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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanoid.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But my mother held my arm.
He went with me,
But we went not towards the altar,
But towards the door.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And the ***** rang through the church,
Humming through the elaborate crown molding,
Carved by my ancestors.

He went,
Not beside me,
But before me,
And I watched,
As he was illuminated by the bright,
Overbearing,
Texas sun.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But I did not wear white.
My father walked me in silence,
And I shed tears not for a man standing at the altar,
But for the one I would never see again.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And no veil obscured my face.
All eyes were upon me, but not for my pristine beauty,
Instead for my clenched jaw and furrowed brow,
Severe and fierce to distract from my glassy eyes.

My father did not leave me at the end of our walk to sit beside my mother.
She clung to me for support and sobbed breathlessly,
Loudly,
Unavoidably,
And I carried her with one hand,
My sister the other,
And walked towards my future.
A future family,
Not one person more,
But one person less.
I walked,
One final time,
With him.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And I will never forget it.
Hundreds of eyes isolating my family from the crowd,
Slow and muffled sounds drowning in the deafening beat of my heart,
Blurred faces staring,
Black heels clacking against the cobbled path from the church,
The anguished wails of my mother,
The whimpering of my sister,
And the wooden box that glided before us,
Pulling,
A string tied to our patriarch,
The pin key of our family,
Pulled taut and then snipped with the slam of the hearse doors.

My father walked me down the aisle,
Before I had a chance to grow up.
He walked me,
Out of the church,
Away from the altar,
Never to be walked again.

this is a tale
of two star-crossed lovers
with a love so powerful
they tainted the heavens
with bursts of colours

they were never meant to be;
mischievous little kids
finding love in sinful glee
in laughter, between dreams and reality

and though it was lawless,
they found solace
because in every prison,
they found a rhyme and a reason

but even for a love so great,
they could not escape
the fates’ wrath and envy

destiny pulled on their threads
cut them loose, thrusted them into misery;
for their memories were wiped clean,
but feelings remained as strong as they had ever been

the boy exiled in a far off land
across the pacific sea
the girl trapped in her need to break free
in a realm both boring and bland

ensnared in a labyrinth of woe
the lovers yearned for anything—
for something, for someone,
to obliterate this endless longing

the gods answered them
in the form of two loved ones
polished in every edge,
a perfect someone

but perfect felt too perfect
and not perfect enough
to fill up the hole
left by a perfectly imperfect

until one day the gods whispered
for the winds to push the two
and the birds to tug at their sleeves
over mountain and sea
even through the darkest valley
so their paths would finally meet

and so they did.

in the flurry of a moment
a pair of brown eyes met
and time was frozen
once more

the two stared intently
as if remembering a broken melody
a lost childhood song
branded as a wrong

the birds fluttered and flew
taking the cursed red fibre
snipped them in two
and the lovers felt all the lighter

it was the girl who spoke first:
“**** the stars.
i don’t want perfect,
i want you.”

eyes dazzling, the boy nodded:
“we’ll invert the universe—
the night sky a blank white
the stars pitch black
the earth moving in reverse”

the fates saw and surrendered
as the stars began to wither
for this love is love
in all its splendor

so the lovers walked away with a promise
under their breaths, they both swore:
“i lost you once,
but nevermore.”

We’d been together so long, it seemed
That nothing could tear us apart,
We lived our lives in a world of dreams
And Barbara lived in my heart,
But frost had covered the window pane
And then it began to snow,
As Barbara turned, with a look of pain
And said, ‘It’s best that you go.’

I didn’t know what she meant at first
As I looked up from my book,
“Go where?’ I questioned, but thought again
As she quelled my heart with a look.
‘I said I want you to leave,’ she cried,
And her face was set in stone,
‘We’ve come to the end of the path,’ she sighed,
‘I want to be left alone.’

Then suddenly all confusion reined
I didn’t know what to say,
Whatever had brought this mood on her,
I wished it would go away.
But she was firm, and she packed my things
And ushered me out the door,
I stood there shivering in the cold
To be back on my own once more.

I found a flat and I camped the night
There was barely a stick or chair,
I’d have to buy all the furniture
To make it a home in there.
But I sat and cried in the empty room
As the question came back, ‘Why?’
I’d loved her so and my heart was torn,
I thought I wanted to die.

I went to her with my questions, but
She slammed the door in my face,
Whatever love she had had for me
Had vanished, without a trace.
It hurt so much that she cut me off
With never so much as a sigh,
I called that all that I wanted was
To tell me the reason, why?

The roses had bloomed so late that year
Were still in the garden bed,
We’d always tended the bush with joy,
We both loved the colour red,
So I snipped one off as I left one day,
And planted it under her door,
To let her know that I loved her still
I didn’t know how to say more.

Her brother called in a week or so,
Said she was in hospital,
She’d gone in just for a minor cure
And thought that he’d better tell.
So I caught the bus and I went on down
With a quaking fear in my heart,
She hadn’t said there was something wrong
Before she tore us apart.

The doctor came in his long white coat,
His brow and his face was grim,
I said, ‘Don’t tell me the news is bad,’
He said, ‘I’m out on a limb.
Your wife just passed from the surgery,
But she pulled, from under her clothes,
And asked if I’d pass this on to you,’
In his hand was a red, red rose.

David Lewis Paget

Which takes us on a direct path to:
THE  INCIDENT.
Say you are a normal man—whatever that means—
But say it’s late June of 1993 and you’re laying on the couch,
Scratching your *****, trying to intuit your LDL level
Based on the two bowls of the Old Lady’s Cholesterol Chowder.
The Old Lady-- you can call her Peg or Mrs. Bundy—
Served it up in her special legacy china,
An assortment of recycled tin foil casserole dishes &
Vintage melmac handed down by your mother-in-law.
You are on the couch giving digestion your best shot,
Still scratching your agates when Peg comes
In from the kitchen with your second glass of
Two-buck chuck and a smoking fatty she’s just ignited,
Miraculously without burning the house down.
The TV is on—the TV is always on because
The TV has had no off button since 1984
You are tuned to the CNN evening news &
A report comes on that makes you sit up,
Snap to attention, straight up and take notice:
"WOMAN CUTS OFF HUSBAND'S *****!"
The media shrikes in Atlanta have your attention now,
Your complete attention;
Your eyes are riveted to the telescreen &
Your blood pressure spiking at 240 over 140.
During the previous night of June 23, 1993,
John Wayne Bobbitt arrives at the
Couple's apartment in Manassas, Virginia,
Highly intoxicated after a night of partying.
According to testimony given by Lorena Bobbitt
In a 1994 court hearing, he then rapes her.
Afterwards, Lorena Bobbitt gets out of bed,
Goes to the kitchen for a drink of water.
According to a journal article in the
National Women's Justice & Defense
League of Psychotic Castrating *******,
While in the kitchen she notices,
A carving knife on the counter & "memories of
Past domestic abuse races through her head."
Grabbing the knife, Lorena Bobbitt enters the bedroom
Where John is sleeping & proceeds to
Cut off nearly half his *****,
Half his Johnson,
In this instance aptly named.
So you have some schnook who’s named
After the iconic Hollywood superstar John Wayne . . .
Now understand something, John Wayne—
The ******* Duke of Earl--
Personifies everything alpha male:
Physique, animal magnetism & a pair of
Huge ***** swinging in his chaps as
He sashays across the screen.
In real life he’s a bullfight & cigar aficionado,
A big game hunter and sport fisherman, &
A hard drinking Hemingway hero
Who spends most of his time aboard
A customized WWII U.S. mine sweeper
******* to a pier behind his house in
Newport Harbor, California.
He’s the proverbial man’s man, &
There’s no one like him in America
Until maybe Eastwood or Willis comes along.
There’s a statue of him out in front of
The Orange County Airport that bears his name.
I have a photograph of him hanging in my garage
Next to a Mad-Dog 20-20 poster.
But I digress.
We return to the Bobbitt story because
It gets better, keeps getting crazier.
After assaulting her husband,
Lorena leaves the apartment with the severed *****,
Drives around aimlessly for a short while,
Then rolls down the car window &
Throws the ***** into a field.
Only then does the loony ***** realize
The severity of the incident.
She stops and calls 911.
After an exhaustive search by
Volunteers from the local Humane Society,
The ***** is located, packed in the ice-slurry of
A banana-flavored 7/11 Slurpee, &
Taken to the hospital where half-**** John Bobbitt
Gets a short-arm inspection and treated,
Mostly for shock and awe.
His ***** is later reattached by Drs. James T. Sehn &
David Berman during a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery
Filmed by Ken Burns and broadcast in its entirety by
WGBH Boston, a stunning illustration of
Your tax dollars hard at work
At the National Endowment for the Arts.
An abridged version later becomes the season premier of
"Girls Gone ******* ******, Manassas!"
Lorena goes on Oprah to explain herself.

