CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

(10/13/12)

At the beginning of “64” - I packed up my uniform
And walked out the door- it was the beginning of
The Vietnam war.
By August of that same year
President  Johnson started the draft
Under protests and jeers.

Then he made it a full scale war
And sent our soldiers to Vietnam shores.
The Beatniks in Greenwich village
With their long hair, beards, and
Flip flop sandals - wrote their poetry
About this undeclared war, and why
Our men were going to those shores.

This created a new generation called ‘HIPPIES”
The hippie generation was groups of protesters
Against everything that they found wrong
The draft , the war , pollution
And loved to stay high with ***, hashish
Coke and acid (lsd) which kept them blasted.

This also created the “ flower children”
Who like the hippies loved to be high
And on certain flowers they would fly.
But they spoke of loving one another
And gave out flowers as a sign of peace
Which to the president was a relief.

They all started painting this “53 Chevy impala”
With the words “ flower power”.
Now the “ flower children and hippie movement
Was in full swing, and everyone was doing their own thing.

They had  Greenwich village under their control
And not one coffee shop would ever be sold.
Every coffee shop had a poetry night
And going there was such a delight.

Then in AUGUST of “69”
The WOODSTOCK festival was on the rise
Over half a million people drove to that farmland
And set up tents , hammocks, sleeping bags and such
And the police found it was much to much
So they had no choice but to see it through
Because there was nothing else that they could do.

The WOODSTOCK  festival had become world wide
And to this day it still thrives.

© L . RAMS

I have often wondered what would have been
What could have been with you
Had it been a different place and time
If we had similar views

The paths we cross they all have reasons
Sometimes it's hard to figure why
We touch each others lives in some way
Then we say goodbye

Feelings were strong and very real
perhaps not strong enough
To cross those invisible borders
Chasing after love

Perhaps we should just smile and reminisce
The season that we shared
Keep the good, cast away the sad
Leave the feelings undeclared

Millennials at Work and War

Scorn not the snowflake who stands watch for us

Now thrown into the existential struggle
Surrendering their youth and taking up life
They muster in the fields and factories
And in their elders’ undeclared, shadowy wars
Uniformed in an unappreciated sense
Of duty and dignity while scorned by those
Who take their ease upon the couches of sloth
And fling cheap mockery at millennials
Who take up tools and work and love of life
Sometimes to die in deserts still unmapped
While generals dismiss their casualties as light
Despised as snowflakes by keyboard commandos
Who never got closer to any war
Than a John Wayne ketchup-****** movie.
Some work long double shifts through university
In a sawmill, shop, or fast foodery
Only to be dismissed as slacker layabouts,
But expected to trust those who condemn them
For not being the greatest generation
As defined by those who never served at all
And while being criticized they will grab
A quick cup of coffee for the night shift
Staffing the hospitals and police patrols
That keep their sneering critics alive and safe
They drive the trucks, they man the ships, they work
They drill for oil, these useless millennials
While idlers lounge long in the coffee shops
And YooToob computered jokes about them
Millennials have no time for coloring books
Or comfort animals or revolution
For they are weary with study and work
The best of them make no demands, but, sure
A little respect, hard-earned, would be nice
If only the scripted singer-songwriters
Would pack up the tired old stereotypes
And see millennials as they truly are
But darkness falls – they must go back to work
On the eleven-seven, the graveyard shift
They do not burn draft cards or Medicare cards
Instead through work they illuminate this world
And build it up with continued sacrifice

Scorn not the snowflake who stands watch for us

Current affairs, making family disappear.
Blood thicker than water; I can't see that from over here.
Haters show hate, to hide their fears, hide their faults by dissing piers.
Their hands weak so they dis their peers.
Weak-minded; Diss-impaired.
Test the truth and get dared
Like something that's undeclared.
Put a ring around your rosey,
Then I’m taking a chair.
The kingdom come;
The dynasty is aire.

Spring blossoms gentle acceptance
Of vagaries of desperation
Like variegated autumnal leaves
From the core of the stone of floods
Undeclared truths
Affirmative requests

There is chaos as a whole
In the expanse of the unending.
Fear fades mystically.
Death and boredom leave your lungs ...
There. Exists
Justice and pleasure... .
.... thoughts of living, laugh in the face of Death.

all the thoughts of failures
Conglomerate and are cast away
Into a deep trench
the soothing currents lull
Sinking green verdure.
Embraced by the biosphere
And forming a reef,
Thereby even your failures succeed.

