My Second Letter to Allen Ginsberg
Dear Allen,
Almost five years ago, I wrote you a letter, and in
That letter, I purged my drunkenly woeful cries
That seem so first-world now and naïve –
The things I grimed over with luxuries I didn’t
Realize that rubbed against my plump limbs
Like millions of felines poised at the
Tombs of pharaohs.

Oh, Allen, I’m so tired –
These politics, and poly ticks, so many ticks that
Annoy my tics. Allen! I smear your name so liberally
Against this paper like primer because the easiest way
To coerce someone into listening to you like
A mother
or predator
tugging or nibbling on your ear –
Swatches of velvet scalped from a ****’s coat
Are you and I talking to ourselves again?
Candid insanity : Smoky hesitance.

Dear Allen, I’m so tired –
Yes, I love wearing my ovaries on the outside like
Some Amazonian soapbox gem glistening from beneath
The iron boots of what the newspapers tell me while
I cough at them with the hurdled delicacies of alphabet soup.
Give vegetables a gender and call them onions, Allen.
Sullied scratch-hicks pinioned feet from slapping
Society’s last rung on the ladder.
Ignore the swerve of small-town eyes.
Scapulas, stirrups, pap smears, and cervical mucus – now do you know who we are?

That fingernail clipped too short, Allen. We’ve all got AIDs
And AIDs babies, haven’t you heard? Hemorrhaging from the political
****** and out – they haven’t reached the heart.  
Since when have old white men given a **** about some
13 year old’s birth control? I’m riding on the waves of the
Parachute game and I swear this abortion-issue is just a veil outside Tuskegee University
Being further shove over plaintive eyes, swollen and black.
Pay up and
shut up.

I still remember my first broken *****, Allen.
Can you tell me all about your first time?
The vasodilatation that made veins rub against skin,
Delirious brilliance : unfathomable electricity.
I made love during an LSD experience, Allen,
And I am not sorry. I see cosmic visions and
Manifest universal vibrations as if this entire world is
A dish reverberating with textiles and marbles, and
All are plundering the depths of the finished wine
Bottle roasting in the sink like Thanksgiving Turkey.
The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.
The opening, between you and you, occupied,
zoned for an encounter,
given the histories of you and you—
And always, who is this you?
The start of you, each day,
a presence already—
Hey, you!

Ah, Allen, if you are not safe, then I am not safe.
And where is the safest place when that place
Must be someplace other than in the body?
Am I talking to myself again?
You are not sick, you are injured—
you ache for the rest of life.

Why is it that I have to explain to my students that
sometimes what I'm spouting is prescribed by a pedagogical pharmacy --
but all they want to know is "what do the symbols on the television mean?"
I am completely aghast against the ghosts of future goners --
I am legitimately licensed to speak, write, listen like some mothers --
I am constantly cajoling the complex creations blamed on burned-out educators --
I am following the flagrant, fired-up "*******"s tagging lockers --
Pay up and
shut up.

Yes, and it’s Hopeless. Allen.
Where did we get off leaping and bounding into
The dogpile for chump change jurisdiction, policing
The right and the left for inherent hypocrisies when
Poets are so frightful to turn that introspective judgment
Upon ourselves?
We didn’t see it coming and I heard the flies, Allen.
Mean crocodile tears. Flamingo mascara tracks
Up and down : up and down: bow – bow – bow – bow
Buoyant amongst the misguided ******* floating around
In the swirlpool of lackadaisical introspection.
What good is vague vocab within poetry?
Absolutely none.
Would you leave the porchlight on tonight?
Absolutely, baby.

Dear Allen, would you grow amongst the roots and dirt
At the knuckles of a slackjawed brush of Ever-Pondering Questions
Only to ask them time-and-time-and-time-and-time-again.
Or pinch your forehead with burrowed, furrowed concentration upon those
Feeble branches of progression towards something that recedes further
And further with as much promise as the loving hand
Attempts to guide a lover to the bed?

Allen, I wish to see this world feelingly through the vibrations of billions of bodies, rocking and sobbing, plotting and gnashing like the movement of a million snakes, like the curves collecting and riding the parachute-veil.

Ah, Allen! Say it ain’t so! Sanctified swerve town eyes.
And everything is melting while poets take the weather
Too personally
And all the Holden Caulfields of the world read all the
*******’s written on the walls and all the Invisible Men
Eat Yams and all the Zampanos are blind and blind
And blind and blind and blind and blind
Yet see as much as Gloucester, as much as Homer,
As much as Oedipus.

Oh, Allen, do you see this world feelingly
and wander around the desert?
Colored marbles vibrating on the curtailed parachute paradox.
Lamentation of a small town’s onion. Little do we know, Allen,
That what you cannot see, we cannot see, and we are bubbling
Over in the animal soup of the proud yet weary. I can see,
However, how the peeled back skulls of a million
Workboots and paystubs may never sully the burden
Of an existential angst in miniscule amounts.
Pay up and
shut up.  

My dearest Allen, there is always a question of how
The cigarettes became besmirched with wax to complement
What was once grass, and
What was once a garish night drenching doorknobs.
The night's yawn absorbs you as you lie down at the wrong angle
To the sun ready already to let go of your hand
As you stepped, quivering, on to
The shores of Lethe.

The burning flowers underline the sunset and 
Dash before the fire (k)night catches them.
Ripe berries cheaply
tremble 
but hopefully their vitality won't burst the pulp pulsating
beneath.

Crumbling flowers
crumb the floor
And Prisms of catching silver refract rose quartz and petal
and crimson
dust.

Bejewelled in Scarlet,
the air,
as the (k)night approaches, grows colder,
Unsure of whether he will bring
solace or strife.

In his chariot
he flies faster than the bees which buzzed around the fruit flutes
in the morning and among the trumpeting bluebells.

Stars fleck the (k)night
like freckles
and the milky ways resins stain his spouting steams lovely. 

The (k)nights kind onyx reaches his crescendo and the floating moon danced drowsily through the cloud's spiralled tendrils

Which diminish as dawn
approaches
so their Tentilcles
droop to crinkled tissue paper sheathed in pink.

And so the (k)night
rides on into
The frivolous sunrise.
The lowing, glossy calves
in sage beside the ***** fields
cast a beloved ambience 

As though
we are safe
in the knowledge
that the sky will remain
forever
topaz and the leaves
forever emerald.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

2002:
today i kicked the door
to history off it's hinges
my jealous frame:
still too proud to say a word
it seems my folks forgot
to pencil in growth marks
cause they thought their boy
would never grow out of small breath
******* dead, years now buried
and i bare his name
too many syllables
for my father to go back
fish & play football
to stand in the yard and play catch

1994:
my mom, the bombshell in retrospect
broke her back in her sleep
a thousand times
since the stairwell in 87'
she still sits for spills
post nuclear about settling
now from the couch
she's a weather report
spouting nonsense
that makes my father
grow grey, crack remotes
& slam doors to dark rooms
abandoning ship
for "cheers" & "scienfeld"
while my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets his place at the table
and my appetite is abducted
by family photos
my mother says things like
"go see your brother today"
-- Johnny's long gone
don't you remember?
we buried him
the day your smile died

2014:
you are inches from me
******* a stray hair
caught in the fabric of your coat
the last remnants of a dog
we laid to rest last week
and here we are
in the hospital again
people don't shake like dogs
finality is found
in the eyes of humans
passing archways
into shallow rooms
where plague and prayer
are the only songs sung
round the stagnant clocks
it makes me wonder
if the clipboards cry
over being the last thing
someone ever writes on
take a number, have a seat
stay a while
i am back, 7 years old
& there are different doors now
they buried the ones
you kicked in that night in '92
when my lungs
were filled with holy water
you never stopped smoking
*i never grew out of asthma

Chapter 1

There was a woman. The cost to love her was your life. No other payment but a sending off, a revolver cocked to your temple’s side.
There was no spite in your death, just business.
Hell of a business to run.

I was protecting someone. Never been one to stick around, but this drag had carried for the past year. That gang-owned joint lay but two doors and a cold alley away. Popular place, maybe not the classiest but it had its patrons. Packed with your essentials: pool tables, dirt-licked walls and chairs, mean folk mixed in with the nice. Old fashioned joint with a history. You could almost feel it when you walked in. That small pressure when it’s about to rain? Felt like that had been building up for a decade there.
Some Madonna owned it. Names elude me, but she was just another front; as was the barkeep, the hired bouncers and those mean-eyed slingers that spoke loud in company, silent alone. Heh, almost like an old-fashioned saloon. Who the hell am I in this tale of cowboys and crooks?
I was holed up in that apartment block for the winter. Stiff drapes covering a stiff cold that seeped through the cracks anyway. Cold chills to wake to, and the whiskey don’t warm a **** thing. Maybe it was the ache of a past flame that led me to her. That old touch had languished and misted away in the night of some long dead memory, leaving an old kiss from a young lover on my shivering body. It grew faint with every year’s passing. I struggle to remember this keepsake.
Every night.
I was a no name protector protecting a no name ghost of a man. Yeah we knew each other. I’m no stranger to keep past talking terms . . . but, hell if I remember his name, how we got into this **** situation and why. Mind’s a little off. Been like that for years.

It was a stumble through the wrong door at the wrong time. Some spiteful voices in the back of the joint or the back of my mind telling me I’m headed for hell and ain’t coming back. See, every day is a crossroad, and I happened upon the worst one yet.
I remember that flaking paint; grime-covered white on a moulding door **** near off its hinges. That suited me, and I hated it. Maybe I grew sick of wandering the same way and turned my life on its spinning head. Spun me all the ways I couldn’t face. Saw a glimmer that fate had readied for me. Don’t think I’ve looked at anything with such eyes since; nor have they looked back at me.
The room was a cramped, dilapidated hellhole like every other room, but with her laying on that bed of hers . . . she was the only clean thing in the whole of this cursed city. Save, she wasn’t clean. No such thing exists; no such thing as clean since your adolescent innocence, and even that went up in flames. Hell, in a city like this I wouldn’t be surprised if the skeletons we kept so tightly locked in our closets outnumbered us ten to one.
Should have remembered that when I saw her, but my mind lay a blank canvas and I couldn’t help but fill it with all the details of this pretty bird. Even those that weren’t there.
No Name yanked me out quick. Never seen him so pale, ghosting further and further from a human being. He’d been running so long I don’t think he even knew what he was running from anymore. His past? Some cop chase from years back, ending with blood stains and shaky hands? A dead kid in the arms of a suicidal wife? Maybe he’s running from himself. Fear in the capacity we contain, and fear in the ways we unleash it around loved ones. I don’t blame him for running. If I was a worse man I’d run from him as well.
Now No Name has it all figured out, even if he won’t let on; and that bird in there ain’t part of the plan. Cash cash, first train out to some no name city for this no name man. In this together, he keeps repeating, like some broke down record player that only plays one song. Well I guess we share more similarities than I’d like to think so.

