1.
From my
uneasy bed
at the L’Enfant,
a train's pensive
horn breaks the
sullen lullaby of
an HVAC’s hum;
interrupting the
mechanical
reverie of its
steadfast
night watch,
allowing my ear
to discern
the stampede
of marauding
corporate Visigoths
sacking the city.

The cacophony
of sloven gluttony,
the ***** songs of
unrequited privilege
and the unencumbered
clatter of radical
entitlement echoes
off the city’s cold
crumbling stones.

The unctuous
bellows of the
victorious pillagers
profanely feasting
pierces the
hanging chill
of the nations
black night.

Their hoots
deride the train
transporting
the defeated
ghosts of
Lincoln’s last
doomed regiments
dispatched in vain
to preserve a
peoples republic
in a futile last stand.

The rebels have
finally turned the tide,
T Boone Pickett’s
Charge succeeds,
sending the ravaged
Grand Army of the
Republic sliding
back to the Capitol,
in savage servility,
gliding on squeaky
ungreased wheels
ferrying the
Union’s dead
vanquished
defenders to
unmarked graves
on Potters Field.

The Rebels
joyous yell
bounces off
the inert granite
stones of the
soulless city.

The spittle
of salivating
vandals drips
over the
spoils of war
as they initiate the
disassemblage,
the leveling and
reapportionment
of the grand prize.

The clever
oligarchs
have laid claim
to a righteous
reparation
of the peoples
assets for
pennies on the
dollar.

Their wholly
bought politicos
move to transfer
distressed assets
into their just
stewardship
through the
holy justice
of privatization
and the sound
rationale of
free market
solutions.

In the land of the
pursuit of property,
nimble wolf PACs
of swift 527, LLCs
have fully
metastasized
into personhood;
ascending to
the top of the
food chain in
America’s
voracious
political culture;
bestriding
the nation to
compel the
national will
to genuflect
to the cool facility
of corporate
dominion.

As the
inertial ******
of the plaintive
locomotive
fades into
another old
morning of
recalcitrant
Reaganism,
it lugs its
ambivalent
middle class
baggage toward
it’s fast expiring
future.

I follow
the dirge
down to
the street
as the ebbing
sound fades
into the gloom
of the
burgeoning
morning,
slowly
replacing the
purple twilight
with a breaking
day of cold gray
clouds framing
silhouettes of
cranes busily
constructing
a new city.

The personhood of
corporations need
homes in our new
republic; carving
out new
neighborhoods
suitable for the
monied citizens
of our nation.

First amongst
equals, the best
corporate governance
charters form
the foundation of
the republic’s
new constitution.
Civil rights
are secondary
to the freedom
of markets; the
Bill of Rights
are economically
replaced by the
cool manifests
of Bills of Lading.

The agents of
laissez faire
capitalism
nibble away
at the city’s
neighborhoods
one block at a time;
while steady winds
blows dust off
the National Mall.

Layers of the
peoples plaza are
plained away with
each rising gust.  

History repeats
itself as the Joad’s
are routed from their
land once again.

A clever
mixed use
plan of
condos and
strip malls
is proposed
to finally help the
National Mall
unlock its true
profit potential.

As America’s
affection for
federalism fades
the water in
the reflection pool
is gracefully drained.

We the people
can no longer
see ourselves.

The profit
potential of
industry is
preferred over
the specious
metaphysical
benefits
of reflection.

The grand image,
the rich pastiche,
the quixotic aroma
of the national
melting ***
is reduced to the
sameness of the
black tar that lines
the pool and the
swirling eddies of
brown dust circling
the cracked indenture.

From his not so
distant vantage point,
Abe ponders the
empty pool wondering
if the cost of lives
paid was a worthy
endeavor of preserving
the ****** union?  
Has the dear prize
won perished from
this earth?

Was the illusive
article of liberty  
worth its weight in
the blood expended?

Did the people ever
fully realize the value
of government
by the people,
for the people?

Did citizens of
the republic
assume the
responsibilities to
protect and honor
the rights and privileges
of a representative
government?

Now our idea
and practice of
civil rights is measured
and promoted as far as
it can be justified by
a corporate ROI, a
shareholder dividend,
an earmark or a political
donation to a senators
unconnected PAC.

The divine celestial
ledgers balancing
the rights and
privilege of free people
drips with red ink.  

Liberty, equality
fraternity are bankrupt
secular notions
condemned as
expensive
liberal seditions;
hatched by
UnHoly Jacobins,
the atheist skeptics
during the dark times
of the Age of Enlightenment.

Abe ponders
the restoration
of Washington’s
obelisk, to
repair the cracks
suffered  from
last summer’s
freak earthquake.

I believe I detect
a tear in Abe’s
granite eye
saddened by the
corporate temblors
shaking the
foundations
of the city.

2.

The WWII Memorial
is America’s Parthenon
for a country's love
affair with the valor
and sacrifice of warfare.

WWII forms the
cornerstone of
understanding the
pathos of the
American Century.

During WWII
our greatest generation
rose as a nation to
defeat the menace of
global fascism and
indelibly mark the
power and virtue of
American democracy.

As Lincoln’s Army
saved federalism, FDR’s
Army kept the world safe
for democracy.

Both armies served
a nation that shared
the sacrifice and
burden of war to
preserve the grace of
a republican democracy.

Today federalism
crumbles as our
democracy withers.

The burden
of war is reserved
for a precious few
individuals while
its benefits
remain confined to
the corporate elite.

Our monuments
to war have become
commercial backdrops
for the hollow patriotism
of war profiteers.

We have mortgaged
our future to pay
for two criminal wars.

The spoils of
war flow into the
pockets of
corporate
shareholders
deeply invested
in the continuation
of pointless,
destructive
hostilities.

Our service
members who
selflessly served
their country come
home to a less free,
fear struck nation;
where economic
security and political
liberty erodes
each day while the
monied interests
continue to bless
the abundance
of freedom and riches
purchased with the
blood and sweat
of others.

America desperately
needs a new narrative.

The spirit of the
Greatest Generation
who sacrificed and met
the challenge of the 20th
Century must become
this generations spiritual
forebears.

