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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanoid.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
i know of Knausgård -  sure, and i share this concerns for
the art of taking to lumber and chopping,
  as novelists tend to do, write with an axe,
philosophise with a hammer...
          metaphor turned into imagery
counter-turned into literalism...
   i once imagined him not being there -
i once wrote ich kampf, stressing
that it was an indefinite expression
of expression, primarily due to the content
of the pronoun... and i was referring also
to the definite expression (much obliged,
atheism, a- without, and the- with,
or indefinite and definite articulation) -
the English eye sees one stance as definite,
and another as indefinite, and juxtaposes
the two interacting...
                          they duly interchange...
i can say ich kampf and say i internalise
verbs: a movement of the hand,
   a strutting or a waltzing circumstance
of owning a body... that's what it's indefinite...
that's why Sartre slithered in counter to
his expanse in philosophy: because i really loved
his novels...
                          but in terms of a mein or
a mit (including me) struggle i find not
ease... no one dares to devalue ****** as a human,
not talking about the past history in purely human
terms urges the postscript of a dictator,
it actually elevates him to a godly status...
           not realising the human is to make flaws
of what the en masse does: raises him to a godly status...
     Zeus had a beard... not a Charlie Chaplin moustache...
right now he's laughing in his grave...
                      old Aldous ******...
   and aren't dictators born because people find their
surnames a little bit funny? it starts so
innocently...          and then it morphs...
   and it becomes an unstoppable morphing...
    yes... i know of a certain number of fellow
      contemporaries... because i want to? no,
because i have to. like rewatching the 2015 film
android - some films you have to rewatch...
   what's being debated? autism and artificial intelligence...
   hyperactive autism, i grant you that...
        it dawned on me... at autistic person could
fake a normal human response treating it as
      artificial... artificial also means mimicked -
  it means that "smart" guy at a bar reciting poetry
he hasn't written... artificial intelligence or the study of it
or even creating it has nothing original about it...
it's not groundbreaking in the same sense that
discovering champagne or penicillin is...
or l.s.d., because these examples have the magic of
being discovered by chance... humanity has been
artificially simulating intelligence since time
immemorial... it's that natural consequence of not being
endowed with a peacock's array of feathers
   to create a soothing, and sickly gentle wind of a woman
resting in a hammock under the shade of a palm tree...
artificial intelligence was inherent in us...
       it's the unravelling of the historical noumenon of man,
the per se that has only crept up on us,
   and before the reality of such a foundation being
established... the humanities create the "prophetic"
citations of it being true: in the "near" / impeding future.
    if god is a noumenon, then man cannot be a
phenomenon... but he is and paradoxically the two
of mutually compatible on a basis of exclusive rather than
an inclusive naturalisation...
               we are talking nature:
  we are talking god naturalised by the medium
suggesting: for i am bound to create obstacles and test
the body, rather than the mind of man...
    as so is man, also naturalised by the medium
of the elements, saying: for i am bound by a body,
   and have to utilise the body first, to overcome the wind
and the snow and the furthermore, until i reach
the labyrinth of the mind...
  and man has done just that, he has bypassed the struggles
of the body, and created entertainment using
the body that once struggled against the elements...
   for he has created the god Minotaur: and the psychic
labyrinthe... as with the Titans whom the gods
usurped, so too comes the twilight of the gods...
but being usurped by demigods...
       Minotaur was a demigod... who usurped the gods
of the trinity that were Zeus, Poseidon and Hades...
        for only the Greeks could create a Judaic bewilderment
as to why a sign was given unto an infant...
           but that's getting technical...
the film, android (2015)? it supports the misconception,
the anguish of a highly functioning autism...
      whereby showing a woman's carelessness in the realm
of adaptability with what some would claim to be
the beginning point of: overcoming the elements...
sure the odd tsunami and earthquake...
   but there's also the tiger, and winter, and parasite,
   and diseases of so many variations...
              man has not been endowed with complete
control over his surrounding... but in becoming partially
overlord of the ones tamed, he has created a mental
labyrinth... a world of such complexity that will
inevitably produce instances of autistic genius...
                 artificial intelligence is already imbedded in us,
just as cloning and Islam has already existed
(Christianity is too schismatic to be considered a cloning
definition... and Judaism as a monotheistic principle
has a heresy embedded in its orthodoxy that it simply
ignores: reincarnation... the Malachi heresy...
  that a second Elijah comes... and god becomes a half)...
   we see artificial intelligence everywhere...
        if the myth goes that woman fed man the original
lie of Eden... then man has nothing else to do than
attempt to polymer that one single lie...
       and repeat it... a reverse intrusion to what "could"
have been an utopian splendour.
      we all see artificial intelligence rummaging about
in the choices people make... it's called lying
   to gain access to a ****** gratification...
  or as i like to call it: a way to compensate our falling short
of the norm, a norm that focuses upon creating
   the most complex startup a Silicon Valley genius
can't comprehend... a family.
    these times prescribe such a bewilderment...
              families are artefacts of what some believe
precipitated into barbarity so close to us: the 20th century...
        and all those arguments you hear that might
discourage the opposite ***, as in damning your parents
for a piece of seashore **** fest of the *****?
   probably came from a person born from a surrogate
mother... well... an incubator, a very expensive *****...
   homsexuality created the evolution of prostitution,
once bound to the genitals... now bound to the womb...
     i.v.f. kids calling natural kids ******...
   i never liked the matrix movies in all honest...
but we're seeing the reversal of the original idea...
                 in the matrix of knowledge... hearts become
piñata: chockies sweet, sensations abundant,
  the spectrum is yours.
                but this poem isn't really about that...
i can sip a whiskey and actually find these things when
i start to utilise these symbols... it sometimes happens
that they fall through... all i was really thinking about
is the "theoretical" score of 147...
                      i'll call them billiards rather than *****
to excuse a "he-he" Michael Jackson laugh at a chance
of "nuance"...
       yellow (2), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink (6), black (7)...
and plenty of red (1)... points in bracket respectively...
                  of course from childhood memory i sided with
ronnie... also from Romford... an obscure town in Essex
that oversees the shard and canary wharf from
a distance...                    but watching snooker as a child...
          not too bad at pub-snooker: i.e. pool...
and that game show when snooker was hot back in
the 1990s... big break, with jim davidson as host...
    and of course: john virgo as the rejuvenated
                         ghost of alex higgins... this whiskey
swiggly is on me al.
                 but this final... ****! at one point it was
a century after a century...
                     chess with mathematics, trigonometry
and Pythagoras in motion...
                                    the gods playing with saturn
and jupiter neptune planetary arrangements...
            i can't word it properly... but it'll definitely sound
better than a concussion after too much rugby and
the rough-stuff of "manhood" strutting with bulging
muscle tensions... rather than this Japanese warrior-monk
in a waistcoat and bow-tie swirling a stick in the air...
           i just thought of one thing...
15 wildebeests on an African savannah...
       out comes one lioness...
    and she nibbles at the pack... and she picks off
the weakest of the 15 wildebeests...
              she nibbles the pack before the pack breaks away...
         she looks left (red) and then looks right (yellow,
green, brown, blue, pink, black) -
                      and she picks at the pack, one by one
they fall... but there are two games going on...
   there's the no-man's land snooker where the game is
about entrenchment, and snookering the opponent
for a foul... and then there's the tsunami snooker...
which kinda looks like one person playing chess...
     with no opponent other than a chance mistake...
misjudgement on the case of instinct and how they ******
well know what angle to fudge the white lioness
                onto the billards... and with what force...
      tsunami snooker, or cascade snooker is basically
a monologue...
                             after seeing 3 centuries in a row
you get to crave classical snook -
                                       the mind games of safety shots...
   and teasing, and tempting, and teasing, and tempting,
before the Rubic cube unravels itself,
   and you find that light at the end of the tunnel...
                        and the black pops into...
i'll be honest, i haven't watched snooker for a long time...
        maybe that's why i feel so enthusiastic about it...
       it's sometimes good to be fed this mundane diet
of sport-fanaticism that football is in accordance with
religious dogma... it's a good thing...
             then you end up watching a game of snooker
and all these things start firing up your brain...
   and you end up saying:
      the Taj Mahal can be there for all i care...
the Grand Canyon can be there for all i care...
                    such things don't really require a photograph
with my gimp-face trying to make other people jealous
by actually being there: only to take a photograph,
rather than feed into the air and the thrill of being there...
        as they say... it's a small world after all...
better get used to it being much bigger inside your head.
anne collins Jan 2013
I was nothing but a teacup in your fingertips
Sliding and slipping, shattering
I was nothing but snowflake in your abyss
Floating, flying, faltering

I was little but a shamrock in your field
Invisible, irresistible, inspiring
I was little but a knight’s wooden shield
Dangling, desperate, dying

You only ever were a word in an epic poem
Useless, universal, unifying,
You were only ever a lyric unsung and unknown
Waltzing, wandering, wavering

You became the tragic figure in the snow globe
Imperfect, ironic, isolating
You became the space that filled the empty wardrobe
Tired, tedious, trespassing