One night, about a month after settling in that old apartment, I hear raised voices. Not uncommon, but something about this still night woke some fear inside me. A fear I needed to meet with my eyes, a score to settle with myself. Sounded like some ******* outside was hoping to bring down the sky with volume alone. No type of gentleman, just a no ***** kid who doesn’t know the difference between command and screaming like a babe.
One gets you respect. Now, the other. . . .
I open those stiff drapes with stiffer fingers. Brush that layer of frozen breath and mist to find some mid-twenty good for nothing punk holding a struggling figure. The apartment ain’t exactly ground floor but even up here I can spot the difference between a gent and a sally. Some broad was in trouble.
Grab that six shooter, old man. The holster smooth from years of wear, small frays on the weathered jacket rubbing against goose-pricked skin. Comfort clothing that never really brings comfort. Not anymore. Guess I’m as bad as No Name. I’m just repeating routine.
Out the hall, no doors left in this apartment block. Stolen, broken, ain’t exactly your family fun lifestyle we’re living. No Name’s holed up in this fortress of upturned furniture and dresser-barred doorways. Lights flicker from between the cracks. The devil ain’t gonna bother with the door, I tell him. He doesn’t reply. Maybe he’s a religious man with one too many sins above his head.
There’s another yell and I feel my blood rise, hairs picking up static, a storm brewing inside that clenched stomach of mine. Take a tumble down the stairs in my haste. **** crooked balsa wood. Those stairs are gonna end me one day, I swear.
Ground floor. I slam that kitchen door and it cracks against the brick wall outside. ****. No Name’s gonna burst an artery. Call out for that ******* punk but he’s already eyeing me up. Only a few steps away and I can see the white in his eyes. No . . . those are his pupils. Wide, all cloud-like, he’s ******* dusted up. . . . Almost like looking into the past. Thrice-cursed ****. I’m in trouble.
This ain’t some lover’s quarrel, some twisted ****’s thought of a good way to end the night. This is a dusthead addict and I’m out of my league. His mid-snarl distorts and stretches past his cheeks and that devil grin sends an electric jolt from the wires of my brain to my heart.
This six shooter is as good as a pea gun against a Smiley.
He’s spouting some glossolalia drifts, layering it like an abominable duet. The coked-up boy in me yearns to understand again, but stiff joints and washed-out dreams have made me a cynic. Ain’t no beauty when you’re tearing things apart to see it. ******* Smiley’s on the edge and he’s ready to pounce right off. If that broad’s sobbing didn’t **** at those heart strings of mine I’d be running for my ******* life.
I lift that pea shooter and aim it straight at that devil smile.
He howls. Glass shatters from above. Some black monstrous thing comes speeding at me. I leap through that apartment doorway in time to see ******* Smiley consumed by it. All sharp, all solid that beast slams into Smiley, screaming loud enough to wake this dead city twice over. Smiley thrashes, he splays out to the ground, the beast’s seared flesh erupting in front of me. A piece slices past my cheek and I’m on the ground in tears. I hear No Name scream an incomprehensible curse above. I’m bawling now. Through my tears I spot that chunk of flesh. ******* balsa wood. Thrice-cursed balsa wood.
No Name had thrown a piano out that barricaded window of his. Tears of pure comedy, that’s what left my face. A Smiley taken out by No Name, I’ll never live this down. His mangled body lies under polished wood. Someone’s yearly worth gone in a second of frantic panic, reduced to twisted wires and cracked ivory. To see something so beautiful destroyed in seconds makes me wonder if the Smiley had gotten the better of us after all.
That broad’s in shock. Splinters covered every inch of ground save that around her; looked like a comet, trailing emptiness behind.  Should have noticed it then that something wasn’t right with that scene. Perfectly unscathed beauty sitting there with not a single scratch nor splinter on her, but I was too **** amazed I was alive. Knelt close to her and caught a whiff of some exotic scent on her skin. Some flower. Saw her face and it added another colour to that filling canvas of mine. This pretty bird from the joint. The one men died for. At least No Name had saved one life worth saving, funny it happened to be the one who could take yours in a night.
Names elude me, but the way I remember her . . . the way I remember her is Blossom, for when she came into my life she gave colours to my black and white memory, colours I didn’t know existed, and my black and white morals took a turn down some dawning grey-blurred alley.
So I’m a ******* gentleman and I walk Blossom home while No Name shifts furniture above us. Scrapes of hard wood against wood, filling that void in his once impenetrable bastion. I told you No Name’s got it all planned out already. Guess I’m just here for the ride.

Your hands easy
weight, teasing the bees
hived in my hair, your smile at the
***** of my cheek. On the
occasion, you press
above me, glowing, spouting
readiness, mystery rapes
my reason

When you have withdrawn
your self and the magic, when
only the smell of your
love lingers between
my *******, then, only
then, can I greedily consume
your presence.

PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.

Blue Monday**
BY DIANE WAKOSKI
Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her *******  
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens  
hanging like tongues
over the fence of her dress
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips
and the moon breaking over her head a
gush of blood-red lizards.

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling  
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.

                     You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.  
                     I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name  
                     is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.

                     Monday is the first of the week,  
                     and I think of you all week.  
                     I beg Monday not to come  
                     so that I will not think of you  
                     all week.

You paint my body blue. On the balcony
in the softy muddy night, you paint me
with bat wings and the crystal
the crystal  
the crystal
the crystal in your arm cuts away
the night, folds back ebony whale skin  
and my face, the blue of new rifles,  
and my neck, the blue of Egypt,  
and my *******, the blue of sand,  
and my arms, bass-blue,
and my stomach, arsenic;

there is electricity dripping from me like cream;
there is love dripping from me I cannot use—like acacia or  
jacaranda—fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.

                         Love passed me in a blue business suit
                         and fedora.
                         His glass cane, hollow and filled with
                         sharks and whales ...  
                         He wore black
                         patent leather shoes
                         and had a mustache. His hair was so black
                         it was almost blue.

                         “Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.  
                         “Mr. Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.

                         So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street

                         Love passed me on the street in a blue  
                         business suit. He was a banker  
                         I could tell.

So blue trains rush by in my sleep.  
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paint cracks in my
arteries and sends titanium
floating into my bones.  
Blue liquid pours down
my poisoned throat and blue veins
rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip
and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.

If I could sing one last song
with water bubbling through my lips
I would sing with my throat torn open,
the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,  
and on my lips
I would balance volcanic rock
emptied out of my veins. At last
my children strained out
of my body. At last my blood
solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.  
It is blue.  
It is blue.

I met Neal Cassady last night in a waking dream sitting across from me with his back turned to the noise; the bar was loud. He repeatedly leaned forward and asking if I wanted a smoke.
        He looked just like Neal, talked like him. I hated and admired him just like I would the real Neal Cassady. His mind was incredible; beyond the worries of mortality, no thoughts or pains of hubris. He had the candor that I lacked only because I hadn't the nerve to jump first. When I asked him if he truly was the great Cassady, he stared at me from across the table with a wry smile; patted his breast pocket down, leaned back and said as he turned with precision out of his chair,
        "Let's go for a smoke".
        Such practiced determination, he was already outside before I had put on my coat. Of course I had no cigarettes of my own, he had expected me to bring one for the both of us. But I for one expected him to procure an entire carton by the time I was outside; one bent cigarette from every Saintly being at the bar.
        And what a bar! Great young gone gals; dressed in short skirts and long autumn coats; wool scarves around their necks and under chins beneath cold steel eyes. Ahh, forever young the white dresses and mistresses of the college bar.
        By the time I had opened the door and exhaled my first breath of the crisp night air, Neal was playing the part of locomotive engine with a German couple who were smoking and pretending to be Parisian. The three of them were standing in formation of a triangle on the edge of a stone staircase with a railing leading down into a steep lawn with Neal’s back facing the moon. It was all arranged in a perfect geometric mandala of overlapping Platonic solids.
        As I approached the cloud, Neal was recounting the tale of a nurse he had lain in the backseat of her father's station wagon in Nebraska in the heat of the afternoon sun. The German man was stocky and ill-dressed for the weather. He told me later that his name was Heinrich, but I did not believe him even though I knew he had nothing to hide. The woman whom I believed to be only his girlfriend told me, with a thick German accent, that her name was Deline. I believed her. She was well-dressed for the weather and smoking heavily; style is everything.
        "They've graciously offered to roll us a dozen", Neal expelled between great gusts of smoke, a boyish grin smeared on his face by the thousand red lips and wet ***** of passed consequence. Even in the light of a single lamppost coming through the haze that billowed forth from the three talking chimneys, I could still see a sheen in Neal's eye. The sort of sheen that implied hooliganisms. The sort of sheen you see before a person flies off the handle. The exact sheen you see before you wake up tomorrow in the late light of the afternoon, wondering who the Hell took your hand last night and jumped into total darkness with you. That is, if there was somebody around to take your hand.
        I liked Neal.
                He had a style about him that reminded me of a dark velvet curtain. Once you had passed through that curtain in your business casual attire, you witnessed the burgundy coloured stain of truth. There was no backpedaling after that; your chains would knot up and you would fall off the ride if you tried.
        The German couple looked around at their surroundings and the both of us with a degree of boredom. I had seen them earlier in the bar, they looked bored then too. Neither had spoken to the other once and I was beginning to feel like we were exasperating them.
        “Who cares? They offered to roll us a dozen” I thought. What did it matter how Neal got them to do it, they've offered twelve cigarettes and now they belong to us.
        Deline handed Neal and I six cigarettes each; they were magnificently rolled.
        “Goodbye, then! Thank you for your business”, Neal said and slid down the railing to the lawn below, lighting his cigarette mid-slide. I had just lit mine and started after him down the staircase. I turned around and spoke clumsily with a cigarette bobbing at the corner of my mouth,                      
        “Yes… thanks”, and left without another word.

        Neal walked with sporadic intensity; arms often stabbing out into the blanket of night; legs that would walk straight and stiff but then bent and fast with sudden changes as if he was preparing to spring off into the evening of speckled lampposts and smoke. His head bobbed West to East, North to South, and all Axis’ between X, Y and Z. The more I stared at this character whom I called Neal the more I thought of him as an illusion of my own delusions. When I had finished that thought, Neal had spun around and laughed a good hearty and honest laugh; he seemed to have read my mind and proceeded to flick the space between by eyebrows with his thumb and *******. The pain was real enough. This Neal must be real, unless I had gone full mad with lunacy. We blasted off down the avenue which connected the college bar to the dormitories and the library after that.
        Beyond the avenue laid the cozy valley of goodnight downtown with all it’s lights of sodium pearls below and us upon the hill top looking down with eager intensity. Neal gave another rounded laugh and stared with mad eyes above my head and pointed straight up into the sky at Sirius.
        “Tonight, yes yes, we go out. Not just out, my dear friend, but up. Yes yes, to the great up-and-over. Beyond the next stop we absolutely must climb.”