The war on terror
neatly fits the
the corporate
pathos of
militarism,
surveillance
and the sacrifice
of civil liberties
to purchase
a daily measure
of fear and
economic
enslavement.

It must be rejected
by a people committed
to building secular
temples to pursue
peace, democracy,
economic empowerment,
civil liberties and tolerance
for all.

Yet this old city
and the democratic
temples it built
exulting a free people
anointed with the
grace of liberty
is being consumed
in a morass of
commercial
polyglot.

3.

During the
War of 1812
the British Army
burned the
Capitol Building
and the White House
to the ground.

Thank goodness
Dolly Madison saved
what she could.

The new marauders
are not subject to the
pull of nostalgia.  

They value nothing
save their
self enrichment.

They will spare nothing.

Our besieged Capitol
requires Lincoln’s troops
to be stationed along the
National Mall to defend
the republic.

The greatest peril
to our nation
is being directed
by well placed
Fifth Columnists.

From the safety
of underground bunkers,
in secure undisclosed
locations within the city’s
parameters, a well financed
confederacy employing  
K Street shenanigans
are busy selling off
the American Dream
one ear mark
at a time, one
huge corporate
welfare allotment
at a time.

The biggest prize
is looting the real
property of the people;
selling Utah,
auctioning off
the public schools,
water systems, post offices
and mineral rights
on the cheap
at an Uncle Sam
garage sale.  

The capitol is
indeed burning
again.

Looters are
running riot.

The flailing arms
of a dying empire
fire off cruise
missiles and drone
strikes; hitting the
target of habeas
corpus as it
shakes in its
final death rattle.
I make a pilgrimage
to the MLK Jr.
Monument.

Our cultural identity
is outsourced to
foreign contractors
paid to reinterpret
the American Dream
through the eyes
of a lowest bidder.

MLK has lost
his humanity.

He has been
reduced to a
a Chinese
superhuman
Mao like anime
busting loose from
a granite mountain while
geopolitical irony
compels him to watch
Tommy Jefferson
**** Sally Hemings
from across the tidal
basin for all eternity.  

MLK’s eyes fixed in
stern fascination,
forever enthralled
by the contradictions
of liberty and its
democratic excesses
of love in the willows
on golden pond.

Circling back to
Father Abraham’s
Monument,  I huddle
with a group of global
citizens listening
to an NPS Ranger
spinning four score
tales with the last full
measure of her devotion.

I look up into Abe’s
stone eyes as he
surveys platoons
of gray suited
Chinese Communist
envoys engaged
in Long Marches
through the National Mall;
dutifully encircling cabinet
buildings and recruiting
Tea Party congressmen
into their open party cells.

This confederacy
is ready to torch
the White House
again.

Congressmen and
the perfect patriots
from K Street slavishly
pull their paymasters
in gilded rickshaws to
golf outings at the Pentagon
and park at the preferred
spots reserved for
the luxury box holders
at Redskin Games.

They vow not to rest
until the house of the people
is fully mortgaged to the
People’s Republic of China’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund.

4.

A great
Son of Liberty like
Alan Greenspan
roundly rings
the bells of
free markets
as he inches
T Bill rates
forward a few
basis points
at a time; while
his dead mentor
Ayn Rand
lifts Paul Ryan
to her
Fountainhead teet.
He takes a long
draw as she
coos songs
from her primer
of Atlas Shrugged
Mother Goose tales
into his silky ears.

The construction
cranes swing
to the music
building new private
sector space with
the largess of
US taxpayers
money; or
more rightly
future generations
taxpayer debt.

Libertarians,
Tea Baggers, Blue Dogs
and GOP waterboys
eagerly light a
match to the
the crucifixes
bearing federal
social safety
net programs
to the delight
of NASDAQ
listed capitalists
on the come,
licking their chops
to land contracts
to administer
these programs
at a negotiated
cost plus
profit margin.

Citizens
dependent
on programs
are leery
shareholders
are ecstatic.

To be sure
our free
market rebels
don disguises
of red, white
and blue robes
but their objectives
fail to distinguish
their motives and
methods with
some of the finest
Klansman this
country has
ever produced.

5.

DC is a city
of joggers
and choppers.

Corporate
helicopters
wizz by the
Washington
Monument,
popping erections
for the erectors
inspecting the progress
of the cranes
commanding the
city skyline.

USMC drill team
out for a morning
run circles the Mall.

The commanding
cadence of the
DI keeps us
mindful of the
deepening
militarization of
our society.

A crowd  
rushes
to position
themselves,
genuflecting
to photograph
a platoon on
the move.

I try to consider
the defining
characteristics of
Washington DC.

DC is all surface.

It is full of walls
and mirrors.

Its primary hue
is obfuscation.

Open
communication
scripted from well
considered talking points
informs all dialog.

The city is thoroughly
enraptured in narcissism.

Thankfully, one can
always capture the
reflection of oneself in
the ubiquitous presence of
mirrors.  

Vanity imprisons
the city inhabitants.

Young joggers circle the
Mall and gerrymander
down every pathway
of the city.  

They are the clerks,
interns and staffers of
the judicial, executive
and legislative branches.

They are the children
of privilege.

They will never
alter their path.

You must cede the walk
to their entitlement
of a swift comportment
or risk injury of a
violent collision.

These young ones
portray a countenance  
of benevolent rulers.  

They seem to be learning
their trade craft well from
the senators and judges
whom they serve.

They appear confident
they know what's best
for the country and after
their one term of tireless
service to the republic
they look forward to
positions in the private
sector where they will
assist corporations
to extend their reach
into the pant pockets
worn by the body politic.

6.

Our nations mythic story
lies hidden deep in the
closed rooms of the
museums lining the
Mall.

I pause to consider
what a great nation
and its great people
once aspired to.

I spy the a
suspended
Space Shuttle
hanging in dry dock
at the air and
space museum.

Today America’s
astronauts hitch
rides on Russian
rockets.

America rents a
timeshare from
the European
space agency to
lift communication
satellites into orbit.

