Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                     “LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”

                 Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents


No.

A fire brings nothing to a halt

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -

A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life
Holds to her heart her notebooks in a grocery-store bag

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least
While carrying his child out to an ambulance

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows
To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives:

Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat
Are a choreograph of life against flaming death

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

An artist whose studio is now but smoke
Will stir ashes and water, and paint again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A little girl will write of her little dog
Her bestest pal whom she never saw again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

In a shelter tonight an aging man
Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives



                                                        ­       then patch

                    a few words together and don’t try
                    to make them elaborate, this isn’t
                    a contest but the doorway

                                   -Mary Oliver, “Praying”

Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always ***,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every ***** and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is *****, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to
you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my *****-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
poke-****.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the ******* of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and
am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be
shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the ****** floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-*****,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in
fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them-I come and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-****’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my
side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
the deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and
weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d
feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting piasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they ***** with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in
the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain,
The ***** that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and
tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
his hip-band,
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat
away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of
his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop
there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown i

Struggles come and struggles go
annihilate each, together with its' bearer
regardless if he identifies himself as friend or foe

Struggle aims at destruction, and drives you to the floor
Remain resilient and savior respiration,
for struggle conquering techniques, you shall soon know

Struggle fails, yet departs having left a mark
For light to shine brightest, we must first experience the dark
Embrace your struggles, your battles and daily rumbles
For they are fueling you for success, and struggle is your spark

Do you ever just breathe?

Well of course you are constantly breathing,
but do you ever
                                just breathe?

Do you ever lie on your back,
Close your eyes,
And
B   r e    a   t h e

Inhale
               Exhale

Do you ever just breathe?
And feel the rise and decline of your chest,
The intake of oxygen
bringing renewal to every single cell in your body

Do you ever just breathe?
In silence of mind and body.
Still
Except for your lungs,
Your ribcage e x  p   a     n        d           i            n           g,
Diaphragm relaxing,
Then contracting as your ribcage draws in closer

Inhaling wonder
                                Exhaling thankfulness

Thankful to your Maker
Who started this life-sustaining cycle
Of oxygen to carbon dioxide
Which made you alive
So that you were no longer pieces of dust residing on the
         cold ground

Do you ever just breathe?
Only to realize
You've taken many
of your precious breaths for granted,
That each respiration could be filled with inspiration,
That the gift of life is not in fact yours to keep,
Nor to take
And it could be stripped from you at any point.

Do you ever just breathe?
And feel the warm love of the Divine Creator
Who made you special,
just as he made the stars

Do you ever just breathe?
And want to make every breath count



                                                        ­                      *I do

I never did quite figure you out.
You gave me gasps filled with fresh air
just to steal my heart
and take my breath away.

where am i?
how am I to write when
I am no different from
those gaseous ephemeral words
who lie prostrate upon
the pages of my dictionary
carved plainly into
those battlefields strewn across
the wartorn country
my heart the despotic dictator
whose primal drumming
carries no tune
and no rhythm
and throws of explosions
grenades that
black out the world for
a brief moment
until it careens back and
slams into me
disorientated

i should have been born twice
for how could i have
both my body and that
intangible inexplicable
something inside
it stirs at the molten core
of me
that chasm that forged
those graven images
that first gave way to
a pictographic language
and offered me
a voice
to explain that immutable
all powerful
urge
lust
to throw myself on that
red button and
detonate
burst into a million pieces
and finally relieve that
nauseating pressure
of adipose smushed between
holy bone and
saintly skin
interloping in that space
and separating two lovers

barriers create madness

walls box me in
and yet i grow
an expanding balloon girl
macy’s day parade and
candy littered streets
and razor sharp edges
to steel walls pressing harder
against me than
my supple skin could
ever possibly press
back

i can’t breathe

there is no room
for my lungs to expand
and feel the
fresh sun filled meadow
of crystal air
delivering oxygen to
starved alveoli
and i can’t find your chest
to guide me
in impossible respiration

i’m suffocating in my own skin
from no outside force
but my body itself
turns inward and
shouts its dominance at my
cowering self
sniveling in the corner
of my dusty half used heart
where no blade could possible
land a blow deep enough
to silence the torment and
particular personal poison
a torture to course through
every part of me
activating every single neuron
and making me
hyperaware of my
shame and noxious
venomous corpulence
a reality i
never wanted you to see
but is written plainly
in fiery script across my forehead
and in every fold of fat.

My world changed.
Now. I. am.
Dis- inherit.

