out what i was
missing...
perhaps... the crazed sound of passing
cars, will indeed, never replace
the cobblestones and hooves...
but... there's a right to heave a sigh...
for no apparent reason other than:
i've met myself this very first time
having aged...

this is not a time for west coast
1990s pop punk or punk rock or whatever
they called it... when you would
either run in gallop jumping
in a jonathan edwards style...
or looking down and walking into
a lamp-post... this is no time to be
refreshing the cinema of youth...
with the offspring's ignition...

not when you're walking: and trying not to think...

also of today: my jewish newly converted
to islam neighbour came round
asking about my mother's slight bout
of depression concerning...
her recent hip-replacement...
and what's still in the post...
the aesthetic surgery...
after all: what surgery, proper...
is also a plastic surgery - an aesthetic...
obviously the muscles and the bones
are intact... but there is always a chance
that waste tissue will be removed...
fat... etc. and it hasn't even been 2 weeks
since the surgery...
and she said: your mum should look
at my surgery scars...
i lifted up my t-shirt and turned
to show her my back... namely my
right shoulder-blade...

and i said to her: you know why i didn't
get aesthetic surgery on this mark
of cain? that's the same reason why i don't
have tattoos...
nothing against tattoos...
i have the only tattoo i need:
a mark of cain and some historical tattoos...
dates... that i keep close to me
from my time in the pedagogy meat-mincer
effort... how it began with the romans: per se...
later began with hastings 1066...
but it would never begin with:
the first battle of Tannenberg (1410)...
so you don't know how i think my mother
is exaggerating?
it's a good thing she's my mother...
she can have her ******* pass...
i'd give her the same ******* pass if...
we were married for 35 years and...
she was a woman i could grow with...
otherwise? the ******* pass i reserve for
children...

i subsequently signed her will...
yes... she came round looking for a second
witness for her will being made official...
or ****** bureucratic paper...
but nonetheless official...
i didn't mention the fact that...
the two witnesses that have signed the paper:
need to be present simultaneously...
i asked her... what's my occupation?
oh... right... i'm a scribbler...
a chicken-scratcher... writer of no
guild... a writ pusher...  

but all i wanted to write was...
i'm not a fan of the haiku...
esp. the western haiku... or a maxim:
i abhor maxims...
but if you put Kant into the juicer
and you spit out the congested
categorical imperative...
and it doesn't sound like the original, should:

act only according to that maxim whereby you can,
at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

id est:

act only according to that haiku whereby you can...
at some distant point of time,
convene for it be a shared experience
in the ratio of a 1:2 point of seperation...
2:4 4:8 8:16...
but that's not really a categorical imperative
to begin with... what sort of "idiot" would strive
for a maxim to become a universal law...
universal laws are maxim spin-offs...
or i'm just blah-blahing too much...
waiting dear god: for the razor's edge (and drowning)...
or a punchline on stage in front of a dumb / mute
audience...

o.k. 5-7-5...
syllables... given the japanese don't use
letter but have syllables instead...
again: i'm not a fan...
if it took my long enough...
i'd find my 5 syllables and my 7 and again
my 5 syllables...
but i am a westerner...
i deal with letters... i don't deal with syllables...
unless they are prefixes akin to trans-...
meta-... anti-... post-...
the western adoption of the haiku implies
the boredom achieved from too many
sonnets... is the haiku the new sonnet?

i'll try... but i'll need to open a dictionary
for this effort...

water knee deep truce (5)
to the drowning man imploring (8)
signature the soul with this last breath (9)

or however many... it's just a passing thought:
i don't know how it would be worthwhile
to think inside a box... standing outside it
to begin with...
a haiku and no punctuation:
if you're going to be puritanical about it...
no punctuation?!
no diacritical markers?!

the Kant reference is just to ease up on:
who the hell would live by a maxim,
a stand-alone maxim at that...
one maxim to make it into the realm
of gravity...

there's the plethora of aphorisms that
are observations that... well...
let's just say it's no an imitation game... (

since how the hell does:
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
all of the above?
darwinism in images:

stopped climbing trees...
stopped being furry...
stopped dreaming about snakes...
stopped fearing snakes...
stopped wrestling with tigers...
stopped king kong versus tiger gorgon...
jumped into a whale...
came out sonar Jonah with hell'io Job
to boot...
stopped climbing trees...
took toward the complexity
of climbing rocks...
esp. boulders... later desired
the great big button of a cookie i.e.;
desired the moon...
brewed some moonshine...
build the mirror corridor
at Versailles...
dug up lazy dinosaur bones of
that thick glutton splodge and...
retired the horse... drove a car...
etc. etc.: came across
the happy birthday of death by
gregory corso and said:
that be one of the best recitations
of poetry i have ever heard...
in youth and Paris and Paris was
the signature...

all of this but there's still...
how dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
more to the point...
how dignified it is, to walk at one's own
leisure...
a bottle of england's finest ale...
theakston's the old peculier in one hand...
a marlboro cigarette in the other...
how dignified it is...
to walk: but to also walk... at one's leisure...
not running a marathon...
not... running the concrete or the tarmac
dry with new year's even resolutions
to loße mass... (yes... since weight involves
gravity blah blah)...

this auto-correct science factoid rubric
around each corner...
i can only admit that walking...
is a sport for gentlemen...
cognitive ping pong ensues...
a solo game... perhaps...
it's not a matter of sport...
or attempting gentlemanly stature...
which could be the case...
say... if i were 75... years old...
but...

that's all fine and dandy... the psychology
behind darwinism 2.0
not even copernicus made it that far
with his "revolutionary discovery"...
or not that Ptolemy was still...
index... bibliography and historical
constipation when attempting to be
democratic and historical...
in a single poo'em... with no rhyme...
and certainly no overt-technique biases
to: "identify with"...

it's still an image burning in my head...
the gorilla that would / could wrestle
a lion to sleep with a ripped-off jaw...
the thumb-king of the jungle
and the savannah...
and of course the donning of the conquered's
mane...

but beside all the discoveries in the past
and the present...
i will find myself smirking...
laughing to myself...
that someone will find this too...
i can't stress it enough:

when i see people driving their cars...
some fast, some slow...
walking onto a bus is not a leisure activity...
it's not even a dignity...
it's a time-warp... a short-cut...
besides the point...

even this brain sometimes allow for
the dignity of walking to be eclipsed...
what its sometimes-odd bursts of egomania /
megalomania or all those other:
traits of the rational man...

perhaps this is the first day i've truly
appreciated the sensibility of walking -
much more in that: it became a dignity...
like the time i found the antithesis of narcissus
in my shadow...
once upon a nightly promenade
in the english outer-suburban labyrinth...
20 minutes walk from the fields,
grazing horses... foxes, badgers and...
no wordsworthian naturalism... i.e. the idyll...

superior intelligence, the fork,
the knife, the screwdriver the *****...
the hammer and the nail...
the scythe, the sickle and the lollipop...
the telephone the radio the television
the soap opera addicts...
the bedsheets the bed the cushion
the shampoo and soap...
all of it... but none of it at the same time...
with what comes a priori and with
what comes a posteriori...
the dignity of walking...
perhaps the only state of grace...

perhaps less "abilism" and more - upon reflection...
a mother strapped to a bed
after a hip-replacement surgery?
i.e. in a personal, very personal,
non-Teheran specific vicinity?!

perhaps the most basic meditation is required...
nothing grandiose...
nothing temporal or non-temporal...
something basic...
i.e. spatial... a meditation on cross the street
like a mindful hedgehog that you are...
and not panic driven like a mother goose
with her nursery...

walk long enough and you can even
experience bouts of spontaneous amnesia...
which is not related to actual memories
and their totality...
more in the immediacy: amnesia ex cogitans...
amnesia out of thinking...
10 minutes apart and you can almost
forget what you were thinking of...
10 minutes more pass... the labyrinth spits
you out and you recover from that temp.
bout of crucible amnesia: to forget what you
were thinking about...
which is a variant to that other escapism
of day-dreaming...
since you're walking... and no day-dreamer
is synonym of the thinker who also walks...

this variant of escapism comes of its own
accord... perhaps it's an ontological built-in-mechanism
that when you couple walking with thinking...
you'll most certainly experience these
bouts of "amnesia"... which of course doesn't
include walking in circles... but in a labyrinth
of your unconscious motives...
that the body is dissociated from a conscious will...

since... what sort of thinking exists
on a treadmill... or during running... to begin with?

how  dignified it is, to simply take a walk at night...
dignified in that: one is not so much able
to come across one's best ideas there...
but that one can simply come across... cogitans per se -

yes... i.e.: to be free from cogito ergo sum...
to come across the res cogitans medium...
only while walking...
and not like Descartes imagining oneself
sitting at a desk of doubt...

i find no better alternative: walking opens up...
thinking-in-itself... sometimes that's merely translated
as: being... it does not specify / reveal itself
as a: necessity of narration...
thinking is not narration is not thinking...
if you have experienced the ugly spontaneity of
the ego... in that vein of psychology's
three-tier meta-brain dissection of the mind:
subsequently the soul... blah blah...

now i see... this has become a sit-down meditation...
it has to end...
now that the arms have been employed for
a period longer, than the legs were employed
for, prior.