Across the Mall
I photograph
John Smithson’s
ashes in its columbarium.  

I fear it has become a
metaphor for America’s
future commitment
to scientific inquiry
and rational secular
thinking.

I am relieved to
discover a Smithsonian
exhibit that asks
“what does it mean
to be human?”

The Origins of Humans
exhibit carries a disclaimer
to satisfy creationists.

The exhibit timidly states
that science can coexist
with religious beliefs and
that the point of the exhibit is
not to inflame inflame religious
passions but to shed light on
scientific inquiry.

I imagine these exhibits
will inflame the passion of
the fundamentalist
American Taliban and
provide yet another
reason to dismantle
the Moloch of Federalism.

The pursuit of science
remains safe at the
Smithsonian for now.

7.

Near K Street at
McPherson Park
a posse of
well dressed
lobbyists, the
self anointed
uber patriots
doing the work
of the people
stroll through
the park
boasting a
healthy population
of bedraggled
homeless.

The homeless
occupy the benches
that have been
transformed into
pup tents.

Perhaps some of
the residents of this
mean estate were
made homeless by a
foreclosed mortgage.  

The K Street warriors
can be proud that their
work on behalf of the
banking industry has
forestalled financial market
reform.  

Through it exacerbates
the homeless problem it has
allowed these K Street titans to
profit from the distress of others.

Earlier in the day
I photographed
a homeless man
planted in front of
the Washington
Monument.

I wonder
if my political
voyeurism is
an exploitation of
this man’s condition?

I have more in common
then I probably wish to
admit with my K Street
antagonists.  

In another section
of the park the
remnants of a
distressed OWS
bivouac remain.

The legions of sunshine
patriots have melted away
as the interest of the
blogosphere has waned.

As the weather
improves Moveon.org
and democratic
party operatives
pitch tents in an
effort to resuscitate
the moribund
movement.

They hope
to coop any
remaining energy
to support their
stale deception,
a neoliberal vision
based solely on the
total capitulation
to the bankrupt
corporatocracy.

I heard someone say
a campaign lasts a
season; while a
movement for social
change takes decades.

If that metric proves
correct, and if the
powers don’t succeed
in compromising the
people’s movement
I’ll be three quarters
of a century old
before I see
justice flowing like
a river once again.

8.

I circle back to
the L’Enfant and
find myself
tramping amidst
the lost platoon
of Korean War
soldiers.

My feet drag
in the quagmire
of grass covering
the feet of this
ghostly troop.

My namesake
uncle was a
decorated
veteran of this
conflict and Im
sure I detect
his likeness
in one of the
statues.

The bleak call
of a distant train
sounds a revelry
and I imagine this
patrol springing
to life to answer
the call of their
beloved country
once again.

Yet they remain
inert.  

Stuck in a
place that the
nation finds
impossible to
leave.

The eyes of the
men stare into
an incomprehensible
fate.  

They see the swarms
of Red Army infantrymen
crossing the Yellow River
streaming toward
them in massive
human waves,
the tips of
sparkling bayonets
threatening to slash
the outmanned
contingent fighting
to bits.

They are the
first detachment
to bravely confront
the rising power
of China many
thousands of
miles away
from their homes.

America like
this lone company
is overwhelmed
and lost in the
confusion
that confronts
them.

Looking up
I perceive the
bewilderment
of my muddled image
reflected on the
marble walls
surrounding
the memorial.

I am a comrade-in-arms,
a fellow wanderer sojourning
with th

The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!

Wonder were in the days of King David,
He wondered a man with a maiden,
A ship in the fleet,
And the eagle in the sky,
But another wonder persists,
Beyond king David to my time,
This is a man on libido,
With ***** ***** at joint thighs,
What’s wrong with a man?
When his ***** is *****,
Whether an engineer or a duffer,
A genius or a stooge,
When ***** is is at noon
Where are the brains?
Why always the brawn,

When you ***** that short ****,
Walking out of your normal way,
Disappearing into the back street,
To some nondescript corridors,
Your hunger for misfortune gets saluted,
By the street patrons in weird corridors,
A gifted *******, brown in complexion,
Her back glorified with man-made buttocks,
Erasing from your eyes her age,
Your mothers age minus white hair,
Then you slavishly bargain not to win,
Now a dizzied creature of fetish of ***,
Your ***** wildly ***** like pagoda apex
No, herself very calm on melancholy of ***,
Shrewdly she accepts to give you a wonderful ****,
At a minuscule fee to your senses; two hundred shillings

You coffle up to the ****** tether,
In senseless dance to the turbulent tune
A tintinnabulation in your ears
Impeachable tyranny of the *****,
You go into a room with her,
A workshop of ******* and *******,
You can call it a brothel,
But I and Marx we call it bagno,
God prevails and she throws a ****** at you
Pulling away her leopard stripped *******,
Letting you see eagle tattoo of on white thighs,
Confused electricity drips in your head,
Then you become a beggar of the year,
Effusively begging for live *** with
Without ****** use lest you zest not,
Lest you don’t harvest maximally,
With your dinosaur’s testicles,
She cunningly accepts your request,
In her full knowledge of your kamikaze,
Villains commit when dying for no course,
She gives it an OK, but at a small fee
You go on to pay as if possessed,
By the devil of paying for nonsense,
And then you **** her ******* live,
Before gracing your joy with live ****,
She feels nothing in entire of her body,
For her vaginal purse is spacious,
Like the side pockets of your trouser,
You achieve early ****** to *******,
She moans lightly like a teased Carmel,
She pushes you away with a sober vim,
You collapse aside in   a dull thud
Like a dead bird from ruffian roof,
Your ***** now flappy
Not reflecting a shuttle in crypt,
In volcanacity of the past minute,
Then you look at her with bent eyes,
You see her sporadic white hairs,
On forehead and between her thighs,
She is looking stupid but not foolish,
She breaks into fits of wild coughing,
Accidentally dropping *** palliative drugs,
The horrendous ARV’s
You now hang around there agape
Niggardly chewing full size of misfortune,
In your voracious mandibles,

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world...  Moby ****, Herman Melville


Call me
Ishmael.

