A baby from Burundi sits next to me today.
He coos and drinks and swallows his mother’s milk.
His father speaks Swahili. Smiles, tells me that his last son
Is going to grow old in Rochester, NY,
Where I sit in a white-walled waiting room, watching
Mothers drag their babies by the armpits to be weighed.

A boy with braided beads holds up four fingers and tells me he is five.
He is too skinny. His pants are sagging and his iron is low.
His mother takes his vegetable checks, stuffs them into the back pocket of her jeans.
What the little **** needs is two percent milk, she says,
Her gold hoops fluttering.

Her son struggles with the small wooden chair he is carrying.
It drags along the carpet, hitting the high spots, and his tiny biceps flinch.
He sits, facing me, while a name is called. And another.
Another woman’s son hands me a book and waits.
He is watching my face and I watch his mother kiss her boyfriend in the first row seats.
He tucks his chin to his chest when I ask his name. Whispers, tells me Jayden.

First page. What color is Elmo, Jayden?
Shoulders shrugging. His lower lip, puckered out and innocent.
What color is he, Jayden?

The color of Jayden’s skin slaps me across the heart when he says he doesn’t know.
He was born in Rochester, NY,
With trash bags and Burger King wrappers wrapped around the fence
That separates his house from the street on which he will grow old
Too soon.
He starts kindergarten in the fall and I tell him Elmo is red, like his t-shirt.
Like his mother’s fingernails.
Like the tomatoes and bell peppers and beets he has never seen.

A girl who went to my High School carries in her youngest child
Who is old enough to walk, but wobbles.
She calls her daughter “thunder-thighs” instead of Jazmyne
And strips off her shoes. Her belt. Her gold bracelets.
The scale says Jazmyne is too heavy for food assistance.
The state says her mother isn’t poor enough for welfare.
The girl I used to know leaves without her daughter’s shoes or the food checks she came for.

In conversations of pretension
We talk about first and third world.
Pretend that America is the land of second chances
Where a baby from Burundi can grow old in cashmere sweaters,
Even when his parents couldn’t pay.

The father who speaks Swahili looks at his shiny watch and his family’s vegetable checks.
Smiles. Tells me his last son is going to grow old and full
In Rochester, NY.

the earth is curved - sure y’all knew that.  
but to get to the Northwest,
Interstate 84
ain’t le route plus directe

nope curve north to Ontario,
wave to Bex as I cross over
London and Toronto, also can’t recall
which poet from Rochester hails,
or did they shuffle off to Buffalo?

Crossing Erie, Huron, and Michigan Great Lakes all,
brings to mind
my mother’s birthplace,
Last of the Mohicans,
and the three years I did in the Cleveland Penitentiary,
where sun was illegal and baseball was a pretend play
of cowboys and Indians
but by god, it made me
the penitent fella I am today

Look skyward to Montreal,
yes, there he is, the Leo Priest,
the baffled king,
blessing this poetic meet ‘n greet trip
with a smiling unsurprising
hallelujah

Apparently some US citizens still can traverse O Canada,
even if one forgot their passports,
and are not PNG’s (Persons Not so GREAT)

over Minneapolis shed a tear for Diane,
a poet- gone-missing, and wonder if you reader come from
St. Cloud, Fargo or Duluth, Bismarck or Aberdeen,
surely they still speak poetic English there
in a twangy metering methodology  - well, message me asap

wow there really is a Saskatoon!

the pilot asks us to lean left in our seats
to help turn the plane
so we go to Portland and not to Vancouver...
me thinks he might be a touch Rockie Mountain High,
considering we are at 30 thousand something Imperial,
as he walks the main cabin with an oxygen mask and a
huuuuuge grin

see the distant Cascades
through a crack in the shuttered windows,
must be close to “the coast”
(as if, harrumph, there were but one)

ah, words in the clouds, ripe for the plucking
must be getting close to Oregon,
where poets grow on trees, woody words like ****,
and log-float poems down the Columbia to the sea

gonna drink me some poets
under the table cause this
trip I ain’t no driving and I am already
“flying” ‘n scribing and arriving
on a high tide and a good wind

We waded knee deep in the puddles
of vacant lots when the flood filled
our gutters to the brim.

