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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We the people
can no longer
see ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.

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

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

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

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

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

Today federalism
crumbles as our
democracy withers.

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

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

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

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

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

America desperately
needs a new narrative.

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

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

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

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

3.

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

Thank goodness
Dolly Madison saved
what she could.

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

They value nothing
save their
self enrichment.

They will spare nothing.

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

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

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

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

The capitol is
indeed burning
again.

Looters are
running riot.

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

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

MLK has lost
his humanity.

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

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

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

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

This confederacy
is ready to torch
the White House
again.

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

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

4.

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

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

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

Citizens
dependent
on programs
are leery
shareholders
are ecstatic.

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

5.

DC is a city
of joggers
and choppers.

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

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

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

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

I try to consider
the defining
characteristics of
Washington DC.

DC is all surface.

It is full of walls
and mirrors.

Its primary hue
is obfuscation.

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

The city is thoroughly
enraptured in narcissism.

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

Vanity imprisons
the city inhabitants.

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

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

They are the children
of privilege.

They will never
alter their path.

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

These young ones
portray a countenance  
of benevolent rulers.  

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

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

6.

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

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

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

Today America’s
astronauts hitch
rides on Russian
rockets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8.

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

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

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

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

Yet they remain
inert.  

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

The eyes of the
men stare into
an incomprehensible
fate.  

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

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

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

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

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

Betwixt the shrub and hubabubb
'neath bracken's shadowed scowl
came a Wren pop-hopping when
arrested by a yowl

He spied another grovely bird
chattering with the gloom
realising it had been observed
it screeked with spittled spume

Stay back, stay back
alack, alack
I've nothing left to give
and should you shake the life from me
unhappy you shall live

Like him the grovely had a one leg
and too the veshy eye
and when he flexed his deeker wings
he knew this bird must die.

The unctuous Wren popped back and forth
as did the groveley bird
and there they stood 'twix shrub and earth
exchanging not a word.

Just this once I'll let you go
announced the cautious Wren
he turned his fractious beak to blow
and was never seen again.

Gruesome blister on a denatured mind
Chimes rumble the anchored soul foggy with Elysian wine
Flippant ruse ignites a battered fuse rusty with malevolent impotence
Blustery portents beyond expired extent throngs the chapels and pickets along the electrified fence
That separates the grave from the gravity of a physics enslaved
A physics where disillusioned mathematics and decay are as sure as taxes and the last earthen day
Nescient of giant leaps our stepwise ascension is helical and cheap
It snails along with unctuous repetition of pendulous rhythm and sails biologically with evolved and animated meat
The advent of acid and bass is a keepsake for the epicurean chase
Of a fulgurant galvanization of phases that remain unfazed
Trends punctuate vain diversions and lionized conversions both raise and raze
The velocity of money ensures a melliferous alchemy of a well-oiled plutocracy buffered by praise and pay
Ivory-tower elegance is immune to demotic ignorance
When the shot-callers devise the rules to the game with impenetrable clandestine eloquence
Hebetude and lassitude sink abundant platitude and offer trite prescriptions for useless attitudes
But the vogue of disembogued vanity entraps individualism and trains martial raillery
Trends tantalized by preening epigamic tens makes the roosters become owls that neglect nest egg hens
Fatuous ambush of the Kardashian putsch is as clockwork as Big Ben
Murky lies appear in flimsy disguise suitable for mice “say cheese” demise
Privacy cries and answers only lurk accessibly when spurred by wise “why’s” never asked when garish time flies
Tweets and beats make us obese with threadbare wheat cultivated by nescient bleats
Beatific ambition obscured by the wail of sheepish sheep
Outnumbered by obtuse angels and a cute horde of meretricious dissolution that ever wrangles
The shelter turns to rubble and the cloister turns to bustle: useful convolution thus entangles
Agorophilia defiles a voiceless lechery on speed dial
Disembodied violence sprints a green mile bankrolled by the peaceful throngs slowed through the paid but dilatory turnstile
Thus we loiter in queue as the slew of vibrant militarized celerity taxes our pews
Pews which enthuse jingoism eager to apportion sentient deaths through religious abuse
We can surf beams of light chasing verisimilitudes of diversion bright
Of unwagered immersion gambling a pittance for vicarious thrills and riskless fright
To discover the vestige of war, a useless artifact of sore egos we now deplore
An enormity of unmoored evil percolating apace of the paradoxical rush hour from shore to shore
But more decisively than an implacable brush fire on pristine ground abetted by sleek star-crossed winds that soar
Irenic ignorance placates, because a vagrant vacant mind is more a felicity than a bellicose grimy crease
Because excess corrodes squinty detests, and partial enslavement is both a rest and arrest to earth’s untenanted lease