I hail
from
the clan
of Adam.

I am the
beloved
child
of Hagar;
unbowed son
of an upright
Ibrahim.

I am
the older
half brother
of Musa,
cousin to
Isa and
father to
Muhammad.

I work
in a bakery
that
overlooks
the roiling
waters of
the Nile.

It’s
owned
by an
Egyptian
General,
managed
by a
platoon
of his
hand picked
lieutenants.

I fire the
ovens,
roll the
dough
and pack
the loaves.

We bake
all day
but it seems
we cannot
quench
the hunger
that grips
our people.

My
brother
Musa
says
I bake
the bread
of tyrants
and serve it
to a people
starving for
freedom.

Musa
likes to say
if we wish
to feast at
the banquet
of liberty
we must
refuse
to eat
the bread
of fear.

In winter
our hunger
blends with
the misery
of living
in frigid
apartments.

My
dilapidated flat
in Darb Al-Ahmar
is one of a
thousand owned
by Cairo’s
most notorious
police chief.

The roofs leak,
the plumbing
is broken,
no heat in winter,
in summer
it’s a sweltering
furnace.

My home
is the
handiwork of a
cold blooded
landlord’s
indifference
to the freezing
rooms they
force us
to live in.

In their eyes,
our sole purpose
in life is to feather
their nest.

They demand
that the rent be paid
on the first of every month
and will make our life miserable
if we’re one day late
or a half a pound short.

Do they
actually
think
that we
live
only
to assure
the
warmth
and comfort
for them
and their
children?

In winter
they freeze
us into
inaction;
while
during the
summer,
swirling
ceiling fans
fail to relieve the
oppressive heat
of fire they
breathe down
our necks.

The batons
of the police
freely swing to
crack a head if
we fail to bow to
their authority
or grease
the extortionists
palms with
tributes to their
*******.

They never
shake down
their friends
that drive
the fancy
silver
Mercedes.

The big guys
roll wherever
they want.  

They
roll over
anything
they
choose.

They take
up parking
spaces in our lives;
leaving less room
for us to park
our tiny scooters.

I’m certain
the name
on their
drivers license
says privilege
and impunity.

Yet
somehow
we
always
get stuck
picking up
the tab
for
their
tolls.

Some slavishly
put coins
in parking meters
for them and get
compensated for it
by being offered
the opportunity
to wash their cars.

I’m glad
that I get
to bake
bread.

I was talking
to my friend
Isa at the
coffee shop,
he said,
“We needn't
live in a constant
state of
want and fear.”

A young man
sitting at
the next table
was a zealous
believer from
The Muslim
Brotherhood.

His name is
Muhammad,
he hands me
The Holy Quran.

My dear
Muslim
brother
exhorts
me to
submit.

He says that is
the way to a
fearless life;
free of any
need,
save
Allah’s
salvation.

My  
Muslim
brother
is firm
in his
belief
that
all
the answers
to
all
my problems
and
all
the answers
to
all
Egypt's problems
were
breathed on to
the pages of
The Holy Quran
with
The Prophet Muhammad’s
-(may peace be upon him)-
own breath;
his tongue
inscribing
the holy pages
in Arabic
squeezed
out by the
loving
embrace
of the
Angel
Gabriel.

Mubarak also boasts that
he too has all the answers to
alleviate the ills that plague us.

He’s
been ruling us
for forty years;
while the
Holy Quran
has been
with us
forever.

Our  
impatience
grows
as we yearn
for these promises
to be filled.

Mubarak swears  
he knows what is best
for the children
of Egypt.

Mubarak insists
that the way to
freedom from
want and fear
is submission to
his perpetual rule.

I get uneasy when
someone suggests
an infallibility.

I accept the
supreme dominion
and divine knowledge
of the Quran and Hadiths
but I’m not too sure
that the Imams,
politicians and
generals who
swore by its
truth really
understand
it themselves.

I am left
to question
if any of them
even see me?  

I am more of a
person then a
Muslim;
and
sometimes
I wonder
if even
Allah
has forgotten
the peril of
Ibrahim’s
children.

I wonder have
I disappeared
from Allah’s
unblinking eye
as well?

Sometimes
I look into
the mirror
to see if
I am real.

I am relieved
to see my image.

I have not
become invisible
to myself.

I am
emboldened
to know
that I am a
real person
of flesh and bones
with a mind
full of conviction
refreshed
with the blood
of a warm beating
heart.

I remind myself
I am a man,
not a faceless
subject
to be ruled.

I am an individual
not just another
submissive being
under the control
of a pious Imam.

I am Ishmael.

I recognize the fire of
life in my own eyes.

I can see the scars
of my decisions,
that my life has
etched upon my face.

I am not invisible.

I am not a casualty
of the twists of history
or the events of fate.

I take
responsibility
for me.

I am not a fish
swimming within
a giant school
trapped in an
ocean current
propelled
to a
predetermined
destination
of a well
laid net.

I am a man.

Let it be known
that I claim
responsibility
for my manhood
and I will
command
respect from
those who now
lord over me.

Like my father
Ibrahim, they
will recognize
me as an
unbowed
upright man.

They will
call me
Ishmael.

As I stand
I will raise my voice.

I will not remain
voiceless.

I am one voice
of many
who like me
have not
been heard.

We were once
grovelling dogs
that have been
transformed
into free range wolves,
set free from its cage,
we now form in packs
howling for justice.

We
will raise
our voice
in concert
so all
may hear.

We
will
make
them
listen.

They will
know who
I am.

Call me Ishmael.