When the rain died down and the water pulled
itself from the streets we watched the rainbow
of oil swirl around our ankles,

walked the wooden footbridge that broke
apart under the weight of our feet,
the water-logged wood rot

splitting while rusted nails slid
out of place. We followed the streams
back to the plaza, back to fake IDs

and the ash-stained tobacco shop.
We found ourselves under flickering
lights, leaning against the rusted

siding of the family market, faces hidden
in a mask of smoke. We got lost
in the electric hum of the laundromat's cyclic drone.

They paved over it all -- covered freckled
skin with cloth and hot tar,
crushed vacant houses like hollow skulls,

ignited neon lights and street lamps,
strip malls and drugs stores
that burn holes into old hiding places.

They still try to sift through shattered glass,
silence the hiss of the popped bike tire,
wipe away the blood flower that blooms

from my scabbed knee.

ROCHESTER'S CALL FOR JANE
Jane, my Jane, l need your love; please, come to me.
I have lost my hand and sight; come make me see.
I feel that l need you much; my heart calls you.
Don't neglect my urgent call; come, be my view.

I have lost all that l have, but l don't care.
I feel a great surge in heart to touch your hair.
Come, l want to press you hard to my faint chest
and give you my loving heart, what's for me left.

I can't keep my heart, that cradles your love, safe.
I wish to entrust this love ere l get off.
It's my treasure in my life, and all l've got.
Please, come soon. You are my hope ere l depart.

I have seen a lot, but you have got the touch
that could enslave all my thoughts and my heart catch.
Come let me enfold your heart to sing the tune
that my heart has sung for long; please, Jane, come soon.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
____________

There's a funny sort of emptiness
that passes over me
as I walk past the paperback erotica that tuck themselves away
in the shelves of the local grocery store in places that are
simultaneously completely out in the open yet completely ignored
looking, as I do, with mock casual interest
and unfeigned disdain.
Who are these intended for, really?
Are they for the snuggly-wuggly, *****, cozy-woozy, wishy-washy and warm family of four
comparing chicken nugget prices and
weighing the health benefits of
vegetable medley versus succotash?
Or are they for the uni flatmates
walking huddled together for warmth or protection or both,
seeing as they're wearing only sandals and denim shorts
and this is the first time
they've been grocery shopping without mum,
that giggle loudly together to mask how homesick they really are
while they compare the calories in
Campbell's versus Progresso.
They went with Progresso if you were wondering.
Or are they meant for those who are cooking for one?
For those who have no need to compare prices
or calories
out loud.
For those who are well acquainted
with the old, familiar tiled aisles
as they have no one to take out to dinner.
Is this where they are to find company?
Betwixt the pages of a badly penned,
lighter than marshmallows,
more shallow than the kiddie pool,
more transparent than Casper,
not-good-enough-to-be-******-compost
"literary" garbage?
Is this -assumed- female
supposed to curl up with one of these slabs of drivel
and feel **** and aroused
in her baggy sweats and ill-fitting hoodie
after she ate a microwaveable chicken *** pie all by her lonesome?
As a single girl who often cooks for one,
I am offended by this.
Personally,
I think Lestat is ten times sexier than Edward,
Salai is way cuter than Fabio,
and Christian Grey couldn't S Mr. Rochester's D.
What I'm saying is-
Grocery Stores.
YOU are the primary reason for this pathetic f-ckery.
Everything else in the store can be compared for quality.
So why not apply that same knowledge
to the book arena.
Signed,
A Concerned Shopper
p.s. Please extend the validity date on the chicken *** pie coupon. Thank you!

The Fox sisters of Rochester
lived in a haunted house.
A spirit there was stirring
That was probably not a mouse.
Spirits rapped upon the walls
and on the window panes.
The sisters Fox would rap right back
according to their claims.