         I don’t know what mad beast had possessed me that evening but I followed this ghost; this great memory of romantic America into the heart of the infinite night.
        “Good gal Deline”, said Neal

        “Who?” I replied
        “Nimble fingers, strong hands for the German working class” he said, “Great gone gal. Good gal. Fine gal by all standards of beauty and sleek german ingenuity”
        “Hmm”, I responded inhaling my cigarette deeply. The Germans were just fine at rolling, but the tobacco was all American. It was harder and harder for me to physically keep up with Neal. He kept speeding off sporadically twenty feet in front of me, sometimes stopping and spouting at young folks asking for cigarettes. 

        “But you’ve already got one” They would say

        “Yes yes, but it’s for when I’m not smoking one is why I want one”, Neal would answer as he trailed off further and further down the road. They thought he was mad, but they all smiled nonetheless.

        My curiosity was brimming. Who was this mad man? Who was this loon impersonator of the American night? I could not stand by my idle silence and unquestioning.
        “What’s the plan tonight?”, I asked

        “What plan? No good plan. Only great plan and great plain rising higher and higher and we will be up all night but on top of the world for we must climb up and up forever until we can climb no more, and then after we can climb no more then we must climb a little further for life itself is nothing more than an infinite climb ever higher and why not get there faster than all the rest?”

        I had stopped walking and Neal’s voice echoed and vibrated the walls of the stairs between the library and the meal hall. His voice was like that of mountain that had slid beneath the ground reborn into an endless peak above.
“Jailbird Cassidy. Great bellowing Cassidy all energy and no direction, but getting there in no time just the same Cassidy”, I thought to myself.
“I trust you Neal”, I had said out loud.
“Not yet! First great big night time breakfast for you and me, for one can not climb without a good energy and good rounded stomach digested of food and stories.”

I'm not a writer... Or anything resembling that
I am just me... Sharing my words picked out from life's hat

I can't find the most accurate to say
So letters I dabble in various permutations
Layers of letters turn into words and come to play
Could call them journals, these text-laden creations

But I'm not a writer... Or anything resembling that
I am just me... Penning the words picked out of life's hat

I'm not a poet... Or anything mimicking that
I am just me... Relating experiences out of life's hat

I can't conjure poems... About anything or everything
Can't use my words to incite or inspire
These are just ideas and I just like rhyming
They are just experiences that fuel my fire

But I'm not a poet... Or anything mimicking that
I am just me...  Spouting rhymes out of life's hat

I'm not an artist... Or anything pretending to be that
I am just me... Drawing scenes from life's hat

I can't sketch a portrait with a simple pencil
Can't put together an installation and call it art
I can paint fairly well; of which I have done several
I can draw out emotions and depictions from the heart

But I'm not an artist... Or anything pretending to be that
I am just me... Producing paintings out of life's hat

I'm not a musician.. Or anything fantastic like that
I am just me... Playing melodies from life's hat

I don't have the quality of voice to match that of a crooner
I can't play instruments that could earn a place in a band
I can sing in key without the help of a tuner
I enjoy music best with a guitar in my hands

But I'm not a musician.. Or anything fantastic like that
I am just me... Singing songs from life's hat

I'm not a writer, poet, musician or an artist...
I do a little of everything, not excelling at any one title
Although I wish to have everything clenched in one fist
All I ever really do is just dabble....

Lately I've been a little moody
I get triggered by comments made
on a video or a tweet or the supposed
leader of our nation spouting his views
on ****** assault victims....

The real victims....men and boys that
are being accused of a horrible act
Innocent yet treated like they're guilty.
Please, don't get me wrong.
Being falsely accused is terrible.
Any one guilty of it should be held liable.

But, after all of the victims, women and men alike
coming forward to tell their stories, he speaks on
behalf of the accused.....Am I stupid for being angry?
What really disappoints me are the people that get upset
when women react to such insensitive views.
They tweet or comment and I try to have conversations
with these people and end up screaming into a pillow!

I walk away wondering if it's worth my time to make
my point of view understood.  
Will I ever change any ones mind?
It's the black lives matter vs all lives matter struggles
all over again!
The argument of should players stand for the anthem!

Why don't people understand that saying black lives matter
doesn't mean ONLY black lives matter, it's a way of saying
Please remember!!!  Black lives matter TOO!  Stop the hate!!!
People of color are being discriminated against and we are tired.
So finally a man decides to protest by calmly taking  knee during the anthem aaaaannnd......here HE comes to manipulate the meaning of it all and makes it about disrespecting the flag and
our troops.  

And don't even get me started on gay rights!  To be treated like
second class citizens is ludicrous!  How fantastically absurd to
be told by your own government that you cannot marry the
person you love! And because life has to be just a little more
unfair the LGBTQ community are at high risk for ******
assault and hate crimes too!    

I realize none of this is new....I guess the Kavanaugh hearing
triggered me and I can't seem to get it off my mind.  I heard
Dr. Ford's testimony and watched as so many people, including
the man himself, come with more and more ****** excuses
and a half *** investigation and in the end he sits on the supreme court any way.  

I'll do my duty....I'll use my voice and vote, but I live in a red
state and I know it's an up hill battle.  One that may be lost.
But I've said my piece.  If you've read through it all, thank you.
If you agree with me, keep fighting. If you don't, I respect your
opinion, but I'll never understand it.

ALL I can give you is broken-face gargoyles.
It is too early to sing and dance at funerals,
Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you don't.
  
Fish to swim a pool in your garden flashing a speckled silver,
A basket of wine-saps filling your room with flame-dark for your eyes and the tang of valley orchards for your nose,
Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I cannot bring you now.
It is too early and I am not footloose yet.
  
I shall come in the night when I come with a hammer and saw.
I shall come near your window, where you look out when your eyes open in the morning,
And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird-baths for wing-loose wrens and hummers to live in, birds with yellow wing tips to blur and buzz soft all summer,
So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always open doors for all and each to run away when they want to.
I shall come just like that even though now it is early and I am not yet footloose,
Even though I am still looking for an undertaker with a raw, wind-bitten face and a dance in his feet.
I make a date with you (put it down) for six o'clock in the evening a thousand years from now.
  
All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles.
All I can give you now is a double gorilla head with two fish mouths and four eagle eyes hooked on a street wall, spouting water and looking two ways to the ends of the street for the new people, the young strangers, coming, coming, always coming.
  
It is early.
I shall yet be footloose.

You were the star that watched me,
twinkling in a vast dim space;
You were the candle in the middle of the room,
sending wisps of smoke in air.

You built a pathway for the microchip,
directing energies from place to place;
You weaved your words into my mind
and left with an unfinished blanket.

The moon was still up in the midst of the day,
the clouds are spouting rainbows as rain.
The years have passed, this flower has not bloomed
Will this ever be the day I awaited?

When they stripped me of the life in my bones
I looked to the stars,
and plucked the moon from its perch
with my lips.
And the rage in their fists
tried to pry it from my skull.
But they cannot win.
They may look down on us with their
hollow eyes that can do nothing but weep,
and their hungry mouths that spit ash.
But I know what hope is.
And They don't.
No matter how many times I am beaten
I swear that the birds that sing in my chest
will always be louder than them.
Tell me what holy is,
and I will tell you of the love in my veins.
Tell me why you hate so much,
and I will tear it apart with my shame.
I will split the night open with my words.
I will sweep up the ashes with my rage.
They cannot win.
Not when your eyes look through me like that.
And while you sew together my wings,
tell me of the love letters that God left
on your windowsill.
Tell me of the fists that left those scars.
When they finally bring me to the gallows,
make sure that the noose is made
from the strings of guitars.
Carve my spine into the heart of a tree.
Spread my ashes over the lips of the sea.
Tell me what holy is.
And I will take you to that river full of sin.
I will write my poetry in the snow with my bones.
Tell me where Gabriel is.
And I will clean the blood from his crippled wings.
I will be an immovable sky.
The mouth of the river that never ceases to sing.
They'll separate us with razor wire,
but a few cuts won't hold me back.
They'll scream at us with their empty taboos.
But the paintings I've got tattooed on my ribs
aren't black and white like their words.
I'm done hiding my heartbeat.
I want to taste the words that come off my tongue,
to paint with the dirt beneath my nails.
Say my obituary was written like a poem.
So that when God greets me at his gates,
he will tell me that I was alive.
That I wasn't empty like Them.
But I'm tired.
And I've walked one too many miles in my
own shoes.
But it's impossible to stop,
when you've got wings flapping in your chest,
and a heart that burns like a lantern.
Remember me like this.
Spouting words from the darkest corners
of my soul.
Words that stick to you like a lover's kiss.
It's a song.
A manifesto.
An epitaph that will stay burned in your eyes
until you blink away the tears.
I'll keep walking if you just carry me
on your back for a few short steps.
A couple of shallow breaths.
Just let me rest.
So that the next words that come out of
my mouth will be “I love you”.
And you'll see that the bruises on my back
are the notes of music.
Tell me what holy is.
So I can tell you why I keep moving.
So I can spread these wings you've built for me,
with the skin I've shed
and my broken bones.
And I'll teach you how to fly too.
Because life has no rhythm
unless you give it a beat.
Tell me what holy is.
And remember
that we
are not.

queer creature of white stone:
the spirit of the island in the head of this lion,
the soul of the natives in the body of this fish,
spirit and soul, lion and fish, mingle together by
mere wry humour of evolution’s word

we revere this beast, (it watches over us
from nine metres above), we bow down our backs,
(worship it as our exemplar): for many of us,
unknowingly, we emulate the spirit and soul
of this queer white creation of stone.

standing tall (unshaken!) even as jaundice bolts of heaven’s
creep tip-toed behind its scales and strike:
its cemented steadfastness of stone we emulate,
for through the towering grey waves of crisis, and
the threatening dark clouds that foretell our very fears,
we too, have floated and transcended and appeared
unscathed.

mutated monster – child of bad genes,
they despise such unfavourable antagonistic features
(shall it rule like a lion or flail like a fish?):
its unlikeliness of surviving, of thriving we emulate:
for this dotted smudge of red pen ink on the globe,
destined to bow down to fate – bowed down not, and
flourished.

beams of white water spouting out in a
perfect shape of a quadrant’s circumference, endlessly,
its majestic spewing action we emulate:
this island of expectations, sterile smell of success,
fate of our future in the setting of an exam hall,
(in there do you not think we resemble the merlion,
our mouths the hoses, the papers our well?)

but, oh, the merlion – so many of it –
the merlions, same-maned, same-scaled,
fluttering and bursting with imitation across our home:
such congruity, conformity we emulate:
for years of yearning to swim in the mainstream waters,
of being goldfish, instead of losing the waters for flight like flying fish,
have made us very much, about
the same.

queer creature of white stone:
do you see not how we resemble your very self,
how we offer you praise (by
lifting our human arms, arching on our mere knees,
hoisting our lowly mortal heads, surveying your colossal royalty,
camera in hand)?