Music Selection:
Muddy Waters
Mannish Boy

Oakland
2/9/12
jbm

~
I work in the clouds
Building a world out of hype
I could be a beekeeper
A prison guard
Reverse pop idol
Extinguishers, all

Hackers ferry contemporaries
Around the diseased city
Merchants of transference
Polymorphing
Paths and angles
Pieces of eight

They could be brutal war fantasies
White noise translations of the snow
Cathedral nights in the deli
Ghost recordings from an opera house
Each with its own price tag

All the pretty girls
Thick with mascara
Go to plasticity
Drink chloroform
100 aspects of subterranea
So long as they come home
With a credit problem

Money devotion
It's what transferred us
Into numbered silhouettes
Slavishly pouring our blood into the sea
~

the Egyptians of ancient times
worked in the sun for few dimes

they slavishly carted square blocks
to ***** temples and pyramid docks  

as the sun streamed down
upon their heads
the workers in stone
wanted their sun god dead

they offered orisons
to Ra telling him he'd gone too far
by sending forth an over abundance
of hot solar bars

so the laborers of ancient Egypt
took refuge from Ra's heat
in the pharaoh's cool crypt

I devote my higher mind to the ardent
Pursuit of the summit, leaving
Verse to chance and its laws,
For when the thought is lofty and noble,
The sentence will naturally seek it,
And rhythm slavishly serve it.

Channelling Nostradamus from the sixteenth century
Did you see what you just wrote
Or did you just dream what we see?
When your prophecies come true
I'll say, You only had one view
So good luck to you and your future note
One shan't believe from an invisible visionary

When I wish upon a **** star
It makes me appreciate who we are
Everything that she'll be requiring
I'll think about you and make it inspiring

The ******* ***** always seems to wear lingerie
That always looks, just a little ******
But never ever, do they slavishly try
To imitate their true identity or culture
Not like those Kardashian dogs, that dress up
Always trying to stylise society, for a very large fee
Speaking of canines, where's that poodle named Paris
She had some real talent, didn't she?

When I wish upon a **** star
It makes me appreciate who we are
Everything that she'll be requiring
I'll think about you and make it inspiring

I wish upon a **** star of mine
Whilst screaming up to ones heaven
Most pussycats lives, end in about nine
But my time was all over, within almost seven
Maybe I really could, make it all alone
On this place god calls, my extraordinary rendition?
Or shall I live this false life, as some sort of robotic clone
Not truly knowing oneself, therefore, failing my own audition?

When I wish upon a **** star
It makes me appreciate who we are
Everything that she'll be requiring
I'll think about you and make it inspiring

Well, just get back on that bronco horse, named Toff
Dust off that hat, once worn by certain gent
For they will forever try and attempt to buck you off
You the rider, of this very serious event
So, forget about the fame and good times
and the overhyped lives of most Hollywood stars
Live within your means and save your silver dimes
In your half empty or half full, glass money jars

When I wish upon a **** star
It makes me appreciate who we are
Everything that she'll be requiring
I'll think about you and make it inspiring

When I wish upon a **** star
My dreams start to become truth by far.

Hi Gibson, of Algonquins table. i want to accept that your comments are elderly and full of  scholastic charm. I have been appreciative to you in each and every situation. I still promise that i will listen to you in the future.I have looked at your photography it shows you are an elder. in this perspective an intellectual elder and an elder in the global community without regard to race and geography. you are the age of my father and thus i am bound to respect you as my father.However, i am intellectually emboldened by both logic,reason,ethics and wisdom of the times to differ with you on a few factors in relation to my story poem humanity of Jesus Christ.First you over focused on my grammatical and typing mistakes in relation to English language  and also on the issue of whether Nazareth was in the colony or it was a colony.By this selfish focus you failled to remember that my inference of Nazareth as a  colony was simply my employing of a poetic tool of synechdoche.I can use one to refer to all or all to refer to one.Just like the same synechdochal experience we have in the bible where Jesus was referred to as son of David , son of man, son of God, and so forth.My in ability to use  written English which can impress you should be  seen as an intellectual anachronism. I am not a chauvinist of English language. I have my own native language which is more mature than English. i don't have any motivation to treat a deficient language like English with any earnest. Secondly i wanted you to see the point of Jesus physical deformity, afilliative relationship with Mary Magdalene and the experience of his mother in the bombazine. you have not seen this.When his brothers slavishly laboured for  Joseph of Aremathea and Yude his last brother slapped him you have deliberately refused to see.
There is another problem i want to point out,i was responding to Theodore not you , but you came out in full combat armed to your teeth with drones of your academic superlativity. Here you are wrong. You lacked the virtue of intellectual humility. Why are you always joining Theodore and his foot soldiers to attack other participants on this table ? or you want me to forgive you by concluding that all Americans have a burden of proving to be Americans and hence this tempo of cliffhanger civilization ?
The references you have mentioned in your riposte lack the element of universality. Most of them are published in north America.These preceded by a current world quagmire that usually in every social , political and intellectual situations North Americans fail to have behave publicly by wanting every thing to look American . And even their social researches have always been skewed by a bias that the results must ring an American tone.You have not quoted any work written in french language,Russian language, Germany language nor Arabic  only not mention Yiddish. You have displayed an avoidable limitation.Kindly research again into humanity of Jesus Christ for the benefit of those who depend on you intellectually.

Thanks

Alexander k  Opicho
Eldoret,Kenya

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Languages are elastic realities of ages
Going beyond political and historical chauvinism
That selfishly blends into exclusive nations
The European languages we slavishly speak
In diversity of the world is a ****** testimony,
Ostensible Afro-American cultural civilization
Are mere protégés of transplanted tongues
In forlorn position of knowledge
That derides cultural Darwinism
Unto this last that Language
is born and grow from the native soil,
Nurtured by facts of history in timbre of altruism
Where misfortune of history ***** my stature
Planting unknown and unnamed language
In my ****** soil of pristine times
My conscience not yet passively accepting
The changing misfortunes of the transplanted English
As they are at current times
The negations of vicious cultural Darwinist
Condemning me a victim of tonguistry.

I sit by sorrow's streams
Amidst wistful longing
Your first soft kiss that lingered
will forever haunt my dreams

How sad it seems
to be so slavishly in love
weary even of life,
such sorrowful extremes,

but I hear remnants of our song
and pine for your possession
to live without you is my bane
life has dealt a bitter wrong

lost in the loneliness
this bereft heart grieves
solace now I seek, in
whiskey's lullaby to forgetfulness

ALesiach © 07/27/2019

Slavishly touting laudatory
Remarks that
Run counter to his belief
Could not let a journalist
A moment's relief!