Lorena Bobbitt ((née Gallo) was born in Ecuador.
Her maiden name, ironically,
Means **** in English.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix had this to say:
“Deport the *****. She may have an INS green card
But there’s no way she had a government permit to
Go around lopping ***** off in Virginia or any other state.
Who does she think she is, Janet Napolitano?”
Napolitano could not be reached for comment.
Shortly after the incident, episodes of "Bobbittmania,"
Or copycat crimes, were reported.
The name Lorena Bobbitt eventually became
Synonymous with ***** removal.
The terms "Bobbitt Punishment" and "Bobbitt Procedure" gained
Social cache with a radical break-away sect of N.O.W.
COPYCAT Catherine Kieu Becker, 48 (Garden Grove P.D.)  
Woman Accused of Cutting Off Husband's *****
Pleads Not Guilty/ VIDEO: Watch Jennifer Gould's Report
KTLA News   10:40 a.m. PST, February 3, 2012 /SANTA ANA, Calif.
"A 48-year-old woman accused of cutting off
Her husband's ***** and putting it
In the garbage disposal has pleaded
Not guilty to all the charges against her.
Catherine Kieu, of Garden Grove,
Was indicted earlier this month on
One felony count of torture &
One felony count of aggravated mayhem.
She also faces a sentencing enhancement for
Practicing surgical medicine without a license."
Sign up for KTLA 5 Breaking News Email Alerts
Comments (130) Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Happy627 at 10:35 PM January 18, 2012
"So my x-wife is a violent drunken *****?
Never once did I ever think of hurting her
But now I see I was wrong.
Vengeance's is the true answer & payback is hell.
So basically I should put an M-40
In her *** and light the fuse.
I should be acquitted from any wrong doing
Because she was a violent drunken *****.
Maybe all men should do this to their
Violent wives/girlfriends & teach them a lesson.
Cyanmanta at 1:10 AM January 11, 2012
In response to Doreen Meyer:
"So you're assuming that because he was the victim
He must have done something to deserve it
In some small way?
Typical of convenient feminism:
Assume all female victims are innocent &
Pure as driven snow,
While dismissing all male victims
With the idea that 'he had it coming.'
I wish I could pander shamelessly
To the media for preferential treatment,
But sadly, I am male (or as feminists would say)
The Evil Gender."
Westfield at 5:47 PM Jan.09, 2012
She should get her own show on the ***** channel.
(Bravo). KABC radio's John Phillips & his girlfriend
Nathan Baker would love to watch it."
Sluff it off, take a load off, baby.
Take a load off?
“Take a load off Annie,
Take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, and
Bom bom bom bom
Bom be bom— & Dddddddddd,
You can put the load right on me.”
Send “The Weight” Ringtone to Your Cell

. . . Snipped, fixed, neutered, gelded,
Emasculated, eunuchized, or castrated?
(Castrating Forceps  (www.alibaba.com/
Showroom/castration-tool.html).
Bobbittized!

He misses me still, but that's old news.
He's missed me for so long now - he can do it in his sleep.

He does it while he eats alone at his desk,
while he runs for a train,
while the rain is coming down in sheets.
While a girl takes off her dress and he reaches for her,
his hands hesitate a decimal. He turns off the light,
and misses me.

It grows inside his chest, like a bonsai tree -
something natural but stunted.
Snipped and pruned carefully, but not allowed
to grow outside it's box. Not allowed to put down roots.

He hauled it off, across the sea.
Across China and the Middle East, he misses me.

Half a world apart, in Amsterdam I walk
with my eyes to the ground, all brown and grey.
Thinking of the planes and trains that bore him
away.
This has become second nature for me.

It's midnight in Tokyo, he sits at his desk
in the light from the street
thinking of trees, canals, red bricks, me
and when we sleep, he and I both,
it's with ghosts in the sheets.

Sitting at my little desk
cluttered up with nothing real
so it looks like I have work
a little heater on my feet
epitome of luxury - warm feet
how time drags away today
so much behind to do at home
alone inside this little room
where photos line the wall
with other people’s happy day
would it be sacrilege
to ever put a sad pose
in the frame that
held such shining joy
≈≈≈
another wall is cabinets
with everything that
I might need for anything
but where is the band-aid
for today and the
cure-all for tomorrow
as I sit and wish that I was gone
to any place but here
≈≈≈
narcolepsy goose-steps in
battalions of its troops-
a war I must not lose
I cannot leave and
beat retreat
I must stand firm and fight
until the razor
hands of time
cut through the bars
that keep me here
unwilling but required
≈≈≈
for I support the camping trip
that we call daily life and there
are hungry mouths to feed
with names like heat and light and
shelter from the winter
they bring their cousins
food and clothes and
go juice for the car
to stand in line
on my front porch
with hands outstretched
demanding
≈≈≈
sometimes I muse
on what would happen
if i just turned out the lights
and locked the door
against intruders
and tap danced away
would there be a net
to catch me
if i jump too high
or dance along
the precipice
without my contact lenses
≈≈≈
now I recall
the words my mother said
when I would dream out loud
“wish in one hand
spit in the other
and see which one
gets full first”
good ole hillbilly philosophy
≈≈≈
so here I stay with a frozen clock
an antique desk
with a vase of crimson
bougainvillea I snipped
off the hedge
across the parking lot
I must have flowers
on my desk and
in my home
my very soul demands it
but never if I buy them
it requires the vaunted
ingenuity my mother
preached to me  
to keep the vases full
≈≈≈
what ceramic vase
 would I fit in
I’m neither rose
nor orchid
would I be
a whole bouquet
or just a single daisy
silliness to ponder
fourteen kinds of nonsense
≈≈≈
still the pen
stays wedded
to my finger
not yet done
with nonsense rambling
though I’ve said
most everything
I need to say
≈≈≈
I’m over half the
way to freedom
looking for a coin
to buy away
the final hundred minutes
will it be the radio
a game of solitaire
or just more
claptrap from this pen
≈≈≈
the usual fall back
crossword puzzle
points up my aphasia
and I’m in no mood
to face humiliation
once again
≈≈≈
how slowly can I nibble on
the sandwich
left from lunch and still the time
procrastinates
my mind at last is blank
And now is the acceptance
I can’t scribble on forever
it’s time to
put away the pen
and hide this diatribe
out of the public eye
And head at last for home.
                ljm

A nervous shiver rippled briefly across his shoulders as Dunstan peered over the balcony, it was a long way down from his penthouse suite he guessed, shrinking back from the handrail... at a rough guess somewhere between the upper observation deck, Eiffel-Tower, Paris, France and lower basement mezzanine at Miss Selfridge, London, England... and Dunstan was terrified if heights.
  
     It scarcely seemed anytime at all really since he'd relocated to his new and upwardly situated des-res, yet for all that he could hardly recall living anywhere else, once you'd seen one, well... you got the idea,  after a while they all looked pretty much the same, you just had to be able to haggle, but for now at least he was obviously safe enough where he was, sunning himself on the balcony watching the world go by as he scribbled down a shopping list... but lunchtime was almost upon him and then all hell was sure to break loose.