.ludo savis... play nice... ludo savis... play nice:

i knew the relationship was over when i encountered her ex-boyfriend sitting in her st. petersburg flat drinking ***** with me, no, wait, it was when she started questionning me using cosmopolitan magazine quiz about perfect girlfriends on our way from st. petersburg to moscow to see metallica, while all i wanted was to listen to bob dylan and appreciate whatever rural russia had to offer... beside that? it took me quiet a time to fiddle through and find the glagolitic alphabet, the slavic alphabet before the learned greek came across "my" people, given the romans never venture that far... good luck finding an african phonetic encoding system, beside the hieroglyphs... i won't bother looking right now... not to insult, though: so much for a large phallus megalomania contra envy... Ⰶ: życie (life) is not the half of the caron ž in the form of: the acute... (ź): ździra (don't ask, seriously, the word implies worse than ***** / szmata)... źródło (source)... eh... the one-armed caron (ž)... ź... i can't explain it any further: you need to speak the lingo to keep the "nuance" alive... southern slavs treat the caron akin to ž = ż... how beautiful... given the english language has no diacritical marker application: can't exactly claim diacritical markers using only the automated hovering decapitated heads above ι & ȷ... i'm not english i'm tired of looking up h'america's *******! i don't need not fancy pants to debrief the people i'm concerned with to mind, not giving a **** about them... thanks for your jeans: subtitle made in canada... beside the whole mao shitshow of: made in china.... back in the 1990s! *******... even in terms of music h'america isn't really relevant.. it just is... and "whatever" this "is" is to be, will remain... but only as an r.e.m. ref. pointer, that requires the physical translation of the lyrics: the one i love... a simple prop: to occupy my mind.... fire! the silesian vampire... because... said so... learning about monsters is what i could only fathom, which included me... but, sorry... the glagolithic script... ⰄⰀⰏ: dam... i.e. i will give... fun fact: r.e.m. didn't sell their: it's the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine) to microsoft for a commercial break.. glagolitic script... where are the africans? oh, right, nowhere when phonetic encoding is turning heads... **** me... even the blind are onto the affair...  i went as far back as the glagolithic script: pre cyrillic, about the same time that the latins incorporated the northern "savages" with applying the chisel to the ᚱ / R... ᚠ / F... copernican "up-side down": why do all tree (beside the pines) resemble a Y shape, a gamma? why did god compensate his existence with opiates?! refresh my memory, though, why am i drawing blanks at african phonetic encoding? **** me, the blind drew something, the deaf too... if you played the guitar, forget about reading braille... you need tender, french, fingertips.... you can't play the guitasr and read braille... mind you... encoding morse overshadows braille... but even the european blindman overcomes the fully ****-naked butter-cup sprinting *** of a black man every day of the week: i'm not here to compensate for a leprechaun's sized *****: mind you... in the hands of a porcelain ***- beauty? everything looks like a hiroshima... i just started to entertain an asian fetish... 4th knuckle mizzing... missing... the most ****** aspect of a female aesthetic? her hand... when *** & the city cited trimming ***** hair (no circumsion, really?), so no asian porcelain hands, no 4th knuckle missing?! i hate what the anglo-speaking world has become, it's this, this, this quasi-Islam.... at least i respect the Quran... but 1984, by the secular prophet of the western world? why do people still calling it: silicon vallyey... it's a ******* curtain, smart-you not seeing the replacement mechanisms of the silicon curtain: now wow... ******, where you're getting-to-go get from? any ideas?! a tehran baza?! ******. 1960s homosexuals fiddling their way past the tunis police, happy? loitering sucker-****** pansie? again... entertain me... where is the african phonetic encoding system... this is my "i.q." avenue masterpiece... i don't care about i.q. but a ******* blind man beat the african at phonetic encoding... personally?

one just simply falls, tired of the right-wing momentum regarding beauty, it's such a bothersome crtique of its generic foundation if beauty..... i hate it, this objective classicism: back to the future take no, 4; *******...

             again, where were the africans sorting
out their invetement in the slave trade...
ONLY WHITE PEOPLE
WERE BAD, CONCERNING BLACK PEOPLE...
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin ....
******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
   ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i said: ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i'd love to see an african-h'american
in africa... mouthin-off their stature...

                   african phonetic encoding....

debussy                                       chopin




satie                                              schumannn...

­and?
              there's too much of loon'don....
                   had enough of it, ****'s....
too much ***-kissing,
too much of the h'american swindle...
carelesss buggers; these brits...
******* ****** jolly-tribe
               ****-ups....
  
i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

oh sure sure, the uncircumcised man,
crucified when all the orthodox were
drunk,
                   פור day,
       drunk cruxion?!
                 lovey purin "misgivings";
what's next?

   oh sure sure, the jews would hav e crucified
me on the hill of: tel megiddo
****-heads throwing up their kippahs
into the air in some skewed form
of celebration...
       like bacchus entering
Valhalla asking: where's the mead?
    i've had too much wine...
where'y the whiskey?

   i'll keep repeating...
              talk about jews among the polonaiase?
hush hush: ****, dont want to bring
bad luck... jews in poland are very much akin
to roma gypsies: lucky charms...
but... do you see any ******* leprechauns
around? look at me: i see none...
  let's tell the joke in verse,
not the stadard: a priest a rabbi and an imam
walk into a bar...
****... is that even a joke?! muslims don't drink!
what's the imam having; cranberry juice?!

and englishman a scot and an irish walk
into a bar... the three of them walk
out on stag-duty with inflanted sheep and
speaking cymcru... terrible joke...
as all my jokes were to begin with...

         i am currently navigating,
my uncle's ex girlfriend is sleeping downstairs
on the couch,
blah blah Tuscany... blah blah prosecco...
i'm becoming suspect: she's a gemini,
isn't she? all the geminis i ever met where
extroverted self-absorbed louis XIV types...
they need to, they need to self-absorb themselves
in order to extract the sort of energy
associate with rhetoric,
   and how they constantly digress,
there's always a sub-plot to the plot... nay,
there are always sub-plots...
          great company, i mean...
when a person speaks all the time there are
no awkward moments of silence,
until the said person tells the "eager" listener...
play some music...
she's a warsaw girl, so she's a pretty learned
in the ways of the world,
i'm just an ostrowiec commoner...

    oy vey! oy vey: she'***** 40 and lamenting...
i too complain about my uncle...
she had an abortion with him...
i once talked with my uncle about music
while he surfaced at mrs. roshandler's back garabe...
we ate sri lankan fried chicken wings and
chips and listened to californication
for the very first time...

   abundance of hope in Tuscany...
"apparently"... but if you have ever watched
a woman, borderline on asylum incarceration?
i was looking at one just example...
  it's not a pretty sight...
even when she asked: how's *** and business?
i'm a monk...
          or at least i tend to...
even if she came from a stock of
failed relationships: fine fine...
            now?

i served up decent food,
a malvani and a tikka masala curry...
          naan bread,
     turmeric infused rice,
vanilla cheese cake with strawberries...
she enjoyed it,
i like to please people...
    mind you: ever see a slim chef?
i wouldn't trust a slim chef,
i never have, i never will,
you need some chubby chub chub rounding-offs...
mind you: i much prefer cooking
food than eating it,
but i would never trust a chef associated
with a c.o.d. associated with counting calories...
never have, never will...
two noteworthy proverbs:
1. too many cooks in one kitchen =
no decent meal is being made...
  one cook, one couldron, that's your best bet...
2. never trust a slim, athletic cook...
those ******* can shove their kale
       smoothies....
they can slurp up those smoothies
turning their ***** in straw ******* vortexes!
i'll cook on lard trimmings,

em....
  [9] - [2] - [6] - [3] - [8] - [1] - [4] - [5, 7]?
that's when the sudoku puzzle was filled...
all the nines... all the twos... etc. became filled
in the 9 grids...

well...
     "apart" from: my uncle's girlfriend:
i've been living in englamd
for nearly 30 yeasrs...
i've dated a french girl,
an australian, a russian....
but u've never dated an english
girl: i guess they much prefer
aged pakistani grooming gang
members....
            i guess:
**** gasoline on them,
they're all readied and geared up!

braille contra morse?
if you want to play the guitar?
forget the braille....
you need tender fingertips
to read braille...
morse? nit so much...
here's a comparison...
i see!

    a.:   ⠓⠑   ⠺⠓⠕
                       ⠎⠑⠑⠎
    ⠊⠎       ⠁⠃⠇⠑
                   ⠞⠕
                                     ­   ⠗⠑⠁⠙

b. play the guitar and learn to....
read finger tip braille, ******....

· · · ·  ·         
· − −  · · · ·  − − − 
· · ·  ·  ·  · · · :
                  · ·  · · · 
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ · − · ·  ·  (a / b)
      −  − − − 
                   · − ·  · ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ − · ·  (a)

(he who sees: is able to read)...

           i can attest...
             i would find myself readily reading
morse in braille,
than braille by itself...
                far more easier.

finger-tips... i'd sooner read your morse
as braille, than braille as morse..

When I kiss you.
I realize it doesn't make me forget.
That the one I once loved has yet to be forgotten.
In my mind, in my heart.
You're just a replacement.

Like batteries that will eventually run dead.
You're the opposite of that in my heart and head.
You constantly running in my thoughts.

I try.
I try everything I know to forget you.
Thrown out your pictures.
And all evidence connected to you.
Cause she is just a replacement of you.

I wake up to the sound
The sound ,noones ever heard
It's my last day to afford a fortune
Nothing that we couldn't learn........

Maybe we'll wake forgiving
It's better safe than sound
Maybe we'll fight forever
Nothing that can't be done......

Back to the past, we ride
Holdin' it dear to our hearts
It's my last day to buy my fortune
Nothin' that I couldn't learn.......

Maybe we'll live forgetting
A something that wasn't said
Maybe we'll find a replacement
A place for you to rest your head....

Back the the howling grounds
Where the dogs of society roam
You can't keep on forgetting
The place where you were grown

Placement that wasn't so right
Back at the pillars and thrones
My sandcastle stands in a mud pit
Waiting to be regrown

How can you sit and stand by
As the hometown grows out of control
You plant chains from a stake pike
And place people beyond their own

Maybe will live regretting
Maybe it's all on you
It's your last day to avenge the fallen,
Something that was brought by you.....

Place a crown on the stand
As peasants wave to you
Look out into the crowds
As friendly faces wave to youuuu

Maybe the Kings forgiving
Maybe the Queens forgot
To help those in need and helping
Of those who couldn't learn......