‘There’s definitely a story here’, she said that evening over the telephone. They’d been sitting in Trevelyan Square in Leeds. He’d brought a picnic lunch so they could sit in the sun. When he arrived at the station she wasn’t wearing her glasses and he thought, I only see her like this in bed or . . . and he stopped that thought immediately because she looked so very lovely and he knew he would only have a couple of hours as her companion before work and children reclaimed them both. They’d sat on a bench eating his salad confection, apricots and nectarines. They forgot about the rock buns he’d baked the night before. Just in front of them sat four hounds, four stone hounds with staring eyes and  very large paws sitting in a circle, four Talbot Hounds with water gushing from their mouths, four just larger than life-size handsome hounds commissioned by Joseph Edwards for the courtyard of his mansion at Castle Carr and, when the house was demolished in the 1940s, had disappeared. The hounds turned up in the 1970s in a stone-mason’s yard and an enterprising architect – building the Open University’s northern HQ - bought them for Trevelyan Square. As he sat there, with the water-spouting dogs, it was only her gracious, lovely self that occupied his attention. Why does she captivate me so ?, he thought. Why do I always feel with her like I did as a teenager, so unsure of myself, so overwhelmed by the female presence (he thought as he wrote this how often that word overwhelm came to mind when he wrote of her, and so checked the Thesaurus . . . hmm. Besieged, snowed-under, inundated, beleaguered, weighed down, beset? No, overwhelm was the only word he decided – she whelmed him over as a wave rises up and cresting falls and turns and rolls the swimmer beneath it.). It was, he considered, her femininity that was so particular and just embodied everything he’d ever dreamed and fantasized a woman might be, could be for him. He knew he’d thought and written of this aspect so often, and yet today, here with the sandstone dogs, there was a intensity, a vividness enlivening his senses. Without her glasses he could see the lines, indeed a shadow of fatigue, under her eyes, simply too much time with the computer perhaps. So she looked older, always wiser, and oh the joy of her freckles, the faint down on her cheek. And when, later, saying goodbye, he didn’t just kiss her gently as a good friend would do in a very public place, but brought her to him in an embrace that something outside of his usual careful manner required. He had hugged her with a passion and a joy and sadness all in one. On the train, a text, and he had suddenly to hide his tears that it could be so. He would write about those hounds . . .

The library is a quiet, empty cave where voices echo like ghosts in a gymnasium.

Laughter.

You can feel the history here, both in the dusty tomes and the architectural nod to the Roman coliseum.

Strange visitors of which I am numbered as I stand here spouting poor poetry on my phone.

Enough.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”

A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
    Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
    Lies desert in thy brain.

When first my father settled here,
    ’Twas then the frontier line:
The panther’s scream, filled night with fear
    And bears preyed on the swine.

But woe for Bruin’s short lived fun,
    When rose the squealing cry;
Now man and horse, with dog and gun,
    For vengeance, at him fly.

A sound of danger strikes his ear;
    He gives the breeze a *****;
Away he bounds, with little fear,
    And seeks the tangled rough.

On press his foes, and reach the ground,
    Where’s left his half munched meal;
The dogs, in circles, scent around,
    And find his fresh made trail.

With instant cry, away they dash,
    And men as fast pursue;
O’er logs they leap, through water splash,
    And shout the brisk halloo.

Now to elude the eager pack,
    Bear shuns the open ground;
Through matted vines, he shapes his track
    And runs it, round and round.

The tall fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice,
    Now speeds him, as the wind;
While half-grown pup, and short-legged ****,
    Are yelping far behind.

And fresh recruits are dropping in
    To join the merry corps:
With yelp and yell,—a mingled din—
    The woods are in a roar.

And round, and round the chace now goes,
    The world’s alive with fun;
Nick Carter’s horse, his rider throws,
    And more, Hill drops his gun.

Now sorely pressed, bear glances back,
    And lolls his tired tongue;
When as, to force him from his track,
    An ambush on him sprung.

Across the glade he sweeps for flight,
    And fully is in view.
The dogs, new-fired, by the sight,
    Their cry, and speed, renew.

The foremost ones, now reach his rear,
    He turns, they dash away;
And circling now, the wrathful bear,
    They have him full at bay.

At top of speed, the horse-men come,
    All screaming in a row,
“Whoop! Take him Tiger. Seize him Drum.”
    Bang,—bang—the rifles go.

And furious now, the dogs he tears,
    And crushes in his ire,
Wheels right and left, and upward rears,
    With eyes of burning fire.

But leaden death is at his heart,
    Vain all the strength he plies.
And, spouting blood from every part,
    He reels, and sinks, and dies.

And now a dinsome clamor rose,
    ’Bout who should have his skin;
Who first draws blood, each hunter knows,
    This prize must always win.

But who did this, and how to trace
    What’s true from what’s a lie,
Like lawyers, in a ****** case
    They stoutly argufy.

Aforesaid ****, of blustering mood,
    Behind, and quite forgot,
Just now emerging from the wood,
    Arrives upon the spot.

With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair—
    Brim full of ***** and wrath,
He growls, and seizes on dead bear,
    And shakes for life and death.

And swells as if his skin would tear,
    And growls and shakes again;
And swears, as plain as dog can swear,
    That he has won the skin.

Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee—
    Nor mind, that now a few
Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be,
    Conceited quite as you.