More like the unwanted
guest,
in
a party for yourself.

That un wanted
is always
you.

Banners can say your name.
One thousand times.
Screaming.

Out of skyscrapers, bungee jumping
from space shuttles.

Saltating, from your inner
lung meat.
Banners, with names, can only spittle lies.

Now unwanted I wanna leave,
get out,
only 3 more miserly months
of a kingdom of intellectual
gods and tzars.
screaming my party name,
but I.
I.
gone.


I am sitting
While I'm grieving
and admitting in my seat
clenching to be let out
breaking cracking/gnashing teeth
left alone. all wanted
left to brain rot
but forced to sponge
learning what i want in
learning my ashcans full
i am done
I will. remain. despondent.
I wont apply my neurons
motor-sensory illusion
for math demagogues
what the ****
crust me over
cut my brain-case
destroy all brain
function and matter
grey dissolve to black
and white every *******
shade inside
cephalic
meat bowel

Lifeboats float back up to the top, after
re-inflated, I breathe air once again. My
retinas detect the light coming from
packets of waves emitting from the shore.
I float back up from the cold sea to the rock.
Alive.

heavy, deep and dark.
louder, louder;
the twofold pounding
of clockwork respiration.

thud, (thud-thud)
goddess arms hang
into the abyss, like
dead weight.

depth obscures,
lesser life forms
meander on their own,
unaware of the wayward colossus.

/lonely/

a shroud of antiquity
suspended --
veiling the secret
of ages.

thud, [thud-thud]
percussive life
continues alone,
out of time.

evolving

longing

To exhale
Compresses the chest
And in its place
Some chilblains,
Disgust for its being,
An annihilation
A ferocious hunger for itself,
Like the ouroboros
In every breath
Tempted by a life
For the moment gone.
To inhale
Invites it back,
A dispassionate process, no less.
The life thus stolen away
Impotent to the next breath
That I must exhale.
On this breath there comes a fear
A longing or
The urge
To lift my hands to my throat
And keep the life in my lungs
To quit exhaling
And never feel that way again.

Vines swindle & slither along my spine
Clawing & Raking thorns into my thighs.
When will I  realize?
That I am no good, too fat, not thin enough.
I'll wander this Earth, lifetime after another
until I'm emaciated as the rings of Saturn.
Only then will I be thin.

I cannot help but know you're there
I see you like I see the air
A force that yea eludes my sight
A pow'r that knows no end of might
Though fire and water cause me strife
I know the wind will give me life
I trust in it to fill my lungs
And so for e'er and e'er my tongue
Will sing no greater truths than these
That you are God,
And I must breathe.

You should never make fun of someone else’s beliefs
Where you are right now has less than a few hundred million miles of surface area
You can’t even walk on 70% of it
77 years of life on average if you’re a healthy American
That’s only 4,015 weeks
28,105 days on this small planet floating in a large black mass
You’ve already lived about one eighth of your life
Time won’t stop for you
Your days on this blue marble go by and there’s nothing you can do to stop it
Believing there’s something more is nothing to scoff at
Do you really believe that? they say
Do you really believe there is a man in the sky?
Well since you asked here’s my answer
I believe there is meaning in every day
I believe there is a point to waking up and doing good actions
I believe there is a spirit in emotion
And a metaphysical being who loves me endlessly
Yes
I believe in something more
Now it’s my turn
Do you really believe that?
Do you really believe this whole thing is a scientific coincidence?
A cosmic collision at a specific point
An explosion that created all of this
Perfect atoms with electrons that bond and share
Creating perfect cells with all the right organelles
A process of cellular respiration that coordinates as a perfect opposite to photosynthesis
All to maintain homeostasis,
the so-called “wonder process”
that keeps us all alive
Our bodies preserve an exact temperature, the ocean an exact pH and salinity and the ground an exact resistivity
To keep us all alive
Scientific coincidence
We are all a coincidence?
What about that shooting in Newtown
More than one kid took a gun to his head
and what for?
Why was that so tragic?
The shooter could have been conducting a scientific experiment
What is the basis of right and wrong derived from?
What are feelings derived from?
Don’t tell me it’s science
Don’t tell me that it’s science that makes you cry when you get dumped
Science that breaks your heart when you lose that state championship
Science that lightens your spirit when you go home to your beautiful family after a long hard day
It’s not science
It’s your soul
A soul given to you with a light side and a dark side
A soul with genius thoughts and horrid sins
Genius thoughts you should act on
Horrid sins you may commit anyway
and He will love you
He will forgive you
Will your precious science forgive you?
I wouldn’t force anything on anyone
I wouldn’t question beliefs in science had my faith in God not first been tested
I’m not asking you to believe, whether you do or not won’t affect our relations
I just need to explain
To each his own
So don’t laugh at me

Here we are again.
Edge of the Portal.
You told me we'd never come back to this God
                                                             ­                    Forsaken
                                                                ­            Spot.

