<>

reversed a verse from “Like a Rolling Stone;
~complements to Mr. B. Dylan, a Nobel man~

you, me, hear what you’re hearing, feeling it,
you, me, hear what you’re thinking, feeling that,
regenerating, excising, pinching a single word of Bobby’s
lyricizing, knowing, you’ve just handbag-snatched a poem full.

the rolling stone sings of next meal scrounging,
he’s talking to you, knowing you, you customizing
his lyrics modifying-jiggering, for your purposeful brain,
emotional crazed notions, your monsanto seed of needs and strains.

nah, I’m fibbing, polite-ly lying,
like clover waves springing up
overnight after a night’s soaking,
raining, picking up hints, misdirections, clues,
***, poem titles dripping from my glassy eyes!

des idées for the next poem, the one, in the garden hereafter,
now called thereafter, all arriving in tranches, backyard bunches,
just to write down the titles fast enough, sometimes, trouble,
oft easy, sometimes rough, but always a fast rush jiggling job.

yeah, I’m liking that word, scrounging,
got character, internal noises aclashing,

so I’m scrounging
while lounging , it’s so ******* easy,

it’s getting borrowed till you! steal
it out from under me,
like an ill reputed
good poet should...


P.S. don’t keep me waiting!
let the scrounging commencin’

tw36

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.

[[I think this is the second half of the first one I found scrounging.  I split them up into two cause they sound better that way.  I still didn't change a word.]]
[[[I wrote the bold part]]]

Wondering
What I left behind
Sitting
On my life unkind
*******
Cause the man's upset
Sitting
On a percocet

Coffee and cigarettes don't do it for me anymore
I'm shooting up on life
And it's unbelievable
I can't control the way I feel
About this urge to take the pills
They **** the pain and sorrow of your lies

**Splitting!
Headache, you can't take the wait
Urging!
To wait, swallow your pains one day
Knowing!
you hate yourself and what you make

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the letter we also read...

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

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

©  2019 Jim Davis

[[I found this scrounging through an old notebook.  It's cool but some of it is confusing.  My friend and I wrote it together years ago.  I didn't change a word.  I wanted it to be genuine.]]
[[[I wrote the bold part.]]]


What you see is your reality.  Everything that you have ever dreamed; in a war where it's a fallacy.  Nothing here is always as it seems.  After torture comes the pain.  No one's here to hear your ******' screams

Run!
There's nowhere to hide.
Scars!
That's all you provide
Hate!
What I feel inside
Waste!
Your *** right here, somehow

Eat away at the pain, that's you beat yourself black and blue.  I'll just sit and watch you crash and burn.  I thought you'd never learn, you've never earned but surely spent.  You worked and made your dollar, but never paid the rent. ** Scream piercing screams into your deaf pillow tonight

My old great-aunt Elaine with her withered hands gave me $200 and beaded handbag
"This your mad money," she told me, as we sat on that nursing home couch, "And it ain't for your purse. This goes in your shirt, where only you know you got it."
The assisted-living nurse chuckled to herself. They got along, my great-aunt and her.
"Why?"
"Cuz if you get angry," she said, in that Marlboro-raspy voice of hers, "And you gotta go, you walk out on your date and you leave 'is ***. And then you got your money for a strong drink. And your cab."
The nurse laughed
My aunt re-situated herself on the nursing home couch. Elaine Dauterive. Her mind was going, and so was her health, but she was as regal as a queen on her throne in that moment
her fire-red hair, ungrayed, was her crown
No cape as royal as that sleeping gown.
"Don't you think for once second I can't take care of you, honey," she said in that creole drawl, and I knew what she meant
Because even after she'd gone I would have that mad money
All stuffed in my bra for when I needed it
Because she was older than time, for me, seeing things like
The Great Depression, World War II
What I read in history books
I'd be ****** if I took what she said with even one grain of salt because Auntie-Lane, I'll be ****** if I don't love you
And I know you're on your way out and
I'll buy you whiskey in the afterlife with some of that $200 cash that you busted your *** scrounging up for me
Southern hospitality at its finest
And those liver spots redder than wine adorn you like badges of honor for all of the years you've endured
My elder - creole woman, with a soul as fire-red as her hair, breathing more smoke than air
My old dragon
On a pile of gold: her mad money