I was as small as pretty as a conquest
Coy, cuffed, charming
I was as small as a name in a black book’s list
Smudged, smeared, sparkling

I was as innocent as your favorite horror films
Vicious, veiled, vying
I was as deadly as your favorite poison
Cyanide, clarity, corroding

I was as lost as a vintage world map
Outdated, ostracized, offending
I was as furious as an Olympian’s final lap
Ephemeral, evermore, evading

I was as uncertain as a Polaroid candid
Gray, golden, growing
I was as adrift as an airplane with no landing
Turning, trying, tumbling

You were as lonesome as the plains of Montana
Wide, whistling, waiting
You were as lifeless as the eye of the camera
Fixed, fruitless, fleeting

We were as doomed as the ides of March
Lamenting, looming, leering
We were as fated as the planks of the cross
Destined, dripping, drowning

We were as simple as the heart of a fairy tale’s journey
Cruel, careful, converting
We were as heroic as the martyr of tomorrow’s yesterday
Unburied, Unknown, undoing

We are as fickle as the triumphant burn of inebriation
Sweet, sinful, smoldering
We are as distant as the chasm between here and the purpose of our creation
Bruised, buried, borrowing

We are as shameful as the last cigarette
Anxious, alone, ailing
We have been as deceitful as long as our secret’s rest
Silver, swallow, savoring

We could have been as inexplicably grand as royal gems
Imposing, imploring, imploding
We could have been as scarred as our nightly Amen
Begging, bleeding, belaboring

We were almost ivory and innocent
Fearful, favorable, frittering
We were almost hell-bound and Satan-sent
Satin, silk, slaughtering

We are unwritten words and syllables on blank pages
Neat, nuanced, needing
We are unseen images on unpainted canvas without aging
Perfect, peaceful, pirouetting

We are as final as the stroke of white paint against the night
Rebellious, rivaling, riveting
We were as concrete as the glittering sidewalks in city moonlight
Gilded, glowing, gone
Francie Lynch Dec 2014
My heart's distressed,
Emotions vexed,
Images can't escape.
I'm perplexed,
My text is hexed,
I can't explain
What I feel.

My hands are dyslexic,
I'm swirled in the vortex
Of unwritten lines to read.
The words are trapped,
My message is clapped
In perceptions
That can't be freed.

I try to release them,
Catch and cage them,
And arrange with diversity;
Then in a while,
And using guile,
I'll fashion
Some fine poetry.
(Such is the state
Of me).

I've heard the quip,
I've been advised:
Just write how you feel.
For me,
That's blathering,
Bothersome nattering,
Void of poetic appeal.

I need a someone,
Like an Anne Sullivan,
To teach me how
To feel;
Not with sentience,
But rather with senses,
Alive,
And writhing in me.
Glynis Kearney Jun 2010
Flaming figure so alone
tattered dreamer left ungrown
quiet minstrel lost in song
tell me firefly
am I wrong?

Broken barriers left to rot
sickened sense of forget-me-not
clutching figments left to die
Is this not you
sweet firefly?

Seeking flames of darker shades
beliefs untorn with prayers you prayed
that safest flame is deep inside
you shine your brightest
yet still you hide?

Man child ~ I must confess
you weaken limbs with your lovliness
the scarlet tears that you expire
are nothing frozen
but made of fire!
© Glynis Kearney
I wrote this poem for a friend of mine who, at the time, was contemplating suicide.  He used to be nicknamed Firefly, and hence the various references to that in the poem.   Eventually, he chose life...and the world is richer!
SøułSurvivør Sep 2014
How can you be truly tough
In this painful world?
How can you stand firm
When the spears of agony are hurled?

Most people in the proud US of A
Don't have a clue of the
price they have to pay.

Western people do not know
What hardship really is.
So gratitude is lacking...
It is this...


Gratitude is having a ***
That doesn't leak,
To walk miles for diseased
Water from a creek.

Gratitude in thanking God
For the dry wood
To cook the rice or millet
For your food.

Gratitude is finding
A pair of shoes
In a garbage heap
That you can use.

Gratitude is finding
Pesos in your hand
When you beg the streets
In a poor land.

Gratitude is escaping
Vicious thugs
Who deal in human
Trafficking and drugs.

Gratitude is Hellen Keller
With no hope
Finding Annie Sullivan
To cope.

Gratitude is having NOTHING
And in pain
On one's deathbed, but yet
The fact remains

They are redeemed
And they have Lord Jesus' grace
So they know that they
Will look in his sweet face.

Being tough is seeing life
As is and still not breaking
Being brave and looking
Not forsaking

Being tough is a
Mental attitude.
Loving God and thanking Him

It's GRATITUDE.**


SoulSurvivor
Catherine Jarvis
(C) September 28, 2014
I think the above says it all.
I want to thank quinnfinn for
The inspiration.
Tyler A Sullivan Feb 2018
TURN OF THE SEASON

For Friends and Family


Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
                                          -Robert Herrick

Intoxicated nights of orange halogen lights-
Illuminating through misty blown water.
As the April breeze ruffles the newly sprung leaves upon the trees,
Men pour malted liquor inside clandestine cellars of tuxedo staff and obsequious waitresses

Echoes of an engine shuffles on down the alley,
Startled it hides in the cornered places.
Men enclosed in smoke talk of days of old-
And better times,
And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces.

Woman go about chatting of useless things and waste the night away.
Men sit about playing games of little meaning and waste the night away.
Both will head to familiar places at mornings first rays
And April effortlessly falls into May

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
Slowly trudging through the paces
Slowly they tighten their laces

And set out for another monotony dipped day

Planting their ears to the ground listening
And many things they'll hear and say
With many hindsight memories in their mind glistening
And their lovers will whisper are you listening
And they'll say "yes yes my dear have no fear I am here"

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
And they'll make many a plan and in cases
And step over cracks in fear of dark places


The clink of a glass carries on down the hall
The bartender while wiping the counter yells
"Last call"
And they'll retort "for what reason"
And he "none at all"
Then the bar goes the way of the shopping mall
And summer slips effortlessly into fall

What reasons can they make when the night is through
When it's time to wake what will they do

As the days retreat with their hairline
And each mirror more distortive than the last
They'll retreat further, further into their mind
And what will they find
With their sanity fleeting fast
A desperate thought floating in the breeze
A candle to thaw the freeze


Intoxicated nights of solemn solitude
Tucked in the back thoughts of a lonely suburb
Trying arduously to abandon actuality
But failing and jumping the curb

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
"Sorry love they're not home I'm afraid"
"They've gone to the races"
Each two lovers in two different places

Rest assured rest assured they'll return
They'll unconsciously sell their freedom
Rest assured rest assured they'll return
At this moment they are Carpe Diem

Rest assured rest assured
They'll be plenty of time
To fumble with furniture
Plenty of time
To spend with her
Plenty of time to waste
Plenty of love to give
Now's to go slow not make haste
Now's to go slow and live


And they'll remember childhood
As a warm August kiss
And where their feet stood
And what they missed
And when the leaves
Upon the trees
Fall down down down
To rise to their knees
They'll remember who they are
And who they use to be


So, before you grow old
And wilt away
And the December cold
Melts the summer’s day
Enjoy what you have
For what you have is to enjoy
For what you haven't
Are merely foolish toys

This summer began as the last one did
And will end when Autumn bids
With the sun and stars above for you to see
Run around like children in the heat of lunacy
...


Though I've fasted and wept,
Wept and prayed
And stayed stoic long
Through passing day
And bards’ men song
I can never,
Never truly say
I have achieved arête

No, I'm not the son of Xanthippus
Who instigated the apogee of Athens
The past beacons of Atticus
Dims my own ember passions

Though I've loved and lost
Loved and lusted
Won a few
Others busted
Though I've seen the world at the needle point,
With all the sordid souls suffering
I've lived like Cummings
The farthest extent of emotions
I've kept a drug induced devotion
But never could I stop from wondering
Never could cease sundering

I've seen the valleys of my life
Where the flowers are disseminated like t.v. static
And the only sound a high tinnitus pitch
They've said go, Go I don't love you anymore
Not pretty enough to be a poem
Not intelligent enough to be of any use

Though I've smiled and agreed
Agreed and died
Through all this hell
I have tried
...



They're troubled tonight
Their restless gaze fails to penetrate the maw of a darkened window-

To have
To have not

To operate in the probity of normality
To practice trembling sobriety
To lose an arm for the ones you love
To have in heart the morning dove,

Assures that come evening tide
Through shroud and delusion
Secrets the world shall confide
And lift your illusion
...