Even now your image is being painted on the dull white canvas of my love.

Violent storms may rend the world
scattering lesser unions,
There is endurance in our madness...

Laughter, the golden bird, with bejewelled feathers,
Leads to the oasis of truth, in this desert of deceit
Reciprocation of sensation
Every intention to remain

And the rapidly ascending choir of broken angels sing the song which massacres despair.

And the body I wish to settle
Caressed by the deepest dark of night
Birth of the morning
The genesis of pleasant daydreams
Calm, hope ...
..... And a sense of success
Blue morning justice cascades
With dispelled illusions, and realized wishes.
Everyday upon wakening
I discard hate
As love, is mildly colored supple flesh
Withdrawn and plunged, into the crack of a stoney heart

Space infinitum opens before us,
On the petals of the lotus
Space through which two beings connect
No matter the distance.

We know that beneath this dull white nightmare
Dwells a vibrant black dream,
That is neither evil or good,
But just is.

On the workbench of despair,
Disassembled hearts are heaped.
In this pile I dwelled for an age of pain,
Until you plucked me from the pile
And made me whole again.

I am constantly reminded of that popular Bible verse in I Corinthians 13: And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. It is a verse that I highly cling to in faith and hope, something that I truly love to hear and ponder upon. Otherwise, I could easily give in to despair and cynicism, as it is prevalent in this world like a cancer. A good combination of a good dose of faith, hope and love is surely the medicinal treatment required for the cure.

Whether you adhere to this Biblical statement and belief, or absolutely do not, anyone can understand that we need faith, hope, and love to rely on. No matter what our walk is in life, whether we are Christians or of another religion—or have no belief in God or the spiritual life whatsoever—we all must have faith, hope, and love. Must!

Our very lives, and the world, depend on it.  

The religious aspect aside, who can exist without these three, without faith hope and love? Take the sun, for example. Even the staunchest atheist has faith that, without fail, the sun will reappear on the horizon, each and every morning, dispelling the darkness of night as the earth revolves around the sun. It’s like an undeclared promise, a brilliant, seemingly miraculous occurrence that should never cease to fill us with awe.

Until we take hold of these thoughts, how soon we do forget.  

Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow and you never saw the sun again? Never? What would it be like if there was nothing but bleak darkness as we looked up into the sky for its beautiful blue canvas and infinite greatness? Our meager light bulbs and man-made lamps would pale in comparison to the blotted out light—the desert in the sky. Life would cease to be, and the thought of it seems almost incomprehensible—the utter void, the earth’s destruction, the deathliness, the icy cold and chaos. How we often take such things for granted! And the life-sustaining sun is only one of the countless things that we often take for granted as we dwell upon this magnificent earth. One may use his or her own analogy to compare.  

Along with faith to spur it on, who can survive without hope?  Hope reminds you it is still there when you cannot envision it there or feel its presence. It offers fresh, new pathways when your hopes have been dashed, and urges you to move on from false hopes that are imposters to the real deal.

I certainly cannot live without hope, nor could another living soul.  Having no hope at all feels like a living death, one I know of firsthand much too well. Inside of me—in my own being—when it seemed that the sun in my soul, with all its nurturing and guiding light, had entirely disappeared from within me—I experienced that vastly void, and dark, bottomless pit. In complete horror and pain, I felt my life would always be this way.  I liken it to having your lungs being ripped away from you, the wind ****** out of your spirit.

Oh, it is a dooming, crushing thing to have no hope!

But the thought of having not a shred of hope was something that I just could not bear nor accept. Thank God, it was an illusion, not really gone for good. It is the very fuel to propel rockets of dreams and goals, and it works hand in hand with faith and love. I believe wholeheartedly that hope is there for anyone’s access, no matter how low life seems. For like that eternal sun in the sky—sometimes seemingly doused out by menacing clouds—a temporary mirage, no doubt—hope is an invincible, precious and extraordinary gift, one that outshines despair by a thousandfold.    