The truth is, I’m not really sure who I am.  She told us to draw ourselves and then to draw our souls; so I drew my face scratched and uneven, just as I’ve always seen it, and frowned at the result both in the mirror and on the paper.  The only soul I’ve ever really known was the one that shone through the strokes of the keys I punched, the scrawling of ink on paper in mismatched arrays of awkward thoughts, disorientated and unorganized, shaded different spews of emotion and rearranged through the lens of ever last viewer’s eye.  Even so, this soul that is composed of words that defined me painted a picture vivid in its contrast, though blurry from both afar and close enough to squint, no details able to be made out.  These words that have wrapped around my soul rubbed raw from the time my skin first flinched at the cool March air cannot be deciphered by their author, though I know somehow that their letters flowing into one another say more than any curve of my face ever could.  These words are black and white, two extremes crafted in the pallet of the Universe’s toolshed, and perhaps that’s exactly what I am.  Black or white.  I’m dark and lost and scrounging for some rusting wall or tree branch to cling to as to ensure the shimmering waves, onyx and charcoal in their nature with the flow of blood in its spine, do not flood into my mouth at a rate in which is too quick to balance myself upon them, or, I’m white, drifting snow from a cloud scraping the vast expanse of brilliant blue gazing as a sky above all the world, pure, innocent, unscathed with the potential for creation in vibrancies yet unknown, or to be ripped to bits, scattered amongst piles of cream and autumn leaves drained of their color beneath months of shivering frost.  And so, perhaps any physical representation of my being would be all wrong, because that’s not what I am.  Myself, my soul, it resides in the murky depths of heights I’ve yet to discover, tethered endlessly and uncertain among the caverns of my inners, pink and mushy, stirred and ******, untouched from the harsh light of a world encased in brevity.

When the funding is cut
So the hospitals shut
That’s a Tory
When the poverty bites
And you lose human rights
That’s a Tory
Such excess
Better reassess
Better repossess
Better get yourself private healthcare
Overtaxed if you work
Unemployed? Then you're scrounging on welfare

When there’s bigoted views
Blatant lies on the news
That’s a Tory
When the biggest and best
Are too rich to arrest
That’s a Tory
But they’re lax
Covering the cracks
Never paying tax
Claiming everything on expenses
They can steal with a smile
While they peddle their flimsy defences

When they're guilty of fraud
And they're banking abroad
That's a Tory
If they're selling your school
When 'austere' means 'cruel'
That's a Tory
Too much spin
Slogan and a grin
Wearing pretty thin
Bussing people in to applaud them
Any law can be bought
If you're well off enough to afford them

That's all folks and remember, you can't spell Theresa May without heresy

**

I am from inconsistency,
forced adjustment,
eternally molding in a feeble attempt to appease my demanding environment.

I am from the loophole of the universe with no purpose,
few absolutes,
and a limited amount of time.

From laugh tracks,
reminding me when to laugh,
and for how long.

From the boredom at the bottom,
I've been Thriving in the *** trough,
endlessly scrounging for solutions and temporary entertainment.

From redundant ideas and places,
stale bread,
flat coke,
familiar situations and words.

On a screen in america

And after, there is only a gaping emptiness
the familiar ache
The desire to drown myself in soft things
Fill my pockets with pebbles and all the poems my muses will never read
And wade into the Lethe
To the place of the first breath after momentary pain
The liminal gasp between sighs
The first touch after a long absence
Body awakening to memory.

Welcome weary traveller, you are safe here. Dwell. Abide.
The scrounging scratching crawl you call a life withdraws.
Here,
Float in the fingers of sunlight through glass
The murmur of breath against hair
The glimpse of ripples from a water-strider’s gait.
Here,
You are small and safe
You suffer no harm nor cause it
Your existence has curled in on itself  
And blooms with the sunrise.
Here,
Your presence is a fleck on a robin’s egg
The bruise of teeth on a petal
An eyelash in sand
Lost, lingering, and longing.