There is this idea, this feeling you say:
A revelation of profound compassion
Riddled with crippling paramount tribulation
Dribbling with drops of pontification.
Thoughtfully and yet aimlessly kicking
Unctuously vacuous presumptions. Promising,
Eventually, to unveil brick by brick
This facade someday and assure me
The imprisoning edifice, with which you keep
Under lock and key, will be effaced
And naked, soon, someday in front of me.
Yet, here another day passes.
From curbside to manhole, up sidewalks and across gravel grit.
Then a squib toward onlookers window shopping
Glaring down at me as both they and you listen
To my dissonant and hollow caterwaul.
CLING, CLANG, BANG! Look at me I'm just a can!
Crumpled and malleable, a thin sheet of five cent aluminum;
Recyclable, reusable, just a means to a mans end.
Ah! But I am not what you think I am:
Within, a bountiful boisterous bloom, unravels
The arid breath of lies and procrastination you exhume.
Your insipid words fall vapidly in my mind like corroded rust
Gently drifting onto a lapping lake.
They are an erroneous ear infection boring my wits
And dulling my thoughts, a waste of time.
All of it bottled, canned, and manufactured
From within your ******* emporium.
Keep your bricks and mortar, think they retain your unctuous pride
While this time, for once, I kick the can curbside.

a commune back home not hippie
buy 300, no 500 acres great land
in Codroy or misty high hilled Avalon
built great big house wraparound porch
beset by rocking chair by the sea yet
in the woods at end of road all brown dirt

growing gardens, herb and vegetable
pulling weeds but keeping good green ****
brewing beer by own hand
group work but not always group think

friends lovers writers growers givers
all come to stay
making great pots of stew and strange brews
awakening brought far from Peruvian Torch homeland
telling stories all somehow great fables and anecdotes for life and living and love and everything that's good in the long run

at night over bottles on beaches by fires
we worry these are funeral pyres
for our great little social experiment
fear of leaving loving womb
of isolated salt fish by sea commune

real world so crass&brash; an unctuous affair
where here instead guitars, ukes
silly screaming little buddhas recite poems
by gleaming eye fireside

Succulent, meaty, ribs falling off the bone and drenched in a velvety, thick, sauce.
“Check please.”

Tender chunks of lobster tail bathed in sweet, drawn, butter.
“Thank you. That will be all.

Heavy, cream-coated, strands of fettuccine accompanied by fresh peas, Speck, and shaved Parmesan.
“I wish I could stay but I can’t.”

Filet. Rare. A veil of Roquefort and sautéed wild mushrooms in a Sauternes reduction.
“It's just not the right time.”

Perfectly seasoned carne asada with a creamy roasted poblano sauce, queso fresco and the cool, half-mooned, sultry innards of a Hass avocado.
“I'll call you tomorrow”

A decadent Kobe burger blanketed in cheeses, caramelized onions, crisp bacon, and a cap of unctuous foie grois.
“But thank you for everything.”

Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.
And you would have me forever.

(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

III

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere **** of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
—I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.

IV

But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

V

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive trees.

VI

Is it better in May, I ask you? You’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.
’Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

VII

Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in her conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!

VIII

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.

IX

Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in:
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there’s the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the Archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke’s!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
“And moreover,” (the sonnet goes rhyming,) “the skirts of Saint Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.”
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.