Then Pallas Minerva put valour into the heart of Diomed, son of
Tydeus, that he might excel all the other Argives, and cover himself
with glory. She made a stream of fire flare from his shield and helmet
like the star that shines most brilliantly in summer after its bath in
the waters of Oceanus—even such a fire did she kindle upon his head
and shoulders as she bade him speed into the thickest hurly-burly of
the fight.
  Now there was a certain rich and honourable man among the Trojans,
priest of Vulcan, and his name was Dares. He had two sons, Phegeus and
Idaeus, both of them skilled in all the arts of war. These two came
forward from the main body of Trojans, and set upon Diomed, he being
on foot, while they fought from their chariot. When they were close up
to one another, Phegeus took aim first, but his spear went over
Diomed’s left shoulder without hitting him. Diomed then threw, and his
spear sped not in vain, for it hit Phegeus on the breast near the
******, and he fell from his chariot. Idaeus did not dare to
bestride his brother’s body, but sprang from the chariot and took to
flight, or he would have shared his brother’s fate; whereon Vulcan
saved him by wrapping him in a cloud of darkness, that his old
father might not be utterly overwhelmed with grief; but the son of
Tydeus drove off with the horses, and bade his followers take them
to the ships. The Trojans were scared when they saw the two sons of
Dares, one of them in fright and the other lying dead by his
chariot. Minerva, therefore, took Mars by the hand and said, “Mars,
Mars, bane of men, bloodstained stormer of cities, may we not now
leave the Trojans and Achaeans to fight it out, and see to which of
the two Jove will vouchsafe the victory? Let us go away, and thus
avoid his anger.”
  So saying, she drew Mars out of the battle, and set him down upon
the steep banks of the Scamander. Upon this the Danaans drove the
Trojans back, and each one of their chieftains killed his man. First
King Agamemnon flung mighty Odius, captain of the Halizoni, from his
chariot. The spear of Agamemnon caught him on the broad of his back,
just as he was turning in flight; it struck him between the
shoulders and went right through his chest, and his armour rang
rattling round him as he fell heavily to the ground.
  Then Idomeneus killed Phaesus, son of Borus the Meonian, who had
come from Varne. Mighty Idomeneus speared him on the right shoulder as
he was mounting his chariot, and the darkness of death enshrouded
him as he fell heavily from the car.
  The squires of Idomeneus spoiled him of his armour, while
Menelaus, son of Atreus, killed Scamandrius the son of Strophius, a
mighty huntsman and keen lover of the chase. Diana herself had
taught him ******* every kind of wild creature that is bred in
mountain forests, but neither she nor his famed skill in archery could
now save him, for the spear of Menelaus struck him in the back as he
was flying; it struck him between the shoulders and went right through
his chest, so that he fell headlong and his armour rang rattling round
him.
  Meriones then killed Phereclus the son of Tecton, who was the son of
Hermon, a man whose hand was skilled in all manner of cunning
workmanship, for Pallas Minerva had dearly loved him. He it was that
made the ships for Alexandrus, which were the beginning of all
mischief, and brought evil alike both on the Trojans and on Alexandrus
himself; for he heeded not the decrees of heaven. Meriones overtook
him as he was flying, and struck him on the right buttock. The point
of the spear went through the bone into the bladder, and death came
upon him as he cried aloud and fell forward on his knees.
  Meges, moreover, slew Pedaeus, son of Antenor, who, though he was
a *******, had been brought up by Theano as one of her own children,
for the love she bore her husband. The son of Phyleus got close up
to him and drove a spear into the nape of his neck: it went under
his tongue all among his teeth, so he bit the cold bronze, and fell
dead in the dust.
  And Eurypylus, son of Euaemon, killed Hypsenor, the son of noble
Dolopion, who had been made priest of the river Scamander, and was
honoured among the people as though he were a god. Eurypylus gave
him chase as he was flying before him, smote him with his sword upon
the arm, and lopped his strong hand from off it. The ****** hand
fell to the ground, and the shades of death, with fate that no man can
withstand, came over his eyes.
  Thus furiously did the battle rage between them. As for the son of
Tydeus, you could not say whether he was more among the Achaeans or
the Trojans. He rushed across the plain like a winter torrent that has
burst its barrier in full flood; no *****, no walls of fruitful
vineyards can embank it when it is swollen with rain from heaven,
but in a moment it comes tearing onward, and lays many a field waste
that many a strong man hand has reclaimed—even so were the dense
phalanxes of the Trojans driven in rout by the son of Tydeus, and many
though they were, they dared not abide his onslaught.
  Now when the son of Lycaon saw him scouring the plain and driving
the Trojans pell-mell before him, he aimed an arrow and hit the
front part of his cuirass near the shoulder: the arrow went right
through the metal and pierced the flesh, so that the cuirass was
covered with blood. On this the son of Lycaon shouted in triumph,
“Knights Trojans, come on; the bravest of the Achaeans is wounded, and
he will not hold out much longer if King Apollo was indeed with me
when I sped from Lycia hither.”
  Thus did he vaunt; but his arrow had not killed Diomed, who withdrew
and made for the chariot and horses of Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus.
“Dear son of Capaneus,” said he, “come down from your chariot, and
draw the arrow out of my shoulder.”
  Sthenelus sprang from his chariot, and drew the arrow from the
wound, whereon the blood came spouting out through the hole that had
been made in his shirt. Then Diomed prayed, saying, “Hear me, daughter
of aegis-bearing Jove, unweariable, if ever you loved my father well
and stood by him in the thick of a fight, do the like now by me; grant
me to come within a spear’s throw of that man and **** him. He has
been too quick for me and has wounded me; and now he is boasting
that I shall not see the light of the sun much longer.”
  Thus he prayed, and Pallas Minerva heard him; she made his limbs
supple and quickened his hands and his feet. Then she went up close to
him and said, “Fear not, Diomed, to do battle with the Trojans, for
I have set in your heart the spirit of your knightly father Tydeus.
Moreover, I have withdrawn the veil from your eyes, that you know gods
and men apart. If, then, any other god comes here and offers you
battle, do not fight him; but should Jove’s daughter Venus come,
strike her with your spear and wound her.”
  When she had said this Minerva went away, and the son of Tydeus
again took his place among the foremost fighters, three times more
fierce even than he had been before. He was like a lion that some
mountain shepherd has wounded, but not killed, as he is springing over
the wall of a sheep-yard to attack the sheep. The shepherd has
roused the brute to fury but cannot defend his flock, so he takes
shelter under cover of the buildings, while the sheep,
panic-stricken on being deserted, are smothered in heaps one on top of
the other, and the angry lion leaps out over the sheep-yard wall. Even
thus did Diomed go furiously about among the Trojans.
  He killed Astynous, and shepherd of his people, the one with a
****** of his spear, which struck him above the ******, the other with
a sword—cut on the collar-bone, that severed his shoulder from his
neck and back. He let both of them lie, and went in pursuit of Abas
and Polyidus, sons of the old reader of dreams Eurydamas: they never
came back for him to read them any more dreams, for mighty Diomed made
an end of them. He then gave chase to Xanthus and Thoon, the two
sons of Phaenops, both of them very dear to him, for he was now worn
out with age, and begat no more sons to inherit his possessions. But
Diomed took both their lives and left their father sorrowing bitterly,
for he nevermore saw them come home from battle alive, and his kinsmen
divided his wealth among themselves.
  Then he came upon two sons of Priam, Echemmon and Chromius, as
they were both in one chariot. He sprang upon them as a lion fastens
on the neck of some cow or heifer when the herd is feeding in a
coppice. For all their vain struggles he flung them both from their
chariot and stripped the armour from their bodies. Then he gave
their horses to his comrades to take them back to the ships.
  When Aeneas saw him thus making havoc among the ranks, he went
through the fight amid the rain of spears to see if he could find
Pandarus. When he had found the brave son of Lycaon he said,
“Pandarus, where is now your bow, your winged arrows, and your
renown as an archer, in respect of which no man here can rival you nor
is there any in Lycia that can beat you? Lift then your hands to
Jove and send an arrow at this fellow who is going so masterfully
about, and has done such deadly work among the Trojans. He has
killed many a brave man—unless indeed he is some god who is angry
with the Trojans about their sacrifices, and and has set his hand
against them in his displeasure.”
  And the son of Lycaon answered, “Aeneas, I take him for none other
than the son of Tydeus. I know him by his shield, the visor of his
helmet, and by his horses. It is possible that he may be a god, but if
he is the man I say he is, he is not making all this havoc without
heaven’s help, but has some god by his side who is shrouded in a cloud
of darkness, and who turned my arrow aside when it had hit him. I have
taken aim at him already and hit him on the right shoulder; my arrow
went through the breastpiece of his cuirass; and I made sure I
should send him hurrying to the world below, but it seems that I
have not killed him. There must be a god who is angry with me.
Moreover I have neither horse nor chariot. In my father’s stables
there are eleven excellent chariots, fresh from the builder, quite
new, with cloths spread over them; and by each of them there stand a
pair of horses, champing barley and rye; my old father Lycaon urged me
again and again when I was at home and on the point of starting, to
take chariots and horses with me that I might lead the Trojans in
battle, but I would not listen to him; it would have been much
better if I had done so, but I was thinking about the horses, which
had been used to eat their fill, and I was afraid that in such a great
gathering of men they might be ill-fed, so I left them at home and
came on foot to Ilius armed only with my bow and arrows. These it
seems, are of no use, for I have already hit two chieftains, the
sons of Atreus and of Tydeus, and though I drew blood surely enough, I
have only made them still more furious. I did ill to take my bow
down from its peg on the day I led my band of Trojans to Ilius in
Hector’s service, and if ever I get home again to set eyes on my
native place, my wife, and the greatness of my house, may some one cut
my head off then and there if I do not break the bow and set it on a
hot fire—such pranks as it plays me.”
  Aeneas answered, “Say no more. Things will not mend till we two go
against this man with chariot and horses and bring him to a trial of
arms. Mount my chariot, and note how cleverly the horses of Tros can
speed hither and thither over the plain in pursuit or flight. If
Jove again vouchsafes glory to the son of Tydeus they will carry us
safely back to the city. Take hold, then, of the whip and reins
while I stand upon the car to fight, or else do you wait this man’s
onset while I look after the horses.”
  “Aeneas.” replied the son of Lycaon, “take the reins and drive; if
we have to fly before the son of Tydeus the horses will go better
for their own driver. If they miss the sound of your voice when they
expect it they may be frightened, and refuse to take us out of the
fight. The son of Tydeus will then **** both of us and take the
horses. Therefore drive them yourself and I will be ready for him with
my spear.”
  They then mounted the chariot and drove full-speed towards the son
of Tydeus. Sthenelus, son of Capaneus, saw them coming and said to
Diomed, “Diomed, son of Tydeus, man after my own heart, I see two
heroes speeding towards you, both of them men of might the one a
skilful archer, Pandarus son of Lycaon, the other, Aeneas, whose
sire is Anchises, while his mother is Venus. Mount the chariot and let
us retreat. Do not, I pray you, press so furiously forward, or you may
get killed.”
  Diomed looked angrily at him and answered: “Talk not of flight,
for I shall not listen to you: I am of a race that knows neither
flight nor fear, and my limbs are as yet unwearied. I am in no mind to
mount, but will go against them even as I am; Pallas Minerva bids me
be afraid of no man, and even though one of them escape, their
steeds shall not take both back again. I say further, and lay my
saying to your heart—if Minerva sees fit to vouchsafe me the glory of
killing both, stay your horses here and make the reins fast to the rim
of the chariot; then be sure you spring Aeneas’ horses and drive
them from the Trojan to the Achaean ranks. They are of the stock
that great Jove gave to Tros in payment for his son Ganymede, and
are the finest that live and move under the sun. King Anchises stole
the blood by putting his mares to them without Laomedon’s knowledge,
and they bore him six foals. Four are still in his stables, but he
gave the other two to Aeneas. We shall win great glory if we can
take them.”
  Thus did they converse, but the other two had now driven close up to
them, and the son of Lycaon spoke first. “Great and mighty son,”
said he, “of noble Tydeus, my arrow failed to lay you low, so I will
now try with my spear.”
  He poised his spear as he spoke and hurled it from him. It struck
the shield of the son of Tydeus; the bronze point pierced it and
passed on till it reached the breastplate. Thereon the son of Lycaon
shouted out and said, “You are hit clean through the belly; you will
not stand out for long, and the glory of the fight is mine.”
  But Diomed all undismayed made answer, “You have missed, not hit,
and before you two see the end of this matter one or other of you
shall glut tough-shielded Mars with his blood.”
  With this he hurled his spear, and Minerva guided it on to
Pandarus’s nose near the eye. It went crashing in among his white
teeth; the bronze point cut through the root of his to tongue,
coming out under his chin, and his glistening armour rang rattling
round him as he fell heavily to the ground. The horses started aside
for fear, and he was reft of life and strength.
  Aeneas sprang from his chariot armed with shield and spear,
fearing lest the Achaeans should carry off the body. He bestrode it as
a lion in the pride of strength, with shield and on spear before him
and a cry of battle on his lips resolute to **** the first that should
dare face him. But the son of Tydeus caught up a mighty stone, so huge
and great that as men now are it would take two to lift it;
nevertheless he bore it aloft with ease unaided, and with this he
struck Aeneas on the groin where the hip turns in the joint that is
called the “cup-bone.” The stone crushed this joint, and broke both
the sinews, while its jagged edges tore away all the flesh. The hero
fell on his knees, and propped himself with his hand resting on the
ground till the darkness of night fell upon his eyes. And now
Aeneas, king of men, would have perished then and there, had not his
mother, Jove’s daughter Venus, who had conceived him by Anchises
when he was herding cattle, been quick to mark, and thrown her two
white arms about the body of her dear son. She protected him by
covering him with a fold of her own fair garment, lest some Danaan
should drive a spear into his breast and **** him.
  Thus, then, did she bear her dear son out of the fight. But