Imagine if there was no love. Many of us think love is an illusion, a ***** trick to avoid. People often were supposed to love us, but failed. Surely, we can often fool ourselves into thinking something is love, when later we find that it is clearly not. Often, we feel burned when we show our vulnerable selves, simply on our quest to love and be loved.

But we want love nonetheless. We have to have it.

Love is as messy as life is. Hate often seems triumphant as we turn on the news. It seems to outshine love, and we grow weary by the cruelties we witness through the screen or from firsthand experience.  And by taking a good look in the mirror, we often question how loving we really are, for our guilt is reflected back at us for how we have failed others in a lack of love. Sometimes, we are just too scared to love. Sometimes, we just don’t want to make the effort. But love is still the greatest of all. There is no way this earth could spin well without it. What would be the need of it's ordered structure if not for such a high attainment as love?

Like I Corinthians says, if I have all knowledge or have faith, but have no love, it as if I have nothing—nothing at all. How many people have been taught that they are not worthy?

Again, like that sun, love covers everyone—encounters all at different times of reach—even those who are seemingly incapable of its power.  

And yet again, what if love had simply gone away for good, like faith and hope? Like that sun in the sky? What if hate truly reigned and ruled the earth?

But the battle is never over, and love must always fight on.  These can't just be words that I am saying to fill up space. I truly fight to believe this!

Again, that sun in the sky represents love to me, as well as it does faith and hope. It is warming and enriching. It is a pathway out of the restful night and into the ongoing world. Like it is a living entity, it doesn’t demand our constant attention, and nestles itself into the clouds before it makes its entrance once again, takes yet another bow.  It continually feeds the plants, which feed the people and the animals. And to imagine that this greater-than-life ball of fire is capable of creating rainfall that sustains life, too.  What a glorious contradiction!

With my poetic mind always churning, and the imagery flowing, I share these thoughts to you. Faith, hope, and love—I am truly amazed!

Fandango we danced
was second to last
or was it tango?
we all are too clumsy
to move
too rigid
to see
things without limits
we need
no gimmicks
just a direction
or a simple question
to be answered
prevent brain cancer
become decent dancers
to get to know
there’s nowhere to go
if we don’t want to
but when we are about to
we need some fuel
to fill our engines
with pride
the heart and the mind
are never
good friends
in the world of dollars
blue collars
dark on the inside
breaking their stride
to fight
the poor
not the poverty
so unfair
but it’s the reality
of our lives
human hives
ideology of the masses
ruling classes
thy neighbour to despise
catch them by surprise
rot one from within
soon to take ‘em in
lose someone you love
to understand
there’s an undeclared war
that we can’t bystand
take part
start
to act, preach, teach, bleach
dye, cry
find an ally
before long
our song
will be that of joy
tactics we employ
are peaceful
spare no enemy
**** one - get one free
the tree
of life
having tea at five
some things never change
we are acting strange
conceived in liberty
created to be loved
but still in puberty
continuously starved
of little things we need
there’s just too much greed
open your heart
take my hand
for a start
we all have one goal
Sweet Lord
help us all!
22.10.2010

Let’s face it:
Vietnam was a purge.
An undeclared yet official
War on largely Black, Chicano,
Mostly urban, poor White-trash--
Any of that unlucky-cohort--
Coming of age, mid-60s America.
A purge yes, but 'Nam was also an
Intelligence Test:  them that went,
Particularly those who never returned,
Those scoring at least two standard deviations out,
Outside normal, therefore inferior genetic make-up,
Those the country could surely do without.
“Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough.”
www.genomicslawreport.com /.../three-generations-of-imbeciles-are-enough... So wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Buck v. Bell, a 1927 Supreme Court case upholding a Virginia law that authorized the state to...”
I couldn’t have said it better, Justice Holmes!
The Nam: those of us who did survive were
Nonetheless, mangled and traumatized,
In both body & spirit.
We knew right away we’d been duped,
Particularly those gun-friendly southern boys,
Hunting ***** for sport and Country, now contemplating
Remorseful acts of mass homicide 40 years ago.
The real poindexters of our generation, of course:
Got a medical deferment, or
Stayed in college, or
Went north to Canada, or
As I did, joined the Coast Guard, unfortunately,
In addition to my nightmare Indochine,
My personal Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
Based on Joseph Conrad’s
Congo Nightmare Novella--
Heart of Darkness.)
And Józef wrote it in English.
Which was for the native Pollack,
His third language after Polish & French,
Which is probably a good time to
Encourage each & every young punk
On the cellblock to make good use of their time:
Learn a foreign language., e.g.
Why not Spanish?
Given Obama’s farcical, unrestricted border policy.
Soon to be a pervasive lingua Esperanto.

