Rod Serling In The Blue Finch Foie Gras
went peacefully when the proper Authorities arrived
to escort Him from the Pate' to the Patio
but was overheard trading barbs with a flat foot
florid with Aqua Velva; both eyes -
without Harps, Utterly.

Come closer, beckoning
witch finger,
curling, crunching
                    in shade.
                                   Summon the night
gallery, hanging Homer and Waterhouse as distorted oil
oozing into a
disappearing act.
My feet are a detached movement
upon semi-real
floor of tar-black
tile.

Scraaaaaaaaaping———

Where is the lapel suit
of my Rod Serling dulled
by bad agents of
                 thrills.
Have him string me
up, a hoisted body settled into daVinci
wings of plain wood and
curvature like a waxy bird's.

The pig's blood waiting
above my head,
                        Serling signaled
for drama.

I see the false teeth of the planetarium
twinkle, an engulfing omnitheater's
air that I am crucified.

Serling behind the casque of gauze
to young Shatner and wandering
starships of lean men and
the end of this star system into
               galactic
                   odyssey.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Was Mister Spock ever tossed from
Olympus and forced lame in
the heart, a shell that is far
from hollow—what only
a mother could hold.
The bow figurehead, awaiting
corrosion.

“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum

Normally this place is colder than a penguin's ****
But Holy Satan, it's steaming right now
And I'm sure it's not my cappuccino
Or the fact that i'm wearing a hoodie,
Must be (it is) the movement of your buttocks
Over there on the little wooden stage
That nobody uses except for sitting and
playing with those lame monster cards.
You and your friend, yeah, that one.
The girl that was on the table behind mine,
sneaking a peek at my iPad as it streamed
The Twilight Zone, the episode with the piano
That reveals what people hide in their souls
(****, lucky that isn't here or
They'd call the cops on me for
Like ****** assault or something),
Began twerking randomly when you called her
And are still going at it, as if you're telling her lessons,
And i'm sitting here pretending to be paying attention
To Rod Serling's monologue intro
When really i'm looking at that popping shake.
Holy Satan! "Control yourself" I think
"Oh what's that? I don't remember
Having a highlighter marker in my pants.
Oh ****, that's not it, ******* it."
And now you're showing your friend
How to seductively move that stomach,
This is bad (no, it's perfect),
You pulling your shirt up a bit
Above the belly button and doing that.
And how come i'm the only one here
Noticing this (besides your friends at the table).
I know the place is mostly empty but
It's a small space, it's easy to see this,
Yet these idiots are drooling over their
New Pokemon game; what the ******* hell?
When you've got the greatest show on campus
Going on right ******* there! I don't get it.
Am I like a perv or something? (Yes).
To the girl with the goddess body
Twerking all nerdishly and awesome
In the coffee shop:
Don't stop,
******* it.
Holy Satan,
Don't ever stop!

We need more Martians , they nattered at me all the time,
More monsters—people like to be scared,
As if those callow youngsters,
Growing up with two cars in the garage
And three sets at the country club,
Their fraternity mixers at Whittier or Occidental,
Knew the first **** thing about terror.
Still, they wanted me to grind out the harum-scarum hokum
They enjoyed watching two-reelers on Saturday afternoons
While men were doing hard work in Leyte and Manila,
As if the transitory fear of some ghoulish bogeyman
Would last through the thirty-second epics
Featuring some cartoon bear shilling for beer
Or bunnies extolling the virtues of toilet paper.
Let me tell you what fear is, I would say time and again,
It’s a padlocked fence and a smokestack
Which isn’t churning out a **** thing.
It’s the jobs you can’t get because you said something
(And more likely, you didn’t) twenty years ago.
It’s one more envelope from the bank or the phone company
With bold red lettering on the front
That you don’t open because you know what it says
And how it doesn’t matter one bit,
Because you can’t do a ******* thing about it,
And these promising young men would just look at me
Like I was some poorly made-up extraterrestrial
From one of their Buck ******* Rogers potboilers.