The very next morning
Or so it would seem
Awoke the old men
Rendering a dream

Patiently focusing
For a clearer account
The words from the past
They seemed to mount
And as they pressed closer
Not to be deterred
It crested their mind
And then they heard

"Soured metal, rotted walls
Darkness hangs from hall to hall
Broken bonds burning ambitions
A feeling half held until fruition

Life a moment
A last choking breath
Happiness a second
Before eternal death

We exist only
In the time between
A hint of joy
Goes often unseen

Until again
The crest breaks
And life slips by
But leaves no wake

Such was the tale
Of the great eluder
A hidden knife
A dark intruder

A ****** thorn
Upon the rose
A heap of sand
At the toes

Left undone
The last request
Above the head
The water crest"

Intolerable mornings of required communion
Accompanied with formulated phrases
Men limp from church
Their mind wondering
Far from there
To their childhood breakfast table
Breathing the memory becomes stable
They hold on to it as long as they are able
Plates of porcelain
Decorate the wall
Floral patterns swirling to the center
Across the room mother enters
The image wavers and ripples like water disturbed by a pebble
"Honey set the table
Get the biscuits, gravy, ladle."
Set the trays down equal from the middle, a cup to the left, forks and knifes to the right-
Get those filthy boon dockers off my floor and out of sight
Go get your brother without causing a fight
BREAKFAST TIME
Rise and shine on the biscuit line
BREAKFAST TIME
The sun is up and shining
The coffee is on and the bacon frying"

The memory dissipated into a fleecy cloud.
It hangs heavy on their heads.
Remnants of yesterday remembered in indignation
When slipping off to bed.

I'm in the December of my days
And stuck fast in my stubborn ways
If only I could grasp youth for longer
If only my frail body were stronger

If only I were confronted again with every last myriad encounter where I chose reticence
Opposed to openness
My martial mind refuses any peacefulness
Perhaps the reason of my restlessness
...

Shaking off the foreboding dream
A distant luminary seemed to gleam
An old man frail but proud
He spoke a poetic oration aloud

"My head is swollen, my mind it wanders
My tongue is twisted stumbling it stutters
My thoughts are lost in the colliding clutter
My meaning is lost under soft mutters

My smile shields my solemnness
My eyes reveal my weariness
I am a man of little happiness
But refuse to possess helplessness

I am as I decree
An old man wrapped in misery
But not one broken to submission
Just one in a transition

I have tasted the bitters of love
Witnessed the horrors of death
I have choked my linen dove
To its final breath

No, I am not a careless senior
Full of content
Shriveled in demeanor
Mind absent

I'm dying not dead
No resolving to expiration
Living instead
No meeting expectation
No bowing my head

In credence I say
I'm living for today

No consideration for tomorrow
No more drowning in sorrow"

...


The day was overcast
Fitting the mood
Black suits stood in formation
While the lucky ones heaved their load.

"He was not an exceptional man

Not one of great worth
No wife, no kids, no friends.

To an outside eye it would seem as a waste
And maybe it was
But that's the nature of things to end abruptly
On a minor note"
Written by
Tyler A. Sullivan
Jeff Stier Aug 2017
(In this poem, the authors alternate stanzas.)

AUTUMN'S CALL

In the stray
sweetness of yarrow
and starlings’ trill by dusk
rejoin the fading
without regret
as the foot worn grass will
receive morning’s frost.

And whenever that green yarrow fades
then I fade
in the dry husk
of this autumn of fire
this autumn of smoke and regrets.

Wake in sidelong sun
light half hidden
days under curtains
of violet and scarlet
leaves so soon
will bury the moss
inch by inch.

But I
being the beast that I am
will burrow through the moss
past every encumbrance
beyond hope and fear
and finally find the freedom of one
sweet day
in October
the air still
not a sound
but leaves settling
into the detritus of dreams.
John Stevens Jun 2023
I have always been a quiet guy and did not want to talk before crowds.
The Old Days
Going from country school to city school had its interesting times. We had to take a test to get into high school and I still remember my score being 10.4.  The over and out thing on Car 54.
My brother Ed was the company boxing champ when he was in Korea in 52.  When he returned from Korea and came to the farm he would bring his boxing gloves and he taught me the fine points of the art.

I could defend myself but never needed to prove it. All through my freshman year **** M was always giving me a bad time. Sophomore year it continued until about Christmas time. At that time I had had enough. I was walking up to Main and **** and his two buddies were following me saying their usual bad stuff. Now **** out weighed by 100 pounds at least but enough was enough.  I set my books down off the sidewalk.  Noting I was right next to the morgue and thinking “one of us could end up in there”. Turning around... I motioned with open hand and quietly said to ****...  “ok ****... let’s get this over with”.  His eyes went rather big and he backed up. The three of them vanished back down the street. **** was very nice to me after that. We never had any harsh words. Sometimes you must stand up and confront the problem.

Sometime later kids started calling me Sullivan. I let it go for a while. Then I asked someone “why are you and others calling me Sullivan”?  Did not get an answer other than “your name is John L Stevens so... you are like John L Sullivan.”  Did not compute. Sullivan was a well known prize fighter. I’ve often wondered if the **** thing had anything to do with it.

Coming out of the sticks into the big city school was interesting the first few weeks. The city boys would come up and would put a hand out for a shake. Not chocolate. They would try to squeeze my hand hard but it didn’t bother me.  The third week I decided that I would squeeze back.  Now maybe they didn’t know that I milked cows by hand. So the next one got squeezed... hard.  It hurt some me thinks. Word apparently traveled fast as that was the last fun hand shake I had. I’m old now but I have never been hit in the face in all this time. Except with boxing gloves. No need to cause trouble but be ready to defend yourself and others.  What I taught my kids and grandkids over the years.

Ok enough of that.
anastasiad Oct 2016
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Our own course load serves the two novice telephone facilitators new at all to the industry of a digital marketing communications and state-of-the-art IT professionals desirous to find our about the latest features involving 'cisco' conversation technology. ARP Systems continually delivers training and technological know-how experience, affordably as well as flexibly, so that you can deliver timely high-quality instruction worldwide. Each of our machines are high tech plus updated on a regular basis along with the knowledge engineering marketplace. We all take great pride in bringing up to date 'cisco' technology on the classroom primary. Cisco Good Mail messages version Seven gives brand new venture suffers from plus gains all over global plus corporate boundaries, such as:

Comprehensive business-to-business communications, providing transparent venture together with peer-to-peer technologies An extensive collection of interoperable marketing communications endpoints, which includes i phone, Htc, plus Bb mobile phone devices Deployment flexibleness, including on-premises machine based mostly and also VMware based, inside clouds, hosted, been able, or perhaps implement inside "cut-over" periods Integrated end user and also consumer activities, to increase relationship having two-way movie in many end items "Cisco believes that that collaboration is going to drive your next era of business work productivity, and efficient venture won't be attainable without having marketing and sales communications,Inches claimed Todd O'Sullivan, older vice president, Speech Technologies Collection, Cisco.

"With the creation of Cisco Enlightening Marketing communications 8.3, we've been generally relocating the best way corporations can certainly communicate. We've been permitting businesses to utilize venture like a crucial differentiator when they talk to lovers, companies and also clients by using a collection of instruments from predetermined in addition to cellphones so that you can venture im, online plus training video throughout firm restrictions.Inches ARP Engineering?education course load was created to manual brand new and also recent telephony moderators by way of initial ideas, products and solutions, as well as implementations working on generation x with Enlightening Connection answers. Beyond this concept, students may take a number of intermediate training that concentrate on distinct 'cisco' Mail messages merchandise as well as state-of-the-art training that fasten this engineering alongside one another and still provide a good basic intended for trouble-shooting consequently companies can boost advantages offered by including the items effortlessly operate natural environment.

A few of ARP Systems?brand new Cisco training incorporate: ICOMM: Giving Cisco Voice plus Communications ?This product produces the abilities were required to administer endpoints along with end users with Cisco Good Marketing communications Boss along with 'cisco' One Emails Supervisor Communicate. CVOICE v8.a: Using 'cisco' Voice Marketing and sales communications along with QoS ?This system gives an knowledge of converged voice and information cpa networks together with the troubles experienced by way of the various community systems. Mentioned several of the A dozen brand-new programs, outstanding classes, in addition to changes in order to official 'cisco' courses this ARP Engineering is delivering.
Relate Articles:
http://www.passwordmanagers.net/resources/Iphone-Data-Recovery-Software-Free-19.html
John F McCullagh Nov 2013
John O’Sullivan was an electrical engineer for Consolidated Edison for Forty years. He drove himself and his staff hard, and took pride in the smooth operation of his substation on the lower East side of Manhattan.  When a man like John, who proudly self-identified as a type “A” personality, decides to take a break it so often proves to be a serious if not fatal mistake.

In the summer of 2007, my cousin John took his wife, Margaret, on a rare vacation out of the country to the sun swept beaches of Aruba.  While a beach vacation was perfect for Margaret, who loved nothing better than to lounge in the sun reading her book, it was a form of physical and mental torture for her husband.  He grew restless lying beside her in the hot midwinter sun as his pasty white skin turned a robust red despite his constant application of sunscreen.

I will never be sure what precipitated John’s near fatal stroke on that vacation trip. It may have been a combination of too much alcohol and too much sun. It is even possible that he had mixed up his daily medications.  All I know is that when my cousin was air lifted to a State side hospital, he was suffering the consequences of a severe brain damaging event.

When I saw John in the hospital, I could see that he had lost most of the use of the right side of his body and that he was going to be wheelchair bound for the rest of his life. While he certainly recognized me and tried to smile and communicate as best he could with gestures and a wave of his hand he had lost nearly all his power of speech.