"The incumbent
Has flickered
Darkness piercing light
Now as things are bright
None stop
We have to condemn the past
To catapult the present
On the infallible mast!"

Conveying messages
Without beef,
Also forced to turn
Eyes, to reality, deaf,
He is smote by
Excruciating grief
Freedom of expression
Turned brief!

To spare himself
A stomach pang
He has to allow
Political thugs,
In the guise of
Media bosses
That form a
Government's favour
Ingratiating gang,
His mouth to gag!

Intimidated by them
Into self censorship
The facility of his pen
He could not keep!

Ironically,
A mainstream press,
With a toothless face,
Rather conveys
An autocrat or,
To be precise,
A clinically dead
Government in place!//

forget perfect
my friends
as we manifest
our aspirations
it's about the journey
not the score card

i don't understand
slavish worship
of big data
like it was
a big mama
of truth? streuth!
more data won't
help discernment

this is not science
and way less than perfect
yet slavishly we
attend our screens
providing metadata more
hash tag what for?

Torn winter sight,
Cartoon loneliness,
Speaking slavishly,
Under the breath.

Trying to lose,
the way,
by gaining,
a path,

Set forth quasi-fold,
Sorted under magnetism,
The cloudy silver sigh,
Serpent hissed,
Past the foyer,

Cast aside belonging,
Become silent,
And have it come to past.

And were it not for the sun
would there be dream?
Would cloud cry upon the day?
I would find, you and I, slavishly cuddled ‘round dragon breath
and every sight would be for sore eyes, lest they be blind.
Every man would be a beggar.
Children cackle in the dark.
Women, free of childbirth, are instead consumed by the world.
Without the sun there is no age.
We are what we haven’t chosen to be.
This is what I see when you’re not with me.
Emptiness separating reality from understanding.
And I call to you.
And I call to you.
And I scream for you!
And I boil alive in the broth, my own anger...
Whatever I can cook up to feed the hunger that you inspire.
But
a peace shatters the storm.
A shaft of light jousts the gloom like heavenly charioteer.
What else could it be?
It is you, so long as you shine for me.

Churned out from the factory
the fractured of
society
what ******' hope is
there left for me?

I want a stewards inquiry.

They'll take them
young
at the point of
a gun  
make them sign on
the dotted line
and time after time has run away
they'll say,
it's too late now for second thoughts.

In The Lord Chief Justice courts
an appeal is filed by
the pregnant women with the
awkward smiles,

but it's far too late to remonstrate
or join a group and demonstrate.

The fracture turns
as the factory burns and the fireman dressed in red
are all at the local football match,
though some are still in bed

and I know that hope has upped and gone,
I'd have done the same, but I took too long and on the wrongs and rights of those flesh coloured tights
the Lord Chief Justice rules.

Take your children
fill in forms
put them in the factory
bed them down in dorms.

Breed them
Feed them
we will need them to
churn out more men

Society salutes you.

But we take them young,
under the hammer at the
point of a gun

auction lots the lot of them.

I am slavishly aware of the value of life and the need for fresh air
unfortunately
so are they

they'll keep us grey
oxygen starved
the beauty we see has
already been halved
and soon to be quartered
and we're being slaughtered

down at the knackers yard
living's incredibly hard
even with a union card

we try
some succeed
but
only because the
factory
decrees it.

My girl.

You are in the midst
of goddesses
upon a pedestal.

Chiseled stone holds
you firm atop
it's foundation.

Yet, we mere mortals
must hold committed
to the hands of time.

We damaged each other.

My guilt, your guilt
keep me slavishly
tied to my goddess.

You are on a pedestal.

Standard behaviour from the Russians. Obliteration by sheer numbers and force. 190,000 troops on Ukraine's border, now forging their way into the pristine land of their cousins.
Shall be interesting to see their tactics, Russians were never good at improvising, Slavishly taking their orders from the war room, those old Generals who fought long ago in Afghanistan and perhaps joined the action in the Chechen affair, both, of which, ended in ignominious withdrawal by the Soviet Union.
Putin's forces have never been encouraged to think for themselves, never encouraged to initiate. The leaders always suspicious of delegating authority. The lesser commanders will not assume responsibility. All decisions will come from the war room. This is the Russian way. Commit the cannon fodder, obliterate by sheer numbers. Stalin did it, now Putin is taking up the chalice.

Under the pretext of "Peacekeeping forces". Putin won't stop at the Dneiper river, he wants the whole country, he wants the vast wheatfields and the mineral wealth. He wants, what he regards as his entitlement, that which used to be a vassal part of the old USSR.

So far, the response from NATO has been weak. The USA, war weary from Vietnam and Afghanistan, wants no part of the action. Token sanctions and a dithering resonation from old Joe show little resolve there. Boris Johnson, who needs an injection of popularity after his Covid indiscretions, is at least broadcasting belligerence to the Russian invaders and is following up by sending advanced weaponry and advisors to an embattled Ukraine.

Broadly the world is sitting on the fence, muttering outrage and wringing the hands. Putin appears to have taken their measure well.

M.
25 Feb 2022

The sooty frequent of the machinations of the Skotádi or Darkness were systematized with Vernarth genuflecting before the Mashiach, poking himself in the Verses that are of draconian dipsomania and Manumission “Here is that spirit that haunts us by showing itself the smooth eruv of the Kathartírio; right here leaving their feet and heads that have been given to the Lord ..., here I have been anointed by him to also bring conversion and merciful news together with my Lord Apostle Saint John who has guarded me, who has removed the bandages from my hallucinated eyes, being trans mortal among the captives and galley slaves that with their chains have broken your tympanum, my beloved Mashiach, like a whale of whales stranded by your bleeding saliva! What greater power is over me bringing my mother's hand that inhibits my fever of trans mortality, and that makes a heartbeat even after my soul is not essential! Messiah, I am the one who has been in all the concentration camps, I have seen hands torn by the fierceness of human felines, and by the noble pacts that open with their stilettos to the Christians who follow your word ..., I know they will dwell in the afflicted wasteland where the nations rule each other with their gold fangs, and with silver earrings ..., dwelling in the opacity of the burned-out farmhouses in their afflicted famine, only waiting for thousands of transgenerational generations, from which the verse of Liberation will make them exempt from satisfying your appetite, even in the angelus or in the sticky wheat that is forced from the jaws of the Skotádi and the Katarthírio, where forgiveness will be to see and eat what it will cost us a lifetime to pay off what we could not condescend from the burning Mezzo acquire!