     Having finally determined to put down roots and raise children of her own, his mother Elvera, finding herself in the family-way had wasted no time at all in tearing several well thumbed pages out of her mother's book, then taken both Dunstan's father and his gene-pool straight to the cleaners, just to keep them, so page three informed her firmly in the family... so Dunstan grew up knowing a great deal about laundry and dry-cleaning, but very little about his father, just the occasional anecdote cast to the wind like so much bird seed, about their early courting days and how they'd both wanted him to grow into a strong, healthy lad and do well at school, climbing the corporate ladder, so-to-speak and go to Boy-Scouts every Tuesday evening just like his father had done before him... and learn all about knots, but Dunstan had vertigo and couldn't tie knots for toffee.
                                    
     All hell was certainly dead set on breaking loose that lunchtime, or rather Houdini were they to continue and remain on first name terms... and there was nothing Dunstan loved more than a captive audience.   Reflecting deeply and never wanting a repeat of the previous week he studied the hastily bound swaddling, perhaps the odd tweak here and there just to be on the safe side should ensure the safety of his dinner guest for the remainder of the afternoon.   As Dunstan snipped the final thread he considered that simply nothing was too much trouble where todays 'entree was concerned, he now sat before Houdini smacking his lips in anticipation, quivering in the front parlour waiting for the dinner gong to sound, the Sunday lunch however, now in a mounting state of frenzied agitation continued bouncing around on the embroidered tablespread.  

     Dunstan could never understand what the fuss was all about... I mean, it wasn't as though his dinner guest hadn't been invited, he argued and that for the umpteenth time, as he reached for the carving knife and steel, he simply wasn't going to take no for an answer, leaving his dinner guest still bouncing about, insisting that he'd merely dropped in for directions... and that he, The Great Houdini, currently billed at The London Hippodrome for the remainder of the season had a far more pressing dinner engagement elsewhere, with a diary for the foreseeable future distinctly at odds with those of his host... leaving Dunstan so he hoped, far behind and in no uncertain doubt that not only had he been left hanging in stickier corners than this one, but had every intention of extracting himself from being principal dish of the day before third curtain call... and having done so, wish Dunstan a very good day and remit his professional fee by return of post.

    Meanwhile, insisting that his guest needn't feel obliged to dine elsewhere when they could both enjoy a really splendid one right here, chewing over happier times together, although should Houdini wish, then Dunstan felt confident that his dinner guest was more than capable of punching his way out of as many wet paper bags as he liked... and just what were the Marquis of Queensberry Rules anyway... so encouraged, Dunstan continued sharpening the knife. 

     "Well really", thought Dunstan... 'and without so much as a by-your-leave' carefully examining the damage to his new lace tablecloth, torn in Houdini's haste to depart, he really must be careful as he rummaged for his darning needle, not to fall through.  It had been the shortest dinner party in living memory, Dunstan sighed, it simply would not do, what would all his neighbour's think, he'd never hear the last of it, his reputation they would whisper, well... it would all end in ruins, mark their words it would.  Dunstan's tummy rumbled, he'd been filled with nothing but anticipation that day and very little else, but other than a torn tablecloth and superfluous items of Houdini, shrugged of in his bid for freedom, no one would be any the wiser... having said that, Dunstan would have to make do with a cold repast for luncheon instead, hanging quite still in the larder.

                                                        ­     ­ ...    ...   ...**

A work in progress.                                                        ­                                                               831

Grab the breathless butterfly
as my heart sinks in
Swallowed by the swift net of desire,
wings snipped, flightless life

They creep me out.
Those sticky-out veins in your neck,
the way they stretch like pythons’ tongues
as if they’re going to snap –
they’ll snap.
Like elastic,
they’ll snap
(just the thought …)

They creep me out,
the fact that they’re so FLESHY
and for some reason,
remind me of goats’ beards
and stringy turkey necks
(I don’t know, but,
just the thought …)

They creep me out.
I’ve got the weird feeling that
they could be snipped away by silver scissors
like loose threads.
They’ll snap.
Like elastic.
They’ll snap.
Stretching,
Stretching
(just the thought …)

DO YOU SWEAR NOT TO HURT ME?
Said the scissors to the rock
I  KNOW WE HAVE A HISTORY
BUT I ASSURE I DO NOT MOCK!

The rock looked at the paper
Then he looked back at his feet
I DONT KNOW WHAT TO SAY he said
I THINK YOU'RE REALLY NEAT

The scissors was beside herself
Jumped high into the air
But because she was so gleeful
Snipped off some of paper's hair

So paper screamed and shouted
She was mad with awful rage
And she jumped onto rock's back
As he tried to turn the page

The scissors with confusion
Felt to blame and so she rushed
To try and help the rock
In the process getting crushed

And so the rock got still
Lying covered by the sheet
When paper realized what she'd done
She fluttered to rock's feet

And cried and cried and sobbed
And stared at her split ends

And paper rock and scissors
Would never become friends.

This is not about you.
This is not about
the transmutation
of your jail celled mind
wrapped in self-help
and cellophane.

This is not about
your new found
discovery
discovering me
and my afflictions
according to the
white man’s diction
a dictation
of my past
extracted
and examined
under the microscopic
power of time.

This is not about
your self-defined
enlightenment
when you made
a deal to unearth
the truth of HeLa
coated in dust
covered particles
of HeLa
on your nightstand
and I laid
in a grave
unmarked.

This is not about
my big lips
and thick hips
under ***** covers
running a sweat
fever on my thighs
shaking feet in stirrups
and the pain was rich
after a tight pinch
and I didn’t know
what part of me
had been snipped
to grow cold
and never die.

No, this is not about you.

This is about me.
A historic legacy
left to thrive across the time
less chains of nucleic
tidal waves
Covalent bonds
could never rival
the strides of this soul
miles beyond
the distant
COLORED ENTRANCE
something brewing
inside dividing
inexplicable replication,
readying for harvest
behind a dried tobacco field

I remember the day
you described me
as "irrepairable"
and the very muscles holding my heart
faltered
the beat beginning to sound
like a mistake.

I remember the night
you stood by the threshold
holding the broken bits of cell phone
that the blossoming anger
(you were still so beautiful, face made up in rage)
strangled
straight
out.

I remember the evenings
the distance between
the spaces between our fingers
roared and mocked
sped up my pathetic heart
made my vulnerable breath
stain the window
which you grimaced over
forgetting how once
it had sighed your name
in your mouth.

I remember your face
as it stood over the facade
I put up
so that you would
find it in yourself
that the heat of my heart
was faltering.
that the strings holding me together
snipped, snipped, snipped till there
was nothing
but a collection
of maybes
and what ifs.

I remember my eyes
as they stare into themselves
in the cracked, haphazard
mirror
framing their deadness.

I remember once
they used to
have their own life.
a life
built
on
you.