The Foxes were sensations,
The Belles of Halloween
Their Séances well attended
By the credulous, T’would seem.
Spirit fever gripped the land
With rapping on a table
(Maggie Fox was double jointed
And the whole thing was a fable.)

It’s hard to sell your real estate
when it’s a haunted home.
But when spooks rap, rap right back
You’ll never be alone.

I was the one who received the faithful letter from Mr. Darcy
I was the one who held Holden when he cried
I was the one who Guy Montague thought was beautiful
I was the one who Heathcliff came back to the Wuthering Heights for
I was the one who Mr. Rochester tried to illegally marry
I was the one who D'Artagnan grieved over after the abduction
I was the one who Captain Wentworth fell back in love with
I was the one who Dorian Gray actually cared for
I was the one who Candide brought the gold for in El Dorado
I was the one who Winston Smith kissed in that attic
I was the one who cried when they all left me with a silent flipping of a page

his bedtime stories
could still be treasured
through the Rochester stars in her eyes;
fables of a hopping bunny
that chewed carrots and
smiled in its sleep.
little did she know
that the bunny’s teeth had shattered
biting into those carrots when
happiness itself became
make believe,
and her teeth shattered, too
when a fist overpowered a
father
and though the Rochester stars still shone,
every nighttime fable
became a living nightmare.

i hope you see my face
in the clouds one day,
maybe i'm gone
and you're still there.

Feel great, feel cool, feel nice. Nice people, nice things, nice ice. Ice cream, ice blocks, ice cubes. Cube, pyramid, cone, sphere. Circle, circle of life, what comes around goes around. Ring around the rosey. Tulips, daffodils, daisies, pansies. Scared, frightened, freaked. Surprise, happy, content, friends. Social, shy, outgoing. Going out with friends, going out of town, going to bed. Sleep, cozy, pillows, blankets, nighttime. Stars, moon, owls, darkness. Dark hair, dark chocolate, dark night, Dark Knight. Batman, Superman, Cat-women, Supergirl, Flash. Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor. Pepper Potts, Peggy Carter, Jane Foster. Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, William Shakespeare. Elizabeth and Darcy, Romeo and Juliet, Jane and Rochester. Love, tragedy, comedy. Happily ever after, never, future, past, present. Wishes, desires, wants, needs. Thoughts, actions, words, deeds. If, when, now, how. Questions, answers, research. Study, work, write, draw. Art, paint, opinions, facts. Math, history, grammar, science. Religion, faith, beliefs, devotion. Marriage, together, apart. Separate, different, change. Old, new, used. Abandoned, left, alone, useless. Useful, helpful, needed, wanted. A place, person, thing. Adjective, verb, adverb, noun, pronoun, proper noun. Mad Libs.

I thought I knew afraid
Going to spring break
with some friends
we never met up
there was this guy
offered me a ride?
and took it
foolish girl...
or they abducted me
that makes more sense...

though maybe ignoring that voice
even though its usually right
I wasn't supposed to be here
My family thinks I'm somewhere else

I'm Seventeen...you know
A soccer queen
from Rochester N.Y.
blonde cutie they say
child-like I hear
I hear we had ***
This guy & I?

Then I was...
offered to his friends
offering me drinks and drugs
No...no...
I try to run
My Instincts
my feet running
my breathing quickened
like a deer
look behind
Here he comes!
Not time to die
I don't remember
Till the gun hit me so hard
I thought I had
I couldn't cry
Or breathe...
I prayed...
for anyone
anything to come
I wasn't saved

Pistol whipped
Gang rapped
Visceral,
animals
******* out my soul
bruises
bleeding
broken
I can't feel anything
my eyes are wide shut

Why?
What's wrong with them?
Why... do they hate me?

Human trafficking they said
No...no....no
I'm "Missing"
Gotta ditch da *****!
no...no.....no....no....No!!!!