Several of my neighbors here were among the men,
Mostly boys in truth, who marched with the 126th New York,
Taking fire at Petersburg and The Wilderness,
At Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor.
We have spoken about the horrors of war,
The kaleidoscope of confusion and dread,
No direction leading to shelter, no road guiding the way to home.
They have said that, as frightening as the sound of the minie *****,
Zipping overhead like malevolent flies,
And the cannon were, what they found truly awful
Was the manner in which those fields,
So like the ones where they had flushed out quail as children,
Became foreboding nightmare landscapes,
Containing a dark madness
That they never dreamed could have existed.

Our discussion scared me
I could not believe
That I could actually be living
With a monster from Maple Street
I checked the address
And then checked it again
I never moved
So, I started asking questions
But the answers I received
Led me right back to Maple Street
Back to the monster you revealed
Blaming those so unlike us
Because everyone tells you to doubt
Pointing out those they see as different
Because their power is on
When you are in the dark
Makes you almost predatory
Almost like a shark
Paranoia is overtaking us
As Twilight Zone forsaw so long ago
I wonder how Mr. Serling knew
That the monsters were due
The monsters that live on Maple Street

© September 28, 2009 Deanna Repose
Reposted from: http://blog.deannarepose.com

Gone unto Heaven

Unto the Heavens she hath gone
Leaving me with an only bun
My mother has passed away
So got no more time to work on clay
With her death, time recalled all hert past
While I sailed alone in a boat with one mast
I remembered all what she didwithout a fee
And how much she eagerly wished to see me
Her words are still alive in my mind
A lady like her is so hard to find
So mother rest in peace
We all miss you even my niece

Sam Burton


Today is Friday, Oct. 3, the 275th day of 2014 with 90 to follow.

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. Evening stars are Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus.f



In 1950, the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz was published for the first time.

In 1959, The Twilight Zone, with host Rod Serling, premiered on U.S. television.

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.



A thought for the day:



The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women. -- Queen Elizabeth II





Quotes for the day:



A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

------------------------

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

------------------------

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.



J. Marx





Every instance of heartbreak can teach us powerful lessons about creating the kind of love we really want.

Martha Beck





"With the exception of women, there is nothing on earth so agreeable or necessary to the comfort of man as the dog."



Edward Jesse



"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."



John F. Kennedy



"All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination."



Earl Nightingale





Poetry


PLAYBACK



Lauren Camp



Let there be footfall and car door. Let me
be finished with fire. Let
the man get on a plane for his morning
departure, erasing each reverie. Soon
there will be only daylight,
maybe a blue envelope, torn. Maybe bracelets
of color from the petunias. I will need
to know how to recover
the familiar, how to open the door
in the evening. How to again lock it.
Almost everything about me goes unspoken,
but commas and colons. I live with this
heart rate, multiple times, its direction,
its tempo: my 4/4 with acceleration, sometimes
tuned to an alternate signature. Think of Brubeck's
"Take Five." Those blocky chords were the result
of an accident-dead on arrival, they said,
after he smashed to the surf. Think how
he switched it around, made his hands
do what he wanted to hear, and forgive me
for the analogy. May I never
rush a surge for a better experience.
Every Sunday all over the country,
apologies gather. When I'm not in this
small cottage, unreacting, I cascade sound
and a few sentences from a cramped
room to whoever will listen. I know some
people think it is sinful to love such temptations,
but I stay with my face soft against
microphone, announcing my moral
directions. Sometimes, I'm convinced my blood
needs all those crossings. I'm not after
absolution. The man I love taught me to want
without lyrics. Remember I haven't
gone anywhere. I'm in a thirsty way
sort of possessive. I shouldn't show you this
side of myself. Try to remember I'm also praised
for my kindness. We each need to learn
to turn off some dreams so we can play
hours without creases.


About this poem


"Sometimes my poems are clearly focused on a single topic, but more and more they seem to need to be about many things because that's how I experience the w orld-so much going on all the time. Given the chance, I'll always try to make c onnections-in this case between jazz, love, humanity and potential error."
-Lauren Camp

About Lauren Camp


Lauren Camp is the author of "The Dailiness" (Edwin E. Smith Publishing, 2 013). She hosts "Audio Saucepan," a global music/poetry program on Santa Fe Public R adio, and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

*
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience.


(c) 2014 Lauren Camp.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate




Health and Beauty Tip



No matter what kind of ****** cleanser you use, check what kind of water you have access to. Hard water can be just as detrimental to skin as plain soap, and can dry it out.