Daniel, Peter, George and I sat in various stages of drunkenness.  Dee was sober and on the water. It was our annual dinner, the great catch-up, and most of us were drinking champagne. A great bouquet of peach roses sat in the middle of the table dropping petals by the hour.
“She’s got ginger hair.” Peter laughed.
“It’s more auburn.” George defended, pouring himself another drink.
“No.” Said Peter. “She’s ******* ginger.”
Daniel leant back in his chair with his arms behind his head, wearing his face of perpetual amusement.
“Dan. Come on, now. What colour is Melanie’s hair?”
“Oh…I don’t know.” Dan smiled. “A sort of strawberry blonde.”
Peter punched George on the shoulder."See! She’s ******* ginger!”
Boys will always jostle to be top dog. Daniel was the alpha and Peter resented it, but Daniel was everything that Peter would never be: good-natured, strong, calm, in control. Peter was loud and insulting, a bit of a bully but sort of sad with it, prone to fits of melancholy and drunkenness. We all had our role to play. George was fey and funny and got offended easily. I was the madman who did the things they didn’t dare.  The dynamic worked, most of the time.
Dee was quiet and an ‘outsider’, so he didn’t count. He sat with his glass of tonic water which was packed with slowly cracking ice, and he stuck to his usual routine : no food, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no smiling, no chit chat. Any time I laughed or told a joke, his silence would shame me. He reminded me of how desperate I was to fit in, to be one of the boys. He always shamed me just by sitting there, by not joining in, by being so ******* above it all, by being so himself.
“So, what exactly are you doing these days, Art?” Peter asked.
“Teaching. You know that.”
“Yeah but…why? Do they even allow mental patients around kids?”
Daniel leaned forwards in his chair and glanced at me, checking for discomfort.
“God.” I sighed. “******* Peter.”
“And what do you do?” Peter asked, looking at Dee. Dee took a long while to answer, focusing his eyes and adjusting his posture.
“PhD. Physics.”
“Sounds boring.”
“He’s mathematically gifted.” I said proudly.
Peter smiled with one side of his mouth.
“If someone gave me the gift of maths I’d return it and buy a calculator.”
Everyone laughed, including me. Dee started to fold his napkin, and then he unfolded it. Then he folded it again.
“Do you love maths, then?” George asked.
Dee pushed the napkin into his lap and shrugged.
“There’s something wrong with you if you love maths.” George said. “Maths is *******.”
“Do you want another tonic?” I asked Dee, putting my hand on his knee. He pushed it off with force.
“No. In fact - I think I want to go home.”
“Don’t go home!” Daniel said. “Please Dee, stay a while.”
“No, I really think I ought to go home now.”
“Hey.” I grabbed his knee again. “Come on.”
“No.” he stood up, the candlelight winking wildly in the silk wrinkles of his shirt. “I really want to leave.”
“The evening’s just getting started.” Peter said.
“The evening is not the problem.” Dee said quietly. “The problem is you.” He closed his eyes. “The problem is you.”
I felt my skin shrink. Dee stood up to his full height and exhaled.
“In fact, the problem is all of you. You’re all awful human beings. All of you. Awful, awful, awful.” His eyes sparkled as he warmed to his theme. “And you’re all so ******* boring!”
Peter and George were speechless. Daniel leant back and laughed beneath praying hands.
“Yes, you’re bores! You’re such ******* bores! Even the waiter is bored! Even the flowers are bored!”
“Dee, love.” I stood up and grabbed his shoulder. I was quite drunk.
“No Arthur, I’m going home, I’m tired. I’ll get a cab, you stay here with your awful, awful, awful, awful bores.”
He stomped off and Daniel blinked at me, his eyes wrinkled and drunk.
“Go on Art, go home. It’s ok.”
“God, Arthur.” Peter said. “What a lunatic. There’s something seriously wrong with him.”
“Oh *******, Pete.” I snapped, for the second time that night.
“Take this.” Dan said, thrusting his bottle of champagne at me. “I don’t want it. Go on, run and catch him. Go and get drunk with him.”
“No use. He doesn’t drink, remember?” I said, putting on my coat.
“Drink some water with him then. Tell him…” Dan grabbed my head and whispered into my ear, “…tell him that he’s right, that we are ******* bores.” He burst out laughing and sank down into his seat, watching me do up my buttons. “Oh my God!” he laughed, grabbing my hand like he was about to kiss it. “We’re so boring! We’re so ******* boring! Look at us! Even I’m bored!”
Daniel winked at me, still laughing. Daniel was one of Dee’s greatest defenders, and he admired Dee because Dee was honest, because he could not fail to be honest, and because Daniel loved the people that I loved, and I loved Dee most of all.
I grabbed the roses from their vase, just in case I needed them. They were wet, and dying, and they had no smell.
I caught up with Dee outside Angel In The Fields. He complained that he had a headache and told me he wanted to go home. He told me that he couldn’t have stayed one second longer.
He took the flowers from me, and buried his face in them until I hailed a cab.
Flowers were a running theme with us. Flowers in buttonholes, wisteria in gardens. Roses in his face. Buttercups in the grass. So terrible, when I think about it now. Perhaps someone was trying to tell me:
Arthur -  this story will start and end with flowers.

Dee had a habit of ruining social occasions. Perhaps the stress got to him, the terror of communicating, the fear of conversation. He became easily overtired and quickly over stimulated, if a conversation was getting too personal or staying at chit-chat level, he would begin to stress and flounder. If someone annoyed him he could not pretend to like them – he had to let them know that they were ****** or boring or dumb. He didn’t fully comprehend how offensive he could be. He didn’t understand that in order to maintain peace, you must suppress yourself a little bit, tailor yourself to fit the rest. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in suppressing himself, it’s that he simply couldn’t do it.
Most of all, he hated people taking up my attention, whether they were talking to me, amusing me, or even hurting me – he made it very obvious that he did not like to share.
Once, he emptied an entire bottle of red wine into a young woman’s handbag because she had been talking to me all night. He placed broken bottles in front of his mother’s car tires. He sent anonymous emails to my father, threatening disembowelment.  He beheaded ivory chess pieces, snipped the heads off anniversary roses, kicked people's shins under tables.
And he had the worst temper I had ever known.
When people didn’t understand where he was coming from, when he felt isolated and flustered by his own emotional poverty, he would begin to fragment. He would rock back and forth and moan. His voice would change, his face would change, and his anger would be frightening in its desperation, he would tear at his own clothes and hurl himself into walls. A few times I had to physically restrain him, pulling his sweater or shirt over his head to trap his arms, sitting on him, trying to calm him down.
But I could always deal with it, the crazy stuff – it didn’t bother me at all. The rage, the disconnect, the alienation. I knew what it was like to lose control. I knew what it was like to feel different. I used to say to him, “I was with Dee today and I seen hell in his face, Guv’nor. It was all red and blotchy looking.” And then, sometimes, he’d smile.
It was the eating thing that devastated me. It was the eating thing that made me feel useless. That was the one thing that I didn’t understand.

We took a cab from Angel In The Fields and went back to no.23. He went straight upstairs to get undressed, and took a pair of new cashmere socks out of their little beribboned box.
“It’s too warm for cashmere.” I said. He didn’t listen, and put them on anyway.
Dee had never had much of a *** drive, so I knew I was pushing my luck by kissing him – we had made love the night before. He kept his mouth closed and pushed me away.
“No, I don’t want to."
He picked the fluff from his black velvet computer chair.
“I’m not cross.” I said.
“Cross?”
“About…tonight. With the boys.”
“Oh. Ok.”
I went to kiss him again. God, I loved it when he bent his head back and his tongue met mine, his arms relaxing at the elbows, his limpet legs clamping around my own. But his mouth pursed up at me. No entry tonight, sorry.
“Goodnight, then.” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
Something cruel took over me as I opened the door to leave.
“Y’know, Dee – sometimes I think you really hate me.”
He looked at the wall behind me, scrunching his face up, wound up and stuck.
“Forget it.” I said. “Just ******* forget it.”
As I closed the door I heard an animal noise, a miserable animal noise.

Dee was the only thing that had ever made any sense to me. I had no real connection to my parents, I loved my mother but she was silent and neurotic, full of nervous energy that set me on edge. I never felt like I could fully confide in her. I hated my father because he had never loved me, and he had told me so. The only people I loved, my grandparents and my sister, were far away and mostly busy, unavailable, and I caught up with them through letters and telephone calls and occasional rushed visits - holidays, weekends away from school, time away from parents and *******.
I once walked to my grandparent’s house after running away from school, and I fought through a cage of conifers just to ring their bell, turning up at their door wild-eyed and full of pine needles.
I always fought to be with the people that I loved. I fought and fought and fought.
I loved Dee because he was mine and he was never too busy for me. He was as quiet as my mother, as vengeful as my father, but he was mine and I loved him, and he loved me back.
Perhaps that sounds very naïve. But it wasn’t naïve. My love was grown up, full of sacrifice and sleepless nights and heavy talks that left me exhausted. I searched for him when he wasn’t there, I talked to his mother about his health, I took his blood pressure, I poured his fortisip, I calmed him down, I made him laugh and I loved him, ******* hell I loved him, and I watched him like a God and reached out for him in the morning because he reminded me that I was alive, because he made my realness real, because he was my cold fire and he burned by the side of me, coldly, to balance out the crazed orange bonfire of me.