X

But bless you, it’s dear—it’s dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It’s a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles;
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like ****** weregeld on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold, scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick

If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Won the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club

If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he bangs the lectern for a war,
That glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and smoke

GLUTTONY


Go ahead and gorge yourself upon gallons of gaudy garments,
Gaining more weight got by galling garish goods I guess won’t
Ground

Let loose to the luscious luxuries of lackluster lemon and
Lots of lulling bedtime letters that will surely let at bay the
Ladies

Unravel your unctuous mind and unwrap the unstoppable urge
That undeniably lives under unruly layers of
Unproductive

Together bring the talk of taking another tackle to your taciturn tally,
Taller the score and take down the tormenting tickling
Tack

Over and over in obscure ovals until objective becomes apparent
Only leaving orbs of former obliqueness’ obliging to
Object

Never again nourish the need to negate the null to nonsense,
Leave behind the knots of then and live the neat of
Now

Yesterday was yellow in yielding to yearning and
Today is your yet to the question of no or
Yes











GREED



Gradualy every great thing grounded in your gaudy life will grain,
Falling from grander to
Greed

Run away you realize will render you ridiculously reeled
Be the regal recall of natures
Ranting

Even then elude the everlasting elasticity of your sins
Only to elect your own faults and
edict

Evermore entrapped in the entity of your greed which eels
Its way through your
Etiquettes

****** to depths of hell’s dungeons you will go down
If you never fix your
Deeds.







WRATH



Wound so tightly your will won’t save you when the
Day weans of light to
Wear

Repent all you require if you really must, no reprise
Will be your
Reward

Again and again you’ve all but alleged all of your agitations
And now do you
Abject

Too many you take to the top and through to the terrible
Tale of
Tartaras

How do you have your hallowed hot-headed hate now
Had by all you
hocked







SLOTH



Silently slithering fangs strike and pierce into your supple skin
The serpent of Hades himself forcing you to succumb to
your sloth

Legs let leave your longing to linger standing
The lull of the luscious leisure of laziness
Calling you

Over and over you omit the need to oblige
Object the obscurities and overcompensate the
obligation

Though it takes away tell of your toes, stunning your talk
Teathering you to a tree and leaving you to the
terrors

However hollow the halo, the hearth of hasty hearts, may be,
you cannot halt it before is has you in its hold
sleep








LUST


Linger in line a little longer until your litenous lust
lessens to lethargic
larceny

Undone and unset you undermind your unity
and uncite all uncertainty, understand to this
ulcer

Slung across a slat singing sultry in your stipple,
you slew to sound off your
sanity

Taught thoughtless logic tenderly apply topical treatment
to tape together the tatters, tonight a temporary
Tylenol








ENVY



Eject and exact illusions of elected goals eluding your reason
So eject them for
Ever

Never return, never negate the negligence of this nuisance,
Need it
Not

Vanquish your venomous vicarious visions so vivid
I assure you not very
Vivid

Yearn no more and yearn by years how yellow
Can yell the
Yetti








PRIDE



Perniciously palpable pigs of pride that so prate way their progress,
Putting all but prosperity in their own
Propensity

Ridiculously cold rendering the most righteous of realist,
Even relenting to the racketeering of a
Rider

I too see an iota of insolence in intemperate impostors
Of what internal instances tell us is
Intimidating

Down the street dally a day and discover how detrimental
Such a disease dilutes the delineation of our past
Delegation

Even if one ever eludes the elasticizes of this eccentric extortionist
Eventually another will emit it upon to you again
entirely

this dead city is alive with stray cats and missing person fliers, but the locals are dancing
on hardwood floors and [  ferocious yellow drums  ] are striking the black-most
and the back-most star, sinks
it's cleat into
banished sunrise
with  No End
in Sight !

the pride of most eyes,
too blind
to witness the free  
oblivious,
As corn-fed black holes
swallowing the wisdom of crowds... as the unctuous clouds
of our dismay
are ever, ever at play; where the thin pool thickens.
where our blown bubbles French with thick tongues... our open lips
rebuffed to an invisible  sheen.
the running of the Bulls is always an Alcatraz in a Free Will.
we dip into shallow cathedrals
where our Mercies slip through
nausea and dank  

and Islands
of Less Ocean... where
The weakest Archipelago
In a Severed Chain
Of Dreamt
Events

are you

Unburied
tomorrow
from Christian metanarratives
the mid-winter solstice.
  
       December 21;
           the shortest day
       over the longest night.