The Lethe plucks the pebbles and poems into the current
Your likeness billows with ink in the wake
Adrift, I clutch at your fading hand
But rising, find I do not know this face
Left only with a flicker
Of a stranger’s arms
around my waist.

Trick or Treat
Trick or Treat
I tried a trick in the last piece will mix this up with both but as Betty Davis said In all about Eve buckle up
It going to be a bumpy ride I will give you a little of both at first the deadly trick I didn’t know and the
Treat of playing chicken with a freight train only now I was seven we lived on Railroad Rd Ave the first
Street south of Jackson where the pizza wars are fought daily between Pizza Hut and Pizza man. I
Crossed the ditch and climbed the grade a little challenge at seven but as I played on the track I heard
That old devil that always shook our house as it passed but it made up for it with that romantic whistle
And the feeling you got as you listened to it fade into the distant night. Well I didn’t know what romance
Was totally except on westerns and I did think those Warren twins were cute and when those brownies
All gathered on the east side of Lincoln school under that tree I did stare and enjoy such a wondrous
Sight they would and have repopulated our world given us the promise of an unbreakable future I can’t
Tell if I heard I guess that was the case I heard it first when I saw the train it was down by the bowling
Alley it was just a dot at that distance not very big it didn’t take long for it to metamorphous in to a
Fierce giant black behemoth it was getting intimidating half way to the crossing to give you the distance
At the time I jumped out of the way and ran down the hill I almost was sent flying as I encountered
Angles we lived in the second house from pine and I was right across from my house they almost had
One less mouth to feed I feel they would have gotten over it about the time it would take to eat a
Hamburger at home town so you get the distance I let him come across the pine street crossing now
Tension was shaking me two things I didn’t know that they rolled back and forth and that they were two
Stories high the ground did more than tremble by this time he was through the crossing and driving
Toward my position that I wasn’t ready to forfeit just yet I had a stubborn streak and a rebel
Heart even back then that might yet land me in hell my wife just said I was banging the keys I talk loud
When I get excited about something and on here I bang the keys. I will have to leave you hanging for a
Moment then take you back for the ending on the same thought about being a rebel I had a dream
Some Years back I was standing in front of a mirror and God was trying to put this detailed and glorious
Crown of intricate gold on my head it wasn’t happening with ease like the time I was ten the coat I had was finished
Torn from the collar to the shoulder it hung down god awful inside stuffing best description here came
The enemy mom sister aunt Grandmother and her sister with a new coat I hit the floor with my best
Three Stooges Curly imitation not a pretty picture even scared the old auntie visiting well from coloring
Books to fox terrier dogs that was what it took for me to relent and give up my coat see what the train
Was up against I have to take this opportunity for years I have tried to honor this special teacher but the
Story to sad and tragic I tried another time to write about Candy Jack a young mother who died leaving
Two five year old twin girls for her mother to raise as I set there drawing on the feelings you have to have
To write I got more than I bargained for Candy was totally visible in my mind but a visitor came with her
As I write this I have a cold chill it was death now Candy lie in repose in her casket but the truth of her
Condition started to take over and grip my body that was all I wanted I dropped paper and pen and left
The room never to attempt her story again you can’t match Mrs. Dagon’s story with mere words I doubt
If even Faulkner could even though he masterfully handled the subject in she lay dying I set in her class I
Might have been at a loss in the business class but I got how much she loved her husband Jim that’s
When and only when her hard exterior softened I hope in vain that her hardness somehow gave her a
Semblance of armor you surly know the story Jim died of cancer they had her in the hospital she asked
To go home for an item she would be right back a promise maybe she meant to keep but the story she
Was wearing a gown and a thin oh to thin a house coat she went in one door maybe in that stillness and
In that reality I spoke of in The Magic Lamp she came to the end of her mind and hearts ability to endure
The untold agony this is what happened she walked out the other door crossed the same street her and
Jim followed home so many times in life she continued over and up to the tracks waited she heard the
Same romantic whistle but for her it was laced with unbearable pain she offered up her life as she
Stepped in front of a fast freight Jefferson stated the tree of liberty must at times be refreshed by the
Blood of patriots sometimes release outweighs the scale of life no longer in balance and can only be
Made so by extreme measures for all who love, you Mrs. Dagon made our experience far more richer
And I know Jim was as the old almost sacred song says I will wait for you just beyond the moon farewell
And God bless continuing in this tragic vain but back to the same crossing I left you at a display of exact
Opposites from Mrs. Dagon the Chesty potato chip man driving the little blue van was killed and people
With the ugliest actions he had barley been removed and they were vultures without human decency
Scrounging potato chip bags and cans of chili enjoy idiots it was a whole different story when the train
Derailed at Owaneco throwing boxes of shoes everywhere sure there was souls and heels everywhere
But they were leather. So there I stood he crossed through the crossing now it was terrifying thats why
They call it chicken I just kept standing there lengthening the thrill I had time now the trick, sometime
Later I played this on the side walk with two guys on a bicycle I kept standing there but when I finally
Started to jump the trick happened my nerves froze and I couldn’t move they hit me and knocked me
Down it was painful but I wasn’t there I was in my mind back on those tracks the train thirty feet away if
I didn’t jump when I did what a small minced pie I would have made.