He followed me to bed soon afterwards, brushing his teeth and taking off his clothes, sitting down next to me.
“I hung up my blue.” He said. “Could you fetch it for me?”
His ‘blue’ was an oversized shirt that he slept in sometimes. He put it over his head and it fell around him.
“You know.” He said, “Sometimes I think that you hate me.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He got in next to me.
“I don’t hate you, not now, not ever.”
“I’m not one of your friends, though. If you had to choose a friend, you wouldn’t choose me.”
I didn’t reply, because I didn’t understand what he meant.
“Daniel is your best friend, isn’t he? But you’re my best friend. What happens when I have to talk about something, something that I can’t talk to you about? I don’t have any friends because I don't like anyone else. So who am I supposed to talk to?”
“Me! You can talk to me! I tell you everything.”
“Well, what if I wanted to do something, but I knew that you would try to stop me from doing it?”
“I wouldn’t stop you from doing anything you wanted to do. Not ever.”
“Forget it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Please Dee, you can’t just start a conversation and then abandon it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”
“What is it? Come on, please. What is it?”
He turned away and curled up.  I stayed with my head against the headboard, looking down at him.
‘I love you.” He said, without moving. “I thought I should tell you. I thought you should know.”
“I love you, too.”
And then he went to sleep, leaving me to the house sounds, the clanging inside the walls, the discordant duet of two sets of breathing and the occasional cough.

When I woke up, he was in the shower. His socks were bunched up at the edge of the bed, shrugged off in the night.
Like I said. It was too ******* hot for cashmere.

Carefully the needle penetrates into my skin
With every new puncture the thread follows along

In and out again and again
Till it reaches the end and finally
A harsh pull, a few tugs

Then the string is snipped free at last
Its been completely sewn shut

Only after you closed me up
Did you ask me how my day was
How I was feeling

But what could I say
With my mouth sewn shut?

We marked the deaths on a map in little black tallies,
every day we counted the numbers and they had come to a strong incline.

You sat in the dust by the flames
playing with a cattail
and you asked me
“When will it be over?”

The smoke drifted into open sky above us and I tried to count the stars.

The map was held together by rivers and
railroads
and lakes.
And we were held together by a commonplace drive:

Hope.

The poem in your eyes had no backbone and it was falling apart at the seams and it made you
tired and
sad and
hopeless.

The map is held together by little black tallies on the edges from an old charcoal pencil.
And we are held together by a thread of life that could very well be

snipped.

Alas, that is out of our reach but we must remember to always
fight! and to stay alive
please keep holding on
please

Because home awaits with open arms and we are here counting stars and
we must never die.

~

The mayor warned when we came home to
never leave again
and to
never go again
and I do not understand because
we couldn’t stop that
and you told me that I understand
and that he doesn’t.

Mother looked at me and my scars
disgusted
and told me to go
and told me that I shouldn’t be home.

And we found a lake from the map marked with a charcoal pencil and stayed there
and you fished
and I found berries.

Every night we counted the stars and
we were connected by constellations.

Every night we were connected by the grass beneath us
pricking the backs of our necks

and we caught the flying stars
(Fireflies)
and we were connected by constellations.

The notes of the piano rang in open air across the lake
how far can the notes stretch to connect us?  

As the lake grew, constellations stretched
far
and we never knew what color your eyes were.

Blinded by the bright light from the upcoming sun,
we both ran for cover, turning our backs on each other for the first time in
a while.

The thick trees hid us from the light well enough, but
you
weren’t
there.

We kept running.
The sun was catching up
too fast
and we ran for everything we could live for.
(each other)

I ran for you and you ran for me.
That’s all we could do until you laid on the ground,
tired and
sad and
hopeless.

You stopped running so I did too and we both were hungry for what we could’ve had.

~

When we were still in the war, they let you bring one thing from home.
You brought the idea of hope
and I brought the idea of music
and we mixed together very well.

The nights when we counted stars under the full moon
were the nights when we’d fall asleep with our arms touching.
(A sign that people are alive.)

The dust woke us up when it blew in our open mouths,
and in a shallow breath the tiny things landed on our tongues, woke us up, and
made our eyes cry.

“When do you know to go home?”
I ask myself this a lot because I know that there is no answer.
Human beings like to ask themselves things without answers and then get angry that there is no answer.
Because only they know when they put you back home.
You and I were lucky because we only had a little time in that hell,
but the others weren’t.
The little black tallies from the charcoal pencil weren’t because they
died.

The light woke us up and we knew we had to run
soon
It landed upon our eyelids and woke us up and made us cry.

I think of you as I am running and my bare feet
smack
across the dirt.
I think of you because your hair always was full of the stuff and now all it does is make me cry.

~

I think we are running along the line on one of your maps.
I think our feet are creating the dark brown streaks on the paper with the little black tallies on them.
And I think that we will never find out
the color of your eyes.

We run back to back for a while
until the light stops us and we hide beneath the tree’s leaves.

I am hungry for our arms to be touching again.
I am hungry to count stars with you and the place we did that was the war,
so could you say that
I am hungry for the war?

I am not hungry for the charcoal pencil,
but I am hungry for the hand that touched it.

I am not hungry for the dirt,
but I am hungry for the person who would lay in it carelessly.

I am hungry for the map so I can see the dark brown veins running across it with bare feet
smacking
the dark brown surface of it.

I am hungry to breathe in the commonplace drive that pushed us along the dark brown lines and out of
the war.
And I am hungry for the idea that once was.

Hope:
That is no longer existent when I am not with you
which is a side effect of
you
that I did not know about.

I would welcome any side effects that came with you with open arms, of course, because I would still have
you
I merely did not know about that one, but I am sad to see the idea go.

~

I wish you the best in all your journeys.
I wish to hear the beat of your heart against the crickets again,
but now I am afraid that the light has caught up with me
and I am afraid that
we will never find out what color my eyes are.

I wish you the best in running from the light
but remember that the without light there would be no darkness.

I am sorry to have to tell you that the dust will settle in the rocks and that
the maps have been burned.

The tallies have turned blacker than ever before.
The tallies have turned into ash from the bright flames.

The maps have fallen asleep in the glow of the flames and that
our idea:
Hope;
has been taken by the wind.

It ran with it, and I tried to catch it, but the wind cannot be caught.
Remember the first breath of the war you took when you stepped outside into the
light
of the day and remember the glow of the flames.

Remember that people are still living
(Remember that our arms touched on the nights we counted stars)
and remember the constellations that connected us.

I am not sorry to tell you, however, that no matter how far constellations can be stretched,
constellations never can be broken.
They can stretch to heaven and hell and earth and the sky and the dust and to the war
But they will never shatter
because constellations are images the mind has created.

Constellations are made by the mind and stars are tangible.
Constellations connect stars.
We are stars and we all burn in our own flames.

~

The words from your charcoal pencil make me cry.
I cannot ever count the stars without you
and I cannot ever write poetry in the dust without you.

Your words make me cry and I run
faster.

I don’t try to compete with the light because I know we’ve been running with our backs to each other for the
whole
time.

The wind trips me and its fingers comb through my hair on the way down.
dust from the ground tickles my tongue and the wind left something in my brain.
our idea:
Hope;
has been taken by the wind.

“Are you the dust, now?”
I feel your thumb across my cheekbone and I am
yearning
for what we could’ve had.

“Are you the wind, now?”
I feel your hand in mine and you lift me to my feet.
My face is dark brown covered with dust
but as I run the wind cleans it off.

“I have never been so tired,” I tell you.

I am so hungry for you.

I am starving
and I am sick with what we could’ve had.

and all the baby crickets chirp
I got the daisies planted and then appeared
numerous
red black bugs
swarming the daises the elderberry bushes
the crickets just watched all the festivity
like who are they they are not me
that is cricket talk  
especially when young
and the boxelder bugs in
swarms respond
in red black harmony of numbers
it is we the red black bugs of sap suckering
I chuckled
the crickets responded
by rubbing their back legs together
almost like
applause

When I was born I asked the doctor, how he thought he did?
He recalled,
"Exquisite, it was a perfect delivery."
I rebutted,
"Then why am I still attached to the umbilical chord?"
He snipped me away from the tangling sheathe preventing me from exploration.
I leapt off the crinkling hospital bed paper and onto the goose-bump extracting tile floor.
Playfully bobbing my head as I walked into the world whilst giving the blonde doe-eyed nurse a crumpled note arranging what time I would pick her up for
dinner that night.
--Nurses enjoy being taken care of too.