Two lovers
               are by the Channel
                    divided
                         to different beds
                                to tongue tastes
                                        to timed beats
                                                     to unfamiliar scents
                                          as Yuletide days
                     burn twelfths to gray ash;
              their bodies
         are sea
cleaved.

Come!
cross the water
and release
with lively touch
tresses thick
and winter's dew,
unctuous upon the crag,
the timely solar orb
to stir the frozen ground
on our rocky shelves
and chopped bowels.

On 25th,
Christ's star is risen:
the king's light dispersed
   in lengthening days
   in opened flesh
   in loosening chords untied
   in sinews gnawed through
   in desire's wanting hotly flayed!

60 seconds were daily added,
to when
in the 100 Year Gallery,  
love to know,
would in solstice
ultimately lay.

For now as then,
our emboldened play
in days delayed
has been
love's lacerating torment!

If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
  had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
  and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
  as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
  leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
  and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
  of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
  had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
  in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
  so that she had to go to her grandmother's in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
  with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
  I would not have traveled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
  nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
  I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley and the river sliding past the amber mountains
  nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall

Muriel, when  our eyes first met and  your name  rolled off my tongue with a fine ring,
felt, I was charged with your sun-filled-sea-radiance from inside out
just the cadence of a name has an unctuous something! I've never known that  before,
just saying it evocatively few times, I felt touching your heart; a golden thread did bind us then.

Verily the exordium told anent a beauty engirdled in her fedora
soliciting those whoever descried her into her mere servile admirer
eight trenchant tinctures upon her body invigorate like a cadenza
I dare not to contradict the verity that I am beguiled afore her

whilst the snain distilled faintly enwreathed her in unctuous silk
concordantly she devote herself earnestly to the impeccable rain
that emanate her fragile poetry with prestidigitation in a whisk
forsooth she is but the vernacular sobriquet to the soul of the rain

recall me otherwhile during the rainstorm champagne did coerce
and the sunset's glass of wine exude her ingratiating persona
like a myriad of aphrodisiac summarized in a single verse
when harmony and lyrics danced in the crepuscular crescendo

all of that needed to be enunciated is it is you
do not harshly let me be thy unrequited dilettante

Pupils contract, in protection, from the onslaught of light
which peels off colours out of the abyss,
shedding sight, on blackness,
the contours of the dream
are beautiful
and falling.

I, a curious position in space, attempt to relate here,
whilst all is being swallowed, and swirled,
in the belly of the Goddess,
whom engineers
faultlessly,
as we
fall.

Monkeys driven by meaning, are strangling reality,
effulgent as she is, near, unctuous and yielding,
a shame, that vision is not seeing,
and seeing is believing,
and god is dead,
and science
is a net
holding
frailty.

Behind the mist of morning, at the waters edge,
in the brimming beams of sunlight,
the percolating mountains,
the stretch of land,
the capsule of
atmosphere,
here:

Is the unknown, and unknowable, the black truth,
we tremble before, afraid of the death
it pours over our living ******.

Yet what is enlightenment, but the ability
to see in the dark, and what is the dark
but the absolute liberating force,
the annihilating edge,
obliterative.

And what is nothing,
but everything.

There, before my eyes
a thousand faces unfold
in one face.