My college educated, urbane sophisticated cousin’s vocabulary was very much diminished by the cerebral accident and now consisted of one word: “Bang”. He made the most of his one word personal dictionary. He could, by variation in tone and inflection, make his one word sound like a greeting, a farewell, a warning, a curse or a need for intention.

The word “bang” could express a terrible wellspring of frustration.  John had spent most of his life in a position of command, first as a Marine noncom,, then as the chief Engineer who ran the substation that powered the lower part of Manhattan. Words, to him, were as vital as eyes were to an artist, ears to an artist or taste buds to a gourmoo.

Locked inside my cousin was the person we had formerly known. He was not like an Alzheimer’s victim whose mind had staged a gradual retreat from his body. Rather, I am convinced, he was being held prisoner within the folds of his damaged Parietal lobe.

From the first, there has been no question that he would never set foot in his old offices on E 14th Street again.  There could be no grand retirement party, just a quiet filing of his papers and the first payments from his retirement plan.  These were sufficient, along with his other investments, to provide him and his wife with a modest, comfortable retirement.  If not for the crash that swept the stock market in 2008, his stocks would have been sufficient to permit a healthy cousin John and his wife to tour the world. Now, in the shadow of the great recession, his remaining capital paid for the home health aides and medications that maintained his precarious existence.

Margaret passed on late in 2011, a problem with her heart, the attending physician said. I saw Cousin John at her wake, the chief mourner unable to express his grief.  I took his good hand and expressed my fellow feeling for his loss. My poor words of condolence were inadequate but he gave my hand a gentle squeeze and whispered “bang” which told me he understood. It was a gentle voice from somewhere out on the edge of sadness.

With Margaret gone, the primary responsibility for John’s care was taken over by his daughter Megan and her husband.  The family sold off the big old house in Yorkville and John moved in with Megan’s family in Pelham.  There his pension and savings paid for 24/7 nursing care and a physical therapist. It must have been a source of humiliation for this proud man, a Marine veteran of  the 26th Marine Battalion  who had  fought at Khe Sanh, to be laid upon a table and have his limbs moved by others to maintain their muscle tone in vain attempts  to retrain his surviving brain.

I last saw my cousin at the Fourth of July family picnic.  He had good color and displayed a healthy appetite. He really enjoyed the fireworks display on the East River. He said “Bang” repeatedly, with all the enthusiasm of a young child.

I got the sad news about John the day after Hurricane Sandy struck the New York area.  My cousin Megan was understandably upset and was blaming herself for allowing her father to watch the news on T.V.  He had become visibly agitated when Eyewitness news showed the Con Edison plant of E14th Street exploding and the lower half of Manhattan plunging into darkness. Megan said that Dad screamed “BANG” in a tortured voice, then slumped back into his chair and was gone.

I never did get to the services for Cousin John.  My own house was without power and heat and the gas in my tank was too dangerously low to risk the trip in those days immediately following the storm. I still think of my late cousin often, and when I do I toss a bootless prayer for him into the winds of Eternity. The substation on E. 14th has been repaired; The damaged homes ripped down or rebuilt and the reminders of the storm grow fewer and fewer like the surface of the sea grown calm in the wake of the storm.
a fictionalized memoir of the aftermath of my Cousins stroke, disability and death.
judy smith Apr 2017
It’s the tail end of fashion week in Paris, the busiest week of the year for fashion buyers.

When I meet Clodagh Shorten, owner of Samui, the game-changing boutique that put Cork on the fashion map, she’s already been here four days and is on her tenth buying appointment — there’ll be at least another five before she leaves in a couple of days time.

These appointments, private bookings with designers, allow her to get up close and personal with the clothes that have just been showcased on catwalks.

She’s deciding which pieces will best suit her customers.

Today, we meet at Schumacher, the stunning German label known for its easy chic look.

A beautiful white space, with lush cream velvet sofas, bare walls and white rails (nothing here to distract from the main event — the clothes), this room, prime space in Paris, is rented by the designer year-round just so they have the right venue to sell at Fashion Week.

It gives some indication of the power Fashion Week wields.

Clodagh is here with her right-hand woman, Samui manager Mary-Claire O’Sullivan.

There are two rails — the keepers and the ‘ones that got away’.

They’ve already seen this collection in London.

Today they are here to fine-tune.

This is unusual, Mary-Claire explains — at most appointments, they are seeing the clothes for the very first time.

“This is a big spend,” they tell me, and they’ll stay as long as they need “to get it right”.

Piecing together a collection is something akin to a jigsaw puzzle.

All the items are photographed — later they will be analysed back in the apartment they rent during Fashion Week.

The mix has to be right.

So the coats, a sleeveless waistcoat, are moved to the rail on the right.

They won’t make it to Cork.

Coats were already picked up this morning at another appointment.

Like I said, a jigsaw puzzle.

Two models are on hand to try on clothes when requested — I hear ‘can I just see this on one more time’ a lot.

There’s no haggling over prices in these sales negotiations — it’s all too civilised.

The price is set, as is the instore mark-up. These lauded designs must cost the same the world over.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire share a language and a wavelength. They can finish each other’s sentences and, while I don’t so much as sniff a hint of tension, they tell me they can disagree on buys.

“Clodagh doesn’t want a yes woman,” Mary-Claire says simply.

From Schumacher, Clodagh leads the way through the Parisian cobbled streets, phone held aloft, Google Maps to direct her.

Her wheelie bag is constantly behind her — inside there’s the laptop for orders and a camera for instant access to photographs of collections.

Her calculator is another permanent fixture in the showroom.

Today, Clodagh is dressed in an Australian label coming soon to Samui, Ellery. The lush black fabric sways and moves with her body; an outfit like that makes you really appreciate her eye for fashion. It’s sensational.

For this 5.30pm appointment we are heading to see another new label for Samui — Paskal (Clodagh will wear a piece from this line tomorrow).

The Ukrainian designer is looked after by an agency so in this showroom there are pieces by a handful of brands.

Again, the setup is the same — private appointments, models on hand.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire have to be more careful here — this is a new label and it’s more fashion forward so black is prioritised.

Not every client at Samui will wear this line. Every purchase, I realise, is a gamble.

“We’ve made mistakes, of course we have,” says Mary-Claire though you get the feeling that could be a rare event.

Pieces bought by these two women rarely end up in Samui’s sales rack.

They know their customer, plain and simple.

There is so much trust there, some clients are simply sent collections each season, allowing Clodagh to make the call for them.

So much of their day is spent discussing various clients (never by name in my presence) — what they might like, the best size.

It is effectively the ultimate personal shopping experience.

The number of items and sizes are limited, so customers know they are truly getting one-off pieces.

As we leave, kisses over, the agency head tells them, “you’re our favourites” and you just know it’s not empty fashion talk.

People genuinely love Clodagh and Mary-Claire. And they respect what they do.

Samui is open 16 years now. Clodagh mastered her trade at Monica John before stepping out on her own. Mary-Claire joined her eight years ago.

It has been one of the few boutiques in Cork to not just survive the downturn but to positively thrive.

As the economy spluttered around her, Clodagh very masterfully decided to go high end.

First came Moncler — the top people here had to come and view Samui to see if it was the right match for their esteemed label.

It was — and, increasingly, doors began to open.

Carven, Marni, Rick Owens — people really began to sit up and take notice of Samui.

Now labels are often vying for space on the shop floor. Still though, it takes work to secure the big new names.

Clodagh spends a lot of time on planes, networking, meeting the key players. And it’s not as simple as a visit to Fashion Week twice a year either.

These days pre-collections are key too: these pieces will be on the shop floor for longer.

So Clodagh and Mary-Claire travel in January to Paris for pre- collections, Milan in February for Moncler, Paris in March. The same cycle begins again in June for A/W pre-collections, with S/S Fashion Week in September.

Clodagh is always pushing, always striving for new.

She was devastated to say farewell to Transit, the brand with her from the very beginning. It was simply time for a change she tells me.

They love seeking out new labels, nurturing them, sharing them with their customers.

The next morning we meet at 9am for Dries van Noten.

Clodagh stocks around 50 different labels, most exclusive to Cork. This Belgian designer is one of them.

Here again is a very fashion forward line.

There’s a minimum €20,000 spend here, and that’s the amount Clodagh and Mary-Claire can play with.

This is a much busier showroom, a slick operation. Buyers are everywhere, the models weaving between them.

They are assigned a seller and a table, laptop at the ready to secure the sale.

Sophie, today’s seller, walks them through the long rails and talks to them about the collection, the fabrics, the colour, the catwalk, the vision.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire repeat the process a second time alone, a third time again with Sophie.

There are little standing breaks for coffee — refreshments and lunch are provided by the designer.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire know to carry snacks everywhere. The buying process can be a long one; Dries could be an all-day event.

The price point is much higher here so, again, each piece has to be carefully thought out. Checked and checked again.

These A/W deliveries will land in store in July.

Watching them make their Samui edit on that March morning, I just know the Dries selection will be a show-stopper this Autumn.

I leave them to sign on the dotted line, wishing them success for the rest of their gruelling schedule as I head for Charles de Gaulle.