My politics? Sign me up for a little T.A.D.,
Manning a 50-caliber machine gun on Donald’s Wall.
Donald Trump:  A Modern Hadrian?
Don’t get me started on politics.
Take a Spanish class.
Finally, you’ll know what those
Grease-ball Mexican landscapers are
Saying behind your back, right in front of you.

After the Army, & after college on the G.I. Bill,
That’s when I joined the Coast Guard.
OCS in the 1970s was a difficult (read:
Lower Standards) recruiting time for
The Armed Forces of the United States,
Including the U.S. Coast Guard.
OCS: The Oklahoma Cook School we joked.
Officer Candidate School: graduating
Nautically savvy 90-Day Wonders,
Inculcated with conduct becoming &
Other archaic, chivalrous values,
Imprinted with Chain of Command obeisance,
Etched deep an acolyte’s primer on class-consciousness.
Blimey! What a difference after my previous
Two years stint as an Army grunt which leads me to
An overwhelming question: Why do Officers live
Better than enlisted pukes?
The Military: last refuge for scoundrels,
Escape artists & last bastion of medieval feudalism.
Officers! Welcome to the Aristocracy.
Mazel Tov,
Bienvenidos!
It's the Class Structure,
The dominant organizing principle for humanity,
Since the dawn of human history, perhaps longer,
Consider, if you will, “Alley Oop.”
“Alley Oop” Lyrics | MetroLyrics: (www.metrolyrics.com) “There's a man in the funny papers we all know . . . Eats nothin' but bearcat stew, A mean motor scooter & a bad go-getter . . . King of the jungle jive.”
Even longer if we go troglodyte era,
Some mean-mother, some swinging
Foucault’s pendulum set of *****,
Some club-wielding Duke of Earl—
Simply put: some Alpha Male,
Sticking it up whatever polygamous
Multiple Missus *** just happened to be
Bending over within my field of vision at
Any given moment.
I am the block’s biggest, baddest, meanest cat,
Made right by might: physical power &
Will to use it.

Then came Divine Right: Dieu et mon droit.
French for “God and my right.”
Conceived by the shrewd ones,
Those staying out of trouble,
Cringing in the corner of the cave, AKA
The inherently weak, concluding, at last, with
Marx: “The history of all hitherto existing
Society is the history of class struggles.”

Inside me,
unfurling currents
adrift in confusion;
uprooted and unsure.

Silent leanings
Undeclared,
without reason,
Unstable and yet
seeking balance,
go tilting towards
secret places that
lie tender and unexplored.

So softly stroking the bowed back
of my subconscious,
a lover's caress of the mind.
The slow hand of thought
flowing across
the dark curtain of doubt.
Veiling, with sly intent,
obscure fears.
Spreading delicate tendrils
of uncertainty.
I am silent.

TV’s going in living room
Talking about our doom
We’re laying on the front lawn
Yesterday’s long gone
Woman showing skin
Too fat, too thin
She can never win
Throwing up yet again

Listen up man
We’re all ******
Re-repeating reprimands
Demolition on demand

Locate security
Trying to make camp
In independent infidelity
Strutting to the bank
Cashing in corrupted currency
Stock markets sank
Guitar man teary eyed
Rock and roll came and died
Record producer’s big old lies
Broken dreams and wasted time
Colorado Smokey Joe lights a bone
Faded out to the ozone
Smoking on home grown
Got glaucoma? Get an O

Shut up dude
We’re all *******
Forget the olden days
Give marriage to the gays

Let go of the narrow minded silly ways
Let it be as common as classic Frito-Lays
Rolling in the new waves
Is it God who really saves?
Is there even one big deity?
Guess there is if you believe

Be born, live life
Go to college, get a wife
Get job, sacrifice
It’s the norm, is it right?
Have a kid, then have another
Father, mother
Sister, brother
Try to tolerate each other

Watch your back bro
Because I don’t know
Undecided, undeclared
Run in circles, running scared