Maybe we'll find a replacement
Another duet to rule the land
Maybe they'll leash their vengeance
On someone other than you

You're his now
Just like how they say "Exactly, it was your seat"

I thought that was my spot, I guess I was just keeping it warm for him

A knife to the heart,
Twisted the whole way round.
Was it worth it,
The new friends you found?

The ones who lie, cheat and deceive,
The ones who changed you.
I was always there, through thick and thin,
But I you like them knowing the secrets only I knew...

you check on me many times a day
with my antique ears
I hear your squeaking shoes
on these vinyl floors
someone laid for those who came before
like passengers on a stalled bus
with windows that allowed only one view

I know you and I wait for the same thing
for you to check on the passenger who replaces me
he will be no different
a few more hairs, perhaps a few less stares
you will gently place your hand on his wrist
write in his chart, and maybe
glance at the date of birth,
do the mindless math
and wonder without wonder
if my replacement will have a bigger number than I

but I am still here
gazing at your angled eyes
while you count the beats
which slow a little each day
waiting for you to say
how long will this one last?

don’t worry, squeaking vinyl floor walker
when my drum stops pounding
I will try to make sure it happens
while I am asleep

I found myself wanting to get you a necklace
  you know
to replace that one with the silver heart you wore before
      the chains got all tangled

I even picked it out, a light blue teardrop of glass to
match mine

no symbolism gets by you, and I wanted to get for you a
    tangible reminder that sadness is always there but

safely contained in a beautiful teardrop from
me to you if that makes any sense whatsoever
to lift up the latches and feel our breeze come
through the glass

there is a sense of fragility in tangible things
  a sense that cautions me from investing any power in one

if only there were a way
I hope you never forget

There is a cake.
There is a beautiful, rounded
Vanilla swiss buttercream well-iced cake
That they gave to you.  

This cake makes me miss you
Makes me miss running my fingers
Throughout your hair
And gently pressing my own soft lips
To yours, Instead of your lips pressing
     this stupid cake.
And I know that you love it.
And I know that if you do not have
every ounce
You will starve.  

I was jealous of this cake, I admit
Jealous indeed of the shiny new replacement
They gave for you for my love
It made you feel good inside and out, as well
Enriched your brain, and your appetite
I was jealous and stole a slice in spite of you.  

Then I realized, that you love this cake
You have waited for this cake, every year
Every birthday
Hoping for the envelope informing you
That the time for cake was now
That the cake WAS your time, now, and that
All of you was invested, in this succulent dessert
And you needed to keep as much as you could,
     for your sake,
I came to accept the fact, that you needed so.  

But like your hair, I brush this cake
with the tips of my fingers, I taste this cake
I understand the sweetness you enjoy
and the sanctity of it being left alone  

But if I dare to kiss this cake
because I adore the things you care about so much
and some icing comes onto my lips
Have I stolen something from you?

"You get what you want , but you don't
have what you need.
Many of us go through life with smiles
on our faces, yet the heart is of stone.
It needs to be chiseled down.
you need tools for that, but not the kind
of tools that many think about.
( a hammer & a chisel)
Try thinking of placing the hammer with
a (Thought) and the chisel with a (Goal)
Try thinking of the things you received in
your life that you always took for granted.
They came to you with a purpose.
Many of us think for what was received was
placed in their proper place. if so then why
the heart of stone.
Try now in your lives to whatever comes to
you, set them toward a goal. A goal to start
breaking down the stone, and replace it with Love.
A love that gives  now what you need.
Have the things you need, rather with the things
you got. "A Replacement"....

A man I once loved told me he wished I “cared more about my body”
But I do care
I care for every lump and curve as much as I hate them
As much as he hated them

I remember yearning for puberty
A thing to make me tall
And thin
A biological fix for my
PROBLEMATIC BODY

Does he know the history?
The gain and loss
The bullies
The pushed-into-puddles
The nightmares

I despise the power of his lips
A lover disfigured
That’s the vibe
His words birthing a mantra of shame
And I’ll never outrun this skin

Thirty years later
And he’s pushing me into a lake
No principal to save me this time
No dry clothes

He left me years ago
Found a much thinner replacement for my side of the bed
It’s for the best
I tell myself as I drunkenly throw rocks at his window

“Don’t think
Just eat”
Is this just a game I play?
Three glasses of whiskey and a Postmate
Won’t chase the horror away

Momentary pleasure
(add guacamole)
Is that enough?
Will I ever be enough?

No
I am too much
Too much skin
Too much softness
Too many folds
Too much of me is filling up space
That’s what they tell me
I see the reflection and I hate all of this excess ME

“I wish you cared more about your body”

What is the remedy?
A perfect diet
A perfect exercise regimen
Pills
Sweat
Porcelain

Think before you speak on a body, sir
Because your words alone
Have the power to ignite a hell
Of
The
Utmost
Destruction

His venom is still pulsing through me
And I’m burning up
I want to escape
Crawl out from the water
Become pure wind

But how do I love me?
How do I allow myself to occupy space?
To stop hiding from every mirror, every glance at the ocean of my belly?

I don’t know
I’m not there yet
I am on an opposite shore consumed by self-hatred
Longing to set sail for somewhere

Somewhere I can cherish the secrets that these sacred ripples of flesh hide
Where my waistline is a treasure map of my wisdom
A place where his words have no power
Where I collapse into the sunset and set myself...
F
R
E
E

Scrounging local garage sales... near ten years past... I had found a flat, welded iron, rusty seahorse... 3 feet high... with a good seahorse shape and poise... edges welded and cut... after the haggle... twenty-five dollars..... perfectly added to my estate... covered rust in gold sheen... mounted upon a tree... to greet all comers... with a seahorse kiss!    
     Seller said it was made by the same artist... of the turtle lady statue... to be found in Corpus Christi!  Asked if I had seen it... my reply... No, but I liked the seahorse piece! He expounded... the artist... only had one leg... but was a surfer... well known for this trait... in Corpus Christi!  
     After I had mounted the seahorse... upon it's tree...I did an internet search... looking for anything about the one-legged surfer artist of Corpus Christi!  Found... nothing!  
     End of May, 2019... visiting my sister, Donna... we were wandering Corpus Christi!  She guided us to the surf museum... not knowing the story... of the one-legged surfer artist... creator of my mounted seahorse!  
     Girl at the front desk... Kyla... real nice and friendly... told her about the seahorse and questioned her... she didn’t know... she never heard of a surfer with one leg or the turtle lady statue!  Looking at us just a bit strangely... one legged surfer???
      Donna and I... started our stroll through the small museum!  Along the right side... stood a long row of surfboards... I’ve never surfed... but I was imagining trying it with just one leg!  
      Anyhow... I didn’t really stop to read or look in any detail at any of the exhibits until I reached the back... there was a glass case... which had a piece of simple letter paper...  8.5x11... taped to the front of the glass cabinet!  I started in reading the last paragraph...

     “Welch, 53, and his wife, Chelsea Louise, 23, died September 15, 2001, when their car plunged off the edge of South Padre Island’s Queen Isabella Causeway, which partially collapsed after a string of barges crashed into the bridge’s support pilings!

     Thought to myself... Wow... Who is this guy???  I jumped up to the middle paragraph...

     “Welch lost one of his lower legs in an auto accident in the 1970s, but he kept surfing with a prosthesis.  He wore a peg-like prosthesis at first, then got one with a foot.  He won the prosthesis division of the United States Surfing Championships on South Padre Island in 1998.”

     In the glass case was a welded metal sculpture of a beach scene... with waves, palm trees, and all!  The piece did have some resemblance in style to my seahorse sculpture!  Also, there was a picture on top of the case... of Harpoon Barry... striking a muscular, no shirt pose... in his tattoo shop... his torso covered in tattoos!  
    
     “It is said... he was on the verge of suicide after losing his leg. In one interview with the San Antonio Express News in 1992 he said;  "I may not make it to heaven, but you can be sure I made no deals with the devil to get where I'm at now, "  Looking down at his false leg stretched out in front of him, Welch said quietly: "It is a real empty feeling when you put one of these on for the first time, especially if you are an adult on your own. And your mama'a not there and your daddy's not there, and the people in the hospital tell you, 'This is the best it's going to get.  I made my first leg myself, out of Hi-C cans. I couldn't wait for my leg to get finished. I wanted to walk. I guess I got the idea from the Tin Woodsman in 'The Wizard of Oz.' That leg actually worked pretty well!”

     I had found my one-legged surfer artist!  I walked towards Donna... who was already half-way leaving the museum...  I hollered to her... she just had to come see this ... “I think I found the one-legged surfer!”  She had recently had partial knee replacement... and was hobbling!  She said if I was fooling her... she better not walk back all that way for nothing!! She came back to the glass case... we read through the letter in it’s entirety!  
     Then we went... and told Kyla at the front desk... she again looked at us again a bit strange... but then reluctantly left her post to go with us to take a look... she was then astounded!  Said she never knew about the one-legged surfer... although she had worked at the museum for several years!  Said there were also a couple metal sculptures... at the front of the museum... she thought were also done... by Harpoon Barry!  We took pictures of those also!  

In the letter we also read...

     “Welch had numerous tattoos and body piercings.  He wore a tiny 14 carrot gold harpoon through one ******.  That is how he got his nick name according to a friend, Scott Gangel.”  

     "I am a unique, self-made sensation!” he said matter-of-factly... in the interview with the Express News!  
    
     It's been 18 years since eight people died when South Padre Island's Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway collapsed... sending 11 people into the water below... four days after the 9/11 attacks!  A string of tow barges had struck the supporting pilings!  A section of the roadway had collapsed...
     I promised Kyla... I would donate my seahorse piece to the museum upon my death!  I only hope my death... is as grand as Harpoon Barry’s plunge into the Gulf of Mexico with his young wife!  Wonder what they were doing during the plunge... what was Barry doing... yelling Yippee Ki Yay... or Surf’s up... Dude!!!... maybe???  
    