“People don’t realise what goes into this,” says Clodagh. And she’s right.

None of us can possibly grasp what it must have taken for one woman to put Cork on the fashion radar.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses
horns squawk
   rainforest avenues
  
  exoskeleton
of cars
   arteries clogged
with unlovely   taxi cabs

fat  green  fruit
for sale
     five languages
merge into a knot
hisses    kiss    vowels
   kiwis apples pears

   black guys   basketball
debt rises like      blood pressure
stocks tumble
    but we walk
brogues clop on concrete

count  brick after  brick
sun cascades
   over roof slates
mind cracks in slabs

   (you say
Monroe      stood here)

   heat quivers
men are dominoes
suits    for the office
   a funeral

designer sneakers
   daddy paid for
pigtails   cheap thrills
  violet octagons
  on a stranger’s neck
(behind the closed doors)

today
I drink purple water
     aubergine lips
remind me
of a Tuscany Superb

   list the names
Houston   Charlton
Leroy   Sullivan
Perry   Cornelia
Dominick and Jane

(ladders lead
                away from me
                close to
you)

and back again
Written: June 2014.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time that sort of accompanies previous piece, 'Fresh.' While I am continuing with the beach/sea series, I am also taking more of a look into the 'city' side of things too. This poem, like 'Fresh', is not about any specific person, but was partially inspired by someone.
A 'Tuscany Superb' is the name of a type of dark purple rose, while the names listed towards the end all refer to streets in New York City.
Ryan P Kinney Nov 2017
I am scared!
Scared of this world

Robert Godwin Sr
Alyssa Elsman

How many more have to die?
By my kind,
By their kind,
Because they blame some other kind
What ever happened to just being
kind?

Daniel Parmertor, Russell King, Jr., Demetrius Hewlin

Where were you when the World Trade Center went down?
It’s something everyone alive then will always remember
Never Forget! was our brand motto for American Pride

Krystle Marie Campbell, Lü Lingzi, Martin William Richard, Sean A. Collier, Dennis Simmonds

And now, the death of another is so commonplace
That we forget what and where.
It’s no longer personal enough to register where in our lives that it struck us
Only note that another life has been struck down
Add another tally to the equation
And still it does not add up

Trayvon Martin
Tamir Rice
Samuel DuBose
Delrawn Small
Philando Castile
Terence Crutcher
Heather Heyer

We are completely desensitized
And decentralized
We keep ourselves disconnected
(because we just can’t absorb,
Take,
Process it all)
It’s not us
It’s not me
It’s somebody else
Somewhere else.
Until it is
Then we care
How much can we take, before we break

Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton Doctor, Clementa C. Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson

The tragedy is the comedy
We laugh so we don’t cry
Sakia Gunn
Richie Phillips
Nireah Johnson, Brandie Coleman
Glenn Kopitske
Scotty Joe Weaver
Jason Gage
Michael Sandy
Sean William Kennedy
Duanna Johnson
Lawrence "Larry" King
Angie Zapata
Lateisha Green
****** August Provost, III
Mark Carson

I can’t say I’ve never thought of committing violence.
Hell, when my ex-wife cheated, it occurred to me
And I can’t say that I have never hit another
I’ve been a kid
My whole life is designed just to grow up
But, I’ve thought of killing myself far more often than the thought to harm anyone else have ever occurred to me
Because my problems are mine;
My fault,
And I am not seeking some scapegoat

Keenya Cook, Jerry Taylor, Million A. Woldemariam, Claudine Parker, Hong Im Ballenge, James Martin, James L. Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, Pascal Charlot, Dean Harold Meyers, Kenneth Bridges, Linda Franklin née Moore, Jeffrey Hopper, Conrad Johnson, 1 unnamed victim

I am not going to deny that being a white male hasn’t allowed me to sidestep a whole level of *******
One day, angry white males will be the minority
And we’ll have no one left to blame, but ourselves.
If we don’t **** everyone first
If we don’t **** ourselves first

Michael Arnold, Martin Bodrog, Arthur Daniels, Sylvia Frasier, Kathy Gaarde, John Roger Johnson, Mary Francis Knight, Frank Kohler, Vishnu Pandit, Kenneth Bernard Proctor, Gerald Read, Richard Michael Ridgell

Jonathan Blunk, Alexander J. Boik , Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden,
Jessica Ghawi, John Larimer, Matt McQuinn, Micayla Medek, Veronica Moser Sullivan, Alex Sullivan, Alexander C. Teves, Rebecca Wingo

The earth has already decided that we are a plague upon it
Maybe climate change is the natural response to the abuse of our gifts

Nancy Lanza, Rachel D'Avino, Dawn Hochsprung, Anne Marie Murphy,
Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Leigh Soto, Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Márquez Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison Wyatt

What is this world going to teach my son?
That he’s better because of how he looks?
Or what I’ve taught him:
You make yourself better.

Jamie Bishop, Jocelyne Couture Nowak, Kevin Granata, Liviu Librescu,  P
G. V. Loganathan, Ross Alameddine, Brian Bluhm, Ryan Clark, Austin Cloyd, Daniel Perez Cueva, Matthew Gwaltney, Caitlin Hammaren, Jeremy Herbstritt, Rachael Hill, Emily Hilscher, Matthew La Porte, Jarrett Lane, Henry Lee, Partahi Lumbantoruan, Lauren McCain, Daniel O'Neil, Juan Ortiz, Minal Panchal, Erin Peterson, Michael Pohle Jr., Julia Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Samaha, Waleed Shaalan, Leslie Sherman, Maxine Turner, Nicole White

I work as a data analyst
So, I ran the numbers
But, these are more than numbers
These are people: sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends, lovers.

Stanley Almodovar III, Amanda Alvear, Oscar A. Aracena Montero, Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, Alejandro Barrios Martinez, Martin Benitez Torres, Antonio D. Brown, Darryl R. Burt II, Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, Angel L. Candelario Padro, Simon A. Carrillo Fernandez, Juan Chevez Martinez, Luis D. Conde, Cory J. Connell, Tevin E. Crosby, Franky J. DeJesus Velazquez, Deonka D. Drayton, Mercedez M. Flores, Juan R. Guerrero, Peter O. Gonzalez Cruz, Paul T. Henry, Frank Hernandez, Miguel A. Honorato, Javier Jorge Reyes, Jason B. Josaphat, Eddie J. Justice, Anthony L. Laureano Disla, Christopher A. Leinonen, Brenda L. Marquez McCool, Jean C. Mendez Perez, Akyra Monet Murray, Kimberly Morris, Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, Luis O. Ocasio Capo, Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, Eric I. Ortiz Rivera, Joel Rayon Paniagua, Enrique L. Rios Jr., Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, Christopher J. Sanfeliz, Xavier E. Serrano Rosado, Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, Edward Sotomayor Jr., Shane E. Tomlinson, Leroy Valentin Fernandez, Luis S. Vielma, Luis D. Wilson Leon, Jerald A. Wright

I did research to try to find all the victims since I became abruptly aware 16 years ago
There are too many
I could not discover a single database that contained a comprehensive record
No one can keep track of it anymore
I know I’ve missed people
I know there are 1000’s of people now missing people
Even 1 was too much

Hannah Ahlers, Heather Alvarado, Dorene Anderson, Carrie Barnette, Jack Beaton, Steve Berger, Candice Bowers, Denise Salmon Burditus, Sandra Casey, Andrea Castilla, Denise Cohen, Austin Davis, Virginia Day Jr, Christiana Duarte, Stacee Etcheber, Brian Fraser, Keri Galvan,  Dana Gardner, Angela Gomez, Rocio Guillen Rocha, Charleston Hartfield,  Chris Hazencomb, Jennifer Irvine, Nicol Kimura, Jessica Klymchuk, Carly Kreibaum, Rhonda LeRocque, Victor Link, Jordan McIldoon, Kelsey Meadows, Calla Medig, James ‘Sonny’ Melton, Pati Mestas, Austin Meyer, Adrian Murfitt, Rachael Parker, Jennifer Parks, Carrie Parsons, Lisa Patterson,  John Phippen, Melissa Ramirez, Jordyn Rivera, Quinton Robbins, Cameron Robinson, Lisa Romero Muniz, Christopher Roybal, Brett Schwanbeck, Bailey Schweitzer, Laura Shipp, Erick Silva, Susan Smith, Tara Roe Smith, Brennan Stewart, Derrick ‘Bo’ Taylor, Neysa Tonks, Michelle Vo, Kurt Von Tillow, Bill Wolfe Jr.

and NOW I’ve run out of lines and time to read off all 2,977 people who died in 9-11
Isn’t that a tragedy?
My grandmother used to bake pies
in the kitchen where I lived as a boy.
She would spend all day mixing
          and kneading,
singing her old lady songs to herself.
I would get to lick the bowl.
This was my prize.
Back when the world was psychedelic
and hippies wandered the streets.

My sister and I would play outside
        almost every sunny day.
Magic kingdoms made of mud and bricks.
Toy soldier citizens of mock empires.
Barbie doll victims of terrible wars.
Bubblegum music from the top forty
       traced the pattern of our lives.