-*qyf

12/30/2018

The eloquence of listless years is lost on heady overweening heels that submerge reality in a cavernous of oblique light shrouding the dark mysteries to come. Axiomatic but refractory we swim and tread danger and peril because the unsaid screams for awakening as the roosters outfox the owls and completely change history based on evil skullduggery that awaits the gainsay of titans compromised in security but elevated over the doldrums of quotidian thought. It is my solemn forbearance and consistent steadfast prayer for alacrity and industry to conquer the dudgeons of incurred opprobrium to clinch a beatific convivial festivity for a time-informed claque of leaders that delight in simplicity but dissemble their true disguise in open shark-infested waters. Salvage the impositions of the many and cull the best to anoint their favor on uncertainties improbable but likely as the discerning will master reality rather than be the dross of yesteryear. We swarm with importunate guilds of serfdom to surrender their edifice to the chiselers that operate and extravagate beyond bounds established by parochial priggishness that is a flagging patriotic insistence on drenched graft dank with the mildew of balkanization but not entirely as reproachable as some relics of the ancient law detest with misguided guile and paranoiac sophistry that is a precarious canker of otiose tastes drawling on with misinformed skepticism. The hounding gray in the pallor of alpenglow light ennobles the concatenations of wistful dread but at the same time esoteric flavor that enriches the emblazoned gallantry of the few to become the mainstay of all relevant considerations. Wish upon a coruscating menagerie of miscegenated aboriginal languages that have always abided in the shadows but exist in brevity among the elite coteries that coddle the world in its infancy away from the artifice of exegesis and the importunate placations of swarthy umbrageous shadows that exist apart from the factitious apartheid of race and gender. We must stand united as brethren enduring the tribulations of human vicissitude to abhor the diseased rhetoric of pandered puritanism amalgamated with aleatory financial alarmism calculated to swindle the dilapidation of penury that burns as a smoldering conflagration of concerted ignorance leading to ochlocratic determinism rather than a whispered percolated pedigree that drowns sorrows but simultaneously strands the pariahs of time in insular self-reflection unbecoming of an age that demands an importunate, ubiquitous and outspoken corporate altruism not superintended by a bloviated and tumescent dysnomy of congregated botched bureaucracies that encroach with a daunting donkey commandeered by headless horsemen who are only known by pennames and cognomens that flinch at the demise of their undeserved anonymity. We use valor as an instrument to prevent a scuttled vessel of a seaworthy humanity slinking along a very balmy coast as we await future instructions at the apropos time for a simpatico relegation of commercial collectivism. We expect instead a demassified world to enliven the dialectic of epistemology itself and renew covenants long ago moribund in their ragged and wretched desuetude that they may be vanquished as vestigial habiliments to the tatters of sloppy abnegation leading to a swollen piety that dares not to pretend but simultaneously believes so much in its pilloried hubris that it provides erasure for the secular enlightenment of a messianic time. Squalor and riddled eccentricity drive a brackish but saccharine attempt to homogenize the pastures that we graze upon but look no further than a bequeathed divine providence of smirks rather than the jibes of sneering ostentation. Whisper you fame rather than declaim against the arraignments of a scuttled pettifoggery of miscegenated justice that embroils foreign wineskins for domestic turmoil rather than the demotic enlightenment of the abrogation of inequitable laws that preserve the totemic dissolution of society rather than the prized ameliorative enlightenment of science informed by faith and faith beckoning the clerisy to seek supernal wisdom and furtive swank to reconnoiter the righteous and jettison renegades imploring for a piebald blinkered apostasy on a rudimentary subconscious level but never realizing their effrontery is gravid in a heedless ignorance interpolated by menacing secular hobgoblins that ransack barren treasure and cherish it as a trinket for a chrysocracy that is specious rather than veridical. Barnstorm for justice but appoint the abeyance of foolhardy prescience so that the enigmas of time can beckon their own deliverance through a culmination of waggish flickers rather than the kowtowed toadies of a quidnunc reality divorced from proper temperance outmoded but thriving among those that disavow newfangled foudroyant spectacles. Always and with alacrity indulge the gladiatorial sportsmanship of a zeitgeist beyond contention as the paragon for livid dreams and lurid imaginations to drive the mutiny against plebeian ears and purblind eyes. Live for the eternal present with providence and forswear the vestigial fossils of flippant eras domineered by dragooning fictitious sentiments buttressed by castles built against the encroachment of the imaginary foes of vassal states that submerged the world in a fideism that rejects too many axioms of modernity to vie for preponderance. The government is not irreproachable, but it is a primeval reflection of the propensities of an aggregated society flippant against choice wisdom of the ageless Constitution that is peremptory proof of the divine providence of sempiternal liberty. People that chide against liberty because they fear precarious cankers that endanger from a distance because of their swollen specters need to uphold a commitment to a wistful remembrance of tragedy but a sturdy ruddy optimism to perdure and prosper on this greenest of worlds for both the greenhorn and the expert alike. Never kowtow before the altar of avarice and always pilfer resourceful contemplation in the respite of quiet times that engage our best faculties to awaken rather than slumber. Recruit the collective imagination to superintend chaos and the leviathan becomes tamed because it requires human synergy in both prosperous times and desperate measures to foment the earth with the brontides of due warning simultaneously murky and misleading but always reflective of an irenic pasture of withering sheep and abundant shepherds. Regal promises have always loitered in the penumbras of the elite but now is the time for absolution rather than scattershot contumely. We believe in the federal way and the state farm system and we don’t believe in foreign monoliths becoming the pasquinade of slippery hebetude that ensnares the immobilized futilitarianism of ignorant creeds and divisive claptrap. Barnstorm together for God and liberty as those two principles-however squandered they might be by listless speculation that doesn’t hinge upon the concerted subaudition of the deeply fathomed sources glistening with profundity- will clinch a victory for the beatific future of a guided humanity rather than the guileless intemperance of choleric fools who wage conflagration against only their own plodding ignorance rather than reaching with outstretched hands and tenacious grasps to invent the future according to the helical perfection of the past. May God rule forever on earth! A prosperous earth! An Earth filled with pleasure and an Earth that approximates heaven more closely every day. Amen  