When I was in preschool my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.
I told her, "I want to feel the love of a woman who makes me happy everyday and loves me for being me."
She under cut my desired fate, "That's not a something you can work for."
I whispered in her ear, "I know you have never felt love from another person."
She began to cry.
I told her, "That tears are just water for her soul to grow."
She got married later that spring after the rain had stopped,
--Her soul grew enough to show.

When I was seven years old a neighborhood bully stole my bicycle.
I cried for four minutes.
I was angry for about an hour.
Instead of telling him that my dad could beat up his dad
I began to wear my helmet everywhere I went.
I shouted to the other boys in my class,
"I had an invisible superb-deathly speedy-extraordinary-intergalactic- bike."
Two weeks later that same bully gave me my bike back.
As he relentlessly rubbed his knuckles into the top part of my scalp I thought nothing, but that this is the reason why my Grandpa went bald.
Then he muttered through his wheezing breaths of anger,
"My invisible bicycle was much faster than anything your ***** daddy could have bought you."
--Dad's, they love hypothetical fighting.

When I was eleven years old two airplanes hit two buildings in New York City.
I did not understand.
I asked my teacher, "Why would God make evil people?"
Through her tears she explained to me, "Some people are just born evil."
I shouted under my breath, "People are not born evil...
implementing ideas in the sponge of a youth's mind is what is morally corrupt and evil!"
--Corruption is the first cause of terrorism.

When I was fifteen years old I had my first real serious girlfriend.
I did not understand, again.
I exasperated to my father over drinking our first father-son beer,
"How do I know when I love a woman?"
He nostalgically took a drag of his menthol cigarette and as the smoke made it's way through his nose like fog in a canyon he said to me,
"Whenever you look into her eyes and know that there is nothing you wouldn't do for her, that is love."
Before he could reach down and crack another pilsner I told him,
"Dad I look a little lower than her eyes and that is where... everything I would do to her."
--Hormones are a *****.

When I was twenty-one years old my mom told me I couldn't come back home after I graduated college.
I begged her to give me time. I will make it, I promise.
I shouted in the driveway with all my belongings she had neatly placed for me to pack into my car, "How do I know when I am ready to be on my own?"
She didn't have to say anything for there was a brown envelope on top of my neatly folded clothes; that mysterious folding method all mom's know but I
could never seem to figure out,
"Son, you won't know. You won't know until you are poor, hungry, cold and exhausted everyday from trying to make something of your life. The character
you will build will help you later in life when you have a family of your own. I promise. I am not a tyrant, I care too much to see you widdle away here with me
in obscurity and waste all the dreams I know you have. I love you my baby."
--Mom's, even though they don't cut the umbilical chord...they cut the umbilical chord.

when I was born, I had
nine lives left, I was bereft
of scars, delicate as fireflies
in a jam jar
(the kind I’d punch holes in the lid for,
the kind I’d bring indoors
and set on my bedroom floor as a fairy nightlight, until I got bored
and one by one they died silent as the pollination of fornicating spores.)

anyways.

9 lives left, age: 2 months
but then one day daddy looked the other way and splash!
the baby’s in the *** and the ***’s still hot
(there are witches in the air but we don’t care)
looks like soup tonight! yum yum
third degree misery etched on her body,
one life done.

And nothing to show for all of her fun
but a twisted left arm and a ***** of a sun (burn)

One life down, eight to go, you know
because she’s a fox, which (if you peek over the ledge of your punitive box)
is like a cat. And that, as we know, means
nine lives, and that’s that.

well, eight now.
if you want, I’ll tell you how she (i) is (now) down several more.
worry not little one, fate always evens out
the score.

The second was me and a boy (THE Boy, if you know what I mean)
it would seem he and I had climbed two stories high
hand over foot over hand over foot over
the parking lot right up next to the sky
and then oh-
wait.

I’m falling.

(breathe in, breathe out)

(the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout
down came reality and washed the spider out)

and there are
butterflies on the tip of my tongue and there is
a word stuck in my stomach.

he held my eyes just like I couldn’t hold
the pipe as I fell, right towards the earth between heaven and hell
now there are hot knives in my ankles and I think (I can’t tell)
I’m alive.

(stop drop and roll)

yes I fell from the roof through the sky. No I’m fine.
just one more life gone, I saw it flash before my eyes in a short space of time
that was roughly
the shape of a stop sign, or maybe a wind chime, or maybe
it was the shape of the sunshine.

Whichever way, that’s two down, seven to go;
the next one I lost when I rolled off the road.

We were going seventy and
the love of my life was sitting next to me and
his skin was beautiful in its caramel coffee complexity and
he wasn’t
paying
attention.

There is air in my lungs when I should be history
but the SUV only bruised my knees as it rolled, glass shattering
pit-pattering over the pinwheel of perfect destruction
around us.

I felt myself decide that it was okay
if this was the end.

At least I’d go with my best friend, there’s some
good stuff. That, I conceded, would be enough,
I could die young
if who I was in that moment
could be the freeze-frame of my song,
the thing that’s left
after I’m gone.

Three lives gone, only five left-
the next one is casually snipped like a price tag
after a theft when I fell
(again)
from the banyan tree and flipped my pancake
(click-clack) like a jacob’s ladder
I should have broken my back.

As I fell I yelled in my head
there’s nothing to fear but fear itself
(till you’re dead.)

four down, five to go Indigo.

Here we go.

(to be continued.)

Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten form
The leaden stars, the rainy hammer
Swung by my father from his dome.

I knew the message of the winter,
The darted hail, the childish snow,
And the wind was my sister suitor;
Wind in me leaped, the hellborn dew;
My veins flowed with the Eastern weather;
Ungotten I knew night and day.

As yet ungotten, I did suffer;
The rack of dreams my lily bones
Did twist into a living cipher,
And flesh was snipped to cross the lines
Of gallow crosses on the liver
And brambles in the wringing brains.

My throat knew thirst before the structure
Of skin and vein around the well
Where words and water make a mixture
Unfailing till the blood runs foul;
My heart knew love, my belly hunger;
I smelt the maggot in my stool.

And time cast forth my mortal creature
To drift or drown upon the seas
Acquainted with the salt adventure
Of tides that never touch the shores.
I who was rich was made the richer
By sipping at the vine of days.

I, born of flesh and ghost, was neither
A ghost nor man, but mortal ghost.
And I was struck down by death's feather.
I was a mortal to the last
Long breath that carried to my father
The message of his dying christ.

You who bow down at cross and altar,
Remember me and pity Him
Who took my flesh and bone for armour
And doublecrossed my mother's womb.

War; absolute
This will be my macadam into re-assemblage
For if I'm not on edge, I'm taking up too much precious space
What wickedness lies beneath the surface of the skin?
I should know this place better than anyone
But my landscape has become mercurial
Ever changing, impossible to map
I am forced to navigate its pitfalls in ever complicating ways
It has become a desolate place
I alone should rule here, my sovereignty unquestioned
Yet I've become content to be complacent, and have allowed a sickly intruder to slip past my walls
They infect, demoralize: turn my skin to stone
They must be expunged; cut out, snipped from the healthy flesh like a cancer
As one removes a gangrenous foot to save the leg
Though my tools at the moment are blunt, I sharpen them daily with the whetstone afforded to me
They will not continue to expel bile into the bloodstream for long
My strength returns by the hour
They know this, and they tremble
I am the goddess to whom this altar is devoted
I am righteous fury, come to cleanse this blight with holy fire and flood
The war drums sound as the gate is lifted

The iron bell tolls -- judgement day cometh

there are earthquakes inside
the knuckles that held my hand,
and writhing rivers in the light
blue strands that dip into your
shoulder blades

i am not afraid to say that
i am afraid which may seem
like an oxymoron, but i
promise you it is not

i broke glass over your head
and cried into the shards,
only because i was trying to
make you see how beautiful
it is, how the glittering
light loves broken things

you always snipped the tags
off of tea bags and when i
asked why you said you
were saving for something
that you couldn't remember
but *******
it is important

here the grass look up brunette trunks, branched arms flex their
form is calm, spindly fingers bloom their open palms
there they reach for spreading clouds
encapsulated sounds of gentle leaves, green noise
orange hues through cherry waves of grape and lemon, sweetened
pecks of the sun set in amber—morsels of melody, snipped bits of

things in canon
contrapuntal
sprouting airgerms
fugal, fungal

"So you'll be in tonight? Wonderful, sweetie.
It's been far too long. Are you bringing Mattie?
Oh, I see. Are Todd's parent's good to her?
Alright, well, I love you and I'll see you at six.
Sorry seven...okay, sevenish."