JOKES



Toddler Property Laws



1. If I like it, it's mine.

2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.

3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.

4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.

5. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.

6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.

7. If it looks just like mine, it's mine.

8. If I think it's mine, it's mine.

9. If I... Oops! I'm sorry, I goofed! Instead of typing in the Toddler Property Laws, I've been typing in Bill Gates' primary business plan.





Phone Call



A young boy answers the phone.

A man says, "Hello is your dad around?"

The boy whispers, "Yes."

The man then asks if he can talk to him.

"He's busy at the moment," the boy whispers.

"Then is your mom there?"

"Yes" the boy whispers.

"Can I talk to her?"

"No, she's busy," the boy whispers.

"Is there anyone else there?"

"Yes" whispered the boy.

"Who?" the man asked.

"A policeman," came the whispered reply.

"Well, can I talk to him?"

"He's busy too," the boy whispered.

"Is there anyone else there then?"

"Yes" whispered the boy.

"Who then?" the man asked.

"A fireman," the boy whispered.

"Can I talk to him?"

"No," the boy whispered, "he's busy."

Annoyed, the man asked what they were all doing.

"Looking for me." the boy whispered.





Hard Working?



A business owner decides to take a tour around his business and see how things are going. He goes down to the shipping docks and sees a young man leaning against the wall doing nothing.

The owner walks up to the young man and says, "Son, how much do you make a day?"

The guy replies, "150 dollars."

The owner pulls out his wallet, gives him $150, and tells him to get out and never come back.

A few minutes later the shipping clerk says to the boss, "Have you seen that UPS driver? I left him standing around here?"



Presidential Quotes



"If Lincoln were alive today he'd roll over in his grave." --Gerald Ford (president, 1974-77)

---

"A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a while ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist." --Ronald Reagan

---

"I want to make sure everybody who has a job wants a job." --George Bush





Football and Confession



Years ago, the chaplain of the football team at Notre Dame was a beloved old Irish priest.

At confession one day, a football player told the priest that he had acted in an unsportsmanlike manner at a recent football game. "I lost my temper and said some bad words to one of my opponents." "Ahhh, that's a terrible thing for a Notre Dame lad to be doin'," the priest said. He took a piece of chalk and drew a mark across the sleeve of his coat.

"That's not all, Father. I got mad and punched one of my opponents."

"Saints preserve us!" the priest said, making another chalk mark.

"There's more. As I got out of a pileup, I kicked two of the other team's players in the . . . in a sensitive area."

"Oh, goodness me!" the priest wailed, making two more chalk marks on his sleeve. "Who in the world were we playin' when you did these awful things?"

"Southern Methodist."

"Ah, well," said the priest, wiping his sleeve, "boys will be boys."




Have a super nice Friday and a very dazzling weekend!

Every once in a while, especially on holidays, I find myself wandering through my memory museum - rattling doors and fishing through those virtual hallways. That’s where I found ‘Father Lucas,’ last night, back from when I was eight or so, at (private catholic) school.

Each week, before we received that week's ‘catechism lesson,’ (religious education) from the nuns, we’d get to hear what Father Lucas had to say about the Kafkaesque mysteries of the universe. He looked very old, wise and wrinkled, like a skinny Santa Claus.

Outside of those brief lessons he was always shrouded in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Even at our age, we knew cigarettes were bad for you - but what did ‘Father Lucas’ have to fear from death? On him, the surrounding smoke seemed right and fitting, as if he were the human personification of the burning bush.

My father had just died (we were in a car crash). Before that, the biggest drama in my young life was putting one foot in front of the other, and suddenly, I had a lot - lot, lot of questions that I absolutely, positively and under no circumstances what-so-ever wanted to discuss with anyone.

Imagine, if you will, the gravitas that Rod Serling brought to the introduction of each Twilight Zone episode, and you have Father Lucas’ introducing the lesson. I felt an anticipation of answers independent of my individual situation.

Father Lucas provided context and meaning to the unknown, he dabbled in surrealism, spun out paradox and it seemed that he stood on the very edge of that dark room at the end of the maze. He was transmitting at my frequency, and I could have listened forever. Bless the man.

Ultimately, of course, there were no ‘answers’ - but that’s ok - no answers are an answer.