12/31/2018

Riddled by bewildering supernal designs of an ineffable splendor that drapes reality in iridescent cloaks of rigorous and strenuous limber we trounce through the effigies of a profaned pasquinade to gallop through the doldrums of time for the allocated investment in the refined human condition to exacerbate the declension of foes but link the Abrahamic faiths with taciturn reflections and wizened countenances beckoning a newfangled harmonious destiny. Livid are the naysayers who proffer gainsay with insouciance and flippant sorcery to denigrate sacrosanct axioms with persnickety maxims that are only auriferous when viewed through a refracted entropy of disdainful speculative mutiny against propriety in values and stances. I sidle through a refractory zeitgeist despised for my aureate temerities against the chided condemnation of those who flout so-called gobbledygook because they lack stringent acuity and pale to the polish of ennobled grace that anoints favor and felicity on the laurels of an age very intransigent against latitudinarian capriciousness that will one day ransack the world of its flickered graft and its paltry obsessions with quondam gaucheries. A house divided against itself will flounder because of titanic pressures of oblique balkanization that is opaque only to the hounded ignorance of wishful but labile people who wage acerbic gambles against the delegated authors of an aborning covenant for irenic reconciliation in a blinkered piebald world. I like to saunter in private with my insistent lucubrations because I know the majestic gestures of jest are more bountiful in their fecund harvest than any circumlocution of blunt poetasters who calumniate the verve of self-made upstart grandeur that I brandish at every opportune occasion to pilfer my due inheritance from the coffers of a self-fulfilling fatalism divorced from solipsistic monisms and the denigrations of the futilitarian quest to deprive sustenance in the exercise of deft skepticism disempowering the perspicacity of miserly mendicants who treasure their science but pale in their trepidatious momentary twinges of faith that are insincere and unctuous abominations against a steadfast God that wallops our misery with the lurched progress of human amelioration wrought by the succor of alien wizardry beyond even the most quixotic imaginations of people who in their prolixity miss the pithy glib sacraments of a terse and burlesque pragmatism. I simper because I know about carbon emissions statistics with hearty gusto and a convivial banquet of amalgamated personalities and wraiths that emanate from the ether of the 12th dimension of reality: transdimensional interspecies sentience. I wrangle on the outskirts of a bustled city embroiled in a relegated civil war entangling plebeians and plutocrats but not engorging any coffers in a zugzwang destined for pejorative scuffles rather than synergistic revivals of the human fraternity, a consensus about intellectual meliorism that will fossick with due efficiency cognitive resources frittered away in the respite of laziness and the abeyance of prospective diligence to conquer rather than waylay with furtive gambits of appeasement. Everyone need to leapfrog beyond the quotidian plane by indulging the oneiromancies of self-efficacy aggrandized by presidential favors and collective efforts to unite the 16th version of reality with the penultimate version of reality. For the ultimate version of reality is corporeal death upon which we are transplanted unto an ethereal dimension beyond contemplation without the horological diminishment of wizened age.  We trudge in the miserly conditions imposed by pharaohs of pettifoggery that swindles with blustery graft and strident intimidation of the audacity of hopes and dreams to foment the requisite fin de seicle zeitgeist that deserves more of a heyday with the revivalism of nostalgic entertainment against the opprobrium of inferior tastes facile in formulaic conformity but deficient in its nutritive enrichment of beatific festivities that traverse the earth at lightspeed because of the vehement energy of foudroyant amazement is beyond contagious when conveyed through the dexterous vehicles of more centralized rather than skeletonized organization. The bonhomie of a copacetic future demands the interpolation of scrupulous adherence to authoritative dictums but the laissez-faire demagoguery of titans trouncing the ragamuffins of cacestogenous upbringing in a miserly husbandry that stunts the stilted imaginations of formalism rather than bequeathing a seminal insemination of a future hybridized race mechanized but humanized simultaneously to accomplish what would once seem impossible that now looms considerable with the democratization of the furtive at a faucet’s trickling pace to empower the future to heed the past and the pastors to revere the eschatology of final conditions rather than a favoritism for aboriginal barbarisms created by the snare of hobgoblin phantasms that exist only to make us tremulous rather than swanky. May God bless this great green earth with many decades of prosperity to come and heap plaudits on the intellectuals fighting the fight against simpleton groupthink. Have a very festive New Year!