But I always thought
"I wonder what it took"
For the people to come up with that name for the land we forsook.

Right away, I'll ask you three things.
1- What did you learn?
2- What will you do different next time?
3- Do you really think you're coming back?

Like I promised to...

A promise is a promise,
but a great love can break almost anything.

Not that the promise got broken...it just wasn't exactly accurate.
It defied expectations of sheer elation and turned a DeathSeeker into a different kind of advocate.

Praise be to glory and the light! That's what I'd tell you if I was still high. Remember? Like that time? When I'd get so stuck in rhyme? That I couldn't define what the slant of the rant signed? YOU ARE SO RIGHT!

Be animal. Be animal all you want.
I'll still animate you from beyond the haunt.
But let's be honest, if it's death you're after...
I think...I may have just met my match.

Ok, you win. Congratulations, you reached the end.
You've quenched the worst thirst that my nightmares could portend.

There is an incredible difficulty, writing in great grief.
Postmortem depression.
Pre-partum relief.
You knew that your death would cause me to split, so you held onto it for way too long. But that death, just like anything else you love so dear, you must set it free eventually.

I'm just stating facts at this point, we're too close to the brink to tip or to cry, the shattering that is happening is slowly enrapturing the entire essence of a lifetime of imbuing something like a w o r d with a purpose.
with a purpose.
with a purpose.
with a purpose.

Scary. The thought.
The thought you turned so dark.
The dark I call the dark because it's
driven into me that
I should call the deathbed
dark.
The death I learned to fear,
to hate,
             to fight,
                         to ****
                         to push my life as far as it can go against the sea.
Procreating until the entire world is covered in me,
And we're all swimming in a surging ocean of my own mortality.

You. Have. Stopped. Me.
From being that reaching fool.
The man who has a different motto for every single situation.
I can never forgive you...for instilling in me: that peace.
That crazy, crazy peace that fights for cessation of perseverance.
The light inside the lighthouse at the end of the tunnel, hanging by a rope from the sky.
You are going to be ok.

You are making it ok.

You are making death something I need not seek.

Making it something that will come to me.

When I am ready.

And when you finally get on that boat.
And you're leaving.
Take one last glance.
At the boy...
Who you have watched grow into a man.
Who has run away a thousand times.
Always promising to come back.
...but sometimes not coming back as often as he promised to do.
Who in this moment has realized:
If you leave home in order to find your home,
Do you ever really leave?

The final night.
The last dawn.
Before your elements dissolve.
Into what I've always called mine.
But truly,
I was yours,
From the moment you saw me,
and decided for yourself,
to call this...
feeling
home.

I'll always come back?
No.




I'll never leave.

A question that should be on
Your mind this evening is why?
Why are the people of Greece--
Why is the nation of Greece--getting
Spanked & punished by their EU
German & French economic overlords?
We should be saluting tonight’s
Referendum NO vote results,
The Greek electorate voting against another
Devastating round of economic sanctions,
Voting NO on more years of austere living.
In fact, it should be U.S. foreign policy to
Support complete Greek withdrawal from
The European Union. That’s right:
“Euro No, Drachma naí!”
The EU is fiscal tyranny,
Led by the EU autocrats,
Angela Merkel & whomever is sitting in the
French baby high chair these days.
Isn’t it a strange coincidence that the
EU whip, always seems to be cracking on
Their swarthier brethren,
Their southern European members,
The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians &,
The Greeks.
The Greeks have had enough.
One would expect nothing less from
These fiercely independent
Hellenistic people.
And you can **** the Greek people
Up their ***** all you want &
Many of them might like it, but
The Greeks will survive,
Survive as they have for nearly 3,000 years,
Give or take a Kalamata olive or two.
We breathe the air of Greek culture,
Deep respiration of so much of
What we still call learning these days.
We owe the Greeks: it was
Greek inception of so much
Math & science &
Countless other right-brain
Spatial ability & logical precision; not to
Mention so many left-brain contributions in
Sociology & ethics,
Politics & democratic government,
Geography & religion,
Education & philosophy,
Sculpture & art, philosophy,
Live theater & literature.
We owe the Greeks.
Had we interceded with the Brits on Greece’s behalf,
Reminding them that we bailed out their sorry ***-cheeks
After two 20th Century world wars, perhaps
The British Museum might have Fedexed
The so-called Elgin Marbles--
Those boosted friezes,
Jacked right off the
Parthenon façade,
Should have Fedexed them back to
"Eleftherios Venizelos,"
Decades ago.
George’s wife, that foxy babe
Amal Clooney sure thinks so.
We owe the Greeks.
The world owes the Greeks.
Let us all help the Greeks.
Let’s encourage them to quit the EU.
To Greeks I say: trust & patience,
You’ve got the sun.
You’ve got the sea.
A clean white landscape,
Ouzo & Retsina,
Spanakopita & Moussaka.
The Greek Islands:
Crete & Mykonos,
Santorini & Corfu,
Rhodes & Ios
Samos & ****** . . .
We owe you.
We love you.
We will come to you.