It happens and I am out of body and the theme from the
Twilight zone is on a a loop.Rod Serling mumbles something to my
Fear.
Insanity crooks a finger and beckons from behind a hooded robe.
But this is a prelude to possibilities down the rabit hole.
So once again I turn my back. Scramble up hill the skinny trail rutted in deep.

Sleep is the breadcrumb trail. That never fails to walk me out of the woods.until next episode.

Man overboard.

In , a world of falsehood many exist.
Making up fiction to be facts of life.
And believing it.

A alternative reality like a story from Star Trek.
We, see it in politicians even in the White House.
Playing games like a cat catching that mice.

Rod Serling, would be proud.
To comprehensively see many in that Twilight Zone.
Until our alternative reality is gone.
And we're back in the real world.

(POSTSCRIPT TO AUTHOR'S NOTE:  As the bit of my brain which allows me to actually complete a piece of writing seems to have gone on hiatus, this chestnut is re-submitted for your approval)


We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.


(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This poem owes a considerable debt to the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilght Zone.  The episode, entitled "The Night of the Meek", features Art Carney as a decidedly down-on-his-luck department store Santa who receives a helping hand courtesy of Messrs. Serling and Claus.)

Okay, many of us can admit some whites just stubborn?
Then aren't we all don't matter about our skin tone?
Some whites think the rights for blacks being around a hundred years.

Afraid to acknowledge that not how it is?
Look how long it took to get the Civil Rights Bill that they trying to dismantle.

Now, if Rod Serling or Gene Roddenberry was still alive?
We ask for life's commentary of addressing issues like their show has in different times.

If a vote was held today for whites to switch roles?
They wouldn't, they couldn't all because they realize they had better advantages.

If using the Jim Crow's rules and regulation?
They would fail?
Just being required to wear a mask has exposed them?

They gripe, they complain but they great at coming up with imaginary reasons.

Being a butler or maid would drive them insane.
Following orders from a powerful black man.

We see the males constantly getting shot and killed by the police.

So could you imagine the fifties and sixties with a black police force beaten Satan out of them?
Dogs mauling them for no apparent reasons except they have the power.

Switch roles and some then get the picture.

Scary politicians were afraid to stand up to their people.

We have seen this in Mississippi and Alabama and yes, Georgia too.
Those first two states weren't the only fools.

Black, without is a strong mentality group.
We hardly ever bomb churches.

Yes, we the face of a racist nation.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

harangue since landing
yours truly immersed
in a dream-like
fiercesome state of war,  
not quite a dream
can be described
as a "hypnagogic state"
while virtually in Singapore,

where Katy Perry
namesake of a lion doth roar
noise amplified courtesy dissonance
while nine inch nails synthesize
scraping across chalk board
evoking discordant soundcloud
foo fighting beastie boys
comprising a quatuor.

Socked away within
cerebral nooks and crannies
house mailer daemons
inconveniencing yours truly
i.e. an Indus das scribe
hub bull mendicant
bullying jimmying,
jump starting, joy riding
junket at breakneck speed
disregarding dangerous signposts

warning reckless (heedless) highjackers
speeding stolen heavily
sedated body (mine)
slap happily, obliviously,
jauntily (devil may
care attitude) careering
across rubble strewn
bombed out stone age terrain
gunning engine like
there's no tomorrow

zipping past crumpled
suspended abridged abutment
jarring sole abducted,
bound and gagged one ***** (me)
hurling over edge of cliff
temporarily free of gravity,
(albeit an infinitesimal eye blink)
between life and death
rapidly descending in accordance
with laws of physics,

when suddenly motion stops
as if thee Earth stood still
freezing all life forms
held as if invisibly tethered,
when ghostly debut appearance
courtesy Rod Serling
rattles of his trademark narration
"...fifth dimension beyond
that which is known to man.

...This is the dimension of imagination."
I resort to aforementioned loose analogy
to approximate mental state of limbo,
asper...this man falling to Earth
minus parachute on par
with crash test dummy
an absent firmament
to feel securely grounded
held stock still,

when moments before plunging
pitched head over heels...
only to find this mortal,
either entering or exiting
somnambulant state
only groggily awaking
out of deep sleep
falling out of bed
singing hup bout poor lovely bones.

Back approximately half my life ago
dissociative disorder
if qualified to self diagnose
mein kampf psychological state...