Ye martial pow’rs, and all ye tuneful nine,
Inspire my song, and aid my high design.
The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write,
The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight:
You best remember, and you best can sing
The acts of heroes to the vocal string:
Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre,
Did then the poet and the sage inspire.
  Now front to front the armies were display’d,
Here Israel rang’d, and there the foes array’d;
The hosts on two opposing mountains stood,
Thick as the foliage of the waving wood;
Between them an extensive valley lay,
O’er which the gleaming armour pour’d the day,
When from the camp of the Philistine foes,
Dreadful to view, a mighty warrior rose;
In the dire deeds of bleeding battle skill’d,
The monster stalks the terror of the field.
From Gath he sprung, Goliath was his name,
Of fierce deportment, and gigantic frame:
A brazen helmet on his head was plac’d,
A coat of mail his form terrific grac’d,
The greaves his legs, the targe his shoulders prest:
Dreadful in arms high-tow’ring o’er the rest
A spear he proudly wav’d, whose iron head,
Strange to relate, six hundred shekels weigh’d;
He strode along, and shook the ample field,
While Phoebus blaz’d refulgent on his shield:
Through Jacob’s race a chilling horror ran,
When thus the huge, enormous chief began:
  “Say, what the cause that in this proud array
“You set your battle in the face of day?
“One hero find in all your vaunting train,
“Then see who loses, and who wins the plain;
“For he who wins, in triumph may demand
“Perpetual service from the vanquish’d land:
“Your armies I defy, your force despise,
“By far inferior in Philistia’s eyes:
“Produce a man, and let us try the fight,
“Decide the contest, and the victor’s right.”
  Thus challeng’d he: all Israel stood amaz’d,
And ev’ry chief in consternation gaz’d;
But Jesse’s son in youthful bloom appears,
And warlike courage far beyond his years:
He left the folds, he left the flow’ry meads,
And soft recesses of the sylvan shades.
Now Israel’s monarch, and his troops arise,
With peals of shouts ascending to the skies;
In Elah’s vale the scene of combat lies.
  When the fair morning blush’d with orient red,
What David’s fire enjoin’d the son obey’d,
And swift of foot towards the trench he came,
Where glow’d each ***** with the martial flame.
He leaves his carriage to another’s care,
And runs to greet his brethren of the war.
While yet they spake the giant-chief arose,
Repeats the challenge, and insults his foes:
Struck with the sound, and trembling at the view,
Affrighted Israel from its post withdrew.
“Observe ye this tremendous foe, they cry’d,
“Who in proud vaunts our armies hath defy’d:
“Whoever lays him prostrate on the plain,
“Freedom in Israel for his house shall gain;
“And on him wealth unknown the king will pour,
“And give his royal daughter for his dow’r.”
  Then Jesse’s youngest hope: “My brethren say,
“What shall be done for him who takes away
“Reproach from Jacob, who destroys the chief.
“And puts a period to his country’s grief.
“He vaunts the honours of his arms abroad,
“And scorns the armies of the living God.”
  Thus spoke the youth, th’ attentive people ey’d
The wond’rous hero, and again reply’d:
“Such the rewards our monarch will bestow,
“On him who conquers, and destroys his foe.”
  Eliab heard, and kindled into ire
To hear his shepherd brother thus inquire,
And thus begun: “What errand brought thee? say
“Who keeps thy flock? or does it go astray?
“I know the base ambition of thine heart,
“But back in safety from the field depart.”
  Eliab thus to Jesse’s youngest heir,
Express’d his wrath in accents most severe.
When to his brother mildly he reply’d.
“What have I done? or what the cause to chide?
  The words were told before the king, who sent
For the young hero to his royal tent:
Before the monarch dauntless he began,
“For this Philistine fail no heart of man:
“I’ll take the vale, and with the giant fight:
“I dread not all his boasts, nor all his might.”
When thus the king: “Dar’st thou a stripling go,
“And venture combat with so great a foe?
“Who all his days has been inur’d to fight,
“And made its deeds his study and delight:
“Battles and bloodshed brought the monster forth,
“And clouds and whirlwinds usher’d in his birth.”
When David thus: “I kept the fleecy care,
“And out there rush’d a lion and a bear;
“A tender lamb the hungry lion took,
“And with no other weapon than my crook
“Bold I pursu’d, and chas d him o’er the field,
“The prey deliver’d, and the felon ****’d:
“As thus the lion and the bear I slew,
“So shall Goliath fall, and all his crew:
“The God, who sav’d me from these beasts of prey,
“By me this monster in the dust shall lay.”
So David spoke.  The wond’ring king reply’d;
“Go thou with heav’n and victory on thy side:
“This coat of mail, this sword gird on,” he said,
And plac’d a mighty helmet on his head:
The coat, the sword, the helm he laid aside,
Nor chose to venture with those arms untry’d,
Then took his staff, and to the neighb’ring brook
Instant he ran, and thence five pebbles took.
Mean time descended to Philistia’s son
A radiant cherub, and he thus begun:
“Goliath, well thou know’st thou hast defy’d
“Yon Hebrew armies, and their God deny’d:
“Rebellious wretch! audacious worm! forbear,
“Nor tempt the vengeance of their God too far:
“Them, who with his Omnipotence contend,
“No eye shall pity, and no arm defend:
“Proud as thou art, in short liv’d glory great,
“I come to tell thee thine approaching fate.
“Regard my words.  The Judge of all the gods,
“Beneath whose steps the tow’ring mountain nods,
“Will give thine armies to the savage brood,
“That cut the liquid air, or range the wood.
“Thee too a well-aim’d pebble shall destroy,
“And thou shalt perish by a beardless boy:
“Such is the mandate from the realms above,
“And should I try the vengeance to remove,
“Myself a rebel to my king would prove.
“Goliath say, shall grace to him be shown,
“Who dares heav’ns Monarch, and insults his throne?”
  “Your words are lost on me,” the giant cries,
While fear and wrath contended in his eyes,
When thus the messenger from heav’n replies:
“Provoke no more Jehovah’s awful hand
“To hurl its vengeance on thy guilty land:
“He grasps the thunder, and, he wings the storm,
“Servants their sov’reign’s orders to perform.”
  The angel spoke, and turn’d his eyes away,
Adding new radiance to the rising day.
  Now David comes: the fatal stones demand
His left, the staff engag’d his better hand:
The giant mov’d, and from his tow’ring height
Survey’d the stripling, and disdain’d the fight,
And thus began: “Am I a dog with thee?
“Bring’st thou no armour, but a staff to me?
“The gods on thee their vollied curses pour,
“And beasts and birds of prey thy flesh devour.”
  David undaunted thus, “Thy spear and shield
“Shall no protection to thy body yield:
“Jehovah’s name———no other arms I bear,
“I ask no other in this glorious war.
“To-day the Lord of Hosts to me will give
“Vict’ry, to-day thy doom thou shalt receive;
“The fate you threaten shall your own become,
“And beasts shall be your animated tomb,
“That all the earth’s inhabitants may know
“That there’s a God, who governs all below:
“This great assembly too shall witness stand,
“That needs nor sword, nor spear, th’ Almighty’s
  hand:
“The battle his, the conquest he bestows,
“And to our pow’r consigns our hated foes.”
  Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came
To meet the hero in the field of fame.
Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee,
But thou wast deaf to the divine decree;
Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain;
’Tis thine to perish on th’ ensanguin’d plain.
  And now the youth the forceful pebble slung
Philistia trembled as it whizz’d along:
In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends,
Just o’er the brows the well-aim’d stone descends,
It pierc’d the skull, and shatter’d all the brain,
Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain:
Goliath’s fall no smaller terror yields
Than riving thunders in aerial fields:
The soul still ling’red in its lov’d abode,
Till conq’ring David o’er the giant strode:
Goliath’s sword then laid its master dead,
And from the body hew’d the ghastly head;
The blood in gushing torrents drench’d the plains,
The soul found passage through the spouting veins.
  And now aloud th’ illustrious victor said,
“Where are your boastings now your champion’s
  “dead?”
Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled:
But fled in vain; the conqu’ror swift pursu’d:
What scenes of slaughter! and what seas of blood!
There Saul thy thousands grasp’d th’ impurpled sand
In pangs of death the conquest of thine hand;
And David there were thy ten thousands laid:
Thus Israel’s damsels musically play’d.
  Near Gath and Edron many an hero lay,
Breath’d out their souls, and curs’d the light of day:
Their fury, quench’d by death, no longer burns,
And David with Goliath’s head returns,
To Salem brought, but in his tent he plac’d
The load of armour which the giant grac’d.
His monarch saw him coming from the war,
And thus demanded of the son of Ner.
“Say, who is this amazing youth?” he cry’d,
When thus the leader of the host reply’d;
“As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung,
“So great in prowess though in years so young:”
“Inquire whose son is he,” the sov’reign said,
“Before whose conq’ring arm Philistia fled.”
Before the king behold the stripling stand,
Goliath’s head depending from his hand:
To him the king: “Say of what martial line
“Art thou, young hero, and what sire was thine?”
He humbly thus; “The son of Jesse I:
“I came the glories of the field to try.
“Small is my tribe, but valiant in the fight;
“Small is my city, but thy royal right.”
“Then take the promis’d gifts,” the monarch cry’d,
Conferring riches and the royal bride:
“Knit to my soul for ever thou remain
“With me, nor quit my regal roof again.”

Missing the whistle of the teapot.
A big tin thing, dented, spouting
Warnings, careful baby, I am
Really hot.

The hum of the microwave,
The machine noises of coffee being made,
Them noises just ain't the same.
There is no poetry in
Whirring hum, beans bump 'n grinding.
They don't talk to me.

But in the middle of night,
When I rise, get dressed,
Still put on mismatched socks,
My t-shirts inside out,
The same jeans been wearing for weeks,
Cause they are right handy,
Lying on the floor, feeling so good,
Covering up my old fashioned
Keds.

Someday, I guess there will be
A machine that hoses us down,
Shampoos the mind while your fingers idle,
Then becomes a wind Chunnel to dry us up.
Will it have octopus arms
To dress us, having  looked at our daily schedule,
Taking into account the weather channel forecast,
Where n'  when we gotta be?

I suppose that if I ask nicely,
The replicator will make me perfect coffee,
And even whistle if that's what makes me happy.
But as long it don't try help me write,
That ****** function, that ****** need,
Human,
And only I can
Whistle while I write.

6:13 AM

She stunned me when I first saw her looks
Never seen like her even in books

An angel who dropped from the sky
To say to me "Sam! Hi!"

She instantly got my full attention
And I at once shown no pretention

She lives now in the corridors of my mind
You won't find a lady so gentle and kind

Now I miss her as I miss the air when I stop breathing
She lives in me, so God help me her seeing

Sam Burton (C)


Today is Friday, Oct. 10, the 289th day of 2014 with 82 to follow.

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



Quotes for the day:



"Correction does much, but encouragement does more."



Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



"The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary."



Thomas A. Edison



POETRY

Israfel





Edgar Allan Poe



In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings -
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty -
Where Love's a grown-up God -
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit -
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute -
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely - flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.



BEAUTY AND HEALTH TIP

Strengthen your nails



Before you go to bed every night, use a nail-strengthening cream on your nails (and under, if they're long). This also keeps them hydrated, which is essential for healthy nails.



Trivia

Where did the name “Revlon: come from?



Nail polish distributors Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with nail polish supplier Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name, gave birth to the Revlon cosmetics company in 1932. Starting with just one nail product a nail enamel unlike any before it the three men pooled their paltry resources and developed a unique manufacturing process. Using pigments instead of dyes, Revlon was able to offer to women rich-looking, opaque nail enamel in a wide variety of shades never before available. In only six years, the company became a multimillion dollar organization, launching one of the most recognized cosmetics names in the world.



How many atoms are there in the universe?



Astronomers believe that the universe contains one atom for every 88 gallons of space.