I won't be the weak one,
Although when I think and speak
I may tweak some I'm just
Searching for reasons
To justify the swell.
I will ride the undertow
Sunken beneath bass lines 
And blunt tails
Intending to take it slow.
But I get a little excited sometimes, you know.
So when this undertow undoubtedly 
Washes me ashore
I'll be the imaginary statue 
Erected in my honor
Proudly saluting every fleeting
Emotion that sailed
Straight through my harbor.
You see, 
Harboring hatred is a trait
I forfeited
To make way for the minuscule moments and glimpses
Of human existence penetrating
Layers of jade and years
Of conditioning and I am successfully
Transitioning into persistently 
Acknowledging the raindrops 
As they hit the pavement and pop.
You see some people feel the rain
While others just get wet,
A wise Rastafarian 
Once famously said.
And I think on it all
Far too frequently for a quiet mind
But I've never had one of those
Not even after rolling papers
Intertwine and smoke fills my eyes,
Because I am accustomed 
To a constant consciousness
And I'd much rather this
Than nothingness
And thus I sit, contemplating 
Consequence 
Aspiring to avoid the guilt of 
Seasons past,
For I am past the point of
Punishment and pain ghosts and
I have plenty of pangs from all
The echoes
In my brain and in these
Rattled apartment's stains
It's not all in vain 
Life grows these varicose
Veins
Colored-in, crawling across the
Window panes 
Of the chamber where my soul remained
Through the bridge until the end of
The refrain.
I am in reign. 
I rock the crown.
I roll the dice when 
I am down
I try to think twice
Before I frown
I contemplate the value 
Of the men that I allow
To lay me down 
Now,
I am grown and I am proud
Because I am humble
And I'm not loud
Any longer,
I listen
To the subtle sounds of
Human respiration.
I am the incarnation
Of ancient incantations that
Shake down the walls which
Separate us all
All the way to the ground.
True power is found
Where unity resounds.

Electrons, making me feel like a *****.
Where the heck did ADP come from?
I don't even want to wonder why there suddenly is a phosphate group.
How come G3P wasn't a nickname when I was a sophomore?
Glycolysis was not a crisis,
And I understood Miss Minnie's drawings.
Now I have a book with 3D figures,
But cellular respiration was not who it was four years ago,
And I swear I've encountered all of them before,
But where did they all go?
I know their names but not who they are.
Honestly, I'd rather think fermentation occurs in a bar.

I Used To Meditate...
In My YOUNGER Days... !!!

The Day I Stopped...
Was A Crying Shame... !!!
But I Now Meditate...
In A... DIFFERENT Way... !!!

I Meditate... NOW...
By Picking Up A Pen And Writing Down...
ESPECIALLY When I Start To FROWN... !!!!!!

Poetry FEEDS My ENERGIES...
And Helps My Mind FIND... " Inner Peace "...

I Write About The Things I SEE...
Within My Life And On The Streets...

It's A Form of... " Meditation "...
My Poetic Word Creation...

It FEEDS My RESPIRATION...
Thus AVOIDING Palpitations... !!!

Palpitations... In My MIND...
When Inclined To RECOGNISE...
That MANY DIE Because of LIES...
And THOSE Who CHOOSE...
To... PERPETRATE CRIMES... !!!

… ” Meditation " …

Through My Rhymes...
MAINTAINS My Search For LIGHT...
That Helps Me STAND and FIGHT...
For What... I THINK Is RIGHT... !!!