Take a risk, double dare
Love needs to be redefined
Unanimously agreed and signed
Peace in the heart and the mind
Going down the rabbit hole
Striving for that same goal
Anti- bullying campaign
Kid comes home blood stained
Toughen up
Enough's enough
Individuality
Opposing mainstream reality
Wiseman taken as a fool
Becomes another social causality

Feel it
Taste it
On the back of your tongue
Hanging by the gallows martyrs hung

Climbing up the ladder’s rungs
Foul smelling whiskey bums
Grab a *** and stash it
Looking like your bat ****
Steal a car and crash it
“Always wash your berries before you eat them and fly toward the sun”

His eyes rivet on the extravagant evening sun,
in frenzied creation, profusely mixing colors,
applying on the canvas of the horizon,
painting her, his lover with astonishing precision,
--portrait of a girl in love
unmindful of what the world thinks about her
and in  total dedication to her man.
Love makes larger than life heroes out of weak mortals,
and creates echoes on the far horizons that keep on reverberating!

She sits quietly holding his hands as if it is all she needs
never thinking, it is obvious, whether this is a fallacy or ultimate truth,
that holds good for all the changing seasons.
With her long chiseled fingers she draws
something beautiful, a motif that emerged in her mind,
in front of them, the seascape, was a lively cyclorama
framed by bright ultramarine.
Like eels just out of water,  their bodies gleaming,
bikini clad glam girls, beach soldiers spearheading
an undeclared beauty attack,
on the look out for hidden challenges
while walking past the love pair,
each one stands awhile, scrutinizing her thoroughly
measuring with a scale, hidden in those eyes,
as if she was a **** on parade, even women couldn't help covet.
Though inappropriately dressed, for the beachfront appearance,
she invites more attention,  she is amused.
But after a tumultuous love, and eventful elopement
she is in bliss,  in her love-land with her prince
she is just ecstatic, no thought could  make her shake off her composure.

Dear Sun-God,

The Bel fires are lit again,
but not to rejoice as before,
for they are flames of my bereaved heart.
They are embers of manifold sadness I feed upon
the feast of handfasting.

Every Adam and each Eve
a rich union of sprouting forests
with flowers and horns to crown their wantonness.
But for the Son of Moon,
No Son-God can be held
to coronate his nativity.

The flowers are shades of November
And the horns are spikes of pain;
for I cannot hear you in the air
nor feel you in the ground near.

The earth was shunned by the hands
that strum its heartbeat
and was sent back to slumber
in the pinnacle of May.

Have you not seen the call of Pleiades
when you took flight in the heavens?
Have you not heard the semantics of  
the desert you landed on?

You left me the afterglow of you to stare
As I drink the ocean of our distance.
It might have put off the ache
if you had proclaimed the omens of farewell
and not a multitude of air for me to embrace.

If your feet touch my sacred earth again,
I will kiss you like infinity
and enfold you akin to eternity.
Be grateful I made it known
what compensation to deliver
against your undeclared departure-
your prelude to your return.
                  
                   Love be not mortal,
                   Child of Moon

Our empty syncopation's are patiently ambushed
By restless margins of undeclared territory;
Shivering cymbals, entraining cloistered memories,
A nimbus inclining toward unredeemable quarries:
Refrains unimagined, of star-tipped dawns
Upon certain days of ritual, unbelievably worn.

Breathing dragons of fire-squandering meridians
Pour round water upon semblance's drowned emotion;
Cleave then to me, who cleaves to the last vestige
Of rarefied air, breathed by bellows-smothered centuries
When your foot trod the newly opened ****** earth,
And your hand hinged loves diagonal, even unto death.

Is Poetics
  a poem or a process

Is Love
  a lover or romance

Is Art
a painting or a vision

Is Worship
  a place or deliverance

Is Freedom
  a word or a statement

Is Family
  just blood that we share

Is Duty
  an oath or vocation

Is Truth
  just a wish—undeclared

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

You still don't notice
If i make no sound
I wanna make impact
When im not around
Like a missing piece
Like half your heart
I want you to ache
I want your thoughts
I
Want
Your love
Is that
To much?