It's so dark
I am so tiny
Didn't stand a chance
So alone
back home
Miss them already....Momma, Daddy...
my friends
Don't cry ....please!
Eerily quiet
Endless Silence
After the 2 loudest shots I've ever heard

Wrapped in plastic?
Dragged out to the Alligator pits
Gone girl
No more boyfriends
or holding hands
Never having Daddy's children
or getting married
I dreamed of
becoming famous
but not only as a ghost
my big ideas
playing soccer
I already miss it all....
I'm late for dinner

I'm speaking to the jailhouse snitches
To the ones involved
Never gonna rest
till I have my day in court
haunt them till the day they die
or drive them MAD
so even if they never find my bones
I know I'm not alone
we must keep looking for Justice
not just the poetic kind
someone out there knows ....
everything.

"In matters of Truth and justice
There's no difference between the large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people
are all the same" - Albert Einstein


"There's no bar to a prosecutor pursuing a homicide without a body"

"Problems in the modern era where the body itself is the best evidence"


Cherie Nolan © 2016

it's quiet hard to find a welcoming book, i can cite two read in one sitting, thus spoke Zarathusrta (the original intent) and the soft machine by burroughs... all others came with many composed sittings... but none of the repeated encounters can be spoken of so favourably as Bertrand Russell's history of western philosophy, with that book came the kindest summer - in that i find historians the prefects of philosophy, the Republic guardians, leave the poets to do their sing-along, and furthered abstracts of symbols (should they wish, and ought), give presence to historians like Russell and Tatarkiewicz (surname derived as descended from Tartar auxiliary at the battle of Tannenberg with two naked swords dipped into ****** soil awaiting blood by a Lithuanian king married to a Polish gal).

sometimes poems can be more memorable than entire
books, there memorableness technique used in
epics gets lost most of the time,
writers' custard narrative awaiting a memorable
spontaneity is always missing, a memorable quote
needs to be bookmarked, it's hardly remembered,
all that talk of etiquette, esp. 19th century is always
the fog in novel, Mr. Darcy and his twin
Mr. Rochester, both haunted -
the former by social structures (prejudice;
his wife to be by lower caste governed by pride)
while the latter by a madwoman in the attic -
there's nothing memorable about these novels
in mono assertions, unless you have a book-club or
a cinematic script and a movie... poems are more
memorable, naturally, even if you're unable to recite
them because you rather recite the list of ingredients
for a bonkers curry, someone else will recite you a
poem, no problem. i guess that's because memorising
poetry is afforded by rhymes, the crude musicology
if given an instrument, would be to pluck
two same notes, ugly with a guitar, beautiful with
the tongue.
no, novels are not memorable, ask blind Samson about
the pillars he absorbed with his strength and pulled
down... ask him...
or... or i can tell you a little secret, it's a secret concerning
Sylvia Plath's *bell jar... page 119 in my edition (Faber & Faber),
slight digression: a page later she's complaining in
a "fictive" personality about the ineffectiveness of sleeping
pills... she has been apparently given max'      imum
strength pills... dear Sylvia,
                                        against your doctor's orders,
          against all pharmaceutical orthodoxy,
sleeping pills are best effective with alcohol,
even though the tagline is to avoid mixing the two...
i can't specify the quantity of alcohol in milligrams
akin to the dosage of the pills, dear Sylvia, they're only
effective with the liquid sedative, and perhaps a painkiller
like paracetamol...
nonetheless on page 119 she's citing a book you will
probably not read, and neither did she (explanation
a bit later)... she cites the first page of J. Joyce's
Finnegans Wake...
                 riverrun past Eve and Adam's...
and that ONE-HUNDRED LETTERED word:

  ba'ba'ba'dal'gharagh'takamminanarronk'onn'bronntonner'r­onn'tuonn'thunn'trovarr'houna'wnska'wntooh'oohoo'rdenen'thurnuk!­

i tried the syllable scalpel to my best ability for breath,
this grand anti-onomatopoeia, cut for brief pause...
but she didn't read any further like Delmore Schwartz
trying to sell this **** Grææ tongue...
she didn't read on, because there's another century in this
book:

(i left a bookmark on the page (no. 23) - a painting by
Diego Velázquez, the toilet of Venus 122.5 by 177 centimetres)

with loss of breath and entry of the centipede as follows

perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhur­thrumathunnaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun!