If I ever get my feet back on the ground,
I'm going to buy me a bottle and head on in to town.
I'm going to find me a girl that treats me kind,
one that pays some attention to what's on my mind.

Dollars to donuts, we'll feel real good,
anything and everything will go down just as it should.
No more thistles and thorns, no more raging thunderstorms.
No more boot heels on the ground, no more horrendous hissing sound.

We'll bring to the table just what we've got,
we'll spend when we are able and stay home when we're not.
We'll kick up our heels to those Celtic reels,
forgetting how it feels to be scrounging our meals.

Those will be the days that we'll choose to recall,
I know this is a phase and better times will put an end to it all.
Dollars to donuts, these hard times will pass,
dollars to donuts, these hard times won't last.

In experience you have learned
which tunnel to explore.
You enter this
tunnel for promises of
"gold and precious things!".
But this promise
did not enter through ear;
but thoracic permeation

Well prepared having
spelunk'ed before;
light- your pack
light- in hand.
Climbing, scrounging to escape
the tight entrance with
jagged rocks and false paths
it's many turns and falls-
although you cannot keep
your flashlight straight
experience triumphs, as in
a maze done quickly
once done before.

One strong pull
emerging through;
cave's pupil dilates.
Ground so smooth and wet
though wise to walk
we tend to slide
                why?
Faster to the gold
Faster for exhilaration
Faster because faster!
and... why not?
hitting rough spots mid-slide
pain in debt to speed.

You let your feet
gain some tract
as the tunnel
   narrows
Solomatic mind; without
doubt- body complies.
A slight gust tickles
but this tunnel is not through...
Alas! A shining shimmer is seen!

The earth is rough
to navigate
difficult; (but shimmers numb the sense)
pain soon saturates and stops your
smallest movement, heartbeat, fidget,
thought... The light is moving near?
As tunnels break space and time
and especially direction
feel as though you've lifted up
and the cave, the light, and all
rushes to you.

The sound of breathing relocates,
oh, yes that's you.
gun to back, hostage of Aphrodite
running, sprinting, breathless
you seek this precious shimmer
soon to realize it's coming
faster, harder, alarming to
you.
Looking ahead-
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
the sound the light bequeaths
not from ten feet but maybe
five, you realize it's you
heavy- pack
heavy- darkness follows
sprinting, pushing through.

And the entrance could not be any farther.