Surfed waves on one leg
Young wife... crazy life... grand death
Harpooned by Barry

©  2019 Jim Davis

.i left an excess of a B somewhere in here... within the confines of a word giblet... i probably thought: bigger... bouncier... gibblet looked better... and so very far removed from goblet... i'm not going to look for it.

i haven't done much today -
and i don't suppose i will finish this day of
with some grand poo'em...
but one can almost be proud
to have perfected a chicken breast roulade...
the rest of the chicken missing
the butterfly? well... bound to a very
decent soup... clear and not atypical
western cream-soup...
but the roulade! the roulade!
no... you don't beat the butterfly *******
like you might turn to: "sadistically"
for a schnitzel...
you do beat the meat,
but you more or less... press down the mallet
onto the meat, until you reach
the right equilibrium of pressure and
there's that squish-sound / feel of the *******
expanding...

if it was a whole roast chicken:
of course i'd stuff the space between
the skin and the ******* with some thyme
infused butter... to capture the richness...
but this is a roulade...
the stuffing? goats cheese... toasted almonds...
fesh dates... thyme...
i might have just over-balanced
the equation with the dates...
but as i explained to the fussy-eater:
what are you implying that we do not
serve poultry with a sweet attache?
cranberry sauce and turkey?
and as i've learned...

it's best buying potatoes from a turkish
outlet by the 25kg bulk...
from a warehouse where the buyers
walk with bundles of money and do not
use debit card "finger" prints...
the free passing of money is still retained
in some tiers of society...
but the idea, regarding the potatoes is
to poach them from a bath of cold water...
once they start boiling leave them for
five minutes, then turn the heat off
and wait for the bubbling water to stop...
drain them... then leave them on
the already turned-off stove to get rid
of any excess water...
drizzle some chilly infused olive oil
onto the baking tray, place each potato individually...
then drizzle some olive oil onto them...
shove them in the oven when the roulade
is finished...
my first most pristine roulade...
of course you have to pan-fry it to get some
colour... the filling is kept intact given that:
goats' cheese is no mozarella...

it doesn't melt and subsequently ooze out...
and the whole lot should be be done within
the hour... the roulade can be pressured
to go for 25 minutes...
depending on the colour of the tatties...
i still had to take it out and "glitter" it with
a 1:1 ratio of honey and lemon juice...
the remains of this juice i designated on al dente
cooked greens... there was no need
for a dressing...
left-over red cabbage coleslaw...
that helps... sweet chilli sauce with some mayo
and crem fraiche...
it even looks the prettier picture:
leftover but it still works...
***** of a ******* butterfly *******!
of course it was going to spit oil back at me,
i was frying the skin... the fat from the skin
was melting the skin was getting crisp
and mingling with the olive oil fat...
also... it's a myth that the temp. should
read: 165°F... that's really just a circa...
mine read 156°F... and given the time i let
it rest...

oh right... this is not a food blog...
perhaps the moon is just too beautiful tonight
to have to attach words to it?
perhaps my love is better left alone and unused
and it doesn't demand sleeper idealism
for it to be celebrated?
it's cooking food... it's not a hip-replacement
surgery...
when cooking was married to chemistry:
i sometimes miss the laboratory
and the cooking up of esters...
my new found calling is in cooking...
and something i... wouldn't exactly want to earn
money for...

and what is surgery if not elevated butcher's ******>antics? oh no, it's needed...
but the meat is supposed to be raw
from beginning to end...
and if i was only given the chance to recycle
a recipe for a stake tartar...
or sushi... well... it wouldn't be much...
esp. when i come into my own
and cook an indian **** of spices...
but then again... the indians butcher their meat
in their curries...
i've come to some serious realisation...
the indians butcher the meat with their curry sauce...
it comes down to baking the meat...
in order for the meat to still retain its
original juices...
i quiet enjoy that little detail of cook...
in that: i don't remember the last time i was
in a restaurant...

i can't imagine eating while having to talk...
conversation over food is no better
than sitting in field of grazing cows
and their leech clouds of flies all bothersome...
with regards to the quality of the meat....
there is always some excess of meat from
the butterfly ******* before you start moulding
them into a shape that will satisfy it being
rolled...
it's a supreme joy working with a whole
chicken... i sometimes wish i was also the man
who could see the whole procedure of:
and be involved in the slaughterhouse...

oh god... the brute village beheading is
rather uncompromising... one chicken is caught
and beheaded on a stump of wood...
the head still moves with its last remaining
short-circuit tongue extending out of the beak
and the eyes roll... and then all the other chickens
congregate and perform a Kuru ritual of pecking
the blood... sipping it...
that's how killing a chicken in a village
looks like... i can't imagine an industrial scale
precision... but i would't mind...

every time i hear of veganism: the ethical argument
i start conjuring up an antithesis of
cannibalism... which is not exactly edgy given
my catholic background (i haven't been
confirmed, personal choice):
this is my body, this is my blood...
i hear a vegan talk i make a fetish of
imagining cannibalism...
believe me... these limbs look akward...
to begin with... where can you find a *******
drumstick of poultry on it?!
nowhere!

only a few days shy off today i made a most
delightful broth of chicken hearts...
i can't explain how the sight of washing...
oh... around 30 pultry hearts feels like...
given that they're hearts and not the entire chicken...
but as ever... the internal organs are a delight...
pork or poultry liver...
poultry hearts...
poultry stomachs...
cow intestines...

come to think of it... you never really cook meat...
you... curate it... it become a fine art specialist...
for those who turn to veganism or the vegetarian
"alternative": perhaps they never curated meat,
perhaps they simply butchered it?
the chicken roulade of butterfly poultry *******
always came out dry-*****?

after all, wasn't ol' Adoolph the one to say:
'hello mr. carrot, hellooo jew no. 1269230 of
auschwitz'... that's the puberty of my distrust
for vegans... they were never able to
cook meat properly... they probably ate
a decent piece of it served in a restaurant...
but when it came to cooking it themselves...
they would have probably butchered
a pasta and never reached the quality: al dente...
either...
and i'm worried that they can't cook
vegetables al dente either...
so it's back to the gulag of roots overcooked
and turned into mush...

oh i believe that meat is butchered...
but it's from the actual butchery...
it's from a lack of respect in how it's finally
"cooked"... well... curated...
are vegans the sort of people that never
ate a stake tartar... or found the most
arisotractic flavours in the giblet?
oh my god... if you can eat a drumstick
of chicken clean to the bone...
and, like me... sometimes bite off
the budding pulp of the bone for the marrow
gnash?
perhaps that's why i own cats...
delicate courtesans of the table...
a dog would go hungry at this table...
sharpnel of bones and some lurking marrow
in the "shins"... and that's about it...

you can never truly be a vegan...
not unless you repudiate the fact you've only
tasted muscle tissue...
what about the giblets and the cartilege?

every time i would perform oral ***
on a woman i could only conjure up one distate...
this is not a steak done rare...
this is not an oyster...
this is not a steak tartar...
there are "things" pulverising this meat...
there's an unexpected pocket of heat
in this... "thing"...
this is a sensation that lends itself
to the pastry section of my diet...
a warm apple pie... a custard drizzle
over some chocolate sponge...
oh qui qui... the marvels of a bilingual mouth...

if the meat is of good quality....
as the chicken roulade i made today...
and there were leftover snippets...
which i fed to the cats...
and the meat was eaten... in totality...
i was eating good chicken...
cats regarding meat are like...
those ancient jobs equivalent to...
Halotus...
god! give me a chance to own a cat!
i'll name him: Halotus!
he'll be my meat taster...
he'll tell me if i'm eating bad meat...
i'm not a Claudius but...
this cat could very well be the next Halotus!
dogs eat leftovers...

beside this one instance of catching
a female mosquito by the leg
and feeding it to a cat...
the most pleasure i ever received was
when i was preparing a rainbow trout
for grilling...
the head couldn't be used since:
i wasn't planning to cook a base fish stock...
so i plucked those pearly eyes from the head...
and my... what a delight they were...
not me... the cat...
i'm guessing that's the equivalent
of me gulping down an oyster...

female maine **** fascination with dairy
products...
any cream will do... even cheap-oh cheese...
dairylee spreadable...
but all manner of cream whipped...
i've heard of cats being fond of red wine...
i once owned one that was fond
of... olive brine...

again: what's with this need for people to cook
your food? what sort of decency of conversation
can one have when presented with food?
i don't like restaurants simply because:
well i can't exactly cook roadkill...
and shooting at birds is not my kind of thing...
so if i can't catch it and **** it...
i can at least: cook it...
i distrust what i eat that i haven't prepared
myself... notably the hygiene dilemma...

it really is on my head whether i'll catch
salmonella when i sometimes drink a coffee
with a guilty pleasure of mine:
whisked egg-yoke and sugar... on top of the coffee...
that's my problem...
but eating is never a synonym with conversation...
and it's never necessary to loiter and wait
for someone to shove pretenses above
the food in the first instance of: the waiting staff...

i blame the rise in veganism surrounding
the people who never allowed themselves to appreciate
the animal: in total...
there's no fun just sticking to ingesting muscle
protein... first you have to cook it properly...
this chicken roulade didn't have to reach
the internal temp. of 165°F - that's a circa proposition...
at 156°F and allowed to rest is just as good...
because it's an art-form to cook meat...
then again: what's cooking and what's about
to be curated?

the people who turn to veganism are also the people
who never bothered with gibblets...
the liver, the heart, the stomach,
in some cases the intestines...
hence my critique of Islams critique of ol' porky Bella...
this most unique animal...
which you can eat in total...
tenga deep fried pigs ears...
again: the cartilege...
ethics my *** if all you know about a pig is a bore
chop or a **** or... you never get into
the knitty-gritty details of the interior of
an animal... lamb is a stinking meat...
it's hell-rot when the male is slaughtered...