but i must i don't have the ratio, since i didn't bother counting
either words, but Sylvia did, and if she counted the first word
as a century, this second word must also be a century -
yet on suspicion should i believe she read further, or didn't?
they claimed the book to be a Babylonian Tower
readying for dispersions of the people, yet with historical
events it's a joke, given that there are no diacritical marks
in the book to provide stresses of accents:
e.g. fumatul poate să ucidă (romanian for: do not smoke
cigarettes, yes, there's a black market for cigarettes,
THANK GOD!) - and with saying that, it is not a book
with a Babylonian Tower attached to it, it's a tower for sure,
but a Globalisation Tower, how english became the
Lingua Levant once more, when the Franks had their
puppet king of Jerusalem at the time of Saladin.

Rochester, public market,
New York, and you see
The woman standing there

With her bags full of shopping
Waiting for her husband to come
And return with the car, with a face

That tells of annoyance and speaks
Volumes. Where the **** is he,
She mutters unaware you can

Hear her as you pack away your
Shopping in the back of your old
Ford. Won’t be long he said,

Be just a moment, she says, her
Voice rising like the fat dame in
The opera house before the curtains

Fall, and here I am waiting and my
Feet aching, my migraine returning
And all he can think about is laying

A bet and going for a drink with that
Logan loon and me here standing like
Some worn out ***** desperate for

A final pickup. She turns around and
Gives you the stare, takes in your skimpy
Skirt, your dyed blond hair, then turns

Away and scratches her *** and moves
Her feet and looks up and down for her
Husband’s returning car. You close

Down the lid of the old Ford and get
Inside and sit and watch the woman
And wonder if she has kids and grand

Kids, or maybe a secret lover, some
Poor schmuck down on his life’s luck.
She swings one of the bags of shopping

In front of her legs, her agitation increasing,
Her face deepening with lines of her frustration.
He knows I don’t like him drinking while he

Drives, I told him if you’re going to drink,
Then I will drive, I don’t want the *******
Cops breathing through the car window on

Me just because of the your drunk reckless
Driving and what does he do? Goes off in the
Car to meet the Logan guy and bet and drink

And me here like some ****** waiting and
My feet aching and the piles giving me hell.
She stops as her husband’s car returns and

He pulls up and gets out real slow and puts
The bags in the back and says nothing, passing
Her by and getting back in his seat and she

Climbing in her side of the car says, Hi Honey,
Did you have a nice drink and bet with Logan?
Yeah, he says, but the horse fell and the beer

Was warm and Logan didn’t show and so I
Drank the warm beer and bet the one horse
And then came here. You? Had a good

Shopping trip? Sure, she says, her voice
Now mellow, a smile on her lips, just got
What we needed and they did my hair.

You watch as off they drive, and as they
Go off the woman gives you the middle
Digit up you sign and a dark black glare.

Rochester, public market,
New York, and you see
The woman standing there

With her bags full of shopping
Waiting for her husband to come
And return with the car, with a face

That tells of annoyance and speaks
Volumes. Where the **** is he,
She mutters unaware you can

Hear her as you pack away your
Shopping in the back of your old
Ford. Won’t be long he said,

Be just a moment, she says, her
Voice rising like the fat dame in
The opera house before the curtains

Fall, and here I am waiting and my
Feet aching, my migraine returning
And all he can think about is laying

A bet and going for a drink with that
Logan loon and me here standing like
Some worn out ***** desperate for

A final pickup. She turns around and
Gives you the stare, takes in your skimpy
Skirt, your dyed blond hair, then turns

Away and scratches her *** and moves
Her feet and looks up and down for her
Husband’s returning car. You close

Down the lid of the old Ford and get
Inside and sit and watch the woman
And wonder if she has kids and grand

Kids, or maybe a secret lover, some
Poor schmuck down on his life’s luck.
She swings one of the bags of shopping

In front of her legs, her agitation increasing,
Her face deepening with lines of her frustration.
He knows I don’t like him drinking while he