What's RIGHT For... ME...
Is... REGULAR Use of Poetry... !!!

It's As If I... " MEDITATE "...
When My Pen EMBRACES Page...

And Starts To... Relay...
How I Feel About The World...
And Our Lives... Today...

Sometimes I Simply...
Drift AWAY............................... .................
Through... Time And Space...
In Other Words Folks I... MEDITATE... !!!

I Write With A RHYTHM...
Some People Say...

That's Because of THE TUNES...
I Put On.... " PLAY ".... !!!

That's Why My Wordplay...
DOESN'T Seem To Be... " Staged "...

There Is... NO STAGE...
When You MEDITATE... !!!!!

Are You Reading Me Folks... ?
Cos'... That's NO JOKE... !!!

Words Like THOSE...
You Should Let SOAK...............

SOAK... " INSIDE "...
Your Heart And Mind...

I DON'T Presume...
To KNOW What's Right... !!!
  
But You May Find...
This Helps Your SIGHT...
And Eventually SEE...

How Poetry...
CAN FEED Your NEEDS... !!!

Write For... YOU...
And Then You'll Find...
Your Rhythm Too... !!!!!!

Meditation IS...
... BENEFICIAL Food...
When... NOT ABUSED...
By.... HARD DRUG Use.... !!!!!

CLARITY of Mind HELPS You Recline...
And NOT Resign To MISSING Signs...
of What Is WRONG And What Is RIGHT... !!!

Mediation HELPS You FIND Yourself...
And BREEDS A WEALTH of MENTAL HEALTH... !!!!!!!!

It Also SOOTHES Your DARKEST Moods...

ESPECIALLY When...
It's USED To IMPROVE...
How You FEEL About... YOU... !!!

The Basis of Which...
Is Being... TRUE... !!!!!

My Poetry SEEKS.............................. ...........
To TOUCH And REACH................

A Place of BEAUTY...
CALM And PEACE.............................. ...........................

Meditation FEEDS My Poetic Creations...
And Helps EXCEED My... "Limitations"... !!!!!

And EASES YES My... Respiration...

BREATHE In................................. .................................
BREATHE Out................................ .................................

And Then... EXPOUND...
By USING Scripts Like RHYTHMIC Sounds...
This Is How I MEDITATE NOW... !!!

Which Is Why My Words...
Are... Humility Bound... !!!

Humble Because The Path I've Found...
Helps My Feet STAY... ON The Ground... !!!

My Form of... " Meditation "...
Helps BUILD My Education...
ABOUT Our Population...

That's Why I'm Now Relating...
About THIS.... " Meditation "....
That KEEPS My Soul ON TRACK...
And... Suitably STATIONED... !!!!!!!!!

STATIONED In A Place...
Where I CAN Meditate...
And When I DO...
THIS Poetry Tool...
of... Pen And Page...

HELPS Me COOL My TEMPER Gauge...
NO Time For HATE Or Getting IRATE.

Because They LEAD To EVIL DEEDS... !!!

I'd RATHER Meditate Than MEET Their Fate... !!!!
Whether Writing On Race Or The Welfare State...

My Words Relate And Indicate...
How I... Choose To...

....... " Meditate ".......

But If My Wordplay DEMONSTRATES...
ANGER When My Pen Meets Page... !!!!!

PLEASE... OVERSTAND... !!!
If I... Start To RANT... !!!

Being... BLACK...
Has It's... PROBLEMS... !!!!

So REMEMBER These Words...
The Name... " BIG VIRGE "...

But When...
ALL's Said And Done...

I'm Just... A MAN...
Like Those Who Have...
A.... " Lesser Tan ".... !!!!

When I Meditate Now...
I'm CALMING Down...

It's Just My Way...
of RELEASING PAIN... !!!
And Learning How To...
SMILE... NOT Frown... !!!

It's ALL A Part of SHOWING Heart...
Before Things Start To Fall A P A R T... !!!!!!

I'm NOT That Smart...
But... KNOW What Makes...
My ANGER... PASS...................

Pen And Page Night Time Or DAY...
Are Times When I Now Meditate...

Poetry Eases MANY Pains...
That's My Thesis What Do You Say... ?
Does Poetry Make YOU Feel THIS WAY... ???

It Breeds... CREATION...
I'd Rather Have THIS Than ANY Playstation... !!!

Synchronisation And Intonation...
Mixed With Patience And EXQUISITE Cadence...
is BOUND To TOUCH And FEED Sensations...

... Similar To THOSE...