Nature/Nurture
Which one hurts ya?
Born a ***** or raised a *****?
Take your pick.
Mother Nature can be sick,
But so can your mother and so can your father.
Look at yer brothers
Look at yer sisters
All of 'em idiots
None of 'em got jobs
What's your prospects?
A life of desk jobs?
Nah, dealing and stealing
Taking without feeling
That's what you'll do
No dreams of being well-to-do.
You were born poor,
Raised to be poor,
Cos you're forgotten by the government,
No votes to be gained from givin' you a helping hand.
Born poor, stay poor.
No cultural capital
To help cast off the metaphorical manacles
That shackle any sense of aspiration that might give you inspiration
To defy nature
To defy nurture.
------------------------------
I'll prove ya wrong!
I was born poor for sure,
Raised poor is right,
But my folks weren't sick,
They raised me not to be a *****
My bloodline shows no decline
Just not born with entitlement,
So don't judge,
That's just ******* lazy
Don't believe the argument:
Nature versus nurture
I am me, now,
So don't get frenetic about my genetics.
I have free-will
I will pay my bills,
Not be defficient,
But be self-sufficient.
And what about you?
Sat in your Ivory Tower
Indulging in your power to judge those you don't know,
Believing them to be a product line of people scrounging,
Needing hand downs from the Crown
Doing nothing but clowning around,
Smoking dope
Being without hope.
But I will be someone,
And prove you wrong,
So put your patronising way to bed
Coz I'm not lazing away until I'm dead.

It had been almost a year now.
Scrounging around for supplies was proving tiresome.
Everything either went rotten or protected by wild beasts.
In this world ravaged by flares, animals who had seemingly taken over the world for themselves, were fighting simply for survival.
The man locked himself in a room with all he could secure.
But at this point, his sanity was at its breaking point.
He sat nursing his wounds from his last fight with a wolf.
He wondered, against which monstrous animal he was going to have to fight for his life next.
Which demonic creature was going to try tearing him apart limb from limb for a bit of food.
Which savage brute was going insane and was willing to rip apart his bones, if it meant surviving for another day.
Then he heard a knock on the door.

I wish I could write a great piece and then chill for a few

Instead of scrounging each day to create something new

Every poem I write literally makes me jones for more

Is it the poet or the addict in me?
I really can't be sure

One day my mind, which is chaotic tried to recollect the past
Yes, I need to do this....
After a breakup my mind is really worried
And now it has crash landed into the world of words .
How? why I'm like this?
May be this is the reality ;
It is like a splatter film, appalling and dreadful .

How did you turned my world upside down ?
Even a single word of "love " could have defined me
But now not just the whole poem.
The whole world thwarted my efforts
Break up with cruel “****-sapiens” is like a big crambo !

You were ready to make agreements
Put your ***** "cool" signature
On the sheets made with my blood
What happened with all that love letters ?
Now all that has ended up like a scrounging note
A promise that you had never accomplished!

It is too late my dear.....
Even the prayer "sustainable " will never save you.
Now accept the reality ,
From Rio to Paris nothing has changed
But I have changed a lot.....
I have lost almost everything.

I will not protect you anymore
You will repay for all the atrocities
This is not just the curse of your ex,
This is the grudge of being unfortunate
Only because I was in love with you.
Are you still longing for more ?

April twenty second will always be cherished
The day that has been put aside by you for me, isn't it ?
Oops, again I forgot...
The day created in my name for you,
To fill your annual report sheets .
My dear it's time to pay for your sins
Before that I bid you goodbye.

©malavikavipin

you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
saving up your love for a rainy year,
scrounging and saving every fleeting smile and shallow kiss and
miserly, hunched over with the weight of your own suffering and despair,
each scrapped-together pile of crumpled-from-your-pockets shreds of I.O.U.s and featherlight touches.
too afraid to leap and risk, you'll never grow or invest your affections into the stocks of Lisa and George LLC, or Francis and Kelly Inc.
so your love is bound to crumble into fragile dust, the fruits of your labours withering into mouldy piles of seed, stem, and flesh.
the could-have-been and might-have-grown dying, before even living to flourish and erupt into glorious blooms of the strikingly ethereal and otherworldy.
but not for you, not ever for you.
you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
and you'll burn before planting your love.

Sometimes most days almost always
When I
Scrounging stuck in traffic
Unknown mayflies driving the cars around
Insectoid feelers grasping the wheel
When I
Bones of lava boiling over
Teeth everywhere and pointy
I hypothesize:

A mass extinction event or
A pandemic colony collapse
Wouldn't be
Too bad

He kept trying
Over, and Over, and Over
To take Her home

Being a good ****-block
Grew tiresome the more I
Drank

He started to beg Me
Because I never leave her alone
Not even on
One-night-stands

I kept telling him
He is a ****
Shut up

One last time:
Erin, come on!
"**** no!"