Our country had a new flag and boys
         in school still had short hair.
Little girls wore skirts and dresses and
pony tails were still the normal fashion.
Black and white television set turned to
the latest American sitcoms. We would
laugh at Granny and marvel at Endora.
Mr. Sullivan would present the latest rage,
the latest quartet or singer from England.
Back when the world was psychedelic
and hippies wandered the streets.

We wore peace buttons on our coats,
and drew "smiley's" on our books.
We talked about what we were going
to do to make a difference in the world.
We admired the Fab Four and worshipped
        at the altar of glorious possibilities.
We knew it was going to be beautiful,
because that is what we were being told.

Every morning at school we would sing
"God Save the Queen" and "O Canada",
say The Lord's Prayer and
      hear the announcements.
Teachers talked about the future
       as if it was a land of possibilities.
We did not know the black and white visions
would be transformed into colour horrors.
We had no idea that the dreams of peace and love
were going to be forgotten. Who could predict
the grey soul of adulthood? Where have
         all the beautiful people gone?

My grandmother used to bake pies
in the kitchen where I lived as a boy.
Back when the world was psychedelic
and hippies wandered the streets.
RAJ NANDY Dec 2020
CONTINUING WITH THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS
HERE IS THE STORY BEHIND THE ENGLISH HYMN:
          “ONWARD  CHRISTIAN  SOLDIERS”

"Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a 19th-century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed the tune. The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favoured processional. This piece became Sullivan's most popular hymn. The hymn's theme is taken from references in the New Testament to the Christian being a soldier for Christ, for example II Timothy 2:3 (KJV ) :  "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

Now Arthur Sullivan was the son of a military bandmaster, who composed his first anthem at the age of eight, and was later a soloist in the boys' choir of the Chapel Royal. ... To supplement the income from his concert works he wrote hymns, parlour ballads, and other light pieces, and worked as a church organist and music teacher.

    LYRICS OF THE FAMOUS HYMN
“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
o Refrain:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers, lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.
Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the church of Jesus constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never ’gainst that church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.”
……Posted by Raj Nandy of New Delhi.……
Kagey Sage Aug 2014
I told the professor I loved beat literature and all the hippy consequences. He said they were such a small part of the population (along with Native Americans too apparently,  he noted a different time. Because of what, you *******? I thought).

A pompous misguided thing, which either understandably or surprisingly, been teaching there since the 1960s. Five minutes of a winded attempt at putting anglophile humor into the lecture and you know the choice is "understandably" rather than "surprisingly." Been professing for the establishment, closed to other ways of thinking trickery.  

A real square through and through. As if all change should come from appeasing the tyrannical bleachy supposed majority. Those in poverty, darker skins, gays, drug users, and all around flashy dressers ought to don suits for their one night Ed Sullivan performance. Get the folks on Bass Run Lane to be okay with seeing you in a glass cage in their living room scene. For just a couple decades. Then maybe they'll be used to seeing you in a grocery store. You'll always be laughable though, as they designed it to be so.

The hippies were a very small majority says the anointed professor.
"So were the suffragettes" snaps back a fiery thing sitting next to me. I should have talked to her more.
Kiara McNeil Jul 2011
There’s a ***** in me.
A ***** that hides deep below.
But don’t try to **** me, kid.
Because that’s a ***** that you don’t want to know.
You think Jazmine Sullivan ****** your **** up, that’s nothing compared to me.
I’ll smash glass in your breakfast and make you drink bleach.
See how crazy she gets?
This ***** that hides away from the publics eye.
But not in private, no this crazy ***** will make you cry.
She’ll make you pant and moan
right before she breaks three of your bones
So go on and get gone, ‘for I release her early in the morn.
Don’t lie to me, our I’ll release the dragon from the lair.
Hurt me? I’ll hurt you tenfold and will not care.
Its not that I don’t love you, but you simply must pay.
Your lies have not gone unnoticed by my heart, and neither has the games you’ve played.
I’ll fight you to the death, gun or knife fight, its your choice.
But everything changes love, even my voice.
Once so sweet and angelic, becauses the demon’s tone.
So think twice before you pick up the phone.
And lie to me about who you’re with and where you been.
Be honest, because it will benefit you and I in the end.
Because this crazy ***** guards my heart.
And if you play with it well, I’ll allow her to rip you apart.

Sincerely, A sane female.
Labeled explicit, it could be offensive due to the language. I guess..
I'll go along with the thought, 'work makes you strong' just as long as I can
but,
sometimes, I feel pooped and can't jump through the hoops and that's when the dreaming kicks in for this man.
I spin in the frame of life's arcade type game and I'm lost in the wheels,
it feels
like,
riding a bike and not watching the street but meeting the idols I'd most like to meet,
like,
Gulliver,Gilbert and Sullivan,Jimmy Durante,Popeye the sailor and the Tailor of Gloucester,
lost in the throng and unaware of time carrying on,I get older,no wiser,no miser am I,
I give my dreams freely to those I love dearly.
This arcade game plays on though the moment is lost, and reality arrives if only to remind me, that life goes along and in it you'll find me,playing the machines,winning more dreams,sailing through the streams of unconsciousness.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i could conceive the western concept of the rehab,
but then for 3 weeks i was in poland
i didn't touch the bottle for that period of time...
i don't see how an addict with a bunch
of addicts can be cured by anything other than
stigma... i'm actually happy addicted to
addiction: i entered my reading-mode...
   that said, most people can't digest a Kraszewski
book... **** me, we read Bradbury in snippets
just to tow in an essay for A-level english...
       philip augustus, or the chess player concerning
the Angevin family... great stuff...
   i didn't choose the book, my grandfather did,
he owned half the Kraszewski collection and read
nothing of it, he had to find a ******* "bored"
enough to read one of the books,
   and as i once said: i've seen the movie adaptations
of the Sienkiewicz trilogy...
         the cossack uprising, the swedish deluge...
and i said to myself: i can't and i won't...
thanks you jerzy hoffman, and yes: thank you
peter jackson...
              the infinite supply of elven arrows
and Legolas shooting orcs at point-blank range did
it for me...
                thankfully i can write something
as obscure as this, and know, for certain, that
there's a back-alley of the human populace out there
that might be searching for something like this...
   but that's what i found entertaining,
i actually had the opposite of wanting to compliment
the film adaptation of sienkiewicz, with an actual
sienkiewicz book... mind you: Kraszewski covers
the same period... and it's all the same time frame...
   should i write a proof that i read the **** thing?
maybe... but the main idea is that:
a metropolis cannot provide the right environment
for a book... or completing a book...
books are read in the countryside, in small towns,
in palaces... in hunting lodges...
          and i dare say: reading a book, getting into
full swing of the narrative is best done in daylight hours...
and i'll come back to the daylight hours,
  as a drinker and writer i chose the night...
  you know how long it took me to restore my
biological clock, and regain the nocturnal realm after
spending 3 weeks with a clear schizophrenia
of sleeping in the night and wriggling about during
the day? 2 weeks! i restored the biological pendulum,
but i have to admit: i feel ****...
    but i guess it's a worthy sacrifice...
i'm planning to go back to my country of origin
during late spring to read some more books...
i couldn't have read don quixote, the brothers karamazov,
bertrand russell's history of western philosophy
    yada yada yada... or kierkegaard's either / or,
or finished off kant's critique without my place of birth...
  and isn't it like a badge of honour?
                some will tell you to speak out an eastern
mantra... om... and the shattering of chandelier...
the western mantra is also a type of hypnosis,
you have to find a rhythm with a book...
  the mantra is the narrative of a book, and the silence
that incubates you has shark-teeth should anyone approach...
   but urban living makes this spot harder to find
than a begger or the ******... you can read books
in large cities... before you head home you're
bombarded with the psychology of exploiting your
literacy, in adverts, in orientating signs...
        with them being so authoritarian, it's hard
to find time for a liberal attitude to books...
            esp. what books are, best described by people
who'd probably like to throw them like molotov
cocktails in protest marches: thick as bricks those
gargantuan apostles of the void are...
       and so we are: sitting in times of hyperinflation
of literature... if that isn't the case, let me know by
Tuesday next week, i'll brood the assumption myself
until then...
      that's 2 weeks it took me to return to my writing mode...
to get back to the nocturnal realm
where everything is doubly black & white...
                 the point is: i want to write at a time when
the surrounding world sleeps...
     last time i remember, i didn't get a message in my dreams,
i'd love to see letters in my dreams, fortunately
i can't... i haven't seen these artefacts in dreams,
      but it's hard to blame memory as not strained enough
to do so... the unconscious and memory don't really
interact that well... it's a paradox that they even do
and that dreams have some sort of existence involved in
the architecture of our psyche...
                        last night i dreamt of lego batman because:
d'uh his endearing sarcasm... and godzilla!
   boo ya!         and this large city being eaten up
by a tornado, and other things phantasmogorical....
well pandemonium here, pandemonium there...
    don't get any ideas about the nature of dreams and
oedial repression... please! unaffordable housing prices
these days can only mean i'd really earn a mortgage
if my ***-drive went to the dogs, of the profession.
    so 3 weeks of a sober life and enough time to read
books... and my return into a writing life, a nocturnal
life, and drinking...
   mind you, in between there was that masters final
with ronnie o'sullivan (at least romford is famous for
something) vs. joe perry... in the last frame, when they
had 30 odd points each, and they were plucking at the
last remaining red ball for the snooker?
       snooker is a metaphor for the savannah...
you either watch snooker, or a david attenborough naturalist
show... there's the herd of buffalo (the red *****)...
           and the cue ball the hunting predator...
well... it's all a bit abstract, there are just ***** on a green
table... but still... at least in snooker you can bug
the "pawn" (red) ***** without having to *** them,
in chess you destroy completely... the pawns go...
there's no time to keep them for a no-man's land pause...
and i just turned 30... which goes to show:
                  if the game of football was perfect,
i mean perfect like tennis is with hawk-eye and
    6 judges vertical, 4 judges horizontal...
                  then football wouldn't be so passionate,
so religious... the reason it is so religious is because
judging it is so ****** imperfect...
     there's a reason why football can't be perfected in a way
as rugby can, where the referee can pause the game
and ask for a replay... the unfairness principle!
it has to be unfair in order for people to feel even more
impassioned by it! that's why in that film
when Alec Baldwin says something along the lines:
god comes first (while his hand holds out
the index and *******), and football comes second
(the index finger disappears)...
      football can never be a sport that has perfect
refereering... which makes me surprised as to why
it can grace the Olympic games...
                   football (in english, not that theme park
of jumping torpedoes) - yes the football known as:
ballet with hairy legs...
                   it has to remain unfair and subsequently
quasi-religious because it generates the most money,
but apart from that, it has gained a quasi-religious
status because it reflects a sort of life we acknowledge:
the referee made a bad decision, god did this... blah blah...
  and we get passion, religious passion that's
best represented by football hooligans...
                        but whereas other sports perfect their
techniques of refereeing a game, football hasn't done
the least possible, because it requires the whole debate
of: life's unfair!
    if it wasn't for unfair refeering, the game would not
be alive, as it is alive, to stage a confrontation
with: apache west ham, and sioux millwall...
       it's the best way to ensure tribalism...
         make the refereeing unfair, don't improve it...
blame it on the man in the sky, or the ponce in new zealander...  
mind you....
   the last football match i went to was at Stamford Bridge,
Chelsea lost to Newcastle United...
             i just just there like a stoic twant...
           i couldn't imitate the screams and the chants...
   i was just mesmerised at how it's so different from
watching a football match without the television acting
like a microscope... i am sure i was looking elsewhere
when someone scored a goal...
                 i probably went to the toilet when i
missed another goal...
                        and i'll reiterate...
   it can't be a gentlemanly sport, the rules can't be fair,
that's why they call it the sport of the rabble,
they have to contain the illusion of being unfair...
       because it's a "rabble" sport...
the referee has to make bad decisions,
otherwise there would be a "what if" dimension...
ask any Pole about the 1974 semi-finals with Germany
and ask them about the weather that day...
  then ask about the Polish wingers... and how fast they
were... and how the pitch was so slosh, and ice-puppy
fudge that the slow germans won it...
                     because the Poles always say:
we could have beaten the Nedetherlands in the final...
        again: football, if it is to be stated as the secular
alternative to religion, has to have an inherent unfairness in it...
all the other sports will perfect their judgement,
football will not move an inch... just like a religion -
perhaps that's also because we live in times of
cold-consumerism,
       a quick comparison is:
   the reactions of antonio conte vs.
                       ivan lendl -
   the former looks like a raving lunatic when something
good, or bad happens...
   the second? is he watching tennis, or playing poker?
Tommy Johnson Jul 2014
What have I done?
I've unleashed Quincy Valero into The Big Bad City, upon Greenwich Village for the first time
The 177 express, round trip
To Port Authority
To the A train to Canal