We DEFINE As...

.... " MEDITATION "....

I’ve summed up the equation for my isolation
It's People who look up, look down, left and right
Desperate for information
We never looked inside for much needed inspiration
Instead,
We lead a life of impulsive behavior mixed with preoccupation for our own reputation
I've lost toleration for the weak minded population
Individual thoughts slowly decay and eventually cut off circulation
Sending thoughts on permanent vacation, worthy of respiration, ideas now suffer suffocation
If this is my "generation"
I’d rather live in hibernation
You can take this as retaliation
I just don’t understand why we seek gratification for having no imagination?
I swear,
It’s like the world around me is nothing more Than telecommunication
Different voices yet the same conversation
Broad interpretation leaves room for destructive *******
Shedding uniqueness for trendy consolidation
Who the **** do you think you are? a star?
You're no constellation
You expel no illumination
Your personality is a narrow cultivation of
Seedy corporation,
Media publication,
And lack of moral stabilization
Let me give you clarification
Meditation is my detonation
Put words in your mouth before you die of starvation
We all have a fixation on giving into temptation
Putting ourselves in situations were
Passion is stimulation,
Trust is manipulation and
Love is *******
Pour out your heartache in perspiration
After ******* we expect a standing ovation
*** is nothing more than sensation
**....are we lost beyond the point of navigation?

RNA or DNA polymerase, an enzyme, protein, attracted to
promoter molecules in the polypeptide chain causing a zipper
motion and transcription of the code, a duplication of codons,
introns and exons, and so it goes, sharing and unsharing electrons.

These attractions and repulsions, coming near and going far
in nanounits or light years, fail to explain things permanently
but make possible the technology to live long and well, with
      personality.
It is a form of governance, the governance of elements, elements are
      now

apparently our gods. Learn all you can about their laws, their names,
their needs, read their poems. Only the mentally unusually sound
      would,
given this knowledge, agree to the process of mitosis and fertilization.
      However,
organisms go round then senseless via involuntary respiration.
      Therefore, Pilot Oh Pilot Me.

Aural sounds of delectation
funk-fuel in fervent distillation
undertones of jazz-swing in migration
electronic clicks and blips for relaxation
ambience is my one true occupation.

The resonance of sound in rotation
the initiation itself a radiation
morphological alternation in isolation
as the hubbub of voices echo respiration
breath in, breath out, in elevation.

No underlying obligation, only inspiration
and celebration of collaboration
revel in the pleasures of sensation
like the first discovery of amplification
and in its appreciation and stimulation
embrace variation in all its illumination.

Seek out new music from recommendation
the gravitation towards transformation
the re-education and regeneration
this musical manifestation of civilisation
saturated in complex contemplation
adoration in meditation
the simplest form of gratification
the creative urge for diversification
and technological intensity
of electronic experimentation.

For each word that never made it past my teeth
-harsh critics-
I am sorry
I told you I loved you last night in bed
and all you heard was my breathing
-waves on your shore-
I am sorry

For each step I should have taken that was frozen in my legs
-stone pillars-
I am sorry
I ran to the edge of the earth for you
where I heard the lilies were blooming
-empty vase-
I am sorry

For each song that suffocated in my hollows
-white noise-
I am sorry
I scored you a serenade for clarinet and bassoon
and your shutters heard nothing
-white noise-
I am sorry

For each quiver of my hands that has held me
chained to the anvils of fear
For the confidence I lack and the love I have not given
-myself-
I am sorry
For times I held truth by the throat underwater
and prayed you wouldn't notice the splashing
For those days I went sleep walking
-through prayers-
I am sorry
For the stability I cradle while sitting on dreams
singing songs we all know the words to
the song we've each written verses to
12 bars on each wall of this blue cage that we sing through
For the times we don't fight
For the times that we mean to
For the injustices that steal the peace from our silent nights
For the riotless streets
For thriving inequalities
For microphones and stages still wet with my ego
For the silence I keep
-when the world is listening-
I am sorry

Shake me
from these paralytic dreams
from the cloud of ideas and fantasy
-what is art but a landing?-

Shake me
make me rise up and face the music
climb out of myself and breathe
-what is prayer but respiration?-

Shake me
until my apologies are gone
and your house is full of flowers
and your ears are full of songs
and your heart is filled with this love of mine
your quivering hands shook free