oh right! right! how could i forget the star
pinnacle... poached giblet supreme...
the neck... if you know how to eat a drumstick
down to the bone...
poached poultry neck...
the teeth and tongue wandering around
the crevices of this elongated spine...
i can imagine monkey's extended coccyx
tastes as tender... but only among
the macaques...
otherwise: when what's about to be eaten...
can be elevated to a status of ****** fetishes...
gimps in leather...
when rummaging among so many
boyscouts & aenemic vegans...

i'm yet to taste this, one specific, delicacy...
flaki (flački) is not new to me...
i need to marry a girl from ******* Masovia...
somewhere in the vicinity of Płock...
for i can eat some černina...
duck blood and clear broth soup...
as long as most of the animal is used...
the dogs can have the rest
and so can the vegan ethics society...

but of course this is no an anathema...
or some curated vendetta...
all the roots in the vicinity...
even the fungus... can vegans eat fungus?
are you sure?
what about those "thinking" magic mushrooms
that... if you looked into 1960s:
quick-n-easy philosophy courses...
the fungus is the botanical hitchhiker
that strapped itself to the humanoid brain
and... broadened our horizons and what not...
can you eat the godhead 'shroom?
it might just very well be...
that i'm picking a half-brain half-mushroom
entity in some alcohol to allow myself
to ease a tongue out from
its standard formality of the mollusk...
and waggle waggle waggle brute...

but yes... one is most certainly butchering
a piece of meat when one cooks
a broth... or a curry... unless its a gibblet
of sorts...
to "curate" muscular meat in a broth of a curry...
poaching it to death and worse than death:
dry...
it's about allowing the meat to retain its
natural juices...
how else to enjoy a poultry butterfly breast
roulade - with the natural juices still intact?

- i stopped paying attention to these *******
moralists...
if you have ever figured your way around
cutting off the butterfly of ******* for a roulade...
and you know what it feels like
when you stuff the space between
the meat and the skin of them
with some butter and fresh thyme...
and you're still not circumcised...
well... that's what skin feels like...

how else to reiterate? Ava Lauren is probably
the best example of a brothel beauty...
mandible beauty... something that contorts
and appeals to a perspective of cubism...
wretched beauty of the squashed square
into a pseudo-rhombus contort...
at least doing it from time to time leaves me
without a single buoyancy of thought regarding:
am i having enough, am i not having enough:
and if i'm not having enough -
what are the chances of me contracting some
s.t.d.?

bad beef...
again... juxtaposing a reiteration...
there's something worse than visit a brothel...
there's the... visiting a resturant..
i can't stop thinking about alien,
unwashed hands, preparing my food...
it's already one kick-in-the-***** not having
hunted the food... but to be left ******-over
twice by not having cooked it?!

at least if you know what flesh feels like
between the two crucibles of
death's kiss and man's tongue tease...
you will know when...
you will at least know when...
death comes with its kiss...
and its breath... the meat will turn all
yucky... as if a mollusk decided to prance
upon it in an imitation zigzag...

hence? i have no respect for islam because
islam has no respect for Miss Porky Bella!
seeing how most of the lamb -
except for the kidney in a steak pie
is not wasted...
the pig could feed two african villages...
if done properly...
while a lamb would only serve a pittance
for a poor man of yemen harem...

again: the pig is the enemy...
while not making crab meat a haram is not?
vulture meat... scavenger meat...
that's a: o.k. but the sophisticated nature
of the pig: sophisticated in that:
almost all of it can be eaten...
that so much of it can be you would probably
burp out an oink...
done properly...
the giblets in tow...
pity that such a desert god would never
appreciate the pig becoming a dog on
its truffle hog days...

beside all the arguments...
imagine how the "one true god" goes down
on a platter of those ignorant Beijing folk...
Warsaw testing! Warsaw testing!

pristine my *** when all they ever do
is eat the muscles and never appreciate the detials...
no wonder they become aenemic vegans!
at least butchering a vegetable is less of a concern...
you can almost get away with butchering a root...
it is... oh most certainly it is a shame...
when you can't cook meat properly...

but at least i never feel ever as bad going to a brothel
seeing the sort of people who venture into
restaurants...
i don't like being cooked for, i don't like being
"waited" for...
i don't like this modern orthodoxy affair
of a restaurant... i wish these people
learned something about how meat is: never cooked...
and how... it's always most certainly most necessarily:
curated...

pedantic? perhaps... you should have seen
me in that athenian strip-club with two-clingy *******
either side of me... starwberries in their *****
and we are all fine and giggling...
stealing kisses from prostitutes is: truffle hog
"learning" parabolla...

a date and a "promise" of *** is always
a limp **** affair...
i always want to know whether what i'll be eating
still entertain the existence of salt...
or whether i'll have to find alternatives
of: extracting the juices and finding the right
bites...
because love is long over-due and i'm not going
to butcher it further with whimsical hopes...
my love is a dead love is no ideal...
my love is donning a ball and chain of memory:
i have left the better parts of myself
in the wrong sort of people...
they're hardly coming back...
the people or the pieces of me...

but at least i can attest that:
oral *** and the cool crisp gulp of an oyster
passing the Charon of my tongue...
oysters are only fascinating to eat...
because you always want to concentrate
on the fact that: you're eating something that's still
alive... not even a steak tartar or a sushi slice
gives you that hope and thrill...
unless... you're hoping for some tapeworm
embryo being lodged in the flesh...
which how man can almost arrive
at the conception of foetus and womanhood...
i can't be impregnated: exclusively...
i can't be... pregnant: exclusively...
but i can allow a parasitical tapeworm
to become my new-born-*******-out-abortion...

inclusively... how else?!
i'm also tired of being left immoral by the act
of *******...
not unless you know what not being circumcised
feels like... and what chicken skin feels like...
the people at the restaurants...
a palette disgruntled by minor changes of heat...
and... there's always a very precise detail
when it comes to the temp. of a piece of meat
being cooked... and when it's allowed to epilogue
when resting to ****** with all its juices
left intact...

over-sexed society, are we?
at least doing the one-eyed-bandit's favor
doesn't allow me to ferment...
to pickle such repressive thinking...
itself pitched against: in itself...
and these this Radeztsky March forward...
over-sexed also can imply:
not exactly culinarily-savvy...
these are always twins walking side by side...
and they are always siamese problems...
over-sexed implies...
not cuninarily-savvy...
the better part of this critique is already wide open...
why all these cooking channels,
all these cooking programs?
and all this ****?

can't **** can't cook? broomstick! and to sabbath
with you!
i can't no better comparison...
over-sexed and also: terrible at *******...
******* is terrible to begin with...
you can't exactly quip yourself with
having done some lessons in tango or salsa...
the chances are that the *** turns out to
be a laughable take on tango and
you're going to step on a day-dreaming
dancing partner...
it's exactly what's it's supposed to be:
a gamble at best...
but when you throw in bad cooking?
recipe for disaster... bad dates that begin
in a restaurant and arrive at a black-out
bedroom with cockoon *** under
the bedsheets with you gasping for air!

'god let me out! let me out!'

I can feel you slipping away from me;
imagine what it’ll be like without you again,
because it’ll be different than not knowing you at all.
As I sit on my bed and write
I can feel the empty place next to me
where you should be playing with your iPod
and cracking jokes,
singing and rolling over on your back with laughter
after we sang a funny lyric.

I’m imagining lying here with you,
discussing and smiling and giggling over
my first kiss, and yours,
but somehow the memory
leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I’m reliving you and him
and I, the one on the sidelines,
the one spectating while the game is being played.
And I’m not even keeping score, not even waving a flag.
I’m the invisible onlooker, the one who doesn’t want to be there;
the high school student stuck
at a basketball game because they don’t have a ride home.

And no, it doesn’t matter what you tell me,
how much you say that you don’t mean
to leave me out or keep me at bay,
here you are, doing it again and again and again.
And it doesn’t matter how much you apologize,

because I’m starting to get the feeling of being replaced.

How Edison and Tesla warred
To be the first to capture light.

A replacement for fire
And an ode to the sun.

Guiding travelers
Across sky, land, and seas.

Balming my hungry skin with rays
When I’m jonesing for the sunshine.

Bringing life to what was once still
Shadows dance across glowing plains.

Illumination to our world
No longer constrained by dawn and dusk.

The power of storms harnessed
To fuel our weapon against the dark.

Transcending to be hopes beacon
Against all fear.

Miniaturized to be as small as a dot
Oh how we hunger for our light.

the corner
of my room
has a light

it's pretty
     it's bright

but in time
    it will age,
but in time
    it will die,

i can change it out,
have a new one shine

but throw away
the old light,
have it die?

tossed into
the garbage
it breaks and
         shatters

the old light
that i knew
that i loved
is dead

must i forget
that love

with a
replacement?

can we replace
feelings,
           emotions,

for something
            someone?

Can there possibly be,
any more affable and
devoted friend than big old dog?

Dogs; the only animal in the world,
bred, and raised that have within
them one driving passion and desire,
to live along side and please their
human companions.

Should we find reason to scold,
or forcibly correct them for some
transgression of unwanted behavior,
They merely love us with their eyes
of shinning acceptance and affection,
Ready to forgive and forget.

A dog is not petty, they hold no grudges.
They seldom nag, never talk too much,
In short they are the perfect friend.

Other than a hopeful encouraging gaze,
Two times a day, like clock work,
Beseeching us as they do, for food,
They seldom require anything of us.
Except to be protected, loved
And treated fairly.

Oh sure they also let us know when,
they need to go outside to do their Duty.
Now that is so completely preferable,
to that other odious option.
How **** smart is that?
Sometimes I don't even know,
when I got to go to the bathroom,
And I'm an intelligent human.

At least once a day, they
conspicuously stand at the
door, leash in their mouth
looking to go outside,
for a little exercise.
And gentle reminder to us,
that a brisk walk would,
do us more good, than them.