I lacked emotions where others concerned.

That refrain replayed itself,
when wife picked up
(like a broken record),
where parents left off
before they entered
another dimension
(maybe the fifth)
of space and time
(hosted courtesy Rod Serling),
where yours truly (me)
repeated until blue in the face
don't hock my chinik
to the missus lest
a potential crime scene
draws The Mod Squad.

Though she ceased reiterating
magnum opus of colorful epithets
towards me, daunting effort
well nigh impossible to ignore
daily USDA over dosage
stinging derogatory, heavily re: tar did
psyche stunted, wrathful
verbal artillery fire remains with me
to this moment in tandem,
and keep lock step company with malicious
noxious obloquy pilloried,
quotidian rate sundering unsung
vitality within zealous
aspiring bookish chap.

Daily eruptions
from glowering Hercules
inundated, jack-knifed, linkedin
fin de sic cull nursing offal
personal quaking resentment stewing
toxic watershed unleashed veritable,
red hot wrath, undermining vivacity
within yawping seething, tormenting
uber vitality wreaking
yours truly x ***** she hating,
killing motives of papa querulously,
rabidly scathing, terrorizing

sole son, who for better
part of marriage underwent
lighter version of invectives
cutting me down to size,
asper zero self worth, though
calmer days prevailed between
 huzz-band and spouse, yet nonetheless
indelible imprimatur undeniably
etched overtop palimpsest
raw hide of self esteem.

Twas quite recently,
this heir indubitably coaxed sea legs,
more so regarding self acceptance
felt emboldened,
empowered, and emancipated
from invisible shackles
bounding (akin to Gulliver)
a dire straightened situation.

Thru auspices of divine help
(then Lower Merion counseling offices)
professional psychiatrists
psychologists quelled
retaliatory spiteful treatment
upon banshee hushed heads
(high school peers,
parents and fiendish ghoul-
lash humans) intently joyously kindled,
lamentable mean name calling
(though sticks and stones
ne’er hurled venality broke
lovely bones), the sheer redundancy
to remain passive
internalizing verbal cut throat,
villainous wicked yik yaks zapped
ambition to fight back,
and desire to live.

Characteristics against cross purposes
predated onset of bullies took delight
feigning Brutus Maccabeus
lashing at diminutive, harried,
and introverted Capricorn
incessantly lambasted, ostracized,
and repulsed from LivingSocial
hermetically sealing within bubble wrap,
could not thwart nor deflect
piercing poison tipped daggers
puncturing outermost covalent shell,
reminiscent pock marks from yesterday.

Though cessation of banal, devilish frothing
at mouth nastiness no longer prevails,
an inordinate number
of bumped ugly chronologically
bereft experiences, detached, estranged,
fostered knee-**** reactions
against socialization, brought
to light this moment
pregnant revelation no need
to discern what cauterized alienation.

Seeds of white lily
begot ordinary individual
(now middle aged male
lxv passages around black hole sun)
accepts schizoid personality disorder
born free and clear
within utero bolstered
by external forces
finds me aware essential core being
alive absent til death do me part.

I think I turned too sharply and missed a step.
I didn’t trip, but I did slip and took a fall.
Now I find myself in the Twilight Zone
Without Rod Serling here to guide me.

I look around to read the words
But they are missing letters.
None of the names are known to me
All are new and foreign

Where are some of the names I know
Ones I read and write to
The ones who read the words I post
And join me on my journey.

Was there rotation of the troops
That I didn’t arrive in time for.
Am I in the wrong battalion now
Headed to places I’ve never been.

Where is Angstrom, Kortas and Omni
Where are Steve, Santita, P Paul
I don’t see Johari, Pradip or Bayan
Did they leave town with Traveler and M-E?

Looking for Fawn, and Graff 88
Ben Noah and Carlo and Walter H
Missing the add-ons of Temporal Fugue
Why are their fingerprints missing?

Who are all those honored poets
With names I’ve never heard before
How did they lap the regulars
In a daily race for notice.

Am I asleep - will I wake up
And find that it was just a dream
And now I’m back with names I know
And no more need to feel alone.

So I will I stay here with my pencil
Posting small bits of my soul
With never a thought to unknown names
Or whether mine will be remembered.
ljm