Shake me
until I see beauty in truth
and truth in what we are made to be

Sugar and spice
And everything nice
A delicate blush, a secret crush
Rings, white wings and other fine things
Ribbons and laces, tender embraces
Elegant grace and a sweet pretty face
Cheeks of pink, colorful drinks
Holding hands and fluttering fans
Smiles sweet, small and petite
Soft, luscious hair and a whispered prayer
Ballroom dancing, timid glancing

Liqueur and ****
Jealousy, greed
In dark rooms, kneeling and wasted
Under the sheets, squealing, getting tasted
Smeared lipstick, hair mussed, no longer slick
Bleary red lips, curvy hips
Tattoos and lingerie see-through
Heavy petting, getting drunk and forgetting
Ripped tights, endless nights
Coke and hazy smoke
Expensive drugs and sweaty hugs
Twisted lies, glazed eyes,
Strong musky perfumes, dark rooms
Sketchy guys, spread thighs
Broken trust, humid lust
Mindless fornication, empty stimulation,
With bated respiration, nothing but degradation
*****-cherry shots and hazy thoughts
Dancing, grinding, lights all blinding
Backstabbing, hands jabbing
Dark magic, endings tragic
Secrets revealed, wounds opened or healed

False memories and track marks pave your arms
Sudden revolt of youth pressurised to fail
Painkillers doubled and stacked for a head to slumber
Soft heads and dead leg spasm attack pillow piddles in *****
Fictitious tesla coil blue breath mortifys mortality
And your goggles won't fog out the underwater current miscellaneous
Digital tectonic pushing ideas you brainstorm
Shadowed reluctance to consume the musk of infrared roses
This romance is one that was jealous of itself
Pre-divorced in its own certainty on incompatibility
Basin top full too top heavy to predict precarious
Living in a shaded sense of erased memory lapses continuing truth
Toward magnificent still life categorised by perdition
Forward thinking ruby gold phong shaded hatred quantum conversate Unthinkable
Nebula of gas
Face first head in hands
Euthanasia between my thighs crush my head
Choked neck
Throat
Strangle me and give me breath
I roll and the conductor pulls apart my mouth
Diseased by euphoria lips separate and teeth show
Pupils land home and iris jumps ship
Perfume gum dry bitter butterfly kiss
Head held back in place tongue falls back into the razor-front of the mouth
Caution held simultaneous irrelevant body load carries my smile
Jump knee deep into the silence of my own lungs
It's been a while
I breath vindictively in time with the respiration of the country
Somewhere out in the hexagon sun I burn candles and whisp
Hold in smoke
Die
Twitch forward in palliative peace motionless and still
Cuspids and lochs
Spread across the grass the harmony touches yours and mine
A hole and whole dream
Conscious and dead
Content
Voices rattle in unified mono-chromidity
Sadness
Carrion

U for Unilateralis Cordyceps. The fungus enters an ant's body through its respiration. It invades it's brain and changes how it perceives smell, because ants do everything they do from their smell of pheromones, right? So this microscopic little fungal spore, then makes the ant climb up the stem of a plant and bite ******* a leaf, with an abnormal force. The fungus then kills the ant, and continues to grow, leaving the ant's exoskeleton intact. So, a small fungus drives an ant around as a vehicle, uses it as food and shelter and then as the ultimate monument to itself. And when the fungus is ready to reproduce, its fruiting bodies grow from the ant's head and rupture releasing the spores, letting the wind carry them to more unsuspecting food. There, our entire idea of free will down the bin.

One single small fungus spore does that to an ant. You have trillions of bacteria in your body. How do you know where you end, and where your environment begins.

We invent God, soul... heaven, afterlife...even life-imitating technology, all sorts of transcendence to cope with the idea of an absolute end. And then, we die for an idea that promises us some sort of immortality.

A forgotten poem by Henry Brooke ( Irish Dramatist/Novelist)

Taken from poetrynook.com http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/universal-beauty-book-3-lines-301%C3%B4%C3%A7%C3%B4400

Or cool recess of odoriferous shade,
And fan the peasant in the panting glade;
Or lace the coverture of painted bower,
While from the enamell'd roof the sweet profusions shower.
Here duplicate, the range divides beneath,
Above united in a mantling wreath;
With continuity protracts delight,
Imbrown'd in umbrage of ambiguous night;
Perspicuous the vista charms our eye,
And opens, Janus like, to either sky;
Or stills attention to the feather'd song,
While echo doubles from the warbling throng.