The Prine place smelled of rich
lemon cleaner.
Not a cobweb could be found,
nor ***** dish, nor glass smudge.

Margaret Prine applied her blood red
lipstick--the final touch before school.

Mrs. Prine arrived thirty minutes before
anyone else, started the coffeepot in
the teacher's lounge, and wrapped up some
lesson plans.

The starting bell sounded,
she headed for her room.
Principal Hughes said,
"Good morning! Madam Margaret!"
as he always did.
Mrs. Prine, nodded cooly, grinned
lightly at the corners of her blood
red lips, and said nothing--as she always did.

At forty-five, she could turn more heads
than any head cheerleader,
and she was well aware
that beauty's power reigns
absolute.

Two young lovers draining saliva
stood outside her classroom door
dressed in matching yellow t-shirts.

"Excuse me, canaries.
Showboat your love out in nature.
Not outside my room," Mrs. Prine snipped,
calm like a seasoned surgeon.

"We're sorry--" Harvey's eyes met Mrs. Prine's.
Mrs. Prine felt a strange transfusion take hold.
The blackness started at her spine
and snaked to her skull.
Old jealousy, been awhile.

"Kaitlyn, Harvey, get to class."
Kaitlyn Mullens barely existed.
Pencil thin, thought little, and spoke less.
Kaitlyn just happened to be in Mrs. Prine's
literature class.
Mrs. Prine followed her into the room--
sizing up her shoulders, ***, and cheapshit heels
with a keen eye.

"Alright, everyone as you know, your analysis
on Catcher in the Rye motifs is due today.
No excuses."

During her lecture she couldn't keep her eyes
off Kaitlyn. The way she fidgeted incessantly;
shifted her gaze with each question asked.
Her idiot face somehow held a superior wisdom.
The dark jealousy coupled itself with
a wicked wandering mind.
A mind journeying into
the mad middle stage,
when a prime lioness
becomes declawed by calendars
and withering mirrors.

When the class left,
Mrs. Prine could not recall a single thing
she had lectured over.
She rubbed her head, sighed a low growl,
and began siphoning through the homework.
"Ah, there you are."
She grabbed a bleeding red ink pen,
then proceeded to massacre the essay.
"Plagiarism, plagiarism. Lazy, lazy."

The seams are ripping-
all mentality is lost.
I seem to be slipping
and for what cost?

What is the reason for my destruction?
A familiar detour I know too well.
I continue to stay under construction,
something to people I dare not tell.

For why worry them when all hope is gone
I look as I feel, after all I'm no con.
So yes the seam, I can say is now ripped
the sisters of fate look at my life line-
it's finally been snipped.

I walk among the
too-tall pines,
lonely sentinels who
alone still bare their green.
They are
unashamed
in the colors they show,
natural exhibitionists
in a world of barren arms
and almost-snow.
I squeeze around their
stuck-out branches,
sometimes stabbed
and sometimes poked.
That’s the thing with trees—
there is no tenderness,
there is no intimacy because
it's all a joke.
Their pines and their needles
stick to your warmth,
cling to the heat that
rolls off your body in
thick
moist
heavy puffs.
How I hate them
and their everlastingness,
how I despise their
infinity.
One by one
I have cut down their branches,
have snipped off the green
in thick, poky batches.
Carefully and
quietly I
arrange them
in the slush,
build them into
a body that I can
slip into when
there is green abound
and the Earth
is lush.

You snipped my red string with scissors constructed of
guilt and manipulation
And wound it so tight, the fingertips he once kissed turned blue
In hasty desperation to make a forced connection, your clumsy fingers
tangled
end to end, artificial “fate”s sealed with ****** knots and whispered promises of false hopes and starry-eyed, idealistic dreams of naive men              
You twirled me in circles until  dizziness felt like love, until I was convinced that I could only see straight with you next to me
Your kisses tasted like passion and coffee and deceit
Your touch seared my broken skin and left me gasping for more

You make me figuratively hate the skin that I'm in
And I want to claw it off my bones, layer by layer, until I literally hate the skin I'm in                            
How dare I let tears fall at night and sob myself into submission
To you
And your hurtful words
Your hurtful silence
The knife in your hand
The knife in your back
And the scissors she used to sever
Her string and yours

one morning, Jack awoke with a distinct feeling
that something was not quite right.
as he peeled his eyes from a crusty sleep
his suspicions were further aroused by a marked loss
of sight from his right eye
as though he was peering through
a thick charcoal jungle
he clutched his hand towards his face
and was alarmed to find
a rather substantial lock of hairs
protruding from his right eyebrow.
wondering if perhaps he might
still be in a world of waking dreams
where one couldn’t really trust one’s intuitions,
he wandered over to the light switch,
flicked it on/off a couple of times.
having reached the conclusion that
he was definitely not dreaming,
and that his retinas
(or his left one, at least)
were definitely receptive to fluctuating light levels
he made his way to the bathroom
to inspect his face, with one hand
bemusedly fondling his recently grown eye-brow fringe.
in the bathroom he stumbled
across his wife sitting on the toilet.
on catching sight of her hairy husband,
she let out a deranged scream.
"darling, you'll alarm the neighbours" said Jack.
but his wife, who did not seem
to be sufficiently worried about
alarming the neighbours,
or anyone in her resident universe
continued to make strange warbling noises.
so, Jack instead decided to study
his growth in the kitchen sink.
although not made from
exemplary reflective material,
the sink was able to confirm
his impression that his right eyebrow had,
overnight, been subject to an alarming rate of growth.  
his wife appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry for screaming.
it was only because I thought you were a pirate”
she said. and though he knew
that this was just one in many
of a long string of inter-marital lies
that bounced between them,
he let it pass. a decision having
been decided upon in perhaps
not the most democratic manner possible,
Jack's wife fetched the kitchen scissors
from the drawer by the dishwasher.
as she snipped away, chunks of black
fell soft like feathers from sunburnt wings
and landed on the Lino.
Jack felt inexplicably sad.
they went off to work as usual,
and no one noticed
the jagged edge of his once pirated-eyebrow.

Beyond is a bleak, grey skyline

I barely recognize my vignette

Yet here I am, walking that thin white line

As if I had not met him yet



I barely recognize my vignette

Black swans move like serpentines

As if I had not met him yet

Slow, calculated, but ready to strike at cloud nine



Black swans move like serpentine

He still whispers in my ear, I just cannot forget

Slow, calculated, but ready to strike me at cloud nine

“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” was his epithet



He still whispers in my ear, I just cannot forget

Their banshee bugle wails overcome; I am confined

“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” was his epithet

Like smashed cherries, their eyes were as ****** as port wine



Their banshee bugle wails overcome; I am confined

He wanted to mold to be a useful asset

Like smashed cherries, their eyes were as ****** as port wine

I gladly follow those threats



He wanted to mold me to be a useful asset

What called them on was my mental upset

I gladly follow those threats

There is nothing to regret



What called them on was my mental upset

It is foolish to once think I could outshine

There is nothing to regret

All I have ahead is a relentless battle line



It is foolish to once think I could outshine

I am merely a pathetic statuette

All I have ahead is a relentless battle line

Soon they all will forget



I am merely a pathetic statuette

Onyx swans call me to the brackish streamline

Soon they all will forget

It is there I snipped that innocent white line



Onyx swans call me to the brackish streamline

He influences my mindset

It is there I snipped that innocent white line

Time becomes frigid as I sink into that brine outlet



He influences my mindset

My body is limp in the alkaline

Time becomes frigid as I sink into that brine outlet

It is there I found no lifeline



My body is limp in the alkaline

The onyx swans fly in a v-line sextet

It is there I found no lifeline

He brought me to the finish with no reset



Beyond was a bleak, grey skyline

Yet there I was, walking that thin white line.