"I'll make you a grilled cheese."

"Yes!, let's go!"

I slept on the couch
His bathroom vanity
Is filled with anti-balding
Creams

Maybe his insecurities
Are a part of his
Slutiness

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I miss Micronesia food

I wanna eat gross ramen
Greasy **** in a ***** bowl

Went to the grocery store with Jesse:
"find the cheapest ****"
White rice

I ate four bowls of it
So good

**** yes!

The kids used to fight
Knock each other around
Scrounging
Over ***** of  white rice
Even the four day old
Rotten ones

Because they were always better
Than the rotten boiled bananas

She thinks to herself:
"Nothing will ever
Be this fun again"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The girls I teach with are nice
But I don't have a white-collar
Sense of humor

My humor is filthy
So I stay quiet

People at work don't know
How funny I am

Seven of them are pregnant right now
We'll be ******* in a few months

They talk about how there feet
Grow as their pregnancies progress
******* fascinating

My closest friend there in the
Kindergarten pod doesn't drink
So we only get so far

In the bardo*
you are floating
aboard the barge of couldhavebeens
and moments that were unseen
not the world
not a boy or a girl
lost
Lost boys are found toys for Thor’s hands
to play with
Lightening lick of guitar solo
striking health into blushed cheeks
Soon you’ll no longer need to be
painted
The eye patches will be removed
and pirate life won’t mean
Scrounging and wishing for an oasis
you’ll throw a life saver
throw a light saber
Glisten the sparkzap through tables
laden with all that’s been spat
from vitriolic minds

Listen
sore elbows from nudging bad spirits away
Blades of bone
and intention can saw through sadness
to the light beyond
like the sky’s pinholes
Stars aren't the cuttings of children
the dark is just a covering
Poke a finger through
Don't fear if you get stuck
for it is only the backdrop to a stage
hiding the mass of light
only there to protect us from blinding joy
Like sunglasses
So be one with your sadness

The cab moved quietly
Beneath the street lamps
Pleather seats: torn, faded
There we sat, silent- content.
The driver, a portly man, hacked
Struggling, his breathing deepened
Panting, gasping to regain regularity
Quickly, his breath filled the
Confined, litter-shrouded,
Van with the stench of
Cheap cigar smoke

We arrived at her home
The driver approached slowly
Carefully avoiding the icy snow
Banked earlier by the cities plows
Sliding the van door open I step out
Still holding her hand, the night air
Enters my lungs, sobering me
Just for that brief instant

Hastily, she leans in
Without hesitation, I meet her
Ambitious advance, reciprocating
The kiss is brief; I’m no longer cold
Her lips are warm and soft against mine
Retreating, she smiles. I gently brush her hair
Behind her ear unveiling a dark brown eye
My glazed, drunk, stare meet hers
Her grin, now beginning to fade
She looks down in confusion

I sense the cab driver behind me
Growing impatient he lights a cigar
Before turning away she whispers night
Her hand lets go of mine; our fingers part
Complacent, tomorrow she will return to him
Revisiting that feigned, simulated, infatuation
The kind they falsely advertised as ‘love’
Standing alone, I’m cold once more
Keying in, she doesn’t look back

Reaching into my pocket
Scrounging for what cash is left
To the cab, I surrender my last five dollars
This pays just enough to get me where I stand
Dissatisfied with his tip, the driver departs cursing
Unsure what to make of the evening, I begin my walk
Now, not so sobering, the night air dries my throat
The chilled breeze that once blushed her cheeks
Now stings my nose, ears, and finger tips
Alone, I continue west- home
Cold, I have miles ahead
Spirit torn in twain
I walk them.