Here, winding to the sun's magnetic ray,
The solar plants adore the lord of day,
With Persian rites idolatrous incline,
And worship towards his consecrated shrine;
By south from east to west obsequious turn,
And moved with sympathetic ardours burn.
To these adverse, the lunar sects dissent,
With convolution of opposed bent;
From west to east by equal influence tend,
And towards the moon's attractive crescence bend;
There, nightly worship with Sidonian zeal,
And queen of heaven Astarte's idol hail.

" O Nature , whom the song aspires to scan!
" O B EAUTY , trod by proud insulting man,
" This boasted tyrant of thy wondrous ball,
" This mighty, haughty, little lord of all;
" This king o'er reason, but this slave to sense,
" Of wisdom careless, but of whim immense;
" Towards T HEE ! incurious, ignorant, profane,
" But of his own, dear, strange, productions vain!
" Then, with this champion let the field be fought,
" And nature's simplest arts 'gainst human wisdom brought:
" Let elegance and bounty here unite —
" There kings beneficent, and courts polite;
" Here nature's wealth — there chymist's golden dreams;
" Her texture here — and there the statesman's schemes;
" Conspicuous here let Sacred Truth appear —
" The courtier's word, and lordling's honour there;
" Here native sweets in boon profusion flow —
" There smells that scented nothing of a beau;
" Let justice here unequal combat wage —
" Nor poise the judgment of the law-learn'd sage;
" Tho' all-proportion'd with exactest skill,
" Yet gay as woman's wish, and various as her will. "

O say, ye pitied, envied, wretched great,
Who veil pernicion with the mask of state!
Whence are those domes that reach the mocking skies,
And vainly emulous of nature rise?
Behold the swain projected o'er the vale!
See slumbering peace his rural eyelids seal;
Earth's flowery lap supports his vacant head;
Beneath his limbs her broider'd garment's spread;
Aloft her elegant pavilion bends,
And living shade of vegetation lends,
With ever propagated bounty blest,
And hospitably spread for every guest:
No tinsel here adorns a taudry woof,
Nor lying wash besmears a varnish'd roof;
With native mode the vivid colours shine,
And heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine,
Where art veils art; and beauties beauties close,
While central grace diffused throughout the system flows.
The fibres, matchless by expressive line,
Arachne's cable, or aetherial twine,
Continuous, with direct ascension rise,
And lift the trunk, to prop the neighbouring skies.
Collateral tubes with respiration play,
And winding in aerial mazes stray.
These as the woof, while warping, and athwart
The exterior cortical insertions dart
Transverse, with cone of equidistant rays,
Whose geometric form the F ORMING H AND displays.
Recluse, the interior sap and vapour dwells
In nice transparence of minutest cells;
From whence, thro' pores or transmigrating veins
Sublimed the liquid correspondence drains,
Their pithy mansions quit, the neighbouring chuse,
And subtile thro' the adjacent pouches ooze;
Refined, expansive, or regressive pass,
Transmitted thro' the horizontal mass;
Compress'd the lignous fibres now assail,
And entering thence the essential sap exhale;
Or lively with effusive vigour spring,
And form the circle of the annual ring,
The branch implicit of embowering trees,
And foliage whispering to the vernal breeze;
While Zephyr tuned, with gentle cadence blows,
And lull'd to rest consenting eyelids close.
Ah! how unlike those sad imperial beds,
Which care within the gorgeous prison spreads;
Where tedious nights are sunk in sleepless down,
And pillows vainly soft, to ease the thorny crown!

Nor blush thou rose, tho' bashful thy array,
Transplanted chaste within the raptured lay;
Thro' every bush, and warbled spray we sing,
And with the linnet gratulate the spring;
Sweep o'er the lawn, or revel on the plain,
Or gaze the florid, or the fragrant scene;

There’s beauty in June
THERE IS BEUTY IN JUNE


Sparkly!  its June in summer.
The leaves are bright and daze
The trees are ripe, and the Flowers are blooming with chaos
Swiftness is Dashing in the air. the sky is **** with bronze.

The Delights of sunray’s, The taste of Sage.
The woods are Timeless with Venus and Splendor.
The Clouds are Crunchy sizzling with navy and Dew.

The scenery is refreshing, and vineyards are dripping with oats
The Merry of Fowls Swaying towards the east
The respiration of haze to luminous day.
Surely there is Beauty in June

out:
     murmurations and even
     simpler:
     the way grass grows and
     dandelion pollen rubs off on your
     nose
     the motive behind a ******
     of crows in this galaxy of
     peacocks

in:
     bloodskinbone and
     respiration and a
     heart that won’t *******
     quit.