We missed our stop
Had to walk from Soho to Washington Square Park
But along the way we saw artists and galleries
Head shops and street performers
Hobos and junkies

"We made it"
"We in this *****!"
Quincy said as we walked through the arches

We saw a multitude of creatures
An artist drawing floral murals with chalk
Meditating Buddhists
A cello player playing for a meal
A drummer drumming for money to get back home
A jazz band
A clarinet player
Writers scribbling down whatever came to mind

We saw beautiful women everywhere
"Look, my ten, your two"
Quincy said nodding to a **** brunette wearing a sundress walking by

We got coffee at The Third Rail coffee shop
We met lovey dovey couples and a girl poet sipping espresso

Treading down Bleaker to Sullivan to Macdougal to Huston
*** shops, leather and studs, ****** and flavored lubes
"This **** reminds me of Saw"
Quincy said with a laugh
"Too much for your threshold aye?"
I said nudging him

We passed a guy selling vinyl on the street
"How much for the Charlie Parker record?" I asked
He took the record out and inspected it
"Five bucks" he said
"How long you gonna be here, like till what time?" I asked
"Oh I don't live by time or numbers" he answered
"Time ain't your mast huh?" I laughed
"Nope, you cant spell T-I-M-E without M-E" he said
Quincy and I looked at eachother with a grin
"I'll be back, if I'm not here before you leave good luck in your ventures" I said as we walked away
"Thanks brother enjoy the day" he said smiling and waving

We ate to Papaya Hot dogs
Best in the city
Then to the pool hall

Now folks, it is common knowledge where I'm from the Quincy Valero is the local pool shark
He can break and sink three *****
He can jump over your ball and get his in
He can shoot behind his back with one hand

Playing with him is a guaranteed loss
But I never cared, I just like playing
We talked and laughed about all the stupid nonsense back at home
And planned our next move

We went to The Blue Note, the best jazz club in the city
The Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band was playing that night
But it was too expensive for both of us so we went on to St. Mark's place

More head shops
More *** shops
And book stores, clothing stores
Punk things in Search and Destroy, record stores
All that good stuff

It was getting late
Back to Bleaker to start drinking
First stop, a little pub
The bartender was a gorgeous blonde, sweet as could be
We ordered two beers
She seemed to be having trouble with the tap
"Sorry guys it's a little foamy, next rounds on me"
We were amazed by that because back home all the bartenders couldn't care less if we got a whole mug of foam
We clinked glasses and took that first cool icy sip
So nice on such a hot day

"Ya know dude, this is it this is perfect" Quincy said
"What you mean?" I asked
"Well this is a great time, I'm on vacation right now and were here exploring and relaxing and enjoying the moment, this moment" he said with his beer hovering over his mouth

Quincy always talked about "This"
This moment
This time
This feeling
This thing

"This" is that time when you're in the moment
That moment of complete and total encumbrance
When you're wrapped up in what you'r doing because you love it and you're happy
The moment you live for
The moment you want to last forever
This moment
This right here
Not then, not before or after
But right now, this
We lived our lives trying to to make this happen every second of everyday
Living it up

Quincy took me to Artichoke Pizza
And my God, it was immaculate
A nine in wide, nine inch long and half inch thick slice of heaven
It was a mixture of crunchy, gooey, savory goodness
I highly recommend it

Then back to the bars
Wicked *****'s
Triona's
Off The Wagon
The Bitter End
GMT
The Red Lion
Cafe Wha?
1849

Beer
Wine
***
Whiskey
Scotch on the rocks
Bourbon

Smoking electronic cigarettes down cobble stone roads
Passing hipsters, college students and tweakers
Locals and tourists
"Out of my way you tourist *******" I yelled frantically pushing my way passed them with Quincy trudging behind

You can always spot a tourist because they got their cameras, their ***** packs and their head looking up saying "ooo look at the building and that one!" taking snap shots in awe

We walked to The V-club
As we walked up to the entrance a little old lady in a wheel chair called out to us, "Are you two brothers?"
We laughed and said "no, were best friends and next door neighbors"
"Oh, well you too look very similar, very young" she said
"Yeah we're both twenty one" Quincy said
"You live around here?" I asked
"Right over there" she said pointing to the building across the street
She told us about how the building was falling apart and how all the law students got booted out leaving the little old lady and one other person living in the nine floor heap
"Back in the day there were river rats in their the sized of cats, but now we only have mice" she said
"I'm being moved though, whenever the land lords and the officials decided where" she added
She had some sort old senior citizen perk that allowed her to be taken care of
She then started to spit some of her poetry from thirty years ago, perfectly from memory
It was full of truth, insight and hope
We were floored by this wheelchair bound geriatric
She was a a retired barmaid, a poet, and an ex-lounge singer
Her name was Tracy Warren

The three of us walked into the V-club
I ordered a glass of Pinot Noir
And Quincy got a draft Brooklyn Lager
While pulling out a stool a spilled my wine all over the wooden table
"****" I said as everyone in the bar watched me put my face in my palms
I got paper towels and cleaned up my mess while the bartender leaned over to Quincy and said "If you don't tip me that will be your last drink ever in here"
"Okay" Quincy said as he walked over to me laughing at my expense
"If it was Burgundy I'd be in tears" I said with a half serious frown

I went to the bartender and apologized and asked sheepishly if I could possibly get a refill