Mammy's accidents usually happened
Within a hundred foot radius of her stove.
Except the one time she had to work
Outside the home,
At the Aylmer Tomato Cannery.
     (Daddy was in his wet season,
      Being laid off was his reason)
The tip of her thumb was snipped,
And gone.
The joke never got old.
Someone looked inside
Every can we opened -
From that day on -
Truth is,
We always knew
A good bit of Mammy
Was in her stew.

i take too much medicine
during the day
so while i'm sleeping
nightmares come to toy with
my fragile subconscious
& i crack like a
wooden puppet
when it's strings are snipped.

it's like watching
a black & white film
& all of a sudden,
it turns to color.
prisms twirl in your eyes,
& gasps escape from
your mouth like thick
serpents crawling
through your teeth.

flies buzz everywhere
in a place where i could always
count on the walls being clean.

paranoia is a repulsive,
monstrous, sluggish thing,
that creeps through your brain
cutting off everything you know
in order to leave you
discarded & ***** with
nothing.

i'm pretty sure they have home, but i can't be too sure...
              they seem to like me...
                 there was this "ghost" of a cat
in my garden tonight...
    a bonsai version of my 10kg maine ****...
it's the second time i've seen him
in my garden...
      the first time i wanted to feed this
poor orphan... i started shaking a plastic
bag of cat treats asking him for
     trust...
                 didn't work...
       just today i was playing my "imaginary"
drum-kit with my hands...
                 variations, culminating
                                in my right hand's index
tapping against my left hand's knuckle...
               and my left hand's index tapping
    against the right leg's knee...
     truly... the (Χ pose... on the windowsill
                         χ)
            drumming away, enjoying the song
jestem psem by lao che "too much"...
            this drumming imitation without an actual
instrument: african cultures call drumming
                                    a medicinal approach to
your mental health...
              too be honest? it's not exactly a beijing
pharmacy where this advice comes from...
evidently you can catch the curiosity of "stray"
cats coming into your garden...
so i tried to feed the poor thing...
         i changed my tactic tonight...
              cats are naturally distrusting, and it's hard
to build up a trust to the point where they
can relax all godly and be fed easily...
               so what happened...
                    (i don't know what *** this ginger
bonsai was)... but i'm guessing female because
my ginger hulk became interested too much...
he's castrated, as all cats bought from
            pedigree sellers...
                                i do know that cats are
very protective of the space they occupy...
                like people and the time they lived in...
but ***** **** *** happens when cats do it...
      dogs and permission...
                                (i'll get onto the ******* question)...
  but i really did want to feed the poor thing...
   honestly? what do you have to a cat
                 for them to go "missing"?
                                      how can cats go "missing"?
      i remember seeing this guy tie his dog to a bench
and then run away... sooner than no sooner
the dog was a stray, and he found a friend... another
dog that ran from the opposite gate of the park
where he was left in...
                  oh right: so this bonsai ginger...
evidently i interested him to come back to my garden
with my drumming using my hands and the rest
of my body acting as the kit...
            i thought of another tactic...
          i took a little plate, sprinkled it with cat treats
and took it outside into the garden,
             then i went away to put on my shoes,
went back to see if the orphan moved... he was still
"agitated" by the scent of my cats sitting
                     tense in contemplation...
                 i took the remains of the cat treats
   and showed him: it's not poison...
        and then i threw of them into my mouth...
CRUNCH... CRUNCH... CRUNCH...
                they're not that bad...
                                   all i know is that if i eat a few
cat treats (dry, felix goody bag) -
                    all i know is that i won't have to have
the same problem as people eating maynard's wine gums,
or rowntree's fruit pastels...
                                 i like my teeth,
     and i like the sugar: lactose... i drink milk first thing
in the morning to stop myself imitating tuberculosis
      of the larynx lined by marmite phlegm left by
the previous day's tobacco...
                            it almost feels like ice-cream...
           so i left this plate of cat treats on a little plate
in the garden as gently as possible so as to not
frighten the poor thing... and went out to buy
two bottles of 70cl of whiskey and a bottle of ms. pepsi...
  they call me a gentleman in the supermarket...
          huh?       and today's compliment from
the cashier tarah: matt... you lost weight.
                really? must be the alcohol diet combating
drinking water.          and it does happen...
i look overweight: but i'm just bloated from the "abuse"
of alcohol.
                   i'm not going to repent... it might attract
the next al capone in the american era of speakeasies;
a story that parallels what happened in poland after
the second world war... some regions of poland had
no idea what coffee was... honest to god, 20th century
and there were regions in poland where coffee wasn't
drank... my maternal great-grandfather actually
          poured coffee into the river of my local town...
they didn't know what to do with it!
                    i'm guessing: if you live in a chai culture
(tea, samovar) you won't know what comes invading,
new...              but they were given loads and loads
of coffee (the detail missing? were they bags of
coffee beans or ground-down coffee? don't know) -
but they got rid of it, giving the river a mouth to
eat it... this is mid 20th century...
                      a bit like: did the americans know what
to do with alcohol in the zeitgeist of prohibition?
i don't think so: butterfly here, tornado over there -
i'm pretty sure they didn't know what to do with alcohol.
*******?
                       well obviously i'd wish to have it snipped,
don't get me wrong... and if this could be a graphic
novel it could well be with what i write next:
           i couldn't.
                           no... two protruding veins on it that
went from the base and encircled the "excess" of skin...
if they cut it of: i'd be dead bleeding from my ******* "pride",
that would later translate into: well... now i guess
i can do **** with a girl.
                                 it's one thing that i imitate after
being taught by pronography and risk pulling it back
and wondering: will these two veins be ruptured?
           well... shoving it into a soft pouch of a **** i'm
guessing: not really... if i did it in reverse via the ****?
probably.
                           but am i going around saying:
do this! do this! i learned this in school: circumcised males
are *****... bombastic retards too dependent on
female genitals... because if you're circumcised and have
to resort to *******: you missed the whole
biblical narrative on the point... jerking off is only
permitted with *******... well: i don't who got *****
prior to being allowed the decision to alter those regions
of the body... but it's certainly sad to be "predestined"
to have such parts... but don't worry: you can choose
whether to have a crew-cut or a mohawk or a mullet:
informed choice... you won't get it down south...
               thankfully i know that revising down south
is not open to me... two serpent-veins encricle the region
that could be "revised"...
                          definitely improved...
                        but it's hard to hear the egyptian argument
of the female counterpart...
         are these really drives to craft a civilisation
         because for a man: it's so necessary to please
women? when you don't have the improvement you turn
to other pleasures... music? prime. alcohol? another prime.
a work ethic? also a prime.
                        i might not play, a ******* clarinet,
but i can tap out a drum beat...
                that's what i love about modern music:
there was once the term americana...
   now there's another: the perfect example of
africaana (ā) - drums... which counters all the hot air
   and burning horse manes of violins that
classical music represents.
                           again: a complete lack of drums!

the cat? i earned its trust, came back from the supermarket
and almost all the cat treats were gone...
            well... they're not that bad... coarse, sure,
but then cats have frictive tongues, they have sandpaper
tongues (if you were ever licked by a cat on the hand)...
         but at least
                                 he trusted me.
         i can only call it the tactic of: look, i'll eat what
i'm about to give you, it's a cold march night and
you can find whatever pleasurable nook (and there are
a few) in the garden and sleep there;
         come back tomorrow, and i'll leave you moist
cat food (that... i won't eat... dry cat food i can eat,
brush my teeth after... wet cat food? no no).