I can sometimes be a little down,
When along comes my canine clown,
And charms and delights all that,
Right out of me. Such is their nature.

Even merely going out to the garage,
for less than five minutes,
Upon my return, I'm excitedly,
lovingly greeted as if,
I'd been gone forever.

Five minutes or five days,
To a dog, it does not matter.
Unconditional love has
no built in time meter.

If you could hook up,
their gyrating, manic tails,
to your house current, no
utility bills need be paid.

Sometimes I swear,
that old dog of mine,
is actually smiling.

Long tailed dogs can be a bit of a menace,
What with their "Excitement Whip" appendage,
slapping seated kids on the floor, in the face,
And sweeping all the little bric-a-brac,
keep sakes, right off your coffee table.
A small price to pay for all their affection,  

I like people just fine,
but I must honestly admit,
in the company of noble dogs,
I can be completely content.

Sure occasionally I seek the
reassuring comradeship,
of some good humans
As long as my dog,
can come along,
and attend the party too.

When I was a child,
we moved a lot,
Human Friends
were not in abundance.
It was an old loving dog.
that pulled me through,
his warm companionship
I have never forgotten.

It was about then,
that I truly understood,
that dogs are people too.
Much smarter than,
we give them credit.

The only real sad part
to this compatible pairing,
this marriage of the heart,
is that we must always,
it seems, out live our buddies.

Love is love and
gone is gone
and nothing
can ever change that.

That loss has come
to me, more times
than I care to remember.
I weep and morn and
Swear to never ever,
Suffer that pain again.
That my last dear friend,
was beyond replacement.

Yet, a sweet new
little puppy can
do wonders to heal
a sad broken heart.

Once more you begin,
to open your soul
and embrace that
young pup forever.
And what was old,
is new again.

And just starting over,
that fresh beginning,
That new budding
friendship,
Is what's important.

For no man is an Island
as long as he has a
good dog beside him.

I bought a cruiser bike
instead of a mountain bike
I’m a sextagenarian
not a 30-something
so every morning I pedal
to the corner across from the Ritz-Carlton and the Montage
next to the high-rent Pandemonde Café
and count the Ferraris roaring by.

I never had a Ferrari
but I did buy a ’96 Mustang once
and souped it up with a supercharger
which was around the time
my doctor took me off testosterone
because my prostate specific antigen
was way too high

You have an inoperable prostate malignancy, he said
after the biopsy
You can’t take hormone replacement anymore
It will **** you

And as I lean on my bike
depressed about missing the rush
of another boost of synthetic male hormone
I enjoy watching the Europen speedsters streak by
so proud of themselves
in cars that cost more
than my house.

I used to wish I was them
used to feel like them
when I was younger and charging hard
but now I just utter prayers
for each Lamborghini that goes by
and I say
I hope your car is faster than cancer.

i look up to the skies
and realise,
they're different now.

thick white lines that hang
and spread; instead of dissipating
like yesteryear.

while all around me, people
stare down @ their
electronic devices.

the world has disappeared
that i knew as a child;
i'm not too enamoured of the
replacement.

maybe if i drink this whole bottle and become intoxicated it will replace your poison
I'll be better
maybe if i go ahead and  smoke to clear my thoughts each inhale replacing our memories
I'll feel better
maybe if i relapse  and break down once again
I'll feel better
*but maybe the best cure is you as the poison

She once told me
she was terribly afraid of
the 889 blades of grass
in the park down her street,
of the 889 worn books
in her local library
of the 889 gum-covered steps
to her bus stops
of the 889 looks
she must make over her shoulder
of the 1 778 pairs of greedy eyes
stealing looks away from me.

I missed her when she sent me pictures
because I couldn't bear to look
at empty frames of empty eyes
(red dows no match red
unless it is the scarlet of blood on broken glass
after a year and two months of tranparency)
and also because the things that slipped into my phone
could only remind me of moments that could never be
and dreams
that would never come true.

I don't know what to say to her
without breaking her
(like the broken glass)
(the image still hasn't left my head)
but she inspires me toward metaphors
and the adromeda galaxy
isn't so far away anymore.

How can I stay by her side
when she triggers me to want to fall
but how can I ignore her call
when she is the only person I feel safe with
to coincide

I am afraid to tell her
(or myself)
how I feel
because in a cliche
I don't know how I feel myeslf
but dear, together, we are formidable
and apart --
I don't know about you,
but I catch myself on the dry spells --
we are fort minable

this song has been stuck in my hear
since it reminded me of you
and this could be another metaphor for something heartfelt
and not altogether original

But I want us to be
the figures in the painting
you said you saw us in
I want to be
that feminist duet
(even if I can't sing and you voice is that of the devil's)
I want to be
the cats in the picture
with the intertwined tails
or the flowers tangled up
on a vine
(I was going to send you that on
but I thought against it
because you were too beautiful to be compared
to a simple petrichor-scented bougainvillea)

So I will be
the 889 poetry books
you dog-ear and highlight
and secretly slightly plagiarize
and I will be
the 889 plants growing
in your backyard,
sparkling for you like replacement diamonds
after the rain
(and better yet I will be the forest
of 889 trees
looming not frighteningly but protectively
over you)
and I will be
the 889 strides
of golden brick road
to follow to your favorite coffee shop every day
and I will be
the 889 innocent peaks
at a delicate pinkie finger or a nose
(because a delicate rose such as you
cannot be seen all at once and truly appreciated)
and I will even be
the 1 778 pairs of eyes
stealing my own looks,
and hopefully you will not be afraid anymore.

I will split myself
into
6 228 parts
to make you feel comfortable
and if this is not a love poem
then it is an apology
and gratitude
and anger/resentment/not really/how could I resent you/you are everything

what I'm trying to say is,
we could go so many different ways,
and what's one more expression of love to you
after all you've been through.

^or the equivalent of the bushidō, i.e. way of the citizen: shimin dōro (shimindō).

it's truly electrifying watching the Olympics, the diversity of
bodies, it simply shames the football ballerinas
complaining about their tiaras
and fouls *****-whiskers tingling **** -
oh ooh oh god, the end of the world!
i finally find my body type,
Greco-Roman 130 kg wrestling,
or 105 kg weightlifting, no six pack...
you watch the Olympics long enough to
sterilise what's otherwise turkey-feeding
of image... i think the discus throwers
are hot, the archery from South Korean with
their porcelain pelicans shattering on the one touch...
the Croat beauty is atypical of
Slaven Bilić - itch - that's a diacritical mark
that's itchy - breve or acute... c̆ that alternative,
along with the c̆ech - Český Krumlov - chequers-ski -
Gucci and other associates of Milan did
a runner... we don't accept anorexic in the
Paraolympics... maybe we should enter old twiggy
daddy longshanks in the races... invent
Metaolympics...  so i found out where i'm designated,
130kg Greco-Roman wrestling and 105kg weightlifting...
that's my body... if i were to be tyrannised by
the dictatorial rule of volleyball and football
i'd be nowhere... no spectrum, no difference...
some like Twiggy Ramirez at the ping pong shoo
(**** **** ****... believe me,
non-purpose onomatopoeia usage is a replacement
of sensibility knocking, i use it when i just
want a sound, not necessarily an accessible
direction of finalising a meaning) -
but watching the Olympics is like watching
the Greeks under Roman rule... the marble genius
of the spectrum of sizes... and coerced differences
ploughed into one...
which had me bewildered about the other duality,
i always thought that the Spartan way of life
was about raw physicality... that all Spartans
had to be physically fit, ten potato sacks on their
shoulders running up Etna...
and that the Athenians concerned themselves
with aesthetics of the arts and clues...
it's not about athletics at all...
i'm a Spartan in that respect, sure, i donned
the long hair like any Spartan might,
men with long hair, women with a Niqab, whatever,
Satan's postbox as the crude English myth said it was...
i might go and see a ballet, but let me tell you,
any first act of ballet is tedious... you can't warm up
to liking any ballet in the first act...
it's all downhill during the second and third acts,
but the first act is horrid...
i realised that there was another dimension of
the Spartan life, it's not the physicality at all...
Spartans' physicality is about efficiency,
we have weightlifters in Sparta, but we have
bodybuilders in Athens, the former concerns itself
in pragmatic matters, the latter in aesthetic matters...
same in art... the Spartan way concerning mental
aptitude is to do with the basics, with very little,
a minimalism, a park bench, a few beers,
a conversation... otherwise? the Athenian reign on
ballrooms, cocktails, royal dinners, flamboyance,
degeneracy, and outright excess...
forget the Olympic plus, the variations of bodies...
footballers and anorexic catwalk models...
we're talking blubber fetishes of Rembrandt -
then into the psychic life of Sparta - simplicity,
twinning with the Japanese way of life...
over and over again... simple fulfils perfection
by not competing, so self-absorbed it is,
so solipsistic it will remain... and it is an art-form
the Spartan life, if i get my sleep,
have my tobacco, a bottle of whiskey and a few beers,
a white page... the end.
the Athenian model discounts what that famous
Spartan argued for: carpenters, plumbers,
better than the claims of being a "son of god",
he broke out, on the prescription that ****** him
by the authorities: deus ex machina -
try imitating him, it's harder than you think.
the Athenian model of the arts and impracticality -
the Spartan model of geometry and practicality -
the Olympics taught me that the Spartan way of life
is not solely concerned with physical exercises,
that the physicality of body be the sole concern,
that one is to perfect the body...
the Spartan way of perfecting the mind is just as rigid
as the body demands... the pentagon of an event,
how strained is your hearing, your eyes or your tongue?
it concern the simplicity of all things being perfected,
rather than the Athenian counter of the complication
of all things being unlearned and in pyramidal schematics
expected: courtesy of approaching a king...
the dinner arrangements, the starter fork, the main meal
fork, the dessert fork... a Spartan would just look at it
and say: they can use chop-sticks because the chef
knew how to cut into bite size... i'll forget the knife
and use the one fork throughout the meal...
she better be wearing that crown of hers throughout
the meal... otherwise she's no queen, i'll just watch
her slurp the soup with that Mt. Fuji balancing on her head...
**** the airs, and all of Jane Austen.