Drives, I told him if you’re going to drink,
Then I will drive, I don’t want the *******
Cops breathing through the car window on

Me just because of the your drunk reckless
Driving and what does he do? Goes off in the
Car to meet the Logan guy and bet and drink

And me here like some ****** waiting and
My feet aching and the piles giving me hell.
She stops as her husband’s car returns and

He pulls up and gets out real slow and puts
The bags in the back and says nothing, passing
Her by and getting back in his seat and she

Climbing in her side of the car says, Hi Honey,
Did you have a nice drink and bet with Logan?
Yeah, he says, but the horse fell and the beer

Was warm and Logan didn’t show and so I
Drank the warm beer and bet the one horse
And then came here. You? Had a good

Shopping trip? Sure, she says, her voice
Now mellow, a smile on her lips, just got
What we needed and they did my hair.

You watch as off they drive, and as they
Go off the woman gives you the middle
Digit up you sign and a dark black glare.

we partied in a Chevrolet station wagon
the night we graduated went fast around the devil curves that
uphill gravel laiden course
to the top like we were the best
to the hill west of Rochester
where those acid drop rainfalls fell
into our open eyes
made rainbows kaleidoscopes
out of evergreens and
telephone poles
flashes shone in brief aware
and dreams they spoke out echoing
no one sane was here
found our way safely back
across the street from my house and parked behind the garage where
Hope came up in a tight dress
drunk and quite acting
nervy knowing she had
made all both our heads turn
or all ten of em
and only having one
Chevrolet
the backseat turned down
into almost a bed
we gave the pulsing energy
the flashes a go
a right groovy we
said at the time
one at the time impulse
the stars
the moon
the rocking
Chevrolet
all night
half the next day
I don't think it was
just my
imagination

The snow fell light and sifted
through last night's bitter cold
but look, the world has shifted
and winter lost his hold.

The soil is rich and warming
and every fallen flake
will nourish green things growing
as seeds begin to wake.

my hairline sweat and tears
mist from a shoreline,
paint down my wrinkles like waves cresting
a rocky beach,
my colors so dissolved, all my fleshy canvases
exposed to too much sun, my piercings all droopy,
teeth falling out. I need a hair cut a good dentist and Dr.
Phil. Or just strip down to my loincloth
go back to Rochester,
run with  wildness, as I did then
through brush and bathed in purple
abandonement, virile unabsorbed
lazing under the mulberry brush
the willows swaying down to touch my unscarred youngness,
with hope with hunger, then.