"You spilled your wine?" he asked with sarcasm
"Yeah" I said
"And you want me to give you another?" he asked
"Well, I mean I don't know if that's okay or not that's why I'm asking" I said
"We don't, it isn't okay, you have to buy another one" he said with the most insulting tone I've ever heard
"Okay" I said with disdain

"**** this guy" Quincy and I both said
I left the remaining wine dripping off the table
Quincy ****** all over the bathroom
He finished his beer and we left without tipping that bearded-high and mighty- *******
We said goodbye to Tracy and she told us to enjoy every moment and to get home safely

We went to one more bar, had one more drink and headed home
But on the way to the train we got stopped by a ***
"Hey you give me money I know you got it" he yelled at Quincy
"Na man, hes broke trust me" I said to end the oncoming confrontation
"No yous lying i know it" he said
"Na, see those shoes? I got him those shoes, fifty five bucks" I told him
"Stop putting me on" he yelled
Then some white knight hipster wearing thick rimmed glasses and a green flannel stepped in and said "What's going on here? You picking on my friend?" While putting his arm around the *** mocking him and making trouble for us
"This ******* won't give me any money for my troubles" he told the hipster
"Come on man, give 'em something" he said to Quincy
"Dude, he has no money he spent all he had today" I said to the hipster and the ***
"He's a trust fund kid, he gets it from mommy and daddy" I said winking to Quincy
"Trust fund kid?!" the hipster said
"Trust fund kid!" said the ***
"TRUST FUND KID, TRUST FUND KID" screamed the hipster, the *** and myself laughing at Quincy making a scene
Then me and Quincy just walked away throwing our heads back howling at the full moon, drunk and exhausted heading for the subway  

The subway to Port Authority
Our legs, our feet and our ***** were killing us
We just wanted to sit

We could not for the life of us find our gate
We got misdirections from officers, other public transportation patrons
Thank God for this one janitor for pointing us in the right direction out of our wild goose chase
And ***** the guy who I asked "Hey man do you know where I can find the gate for the 177 express?"
And all I got was a blank indifferent stare
"WELL **** ME RIGHT?!" I yelled in his face

Finally we got on the line for our bus
We saw some weaselly looking guy cutting the line until he got booted to the back of the line
As he passed us we both looked at his and said "Weet, get meerkatted scumbag"
He had to wait for the next bus, whenever that was

The bus ride home felt like an eternity
But we made it
We had to walk down the unpaved dirt road to our street

We did it
We took on The Village
Sailed through the bars
Walked the streets
Met cool, hip people
Made memories
And now we have stories to tell
Nina McNally Feb 2010
Jump
Into the sea, feel the
Move-
Ment
Yet

Standing still
Underneath the trees
Laying,
Lying, trying to hide those feelings
In the ground--- its
Very pretty today,
And we will
Never forget you Rev, our brother of MUSIC.
Written Now. for all of those who love The Rev and A7X.
This is dedicated to Jimmy's family and the A7X family
Vince Chul'Theg Nov 2013
I guess I feel threatened by your strength
I guess I feel threatened by your beauty
I build brick layers between us.

What is that?

She ushered me to that golden path of sacred
My hands seek but grasp not
But there is something there to be taken
Why the blinders?
Why the stammer?

I have never been so confused
‘Olobeouch,’ the Yapese say
A tangling predicament worth
Unraveling with a fine-tooth
Bamboo comb

What about awareness
Emotional terror both by day
And by night
The subtle insidious kind
Calm waves of sad

Inertia creeps

What is that?

How do I heal when--
(and thanks for putting words to it, Rudy):
When it feels like the arms of my
Clock have arthritis?

Ship wreck on the wrong shore

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

My feelings for you have grown needlessly ornate
Yours for me, simple

Sullivan says:
Friendship is underrated
Because of its inherent
Ability to be so earthen
So organic
And, thus
Conceptualized
Less

So why have I built
Nonsensical negativity?
Self-sabotage

What is that?
I’m not that guy.

I told you:
“I want so much more of you than I need”
I didn’t know at the time that I got it twisted

Maybe:
I need you more than I want to admit

Love the one you’re with

I idealized, romanticized the **** out of you
Before I even came back

I shot myself
Big toe on rifle trigger

A nice distraction from more
Pressing issues?

What is that?

I thought I was alone
But you reminded me
I am not

I can’t tell you how much that means to me

Those words:
Struck match
In a dark room

I’ve not let anyone acknowledge or
Sympathize with my lingering ache
Much less help anyone understand it

What is that?
I’m not that guy
I’ve never been that guy

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

­
I let news of:
Thousands killed by super typhoon
Refugee birth
******* hunter casualty
Child victim of AIDS
Remind me that my pain is small

Pretending that that news is
Good enough to build perspective
And deal with pain
When it isn’t

“We accept the love we think we deserve”
I guess I thought I didn’t deserve you
Thank you for reminding me that that is
Not Truth

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

Ask me unprovoked questions
By the sea, under a tree
Whisper me stardust

Because one day I want to say:
Love me for the man I’ve become
Not the man I was

I touch the tip of your nose
Donall Dempsey Apr 2015
"Have you a working pulse?"
he asks of his petunias.

"...he went away cold as a snowball!"
he tells his gladioli.

They positively beamed at him.

"Oh yes...oh yes. . ."
he pontificates

"Flowers like Shakespeare
best!"

"...especially PERICLES
& other minor plays

rather than the great Dane
or say OTHELLO!"

"The herbs prefer
Gilbert & Sullivan!"

"But, spoken:
not sung!"

"...poor wandering one..."

"Or sometimes a little
dash of Noël Coward!"

"...what compulsion compels them and
who the hell tells them..!"

What could I say?

His voice produced
such a fecundity

such a fertility

that his word
could not be doubted.

"Oh yes...oh yes
plants like to be

spoken to, but:
prefer a little culture.
https://youtu.be/U3MwdWPYqC8
Morgan Nov 2016
We watched three DVDs of Elvis
on the Ed Sullivan show,
Just to find you waving in the crowd
for a quarter of a second

It was brief
But to see you so young
And gentle and light
Was worth the hours
Of black & white tv
And jokes that are no longer funny

The first night I met you
You asked me if I was a writer
And I asked how you knew

You said it takes one to know one

I read your poetry for three hours
In Indian style on your living room floor
While you ate crackers from a ziplock bag
And talked about the love of your life
And the way his chest felt
The first time you used it as a pillow

You told me not to cry
When Elijah dumped me
You said pain is everywhere,
I'll miss out on life
If I let it consume me

I turned to leave your room
On a random Sunday last December,
It was cold and wet and dark,
And I was tired,
You grabbed my hand
And stopped me in my tracks
You said "learn to relax"
And then you held me still
Until you saw the anxiety
melt out of my eyes

I asked you why you
Bother to keep the car
Even though you know
You'll never drive it
You asked me why
I bother to love the sick
Even though I know
They're dying

You told me "don't close the blinds,
The world is beautiful"
Last time I came to say goodnight

You kept making plans,
Where you'd go after you left here
Even though "here" was certainly
The last place you'd be

I never understood
Why you kept pretending;
Pretending there was more

I get it now, Peggy
I know
Paula Swanson Jun 2011
Not a cloud in the sky,
Sunday chicken set to fry.
That is how I recall those Summer days.

Playing ball just for fun,
ice cream when the day is done..
Watching my freckles pop out from the suns rays

Colorful kites in the air,
Daisy chain in my hair.
Over and over in my memory it plays.

It was more than a childhood,
that Mom, Grandma, Grandpa gave to me.
It was more than a childhood.
It was a gift of, precious memories

Playing Barbie's on the porch,
Grandpa in his Bermuda shorts.
Big Band music on the stereo.

Playing tag with my brother Steve,
Ed Sullivan on T.V.
Listening while sister practiced her piano.

Swimming in our little plastic pool,
watching Grandpa work with tools.
Seems we were always having fights with pillows.

It was more than a childhood,
That Mom, Grandma, Grandpa gave to me.
It was more than a childhood.
It was a gift, of precious memories.

Slip and slides in the grass,
cold iced tea in a tall glass.
Runnin' barefoot through the neighborhood.

Gram making strawberry jam,
Hear Grandpa cheer a grand slam.
On our swing set we'd go as high as we could.

Walks down to the Rexall drug Store,
we were never, ever bored.
I know now, what back then, I never understood.

It was more than just a childhood,
that Mom, Grandma, Grandpa gave to me.
It was more than a short childhood.
It was a lifetime gift of precious memories.
Nina McNally Jan 2011
In this Nightmare where Today Feels Like Lies, I see Joe Jonas and he tells me, it's Time to Dance.
And Oh look, there's Peter! Pete tells me, that Music is Life! But I already knew this.
And there's Jimmy Sullivan--The Rev tells me, Don't Jump. I won't. I don't want to be Buried Alive. ----
"I just wanna live while I'm alive 'Cause it's my life."
Avenged Sevenfold is the Cardiology that keeps my heart beating.
Now What If... this was real and not a Dream?
Let's just Dance for **Tonight.
copyright; 2011 McNally, Inc.
I took the titles of the poems that I wrote so far and made 5 poems.

— The End —