How do animals influence the weather?



Living creatures create tiny weather systems called microclimates in their nests and burrows. For instance, bees fan their wings at the hive entrance during hot weather. This makes a cooling draft blow through the hive.

VOCABULARY



Splenetic

adjective



:


marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite



Examples:



I know David was in a bad mood all day, but the splenetic tone of his reply to Brenda’s question was not necessary.



"If he were 10 or 15 years younger (or at least looked like he was), [Charlie] Sheen would be perfect as the splenetic, screed-spouting anti-hero of John Osborne’s 'Look Back in Anger.'" — From an article by Ben Brantley on the New York Times Arts Beat blog, May 26, 2011



Did you know?



In early Western physiology, a person's physical qualities and mental disposition were believed to be determined by the proportion of four ****** humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The last of these was believed to be secreted by the spleen, causing feelings of disposition ranging from intense sadness (melancholia) to irascibility. This now-discredited association explains how the use of "splenetic" (deriving from the Late Latin "spleneticus" and the Latin "splen," meaning "spleen") came to mean both "bad-tempered" and "given to melancholy" as well as "of or relating to the spleen." In later years, the "melancholy" sense fell out of use, but the sense pertaining to ill humor or malevolence remains with us today.





Courtesy of Merriam-Webster, Inc.



JOKES



Female Comebacks



Man: Haven't I seen you someplace before?
Woman: Yes, that's why I don't go there anymore.

Man: Is this seat empty?
Woman: Yes, and this one will be if you sit down.

Man: Your place or mine?
Woman: Both. You go to yours, and I'll go to mine.

Man: So, what do you do for a living?
Woman: I'm a female impersonator.

Man: Hey baby, what's your sign?
Woman: Do not enter.

Man: How do you like your eggs in the morning?
Woman: Unfertilized.

Man: If I could see you naked, I'd die happy.
Woman: If I saw you naked, I'd probably die laughing.

Man: Your body is like a temple.
Woman: Sorry, there are no services today.

Man: I would go to the end of the world for you.
Woman: But would you stay there?





Seminars for MEN




(Prepared and Presented by Females)

1. Combatting stupidity

2. You too can do housework

3. ***: Learn when to keep your mouth shut

4. How to fill an ice tray

5. We do not want ****** underthings for Christmas: give us money

6. Understanding the female response to your coming in drunk at 4am

7. Wonderful laundry techniques (formerly titled, "Don't wash my silks")

8. Parenting: It doesn't end with conception

9. Get a life; learn to cook

10. How not to act like a ******* when you're obviously wrong

11. Spelling: Even you can get it right

12. Understanding your financial incompetence

13. You: The weaker ***

14. Reasons to give flowers

15. How to stay awake in public

16. Why it is unacceptable to relieve yourself anywhere but the bathroom

17. Garbage: Getting it to the curb

! 18. You can fall asleep without it if you really try

19. The morning dilemma if IT is awake: Take a shower

20. I'll wear it if I **** well please

21. How to put the toilet lid down (formerly titled "No, it's not a bidet")

22. "The weekend" and "sports" are not synonyms

23. Give me a break: Why we know your excuses are bull

24. How to go shopping with your mate and not get lost

25. The remote control: Overcoming your dependency

26. Romanticism: Ideas other than ***

27. Helpful postural hints for couch potatoes

28. Mothers-in-law: They are people too

29. Male bonding: Leaving your friends at home

30. You too can be a designated driver

31. Seeing the true you (formerly titled, "You don't look like Mel Gibson when naked")

32. Changing your underwear: It really works

33. The attainable goal: removing "****" from your! vocabulary

34. Fluffing the blankets after flatula! ting is not necessary

35. Techniques for calling home before you leave work





The Bacon Tree



There are two guys who have been lost in the desert for weeks, and they're at death's door. As they stumble on, hoping for salvation in the form of an oasis or something similar, they suddenly spy, through the heat haze, a tree off in the distance.

As they get closer, they can see that the tree is draped with rasher upon rasher of bacon. There's smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life-giving juicy nearly-raw bacon, all sorts. "Oh my, Pepe" says the first bloke. "It's a bacon tree!!! We're saved!!!" "You're right!" says Pepe.

So Pepe goes on ahead and runs up to the tree salivating at the prospect of food. But as he gets to within five feet of the tree, there's the sound of machine gun fire, and he is shot down in a hail of bullets. His friend quickly drops down on the sand, and calls across to the dying Pepe.

"Pepe! Pepe! What on earth happened?"...

With his dying breath Pepe calls out...

"Ugh, run, run!... it's not a Bacon Tre! e...

Scroll Down...













...it's a Ham Bush"





HAVE A SUPER NICE FRIDAY and a GORGEOUS WEEKEND!

Goddess above me!
Snake of the slime
Alostrael, love me!
Our master, the devil
Prospers the revel.
Tread with your foot
My heart til it hurt!
Tread on it, put
The smear of your dirt
On my love, on my shame
Scribble your name!
Straddle your Beast
My Masterful *****
With the thighs of you greased
With the Sweat of your Itch!
Spit on me, scarlet
Mouth of my harlot!
Now from your wide
Raw ****, the abyss,
Spend spouting the tide
Of your sizzling ****
In my mouth; oh my *****
Let it pour, let it pour!

You stale like a mare
And **** as you stale;
Through straggled wet hair
You spout like a whale.
Splash the manure
And **** from the sewer.
Down to me quick
With your tooth on my lip
And your hand on my *****
With feverish grip
My life as it drinks—
How your breath stinks!

Your hand, oh unclean
Your hand that has wasted
Your love, in obscene
Black masses, that tasted
Your soul, it’s your hand!
Feel my ***** stand!

Your life times from lewd
Little girl, to mature
Worn ***** that has chewed
Your own pile of manure.
Your hand was the key to—
And now your frig me, too!

Rub all the much
Of your **** on me, Leah
****, let me ****
All your glued gonorrhea!
**** without end!
Amen! til you spend!

****! you have harboured
All dirt and disease
In your slimy unbarbered
Loose hole, with its cheese
And its monthlies, and pox
You chewer of *****!
****, you have ******
Up ******, you squirted
Out foetuses, ******
Til ******* you blurted
Out into space—
Spend on my face!

Rub all your gleet away!
Envenom the arrow.
May your pox eat away
Me to the marrow.
**** you have got me;
I love you to rot me!

Spend again, lash me!
Leah, one spasm
Scream to splash me.
Slime of the chasm
Choke me with spilth
Of your sow-belly’s filth.

Stab your demonic
Smile to my brain!
Soak me in cognac
**** and *******;
Sprawl on me! Sit
On my mouth, Leah, ****!

**** on me, ****!
Creamy the curds
That drip from your gut!
Greasy the turds!
Dribble your dung
On the tip of my tongue!

Churn on me, Leah!
Twist on your thighs!
Smear diarrhoea
Into my eyes!
Splutter out ****
From the bottomless pit.

Turn to me, chew it
With me, Leah, *****!
***** it, spew it
And lick it once more.
We can make lust
Drunk on Disgust.

Splay out your gut,
Your *******, my lover!
You buggering ****,
I know where to shove her!
There she goes, plumb
Up the foul *****’s ***!

Sackful of skin
And bone, as I speak
I’ll ****** your grin
Into a shriek.
****** you, ****
****** your gut!

Wriggle, you hog!
Wrench at the pin!
Wrench at it, drag
It half out, **** it in!
Scream, you hog dirt, you!
I want it to hurt you!

Beast-Lioness, squirt
From your *******’s hole!
Belch out the dirt
From your Syphillis soul.
Splutter foul words
Through your supper of turds!

May the Devil our lord, your
Soul scribble over
With sayings of ordure!
Call me your lover!
Slave of the gut
Of the **** of a ****!

Call me your sewer
Of spilth and snot
Your ****-sniffer, chewer
Of the **** in your slot.
Call me that as you rave
In the **** of your slave.

****! ****! Let me come
Alostrael—****!
I’ve spent in your ***.
****! Give me the muck
From my *****’s ****, slick
Dirt of my *****!

Eat it, you sow!
I’m your dog, ****, ****!
Swallow it now!
Rest for a bit!
Satan, you gave
A crown to a slave.

I am your fate, on
Your belly, above you.
I swear it by Satan
Leah, I love you.
I’m going insane
Do it again!

Recently, I've come to think I have ADD
Definitely, it's in the open, plain to see
As a child I found life hell,
The gears kept twisting, spouting some scandalous lies
My mind just raced no matter what,
Its true what they say, kids are mean, nasty, and cruel,
If I could go back, I'd say "know your heart is true",

I remember the Moose I saw, up in old Maine,
We were all in a cabin, I loved the soft rain,
Four generations, all as one,
Lived simply together, I remember our song,
We sung once when a fox poked up,
Out of the brush, we hushed and cooed out of sight,
And it stared with green eyes, and in there flared fiery fight,

I can remember the beach my favorite time,
I put my toes in cool sand, a feel that is sublime
The sand was so white,
It was just right for fireworks that starry night,
I can't imagine,
what would be better than warm water, Old Silver
is a beach where I would stay for meditation

Remembering the smell of the gross chemicals,
I sprayed at an abandoned night club, stomach full,
Of ***** I once stole,
from the cupboard where I wasn't supposed to go,
I could feel my soul,
When I climbed onto the roof, I could feel the weight,
When I sat on the edge, in front lay a beautiful city,
'
Recently, I've come to think I have ADD
Definitely, it's in the open, plain to see
And to this day I find life hell,
The gears kept twisting, spouting some scandalous lies
My mind still races no matter what,
Its true what they say, life is mean, nasty, and cruel,
If I could go back, I'd say "know your heart is true",

I could tell a thousand stories about a boy.

There are dry crystals of DXM on the desk on which he writes CVs,[1] and as he writes he listens to Lou Reed because of his apparent lack of knowledge of Reed's back catalogue.[2]

He takes Molly on Friday nights, because rappers say its cool, how could Chief Keef be an idol to reasonable people?[3] Spouting buzzwords and memes in public places, hoping to be noticed and applauded for a knowledge of he knows not what.

The Twitter feed reads like toilet paper, with less information
Fooling himself into thinking that he needs that rapid a-disinformation[4]
He wonders why there are still advertisements for MySpace, is it not dead yet?

He uses a trusted torrent search engine to download every episode of TV shows he watches religiously. Is that not an indicator of a profoundly unhappy person?[5]
A liberal thinker in his own right yet still regards the BBC as having unabashed liberal motifs haphazardly forced into all of its programming and news coverage.[6]

Why have hashtags stumbled into the global lexicon, and is this an example of cultural Marxism?[7]
Why is he never noticed?
That sweet jazz serenade that emanates from speakers in his lonely house, is but melancholy drones, might as well be Tim Hecker as opposed to Jack Teagarden.[8] His record collection is vast, the smell of vinyl pungent and nostalgic.[9] Obsolete so they may be, but those indie movies sure make them seem cool.