lieutenant sticks, that's what they called him,
kij denotes a stick, without confusion
the emphasis of an olé (diacritical marks
are punctuations in punctuation) -
russians love to read, so you begin writing for
russians... a bit simple...
               i know they will one day approve
diacritical marks for the j, and depose the dot
above it like a halo...
  so i then get to say: key-jay....
           unitl that day happens i won't be found
playing the piano, able to read the notes
of a composition...
          nor draw blood from my fingers when
allowing myself the second thought of chess...
but some day along this carpe diem expansion
i will say: that day i took l.s.d.,
          and also that memory of 1950s
technicolor films made all the more sense...
       and it really was that saturation of colour,
the original saturation of colour translated onto screen...
like fake-tan orange of essex,
                  i'm about to juggle watermelons: wee!
productive sarcasm or even counter-productive sarcasm
never really sticks to a frying-pan of salivated over
pancakes readied for breakfast or some hereafter...
slobber gusto is not exactly a case of Pavlov's...
nor is reading a sunday newspaper...
               i can only think of a "metaphor" of walking
the dog in an english park and picking up
its ****... so much so for agonising myself reading
a newspaper... so i guess i now get to write the word
similie, in italics preceded by the colon heresy and not
reaching for the b, i.e.: italics.
when did i become so twitchy and double pardon
a concern for appreciating the comment?
last time i read jane eyre and started thinking about
that madwoman in the attic, that was rochester's
first wife... about that time...
      unlike that case of being a "poet" and writing
a scenario, i feel no guilt over these compositions,
   why did bukowski have the c.i.a. onto him and not
the f.b.i.?
                could you tell me if he was a spy?
oh look... a tumbleweed moment...
                             so i was talking to these two drunks
in this shady place at night
  and just blah blah blah later we exchanged
ethnic content, and one said he lived in
birmingham for a while, that place where ozzy
came from... and it's not like they even call
that city a "venice of the west", or a "st. petersburg of the west",
just as well... they twinned the town of
grimsby to chernobyl...
        they have edinburgh the "athens of the north",
they have amsterdam, the "venice of the north"...
and then you get birmingham,
and it could apply for a romance from somone,
like the venice of north-west... north by north west...
i'm not ignorant because of copernicus:
just a little bit disorientated trying to translate
sign-language from chinese ideograms...
   the idea was: ching chang walla(h)...
               extend that and you have imitations of dolly,
oh... finding dory...
   or... when in suffering, make a comedy...
like that pain adoolf hihi-tler felt watching a charlie
chaplin movie and saying: that moustache gig
is going to conquer the world.
   so where was i?
                   if you build a labyrinth you're bound
to ask the question of where you are?
     ah right, heading for the mortality exit...
concentrating on some word that would make no sense
to the average cognitive tactic of narration...
                 kije! - yep, sticks, that's the plural
version of kij, which just means stick...
    i really want to put a macron over that j
      so people don't confuse yahweh with jesus
   or add fractions to the concept...
or what the ancient greeks did, i.e. doing the dumbest
thing possible of sub-humanising the jews...
             suddenly Y                              is very far
from
                                                                             J
via gamma...       was that me trying to
  turn the tongue into a saxophone of cool?
  is that word even as half relevant these days as disco?
or is that when good becomes "evil"
   and evil becomes "good" and we call
                          a nightclub a slaughterhouse?
"   " aside... you don't get to play the existentialists
when it comes to words like list from
   the thesaurus (rex) beginning with the word red...
  the book states the "ambiguity"
                     via its synonym basis: crimson, burgundy...
red... rose...
or as kant would put it: we need the categorical
imperative, not to be "good", but to make
clear distinctions...
               and what a sad sad affair that has become,
when having looked for all the facts,
we became stunted and now argue with
what is the chiral (evidently opposite of facts) statements;
so they had genes and so they came up with memes...
facts need the opposite unit for them to be
the much needed resource...
              i guess i can't "coin a phrase" working
on this angle... because a word already exists to counter
factual expressions... you posit the chiral version
of facts on the word...                 factoid.

lady gaga: i like it rough:

what was ever wrong with being tender, treating a body
opposite to one's own like porcelain?
                  never mind...
                     these days i'd rather
be bound to caressing a cat than
touching a woman.
   me? gift to women? a don juan?
**** no!
              ha ha!
                i'm waiting for the comedy
of seeing women age and become
barren due to their cherry-picking
        not having entered a harem...
mmm...
               what now?!
                         conversations with your mother?
me? i already told mine: i know
where switzerland is... and i'm thankful
for their competence in discussing euthanasia...
sure, i'll hold your hand, because i'll
take the same route...
                    i think that's called the serenity
of dignifying something called a: human.
after a while or the years: i just
lost interest with all the ***** *****-slapping...
    i can't remember a ******* wanting
the sort of fetishes these free-women of the western
world want or sing about, or frankly
celebrate...
                     i must be victorian...
a 21st century *jack? he wouldn't be after
the prostitutes...
                            believe me...
                                after a while you're
just like: whatever... can't be bothered.
                            the totem of jealousy dries up
anyway, given enough time for it to do so...
         an old bachelor? akin to mr. portillo?
   nothing sad about that...
                   it's actually quiet welcoming that a man
could accomplish being a bachelor at his age...
but with women?
                that's just sad... a bit like the fetish
women have with mr. rochester and the madwoman
in the attic... i'm starting to think:
         when's edward coming out with
                                                     entire circus?
oh right: now they can't handle reality!
but they're still into "loov"; beckoning Grimsby!
    this language has as much monetary value
as a penny dropped on the street in Silesia / Śląsk.