In this way it will be channeled under your majestic cloudscape and the surrendered sea of the sacraments in all those who did not make it at birth ..., and neither did they dazzle the depressed sower who will be redeemed from Zion. Everything is an undeclared transgression, but if he lashes twice in the gall of what he is capable of turning away from Suffering, and from the prediction that he declares himself to be pardoned free from the Truth that hides from his woes in adversity, and that continues to struggle under thousands of years for the Kathartírio ..., What is our Purgation that is more than an organism of Superior Light, sleeping and surreptitious in the calluses of those who contaminate their sacred walk for thousands of years through the desert ..., only arranged for those who will find it! indivisibly stigmatized! Do not ****** the Reception Vessel from me, because it is in it are the souls of my foundations that encrypt and underline more than my untied hands in the entire enunciation of its declaration and only in its inverted nomenclature of language. I can only say through my feet, that they are yours my Lord ..., alone and little that nothing coexists ..., it will be more than what I will not know how to say with all my respect, so what has to transform me will channel me into dissimilarities and before my dreams as a pairing of burning crematories on the extended flares that will not end.

Patmia is with her face and derision unmasked, noticing the abysmal restlessness of the alelí, with its imperfect aggravated treachery in what is incapable of persevering when the twilight becomes suppressive in the master key of the burnished ethón, whose most diluted timid will be only the roar of his turpentines that cry out for the Cristus that crystallizes, and dematerializes in chromatic colors that are unpainted from the splendid Sun translucent in the water of the Jordan. What difference will there be in the othones or screens that support their contrasts, if one day there will even be a lack of water for the baptismal of Ein Karem. I will be from a deranged domain where floodgates of hydrous fullness will not open, that fills real nature with the desires to supply what passion does from the top over the Jordan and this in the passion of Keter, as adoration and idolatry of incorporeal Water. Everything pleads about harmonies that are distressed, not holding the rod that measures runaway time in front of the inexorable Thuellai. And what is the knotty thinking, mute in its purposes that are of the sacred lexicon? But my Beloved Confréres let us bind the flavor of the elder root, and of its old painful as beards in the feather that will become feathery springs where its flow will germinate with the compromised berry of dew and vine, totally scattered in the frontal green of the Hexagonal Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem. Pluri-springs and their eyebrows, they will guttural squalls in the ovaries of their pericarp, but not from the same elderberry that will sprout in eternal life from its irradiated berries, where nothing and nobody will omit its brownish petiole and its late Zoroaster that carries it in his chins as ornaments in the merciful compassionate, before the punishing weak and his bite for everything in whom he does not resent him!

I will cross out the lines of my hands and I will return to where the Shemesh blowing from the Shofar ..., fitting only in my unleashed thoughts ..., with sneers of derision on the plain of a barrel and its berries to save us. In the world, they will fall like wicked towards others who will blame them! I do not know if the vice of hiding traumatizes me behind the tropes that ride dark or carry me over their darkness, and my very image that sacrifices it, or will it be of those who get fed up knowing that there was nothing from me to save ..., only the transformation that is made of the Jordan where they will never again be seen in the river ...! That he dozed next to Peter…, undulating like a cobra and feeling himself say white sin? Nothing is a substitute in the reception that never stops opening floodgates, perhaps expanding in the executive axes of the Apokálypsis, or of a Behina Dalet receiving multisectoral in what is not its equivalent ..., nor in the hatching of its identical disparate, and that nothing and no one will know by any Written or Wisdom rule to be transformed from his oral to his back! A verse will run shaken from the relaxed worldliness, compressing itself with graceful touches in the charities of the Shofar, and of the long sounds of perverted anguish without wavering in what is temporarily suspended, either in clauses overturned before the eyes of anyone, and those who are cowed from the fears that they never knew how to overcome from their own.

The Deus Himation bubbles, surpassing the warmth of what is and is not surnamed in what is a sweaty proverb, even in the solitude of all the patrimonial that has weakened from its plinton, grafting itself on the directive designs that work slavishly to their own compromise. laborious and healthy maternal, complacent of the sap that goes to the following of the mischievous sigueríos or Lost Seas of Capernaum, only washing in the heel where it will never be healed. Nothing more generous than to pursue indulgences in rivers that end of those that are pacified even more at night, when they still seem to flow towards the Shamaim or Heaven of imperishable prayer, as if they were crashing from some runaway and sticky wagons at dawn, but yes grim in the lump of a champion where nothing has ever to be compromised in the glosses of his worst injury!

To be more like the machines
and gadgets that surround us,
the newest incarnation of gods
spun from nightmare threads
of loss and starvation
then slavishly served.

To have a memory
like a video camera,
to never be lost
like a GPS map,
to be an efficient little worker
steady as a robot arm,
to crush enemy bones
as relentlessly as a bulldozer,
to weather insults
as dispassionately
as your virtual assistant,
and be as immortal
as photos in cyberspace,
forever smooth cheeked,
outlasting any marble statue.

Not forgetting
birthdays and car keys,
stumbling down dead end
hotel hallways,
limping on a sprained ankle,
calling in sick or hungover
bedridden with shaking,
nose broken by a drunken
bar brawl head ****,
or crushed by that woman
just rolling her eyes,
and walking away.

And not this
trembling skeleton draped
in withering flesh clicking,
ticking like a broken clock,
springs uncoiling,
winding down.

We scramble and race,
controlling and perfecting
and finally break ourselves
against the steel idols
of our own creation,
like John Henry
hammering his drill.