I am an aristocrat.
The kind that molds and seams sentences,
one word upon another as if they were ancient incantations
taught to the younglings of Native American tribes. Generations upon generations.  
I’m well spoken.
Can’t you tell? The way I’ve found that happy medium between the whimper and the whine?
I won’t be a bother. No, no, if you want me to kneel for you, I’m the frayed ends of your welcome rug. Sing you a song?
I am your mobile radio.
Tap my dials, I’ll make you squeal
with delight in the evening light.
Tip, turn
She was an American girl.
You yell, you scream.
I’m a sweet talker.
I’ll make you slit your eyes with pretend apprehension and the slightest, least perceptible grin I’ve ever witnessed performed by a member of humankind.

Oh, you know I’m never lonely.

Never have I spent minutes in the corner
scrounging for the few innocent nickels I’ve left to
maneuver claws and
obtain my purity.

No, my pockets are full.

Full of falling stars.
And not even just my front ones. I’ve got so many that it’s starting to affect my strut so people notice and congratulate me on my confident and masculine demeanor.

I was told to save them for a rainy day.
But I’m rain repellant.
That billowing storm wouldn’t dare approach me.
There is a drought,
and it’s deliberate.

Here, have a few of my stars.

I’m a real winner, and I’m living it large.

Touch me, I’m golden.
I am a fighter.
I am a winner.
So long, reflection, I’m off to woo the world.

Desert and mountains merge into brown haze
in my recollection of those days.
The smell of gunpowder or paupers' fires
could ignite a conflagration of memories
if I would not extinguish them
which I do.
But one burns ever clear, even in the fickle fog of memory
—the mongrel and her pups
scrounging for scraps around our camp
and the Afghan village below.
We watched them in their scavenging and their play
until one crystal blue and frigid day
when Randy captured the runt of the bunch
and fed her some of his meager lunch,
and placed her inside his jacket
where she slipped into rabbit chasing sleep
and did not make a peep
until I heard her whimper
as the bullet that sliced through her gut
lodged itself in Randy’s young heart.

the first thing people would say upon our engagement is show me the ring like some bling is an ode of your love to me. i am not a homemaker i am a homebody. i excel in colombian coffee and monday night pub specials and cheap wine with expensive labels. i excel at being one of the guys and by being one of the guys i mean not being your wife. i filled the crevices you scraped in me like some kind of sculptor smoothing over past mistakes like being your wife was some kind of placebo pill i can sweat out with half-empty pizza boxes and grease stains on a couch that was never mine. when i first tell people about us about what i've done they say
but you two fit so well
but i liked you together
but you were going to get married
but but but
but they don't see your knuckles almost shaking hands with my jawline or the time i stared at you deadpan i'm not scared of you and i think that's what scared you that i'm no battered wife that i'll take you all bleed you dry then smile from the corner.
i am no battered wife like the woman who raised you
whose christmas-gifted blanket i'm currently curled under but whose 4 a.m. whispered words i cherish more he can't make you forget what you felt like your lies would forge me into the bat **** crazy ***** you christened me but what i felt in your *****-stained breath amaretto-sweet words ice-diluted eyes was i am no battered wife
i am no laying next to you in bed at 30 with kids i couldn't convince myself to want and bruises that fit your fingers on my ribs. i'll take my tuesday tequila and too-loud laughs, my scrounging for quarters for just one more cup of coffee over your stability smirks.

Dress that can feed a village
For a hundred years.
Pompous talk, cocktail cheers.  
You wish she’d choke
On her caviar.
Your very best, always subpar.
Palace to house a single soul,
When you’re scrounging for
Coins to live off the dole.
You cringe at the sight
Of other’s success,
Secretly yearning for their distress.
Why, oh why, should I settle for less?
Their life’s a luxury, and mine’s a mess,
Even with all my sins confessed!
Envy corrodes the purest mind.
Cataracts, leaves you blind
To the riches you yourself possess --
Family, love, and health in excess.
And all along you never knew
That those you envy, envy you.

She was a gamine,
an urchin and a recluse.
Tattered and waifish,
scrounging for some small morsel underneath a city bus.
Tarnished,
a lot like brass that's been exposed to water;
she's splotched.
Even whilst disenfranchised,
she carries some valiance hidden beneath her turncoat.
There is beauty in the loose pages she's giving to the wind.
She is,
and will forever be,
floating in the updraft of a sidewalk vent.