Smelling sharp,
Line up in the graveyard.
Throw in your bones.
The pious are the sactified.

Hold the bottle,
Intermittent puddles.
Full of people.
Breathing and suffocating.

Unconvinced thoughts,
Continually misfiring.
That poisonous smell,
That soft ticking.

Pulling me closer,
To the end of the world.
Burn the spires,
Complicated regressions.

Dead mind,
Straight to stone,
Close the door on,
The shadows on the ceiling

The thought
of her name
on your lips
and your hands
on her hips
sends goosebumps
to beneath my skin
I tremble
from a non-existent cold
my lungs stutter
and will give out
along with my heart
which will shatter
into a million pointed shards
that stab and cut me
when I think back to us
and my name
on your lips
your hands
on my hips
I suppose
I was not
enough.

This is chapter one; your opinions  are a blessing?!



As Obliteration Comes...

What is there to think of a man who goes, so far, out of his way in the destruction of the woman who loves him; Years beyond the assault she could not, would not speak about… a woman, … within her devastation tries to dissociate and desperately tries to make it… not be?!  Of this day…, she tells no-one; … only those there knew, they were there in the aftermath and saw. There at the place she’s works and holds a different name;  a place where she could not report  to police…, not without turning her world inside out, a destruction which becomes impossible to avoid?! Considering such a thing leaves behind evidence of its unspoken crime. Unknowing all … He hates her for acts of duplicity; as if she’d want any other than he, who owns her heart?!
The day
I know Denise’s men; for the most-part, their ******* Freaks! I’d never normally go near any of them?! But, this man had pleasant eyes; I knew Denise was going to be in before I leave… so I sat with him.
He tells me he and Denise know each-other through my other Agent, Lisa; I worked with more than one agent, AI-Talent and Top Entertainers Talent Agency all for my NY, Conn. and NJ gigs. I had Lisa for all gigs at after-hours and for those long-distance clubs.    
(Lisa’s the agent which was going to give me up to the Rode Island police, when we were all on the way home from a four week gig we did in Boston’s Pussycat’s Lounge. An unforgettable time to say the least ;)

Kal walks over around 3:30 and whispers “Denise is a no-show tonight could you stay until her replacement gets here?”

What, as-if I would say no?
It was one extra set and I would be out of here at 5pm!
” No problem! But, I need to be out of here by five?!”

“Janice, cool! Callie lives on the other end of the Market; she said she’ll cab it down!” Kal looks relieved.

  But as it goes with Denise’s friend; he was, to say the least, miffed!
“Denise told me to be here! Why…? If she wasn’t going…”  
I tell him, “If Denise told you to be here? She’ll stop by later or she’ll send someone in to get you! Right?”
He orders me another drink; he stews about where Denise could be…; Meanwhile, Denise’s replacement is nowhere to be found?!
It’s now 6pm?!
“There’s no-way, no way in hell, I’ll make it out to Rockaway’s by 8pm!” thinking to myself …, ‘I can’t be late?! I’ve never been late!’
“This is not my day!?”
Denise’s friend turns to me and says,” I’ll drop you down at the train; Hell, I’m going down to midtown; the hell with waiting for Denise! So, if you can use a ride down to the city?”
As he says this Callie flies through the door.

As you know; I’m an *******!  I was totally elated thinking of the possibility about being out there with Joe by 9- 9:30! ‘He’s saying he can get me down to the A train and from there… One straight run! Oh, Baby!’
What a ******* *******; I’d never… I wasn’t thinking.

“That’s so nice of you; thank you!” Stupidly, “You have no idea; Let me go in the back and get my stuff!”
I never before..; “You can’t know how much this helps me out! Thank you! “      

   I tell Kal he’s was giving me the ride.  Kal smiles, “Thanks man! She’s a good girl… take care of her! “
  
He takes my bags to carry them outside for me; It was so bright outside. After a seven hour long day of being inside drinking with that pounding music and those pulsating lights; the outdoors seem so foreign?! I look to see where his car was parked?
He laughs saying, “I put it in the lot across the street! Willey’s lot was full when I got here.”

Still thanking him for driving me downtown while crossing over Hunts Point Avenue; we reach his car he opens his back door to place my bags on the seat… fumbling the bags one of them falls to the ground. I remember hearing his laughter as I bent over to get my bag; all the bags were flying towards me!? Before, I could… I …   the back of my head hit the edge of the door… my bags were on top of me … and all the weight? I try but couldn’t make a sound! I was in the back of his car. All my bags moving, cutting into me and him pressing down; …clawing, pawing all over! My bags cutting into my skin; His arm pressing against my chest!  I heard, “Don’t… **** … Die!”   I couldn’t feel… Breathe? And; Snap! …Blackness.    
Then, I remember… falling!? I was…. a body empty nothing-more as it’s pushed out the door and hits gravel! Bags slam hard onto…, all of what remains left of it.  
There’s sound of an engine? There’s shower of gravel? Car-horns are heard blaring in the distance; still breathing.  
I’m not sure how…??? I pick stuff off the ground. My mind’s numb, thinking all I could… I need home to clean this… I’ll make it gone??? I’ll make it… not have happened!’
I took a cab from *****’s; All the way from the South Bronx! I still don’t remember that time to my home; I only remember getting out of the second cab, The Rockaway’s Play-land; I remember watching for the A-train to go by… thinking; ‘I’ll tell Joe I took the train out. He’ll never know… he can’t?! He told me not to go; he told me to be out here with him to meet his friend. This is my fault.’ The head’s not… Hide, it didn’t happen just forget the last twenty-four hours?! I turn the corner and walk down the block towards the bungalow; he was there.
‘He’ll leave you; it’s your fault you went to work; he told you not to go… No, nothing happened?! He loves me? I love him!!! Nothing happened!’
When he saw me? He didn’t even ask anything about my not having all my bags? I always carry my three extra large duffels and a pocketbook?
I walk in the yard with only money in my pants and not even one bag?
If I were here straight from work and had left the club when I suppose to off I’d been here no later than 8pm?
I show up ten moments to four in the morning, without bags and he doesn’t say a thing about it; not even a single word about this long-sleeve shirt covering my cuts and bruises?
He smiles; he tells me his friend’s still sleeping but when he wakes-up we’ll all go to breakfast. His friend comes out and we sat and talked for a few moments. Joe hadn’t notice but his friend asks me if I was alright: I said, “Yeah hadn’t eaten all day; Joe says we’re going out for food. His friend took his car and Joe and I met him there. The whole time sitting there in the Crossbay Diner with his friend I kept thinking;
‘If Joe and I were with each other it would be as if nothing happened? It will be it never happen?! That’s what I need to do!? I’ll be fine. Everything… fine.’
  After breakfast his friend got into his car and left;
Joe says he needs to head home to get some rest later-on he’s taking his mom, Rose, out to her other son’s house.
And, he says he’ll come for me once he drops her off… and we’ll go to the place underneath the Throgs-neck bridge  
How hard it was…
Joe parks and takes out his jug of ***** and grapefruit then begins talking? He’s talking???
As if there wasn’t …?  Like nothing happened… nothing??? He was simply sitting there saying something about Vincent and Helga???
“They’re going to drive mom home!”
He’s smiles? Saying, “They’ll take mom home from their house so we can stay here as long as we want!”
Every time he tries reaching for that jug or reaches out to put his hands on me…; I’d jump!?   I felt my skin crawling; there was a bubbling sensation all over in every last place that was touched; I felt my skin as if it going to burst out with blisters of poison! I needed to get home!? I need to wash this..!? I need not to have his hands touch… This thing I was???
‘He touches me, so help me God, I’ll open this car and run and throw myself into that water! I was shaking, I was sitting on the arm-rest of the door and I began yelling!? “Take Me Home! “
“You son of a …!  Can‘t you see; Can‘t you see!”
“I need home! I don‘t feel well!? “
“You, *******!  Get me home!”
No Clue. Still, He’s clueless to any difference??? He yells back at me, “What’s your problem?  You on the rag or something?”
He drove me home.  I open the door before he could try to park and I run inside; I locked myself into the bathroom. By time I was out the sun was up!

The phone begins ringing.  It’s Kelli Ann, “Sometime last night my grandma, Rose, died. “
I dropped the phone. My sister got on… with Kelli.
I just stood there numb; thinking how…
‘Dear God! Joe and I were at the bridge!  
If I told him what happened he would have been with her.”
He would have left me; But, He would have been with Rose?

Rose was the most amazing person to me; I adore her, I denied her… and I stopped him from being with her.
‘I didn’t want to lose him; I couldn’t see losing me again?!
And, I made it so he wasn’t there… for her.’
All the times he’s walked away from me, so many times; He’d say nothing and show up at the house with some girl.
And introduce her to the family; that was his way telling me just how important I was… That was his way of telling me he didn’t want me. And, I would stand there… act as if it wasn’t a big deal… ‘It must be nice… no feelings?’
But then after a while he would come back; It be like none of them knew a thing?! Yeah, not even what I did for a living?! When asked, what I did for a living, I’d tell them; I work as a Entertainment Manager for bars throughout the Tri-State area; Yeah right; I was entertaining and I did Manage… (I manage to get to and from my gigs and I was entertainment!) So, it’s not complete truth or lie. And, HELL, Joe can’t think too poorly of what I do; after-all it was his idea?!