you’ve had your whole future mapped out
since you were 16, sitting in homeroom
and hand-picking your life.
me, i’ve got no plans to speak of,
still trying to figure myself out;
everything major still undecided and undeclared
because pandora’s box is
always really pretty until you open it,
and the future’s really alluring until you’re in it
and you’re wondering if it really fits.
and i know it’s stupid trying to
plan for a car crash,
to plan on ******* up  
but i’ve been trying to take precautions
in case i don’t grow into who you were counting on.
i keep your promises tucked in my pocket,
you make vows just to talk about it.
and i don’t know much about fate
because once my horoscope actually told me
that i’ll be alone and unloved forever,
born under an unlucky star,
so i’m not placing my trust in the stars
even if sometimes i get the sneaking suspicion
they might just be right.
i’m trying to dictate my own future without having a tongue,
i’m trying to find a future i’ll be content living in.
people are always waiting for time to run out,
and i’ve always been waiting for the fall out.
because i know all good things have to end
all bands have to break up, all stars have to explode,
all slow dances have to still, and eventually
all loves have to run out in one way or another.
and i’ve got front row seats to
the inevitable explosion
because you’re a heart attack and i’m totally doomed
we’re just bombs going off too soon
we’re just strangers dancing in a crowded room
we’re just ****** up and wishing on the moon
we’re just racking up casual causalities
we’re just reading our fortunes
in the coffee grinds and tea leaves,
half-joking and half-a-little-too-honest
when you peered at yours and said,
“it says we’re gonna grow old and grey together,
and move out of the city and have a bunch
of loud mouthed kids with your eyes.”
i don’t know about the future
and i suppose you’d like to tell me about it,
after all you’ve had your whole future mapped out
since you were 16, sitting in homeroom
and hand-picking your life.
but it’s an affliction, all those ******* predictions.
don’t tell me where you want to be in five years in from now;
tell where you’re actually going to be tomorrow.
because i was dying for this week to be over
and then i was dying for this year to be over.
and i can see it clearly,
my whole life lived in transit
on the way to something else.
i was dying to finish high school
and then i was dying to finish college
and then i was just dying,
and i forgot to live in the present in my rush
to get to the future.

In the cavernous expanse gilded out of silicon robes of Greece flattened into the diminutive spaces between crags and rock, the swimmers of the natatorium embrace to plunge in transparency where they erred in covert chivalry
Knighted partially by association but yet unofficially born of sentiments rebarbative to the well-heeled, I linger like tar heels lamenting that the supernova eventually bequeaths the death of the ultimate chapel hill a shining city on a valley masquerading as a hill
From past and repast, the nurture of former presidents calumniates if also embraces the possibility of unfettered liberty and prosperous futurity, they simper in silent lugubrious reflection at lives shortened by liberty prolonged, of hearts opened but death devolved
Latitude and the caress of brazen attitudes corners the ***** in a tightened alcove of a restrictive forest of livid and limpid dastardly deeds, the arm of hunched idiots grazing with dumbfound idiocy at their own protective duty to shepherd the forest only for the singular trees as though disease itself is only a tease in a flirtation too exposed to believe
I joust with giants in a town that brooks lions and lyon estates with too many GrayZe superintending too many fain and valiant graves littering the stream besides the Pennsylvania forest in a past sunken in intrigue slipping in and out of an ethereal time invented by a harvest moon too attuned to be a lunatic any time soon
Whither is the outcome of a Shakespearean demise of prattle becoming the pasture of specious but solid skies, gleaming that a science fiction theater isn’t hailing a fuhrer or jingoistic furor any time soon hopefully I do too croon.
Militant tapestries of unhinged madmen craven in their disregard for every bent temptation, we witness the downfall of scrounged indecency and lonely hearted thieves contemned as they condemn perdition upon an unsuspecting victim
The victim is the hope of galvanized promise, a regal flutter of liberty tracing the skies elaborately for the flight plan most likely volitant and most destined to succeed
Corporate heads shake hands with desperate beds that Damocles himself wishes blood himself was yet shed or never shed but cutthroat collapse is avoidable with the recrudescence of provident relapse and rejoinder, asunder the ships may seem but now aimed so directly like a laser pointer
Titanic is a father to founding fathers only in the regress of avoidant times, sheepish of the whispered grime of inutterable blithe sublime time, limpid in partial acknowledgment of a wretched fate as avoidable as possible with the proper introduction and the right heeded date of a love better than choice wine and the wineskins of an indian province live as well just as much in a Skinnerian time.
Read the palimpsest, pittance proferred for every skeptical and undeclared bet that skewers the coffers of a criminal ring of Barnum Brothers in bed with burned asylum, a sanitarium wider and menacing like the most minatory lion
But the jaws of these aliens in time, whether specious or not thrill only those susceptible to the flattery of swank and the travesty to which we thank our deliverance and suspected exoneration
Flanking the outstripped malls that sprawl in the orbit of cities engorged like a skyscraping promise littered by Walled Ease and regaled bleats that belay down the cliffs of rigid insurrection only partially courageous to noble and partial inflections.