Das Fuehrer gefüllt mit Flöte.

Listening 2 yawns,
meditating on medication,
lisping a cry to Das Führer,
I proffer a pray,
im morgen Früh, im morgen Führer,
im morgen nah; hören Sie mich.
Not 4 pleasure yearning 4 unright
Unctuous crimes. Not with U.
Not with boast (yet not with hate 2).
Hating the bath water with the babe
as it bashes Reaper's polemic
hellfire falling out of window;
Still me, in that kindness enters
my home, bowing cuz the doorway is 2 large.
Guiding in black ink,
writing a way
out of loyalties mouth,
out of sclerotic liver,
and contumacious throat.
I tongue an act, a play,
staying guilty in U,
saying guilty in Us.
Lemmings encouraged to revolt,
Offending in U,
Rejoicing only in Us.
Witness our joy, that Xanex protects
against dull moments, forgetting Us,
bland blessings rightly
Surrounded by Yawn's shield.

Your love is black ice
Unctuous, greedy, slippery, treacherous
Seductive, alluring
The duplicitous song of the siren.

You are as the ancient oak
Whose once vital branches have withered
Into gnarled, beckoning husks
Ever reaching, never grasping.

And still I hunger.
To my shame I yearn.
I eat your dirt with the impetuousness of the dying.
And with trembling hands wipe away the maggots.

More the fool am I
For allowing the shadows to lengthen
Awaiting the day your siren song
Delivers its unspoken promise.

Ever listening for the soughing wind
To blow through your wizened leaves
To shimmy up your sturdy trunk
And carry you back to me.

But your branches are black with decay. Desiccated from neglect.
And my ears have forgotten how to hear your voice.
Accompanied only by the echoes of a dream
That has long since faded.

Ever snorted *******?
I watched some partiers snort ******* last night,
in a dark, Manhattan nightclub corner celebration.
But I’ve never crossed that line. The white line.

When offered some, with unctuous camaraderie,
I shrugged and said, “No, sorry, I’m allergic.”
What are you supposed to say, “Crack is whack,”
or “I prefer my coke with *** and ice?”
The white line. I don’t cross the line.

It’s not the first time, of course, I saw more drugs
in high school than I have at Yale. I’ve mostly seen
“study drugs,” there, like provigil, adderall and alza (concerta).
Do they give students an advantage? I don’t know, maybe.
Call me a boxcut or a squarepants, but my parents are doctors,
and I just don’t cross those lines - those little white lines.