Mindless hate
Fueling,
The spectacle
Ruling
The idol lies
Hypnotized,
Slavishly drooling
Like homeschooling
******
In repressed
Insecure
And alone,
Unexpressed
Will turn into
A war
For your loyalty
Soil,
Your toil,
Your vote
For the royalty’s
Dynasty’s
Building a moat
And awoke
Is unwelcome
Just go back to sleep
As they reap your American dreams
Counting sheep

As September daze will soon arrive
recollections from a
psychologically checkered  past
loom large recalling  
tragic storied days of mein kampf.

Circa early nineteen seventies:
As a mere slip of a shy lad,
(who knew nothing
about powder milk biscuits),
I experienced unfettered amorousness
toward an equally introverted lass
(conjured courtesy my imagination),
though both of us
barely out of our boyhood
and girlhood respectively
unfettered infatuation naturally
found me wedded to Anna Rexia.

Unhealthy relationship between us
left the writer of these words
with ****** dysmorphic  
skeletal elements of harried style,
swiftly tailored over
mine ensuing tweener years,
which pronounced after effect(s)
still linger approximately five decades
after existential crisis indelibly pierced,
scored and tattooed permanent
anatomical and  physiological characteristics
within windmills of my mind
namely delicately impressed psyche
communicated this August 30th, 2022.

Imagine yours truly post pubescence;
(no matter ye never met me)
all that life in front of one young buck
argh... precious time squandered;
I blithely would surrender
entire corporel being
lock, stock, and barrel,
whereby mine fractured mindscape abustle
with rattle and hum of compulsions
most time consuming innocuous rituals
slavishly buzzfeeding pet peeves.

Anorexia nervosa ranked
as thee moost detrimental
upon cusp of prepubescence;
I metaphorically teetered
and tottered on the brink
of deep analogous
Russian Siberian exile.

While awaiting piano lesson
(circa early 1970's)
collapsed unto the floor
Barbara McCall, née Youngblood
helplessly watched her student (me)
he flailed, garbled, hobbled...
succumbed into heart of darkness
softly wailing "I cannot live anymore"
or some such grievous plaintive utterance.

Long befuddled long dazed journey into night
began to hound my doggone noggin
while in the throes of puberty
voices dictated me to forego
first one meal, two, then all hunger pangs
eventually stymied, squelched, and silenced.

Dumbfounded family members
(father, mother, and deux sisters)
baffled, and thought
precious progeny and brother respectively
possibly involved with drugs
(an easier fix in retrospect),
versus shattered psyche (mine)
analogous to Humpty Dumpty mishap
only far more serious.

Even curious peers queried me
during lunchtime understandably asking,
whether non intake of food
nsync and/or linkedin
with particular religion,
which inquisitiveness answered
with shrug of shoulders,

cuz reason without rhyme
i.e. existential crisis
impossible mission to communicate
at that moment, whereby
all ears and eyes turned toward me
I wanted to crawl into
a black hole and disappear.

I felt absolutely zero joie de vivre
(no surprise stating the obvious)
essentially loathed being alive
when fellow students grilled me
(unspoken tongue in cheek retort
cheeses crust inaudibly uttered).

A short while prior
before anorexia nervosa got free rein
to ride amuck
analogous to red
(angry) bulls running roughshod
think utmost helter skelter
my mother acquired degree
as licensed practical nurse
courtesy local vocational trade school.

She crafted nutritious concoctions,
yet interestingly enough
did not watch me like a hawk
rather left her sole skinny son
with task to consume sizable quantity
without dereliction to pour
said healthy drink down toilet.

I quickly established routine sipping elixir
whereby yours truly filled
little plastic measuring cup
then painstakingly nursed
said tumbler size capful
down gullet - good to the last drop,
which inexorably time consuming process
found hardly any spare hours
for any other (necessary
or otherwise) function.

Eventually solid food intake
integrated with pureed secret ingredients,
yet even the painful prospect receiving
iron inoculations into bony buttucks
(punitive punishment gladly accepted)
without curbing appetite for self destruction,
which as an aside mother dearest
never disclosed constituent parts
comprising blended conglomerate
when, some few decades later,
she went to her grave.

Traveled
For miles
To get to you
Rescue you
Lucky enough
To behold the whole
Mess of you
Dressed in a sorrow
I struggle to emulate
Here in this
All too inaccurate
Capsulate
Gravitate
Slavishly
Back to your side
But belong to
Along with you
Down for the ride

Because of the pre ponderance of handguns and their ease of
availability in America....and because of the theatrics embedded in
the imagination of the population by 60 years of 1st Blood,  *****
Harry and High Noon....and lastly, because of the newly expressed
rhetoric of ultimate violence against any opposition by people in high places....

The mantra of political assassination hangs like a shroud over the nation.

There is always going to be the loose cannon who lusts for notoriety, who lusts for revenge, who hates to the degree that he or she will court a violent end to achieve their ****** ambition.

Politicians are the prime target, loud and vocatious, exposed to the
masses frequently, always violently expressing the primal things which trigger the thin line of discord to rupture with the shot from a gun, with the momentary gleam of manic satisfaction, with the spasm of agony as the ****** of justice fires the round which ends the assailants life.

It is a grand performance which has been replayed through history. A performance, these days, played repeatedly over the media, every portrayal in every available angle, every agonised expression of the players recorded, every spray of blood. The more graphic and grandiose, the better....and it is devoured, slavishly, rapaciously, by much of the nation's spectator population.

Disgustingly, Trump has made huge capital from the near miss of last week. He has enlisted the roar of approval of the MAGA crowd in his expression of ****** defiance whilst being rushed away by the Secret Service. He has maneuvered the mass sympathy of the adoring thousands at the crass pantomime which was the Republican National Convention. He has even invoked the assistance of Divine intervention and the suggestion that God has, indeed, decreed that he shall be the next President of the United States of America.

From afar, it all looks like a huge and ghastly fabrication. A
manipulation of tragedy to achieve a political aim. A blatant betrayal of values of human decency  and a crass desiccation of the  values embodied in the magnificence of your nation's history and the grace symbolized in the proud Stars and Stripes flowing forth, yonder in the breeze, from the white flagstaff.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