I wonder if I had lived somewhere

other than Rochester.

(Minneapolis?)

What would I be?



I can not help but

keep longing for that air

OH! all the air that's there!



I'm old.

And the ******* millennials are

pouring over and I am just

stuck.

Who will I be?

after all this fire

surrenders to dusk?



But the silent air screams

LOUDEST

in my ears.

However I can't fight back

for Life's too powerful

and I am left with water

so much black water

that can not be drained.



It was the most important decision

in my life and for all those around me.

I swear my feet land by my decision

but I can not help but wonder

what would I be?

if I had lived somewhere

other than Rochester?

In Rochester, on East Avenue,
A greyish soul treks off to work,
Throws back the coffee handily,
Sleepily pays the sales clerk-

His gaze is now transfixed by a tree
Colorful and flowering
Wishes he could stay outside
Alas, the tasks are towering…

He checks and sets the openness
Of his eyes in his image in the glass,
So as not
     to make it seem
          he’s as gone
               as he is;
Stumbles past the guard, plops down on his ***,

Planted thus, in front of his monitor,
In a cubicle, first floor, across from the lab,
Curses his fate for landing him here,
In this windowless slogging, dark and drab.

It wasn't that he didn't remember the lay of the land;
Hell, knew it as well as his own name,
(Even though, he noted with some disquiet,
The pavement had crept a bit farther up Bootjack Hill,
And there was a driveway or two,
Not to mention the odd electric meter,
That hadn't been there some years before)
But there were considerations now,
Things which needed to be taken into account
Which, in his days of rattle-assing in these hills
In his third-hand '75 Nova
(Last of the Rochester straight-sixes,
As so many bottles and cans raised in tribute noted
Before he sold it to some kid from the neighborhood
For fifty bucks, probably forty more than it was worth.)
Had been under his radar, if not beneath his contempt,
But he wasn't driving a beater with a cracked manifold now,
And his hips and knees were less than amenable
To changing a tire on a narrow strip
Of packed dirt and gravel,
And if you moved at more than a snail's pace up there,
You could bust a brake line in short order,
And if even you could walk to a point
Where you had cell service,
You had to convince someone from the garage in town
To send someone up to those hills
(He could just imagine someone on the other end
After an incredulous pause saying
You up where, now?)
And he'd decided to tuck his car
Into one of those **** new driveways
(He'd have just K-turned it back in the day,
But he knew those culverts were deep and serpentine)
And headed back downhill,
Reaching the Irish Settlement road
(Itself only paved completely back in '84 or so)
The drone of the tires on the tarmac
Faintly irritating and mosquito-like.

“I’m in my third year of college…” I answered, taking a quick gulp of my wine and disguising it as a sip. (Success is finishing a bottle of Pinot Noir with two of your friends in under 15 minutes). “So, what do you want to do with your degree?” My nosey aunt said. And the words came straight out of her nose.  “I… I want to be a lawyer.” (Success is believing in the existence of a free market). “I’m so smart, I know I could do it! Hashtag, girl boss.” The voice in my head continued playing like a CD. “Are they feeding you in New York? You look so thin.” (Success is a Saint, but alas, I’m a sinner). I replied, “I moved out of Rochester because I wanted to be invisible and feel free from the constraints of my past”. “You’re so pretty, why don’t you smile more?” A construction worker yells at me as I walk by. Then, my voice speaks for me again. “I hope that scaffolding falls on you, *******”. (Success is a drunk walk back home, crying on Broadway in your leather boots, and no one asking you if you’re okay).

Verdict is in, all 7 are pardoned from sin. The streets are safe again from the menace that creeps. One less life to take, add to the collection that have suffered the same fate. Freezing in the damp winter night. Mentally unfit to be allowed a plea. We don't care if you are cold, a bound and naked man is alot to fear. How long to find a blanket or a coat? How long before he found a knee upon his throat? When Chuck made the claim I could never believe. 911 is a joke, just check the footage and see. Rochester oh how you have made the scene! From Treyvon to Daniel and every name not yet released.