Of course we’re born sad little creatures!
To be born, we had to have the picture
broken & bursted—for, being born, we’re
fragments of it. (But not just us born—all
of it that’s born…all of it’s fragments.)
Us, though, we found out about the pieces
(and that we’re them) so shock-hearted and
weary-eyed we joggle ourselves around,
and waggle and babble (because we can move
and talk to the other pieces, like you) in the
sedulous task of trying to see what picture we all
formed before we were born and to see
if we can’t form it again while born and living.
And, also, inexorably, to see like fateless
naked goggling chicken-children what part
we have—is it a sun’s ray, a cloud’s feather, a
grass blade, or is it just the indistinguishable
shade of unctuous bole that’s laid there
almost smeared in between? I’m not quite sure,
our tabs seem flexible enough, and to add
we’re whimsy little interlockers, so no wonder
we’ve been going on billions of years now.
At this point it’s probably give-up or never-end,
and both options, frankly, seem quite abominable.
I wonder if that’s what it says on the box,
right above “meant for children” and “small
parts dangerous choking hazard.” But the
question is what to do when you’ve realized a
piece has been missing, always been missing,
and probably more. (Oh, and for after, you can
ask if it was never put there in the first place,
and why)—do you just imagine, then? I mean,
just that—just imagine the whole thing, after all
the fuss been going on to hold hands and make it out?
I’m telling you, I bet the sucker is something else
entirely, like something I don’t even know what,
but different—crazy different, I bet. And it’s
probably why they didn’t want to include it,
those ponzies—we wouldn’t choke on that one.
Not that piece. Still, though, I hope it says on the box.
I hope it at least tells you something on the box.
Wait, where’s the box? What box?

More of a man at 20 than at 22

All of the passages about One, there were no others

Regressing into sin, no art without misery

That old cliche, right? Right.

I read somewhere that he wanted to be a writer

He wanted to be a great writer, Remembered

Taking, making great sacrifices for art

Alcohol, Benzedrine, Isolation

Checkmate, One and Two and Three

The night (this night) will be my Desolation Peak

For now,

Looking back through the pages

Who exists in this manuscript?

Who is Marg?

Who is Sil?

Won’t you please tell me?

Won’t you come fill my Head. I’m not asking

Won’t you come fill my bed?

So I need not pretend

Were it that I could let you in

Save for those rare times when everyone appears not unctuous

          To my uneasy usurious eyes

In an act of desperate atavism I return to the roots,

To the past, to the Grass,

      (Looking)

           To the glass

Only momentarily half empty

Before it is refilled

Where will we find our answers honey?

When will we cease to believe this positive psychology *******?

You don’t need to be happy

You don’t need to be comfortable

You need to Mean

                 to have

                             Meaning

                                   to create a legacy

Not shrouded in shame

    and neglect

         and fear

It doesn’t have to be the same

New city, new hope, new name

Erase the stain with pen and paper

Evoke change

See the world through baby blue eyes

   The bucolic beauty brilliantly beats and beads down, blooming

        Bright flowers in early mildew sunlight

            Or Big Sur - view from the mountains

                Or the moon

Soon my love, soon

   Swoon, sweetly suggest

       The sight of a lover’s supple *******

            And her name like poetry on your soft still whispering lips

   Tantalizing and tickling tongues

       Tickling and tucking shyly

Soft skin swimming in hushed tones, brushed bones and quiet sighs

   Wide eyed, clenching belies

       The beginning and the end of far more

pumice
peat
mulch
humus
leaf mold
clod
loam: a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.

marl:  Geology. a friable earthy deposit consisting of clay and calcium carbonate, used especially as a fertilizer for soils deficient in lime.

argil: clay, especially potter's clay.

bole:
noun
1.
any of a variety of soft, unctuous clays of various colors, used as pigments.
2.
a medium red-brown color made from such clay.





clutch
kaolin
loess: a loamy deposit formed by wind, usually yellowish and calcareous, common in the Mississippi Valley and in Europe and Asia.
slip
till: a stiff clay, a glacial drift of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders

(with apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning)

                                        Arrogant
­Book Soldier
Conceited
Con Artist
Covetous
Cunning
Deceitful
Disingenuou­s
Egoist
Egregious
Envious
Entitled
         ­                               Evil
Haughty
Hypocritica­l
Ignominious
Immoral
Jealous
Jumped Up
Machiavellian
Martinet
Mendacious
Nit Picky
                                        Obsessed
Peck Sniff
Perfidious
Persnickety
Pompous
Popinjay­
Predatory
****
Rapacious
Regimental
San­ctimonious
                                        Self Important
Shylock
Smarmy
Sophist
Supercilious­
Unctuous
Unethical
                                   ­     Vile
                                        Vicious
       ­                                 Zealot
       ljm