Oh he watches Truffaut, Fellini, Tarr and Michael Snow, he does it to appear cultured, but to who? Since nobody exists.[10] Antiutopian music videos, depicting *** and violence, he could make crass judgments on society but he knows that he loves that Robin Thicke video and what Kanye West did with New Slaves.[11]

Spending hours at a time, ******* to amateur **** on some seedy site and pictures of girls that he probably shouldn't have seen. [12] And after such laborious efforts he can return to an endless cycle of hitting F5 on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, 4chan, 420chan, VICE, TheYNC, BBC News, Mishka, 2DopeBoyz, World-Star Hip-Hop, Fetlife and Hello Poetry. Amassing information and retaining so little that it hardly seems worthwhile.

Yes he reads, when so many do not. Nabokovian purple prose and the way Bukowski was so ******. He read Poe in elementary because 'goth' was new to him, and now he loves Whitman, Plotinus and St. John of the Cross because Ginsberg mentions them in Howl and Other Poems.[13]

He uses words he doesn't understand like 'catechism', 'ecclesiology' and 'female ******'.
A sprawling mass of words, never ending streams of thoughts, the constant reminder of drudgery in modern times. Wishing he was from some other period, but the idea is ridiculous in and of itself.
He makes crass jokes and thinks they're actually funny.

He's lost. He's empty. He's sad and he's a fraud, its how I knew him best.[14]

If the beautiful pea green boat had been painted battleship grey,the owl and the pussycat would have stayed at home and not 'sailed away for a year and a day',but it wasn't and they did.
The story ends quite badly some would say quite sadly,the pussycat got rid of the owl,stating in his defence, that fowl was for the eating of and not for spouting like a whale in Edward Lear's fairy tale.
If only the boat had been painted battleship grey the owl might still be with us today.

"It's just one cut,"
said the sharp lady doctor before language
melted off her clipboard and the operating lamps
grew huge and spilled their bright innards into my eyes.

I lay on the cold tiled floor of the museum.
One monstrous cut -- the white shark suspended
above in a last hungry lunge yawns, belly open.
Around me what a wide-eyed fisherman pulled out:
old tires, whale-oil lamps, Damien Hirst, bones upon bones.
Damien sits on a tire, bored as hell. See the jagged edges,
he says, they pulled him into our cold afterlife
and cut while he suffocated, explosive oxygen flooding
his lungs from the wrong direction.

Later, the doctors showed me
what had for so long kicked and screamed to be out.
Liver-colored, swollen, wrapped in catgut, it was not
as expected. Others had promised ground seaglass,
poppyseed freckles, huge lungs like fibrous balloons
for flying or spouting poetry nonstop in day-long stretches.
Where were my eyes?
It was supposed to have my eyes.

i am leather bound
to last night's conversation.

while thumb thick
in good intentions,
i am beginning to think                      
you never knew me
as much as you
think you did.

dear, tell me
what has hooked
your jaws into spouting out
these pig tailed assumptions
of me?

you see, i've never been
quite as crisp tide white
as they made me out to be.
always a little fade to my denim.
didn't you know
some stains
can't be washed off?

some fingerprints
can't be dusted
or steamed out in the dew
of a 4 am shower.
and sunday knows
i've tried.

and still try to make it
plainly clear that i left
my mother's baby
somewhere between the arms
of brooklyn.

left her, all koolaid stained
tongues tied to the push pop
fantasies i'd held until
i was about kush high
to a grasshopper.

abandoned her
pb and j sandwiched in an alley
with a trash bag
criss cross applesauce
knotted around her lovely
to keep her just
as warm and naive
as she never had been.

had you ever noticed
the gauche in her grin
wasn't nearly as golden
as it should've been?
and her paperback bone
seemed to fold
a tad too easily.

of coarse
spines aren't meant to
break like that
but they do.

divorce and dysfunction
has taught us that
it all falls down
someday so don't
weep for the jericho
in my bones
but at least acknowledge
that its there;
that there are bruises
too light to be convincing
but they still ache
when you stroke them right.

that some nights the pains
of resurrection memories
out shine those
of the crucifixion.

certain skins must be shed
when your convictions
leave you broken
and the stars you sin beneath
begin to gossip
about your shadow.

and your shadow
finds its way
onto the floor of living room
while it watches you
let yourself be made
into one of the victims
you write poetry for.

when you're trying to bottle
God and grandeur
into the barrel
of the gloc your mother
grabbed in anticipation
of spilling herself
in the wind
when the wednesday's
got too lonely.

listen
stop trying to card me
before accepting
my truths.
i've traveled too
far for ****** to not
assume i've been
in the dark before.

drop my shell
and see the inside
mash called me
has been spilled
and shattered
and reassembled
and shattered
and scattered
and reassembled
and splattered
and bent
more ways
than i can yoga
position myself in.

when you asked me
how could a 17 year old
know the pain of this world
i wanted to tell you
to roll up you sleeves
and unzip your pride.

yes i am 17
but i know everything happens
for a reason and i know
being broken makes
you grateful of the
pieces that weren't obliterated.

i know you can't be
flexible without stretching
and i know how it
feels to be stretched
between 4 states
two parents
and 1 divorce signee.

i know what a blanket does
for someone afraid
of the shadows
and i know you can't
have shadows without light.

i know that florida fern leaves
are consistently stormed on
and never curse clouds for it.

i know i am beautiful
and i know how many
days it took me to find out.

i know i am made of those days
and those days
were born of a maker.

i know my mine
met and got married
and made me and my sisters
and mistakes and i know
they paid for them
in cash and criticism.

i know my father is a good man
and i know good men
lie awake at 4 in the morning
making plans to fix things.

i know my mother loves to laugh
and i know laughter
is the easiest way for her
to cough up her worries.

i know she almost drowned
on dry land before
and i know she was one of
the best swimmers in my family.

i know i am still learning
but i've learned
we know a lot less                            
than we realize
and feel a lot more
than we recognize.

Streets filled with bodies
Dead or alive
Nobody knows
Blood runs through the streets
Like floodwater
Innocent blood
Flows like runoff
Through concrete veins
But only because we let it happen
Because of judgement
Because of ignorance
Because of prejudice
Prejudice that we carry over
From our predecessors
The violence and hatred of our ancestors
Continues on through us
But only because we let it happen
Because our naïveté lets us see the world
As monochrome
Everyone belongs in one solid genome
Straight white cis
So they lock us up in a cage of exile
Invalidate the opinions that don't sit well
On a stomach full of lies
So we stand in solid lines
Hands locked together
Silently screaming
NO!
With the ******* hidden in their claims
It hurts but the pain isn't enough to break our chains
At least until the weakest link caves
And the flood gates open up
Our nerves sting with rubber bullets and tear gas
Police brutality and 'controversial' crowd control tactics
Resulting in the blood of innocents.

The truth comes out
Oppression
Recession
We deliver new life
Spoon feeding democracy
Cookie cutter
Build your own government kits
Follow the instructions with a gun held to your head
Puppet government
Corporations pulling strings
Calling the shots with a mouthful of greed
Blaming tragedy on street rats with golden teeth
Hiding behind business suits and briefcases
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtains
Take part in the rat race
Get distracted by the fast pace
Pay attention to your own **** problems
And forget to see the big picture.

Another ride on the metro
Catcalls and wolf whistles
To the wrist to the neck to the ankle
I'm breaking the dress code
The double standards are air tight and unbreakable
I'm stuck in the choke hold of the patriarchy
Kicking and screaming
Perverts jacking off to the sight of me
Objectified, and only fourteen
Take precautions stay safe
Because we have reason to be afraid of the dark
When we have to assume that everyone is a ******
The world is out to get us
Plaguing the younger generation with pop music and photoshop
Shellshocked by the devastation of self confidence
Short hair means you're a ****
Long hair means you're property
The American dream is four walls a roof and a wife to call your own
To own
****** assault is normality
I'm appalled at the way my peers think I owe them something
My virginity
My body
I'm not a carcass to be picked clean by vultures:
The beasts who sit next to me
Who view me as a threat because I'm intelligent
A ***** because I'm intolerant to their ignorance and oppression
The gender roles and discrimination
Objectification
A one woman war
That every woman faces.

Hopelessness stands at the alter
Spouting discrimination
Dug from the depths of the bible
New age bigotry
Picket signs versus pride parades
Spot the queer in the crowd
Wipe them out
We are not a virus of humanity
Your hateful words aren't the only thing that cuts me
When coming out equates to ear splitting arguments
"Get out of my house"
"you are not my son"
LGBT blood on the streets
****** of trans teens
Pop culture is enemy to androgyny
*** education skips over me
And change is met with board meetings
Conservative parents complaining
Claiming they know better than the mouths they feed
Age is not a crown of wisdom
The 21st century witch hunt
Discrimination spills from the mouths
Of little Hitlers
Screaming "God hates ****" before they know what the words mean
Wrap my coffin in a rainbow flag
When they find my mangled body on the street
The product of a hate crime
The product of the war I'm fighting
Brittle bones riddled with stab wounds
Every one carries weight with the words they were paired with
Queer
***
******
I don't have invisible amour
The words pierce me in a way that can't be seen
My blood leaks silently and joins the masses.


We are a generation so full of hatred
Promised so much that wasn't delivered
And so we raise our hands and salute the mother ******* rebellion
Our sweet saving grace
America isn't free and neither are we
We are slaves to misogyny and bigotry
Police brutality
Crafty government puppetry
Patriarchy
The enemies that we face aren't the ones we see
Well **** society
We can create our own
Carry in the revolution on our shoulders
On our knees
Plastered across our twitter feeds
We fight with words
With fists
Whatever it takes
Speak out across our dashboards timelines and comments
Word of mouth
Engrave them into your skin
What was started needs to be finished
We have a price to pay



It's time for a revolution *****.

Misshapen I, assume this Harmful Trot
Another Term to disappoint your Name
This I Bow; Multiply my Penance lot
Never again will I repeat this Shame
For Honest Will, assist your Son's Best Worth
Though I know spouting Flames is not the Way
Purse this Regret; And shake the Stubborn Earth
Then leave this Barker alone for him to stay
Yet hopefully, in Prayer bid my Tears
You may Consider my Innocent Plan
To Heal, Flow and Live; Like your Boy's Best Years
To prove Un-Condition by your demand.
I Understand, your Investment withdrawn
But Faith in Mother's Heart is best to own.