It’s only three days before his birthday and here’s Joe having to make the arrangements for Rose’s ( his mother’s) wake; He turns to me and says,” My mom had these spills often before..; But, she’d always come back to me! I’d hold her hand and I’d call to her!  I wish I had been out by Vincent’s. She maybe…. Maybe she’d still be here with us.”
I felt… numb.
That night we were all at the wake;
I hover in doorways watching every person go in than back out again. I kept looking at Joe; I didn’t know why, but my mind, I wish it was him in that **** box. Isn’t that sick!  As much as I love Rose I’d wish her son could trade places??? How that would have been unbearable for Rose and yet…
The biggest reason Joe and I kept our being together a secret was her; She was by no means the only… not by a long-shot!  But, she was a most important reason. I could have never dealt with even a thought of her hating me for loving her son; I fear… loss; now, she’s gone. I love her; I want her back! I want her to know; I want to tell her! She never knew… he’s her grandchild? She’ll never know now.  Here knowing…, seeing everyone around feeling this loss for Rose; because of me… she might have still been here…? Only if…?
Thoughts, ‘My life is imploding; it’s all moving in slow motion. I don’t know how far… I don’t know if… I’ll survive this… this time? ’ I cling to straws; I can’t lose Joe; I can’t make my sister leave home? She’ll never make it on her own; I can’t tell Joe what happened? Then he’ll know all of this, everything, is my fault?!  I stopped him from being with Rose when she needed him most.
What if he’s to ask about little Joe…? With the way he feels about my sister? I never gave him an opportunity to ask out-right if he’s his before; it wasn’t me who told him. When I let him know I was having a baby I told him,” You could be the godfather?! He agreed to that… He didn’t ask, he didn’t want to know; and I couldn’t ever take the chance… Not then, not now; He’ll take my child away; He’ll take him and leave me?! I’ll have nothing I’ll be…?!
Say nothing; …perform as you go; Stay in survival mode!

The day of the burial:  We went to church and everybody goes up to the front. I didn’t know where to sit? None of the family told me where…?  Then, Kay Young, a neighbor and friend of my mother’s pulls me over and says to sit in the last row near her; so that’s what I did. Afterwards, when we were all outside someone told me to get into a car; a car which turns-out to be Lynne’s car!? Lynne and Kelli together were the ones who made it that Joe found out about the baby.
Thoughts, ‘… imploding; It’s all moving slowly… don’t know how far… or if I’ll survive, All this … this time? ’

After my son was born Lynne was the one who told Joey that others are saying little Joe was his… Joe wouldn’t ask me if he was the father and I was more than glad not to tell him! Yes, I know it’s extremely selfish; but I couldn’t risk losing another one. But, if I did I would have turned Joe’s life upside down for nothing.    
(My Joe was a preemie; barely six months along when he was born. My tiny baby boy needed to stay in a hospital from June 6 until Aug. 31st.. )  
It was June;  
We, a whole crew of us, were out at Rockaway‘s;
Kelli Ann and Lynne were making drinks and I had maybe five big drinks in those 20 oz. cups. To say I was blotto is beyond an understatement!

The two of them get going; they were told and they know that my baby was Joe’s; And, I have to tell him!

“I don’t know what you girls are talking… You’re wrong! Leave it alone!”  
“Everyone knows how you feel about him!?”
“What? Leave this alone! You don’t know what you’re talking…”  
“You’re going to have to tell him….?”
“Leave this alone; this is none of you business and you haven’t any idea of what you’re talking about!”  
“If you don’t tell him I will!”
“I’m telling the two of you to leave the man alone!”
“Well, he needs; he has a right to know!”  
I got up and say, “Apparently, I do need to talk to him about something? Don’t I?!

I turn to go find Joey! I need to talk to him about what Lynne and Kelli are saying to me…??? There, in mid-turn, I slap in face into his chest; Joe’s standing there hearing every word of what was being said.
He yells at me; saying, ”What… This is ******-up!”
I start crying; I run towards the beach! Thinking, How am I going to tell him? How can I say I couldn’t tell you, I could trust you! How do you say to the man you love that you left him to believe he wasn’t… because having this baby means more than he does; And, if he knew he was the father when he was told about the baby he would have just been another person, in this life, trying to stop this baby from being born. I lost too many; He’s mine! No-one’s taking him from me. Not even his father.  How do you say this…  
I went up to the bench on the boardwalk; I would always sit in that same spot; I was crying.  
Joe comes up behind me;
He says,” What are you going to do now? **** yourself!?”

I didn’t try looking at him; I just spoke holding my tears, ” No…, You’re not worth that!”
A long time passes as the two of us stare out at the surf.
He said,” So…?”

Painfully, I remind him his words he told me, at Christmas time, when we first…;
“Joe, do you remember, what you said to me? The very first time I told you how much I love you? Do you remember?  Joe, you told me, “Don’t!”  
Then you told me, “You’re just for now?! No attachments! Remember?”    

Joey turns and goes back to the bungalow; He gathered up his stuff, takes Lynne and leaves. He wouldn’t speak to me again until mid-October after, I got little Joe back after my mother and my grandfather kidnapped him.
When I got my baby back his stomach… There was something wrong? Every time I try to give him his milk it wasn’t staying down in his tiny body?!
I was so frightened; I saw Rose outside the house and I ran-up to her for help; she goes downstairs with the baby and gets out baby cereal she mixed it with the baby-milk?
“Rose? The doctors told me I’m not to give the baby anything but the baby-milk?”
  
Rose said, “Don’t worry; I’ve seen this before… Don’t you get scared?”

She force-fed Joey some of mix and in moments the baby threw-up every drop of what Rose gave him; she cleans him up and shoves the bottle of plain baby-milk into his mouth; He was drinking it on his own!
She tells me the baby’s stomach was shut-down. She says, “Sometimes baby’s go through this failure to thrive when there’s too much turmoil around them. But, this little guy here is alright now.” She hands him to me and says, “Now, He has his Mama.”
Joe came down stairs from his room he must have heard the yelp I made as the baby threw-up the cereal-mixture.
Rose saved the baby’s life that day, her grandbaby.
And, now, I’m sitting in this *****’s Lynne’s car; I’m going to say goodbye to dearest woman I ever knew… ‘I wish it was me going into that hole.
Later, we all went to eat out at a place on the Blvd and then the family came back home. We stayed up late and Joe’s brother from Florida with his wife and their two kids went upstairs. They bunked-down in Rose’s living room and Joe and I were down the basement in the kitchen. We finish cleaning the dishes and he tells me to come with him to his room;
“They will sleep ‘til three; Both, Butchy and Sandy have been drinking since seven this morning.”
I went with him; I felt so numb. I belong to him; I love him. I just need to let this happen then everything will be the way it’s…I am his.

I kept saying, “My Love, I belong to you! I need you! I love you! Joe, you are everything to me!  You are my life! My head kept whispering” You didn’t stop it; you allowed another to take what belongs to Joe.
You are nothing.
I kept repeating to Joe, “I belong to you Always, I’m yours.” I kept saying the words over and over to him; I didn’t want to stop telling him, I am his…
When he fell asleep and I was sure he was asleep; I got up and slipped out of his room. Sandy caught me leaving his room; I saw her and I stood there like a deer in headlights!
Sandy just asked, “Is he still up in there?”
I said, “No.” and, I went fast out the door and ran home.
I need to check on my sister and my son; I didn’t want Joe’s brother or any of the rest of the family getting any notions. Running into Sandy as I left Joe’s room scared the hell out of me! But, she was … Sandy didn’t remember seeing me. She says she doesn’t remember anything after she ate dinner down-stairs.
That was the last time him and me…              
Joe was pretty busy while the out-of-towners’ were stopping by and with all the paperwork needed to be done…  I just hung-out with Kelli; I figure, when he’s not too busy he’ll talk to me.
It was a few weeks after that night; Joe comes up stairs where Kelli and I were; he asked Kelli to leave us alone.

He handed me all the papers he was holding for me and told me,” Don’t you ever talk to me again! You are a nothing; do you hear me? A nobody! You’re a worthless ***** and I don’t want to ever have to look at you again!”
Then, he went down and locked the door, hard.  
Kelli Ann comes back in and asks why he’s acting like that towards me; I told her, I don’t know?  And, I didn‘t?! I didn’t until nearly two months later when I went to the doctors; then, I knew.
I have gone back to work; But, I will never go back up to *****’s!
I met-up with Denise a few days after I went back to work; we were both at the Golden Dollar; she was just leaving as I’m walking in…  She slaps $350.into my hand saying, “Thanks for taking care of my friend! Gotta’run!” She’s out the door before I could tell her what happen to me wasn’t, by any means, by chose.
Time passes; it’s now, nearing my birthday; I’m hearing about how Joe’s spending his time with Lynne; So, I decide I to write a letter to Kelli. I could stop kelli from mistreating Joe, for what wasn’t ever Joe’s choice in the first place, and I can stop Joe from being convinced into taken my child away from me by that *****, Lynne.
Joe wants to be with that… that’s his business; she thinks the two them will take my child? Not that *****!  That ***** won’t ever get to put her hands on my child! After what she did on June 4th and 28th and so many other times… With his wanting to be with her it makes it a whole lot easier for me to feel a deep disgust towards him. Joe thought me to be such a no-body; he thinks me so cheap… He left me months ago unaware… in pain and he thinking I would want…
  Fine, two birds’ one stone?!   I don’t want her mistreating him for our not being together… It’s not his fault I went to work; but if he’s going to try at any point to come and take little Joe away?! I can’t let that to ever happen!
I wrote Kelli a letter saying his in no way my child’s father and for her to stop mistreating him like he had done something wrong his mother has died and you are being nasty to him. I can’t be friends with you anymore I have too much in my life I need to take care of my son and my sister and I told her I hope the best for her in her life. I wrote… using six pages of words but this is the full gist of it.
I thought if some day things are different and he and I find our way back to one another again; Kelli would have a chance to confront me in front of him about the letter and I’d be able to ask Joe for a signed a waiver of parental rights and then I could ask him to have a DNA test done. But for now, my son will remain where he belongs…with me.

How it is that all this started; why must this be...