The courage of a wistful day slipping into the fathomless depths of dudgeon and pain the dungeons clamoring of insanity willfully reign, we clip the newspapers to the walls and scrawl our loves into the fallen scrawl.

Crimson red beneath the spangled spars, the author of debauchery immemorial that swills and wassails its own heartrending blues. And this movie squandered in limelight but buttressed by blithe regards for morally debased frights. Sting me the police and see the wasps nest infest your hollow diatribe to the extent you are hobbled in the depths, ennobled aboveground but nevertheless widely pitied.
The mathematics of love and loss, cravings for distrusted sacraments on a blue bus swiveling though the recesses of aleatory or controlled time. But then I lament that fully loved and fully lived is a fluff of sacerdotal emulation rather than the true authorship of heaven blanketing the earth.
Polished polity renegades and the rumpus of crumbled heaped ashes in a cremated time, where sand itself is eternal and sentience is somehow the door to nothing but despair, in their blinkered hubris that scales the lizards back in order to be lifted by olfactory graft.
In that light I see a bright whisked wind carrying the secrecy of portentous spared revelations and the spate of intermittent lightheardedness blows away my skepticism, but sides have been chosen and the bluster of the past emulating the culmination of an amenable future scares the birds from their chavish
Chiliads chill like excellency dissembled as the husk of an eternal monument of punctuated emphatic glory lingering above the ground with intransigent resistance to gravity and an slaver of better sincerity in the attempt to become beyond guileless tourists.
Dressed rankled blue swayed news, always operative in militant conformity to an eradicated sentience but simulatenously a wider sing song enlightenment. I struggle for words in this debased state of pitiable futures plastered all over every billboard that ever matters rather than the closure of closed doors trampled by intermittent dreams and seamless cows becoming the heifers of unified peace.
Smaller that the ants the infest the hills but more glorified than the quiet pristine ponds that outskirt the skirts that need less descent and more ascendancy.

Blitzkreig of cosmic wars swelters the torrid desiccation of a languor existing in human platitude but defiled of human gratitude. We swiftly wait for the erosion of sanity to become the author of a novella of craven deeds and bolted brimstone, serenading a rush towards sensation and an abandonment of rivers libation
Beneath which rivers flow, scrounged glowers endemic to a ruddy blush of sun-stricken grace, I clasp every remedy and every catholicon becomes more ecumenical and more rabid with stricken gaze of disordered streets in festivity but inured of nothing but lazy passions rather than sought rations
Dickens and hard hammers scribble the parched concrete with Chinese depths masqueraded as a suburban muse for canned applause and raucous crews relishing everything crude.
In the refinement the poet slings his garment over his shoulders and buys coffee for his ***** queen, and how to outfox such gallantry and how to temper so much enthusiasm. Only by the skullduggery of dead hands anointed with Greenwich bands.

To mention is to men
A thing forbid by woe,
Though beauty seems to flirt
Like first November snow.

In golden coffins then,
They dye the draggled corse;
Their hearts so often hurt,
For silence they endorse.

The truth about her beam,
A daughter should not know:
That sedentary gleam
Sets hearts and eyes aglow.

More wondrous is the dream
Of special moments shared,
When under every seam
Lies beauty undeclared.

Be hush and still again,
And never let words course;
Keep failing tongues inert,
Lest meanings well turn worse.

And though she stands overt
With grace upon the low,
To mention is to men
A thing forbid by woe.

Repeating with
The frequency
Of apologies,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
While my head
Spins, and my
Innards lurch
Like carnival
Ride children,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
The chaos,
The orderly
Passage of red
Faced spectators
Drifting through space,
Their classic attempts
To embrace and
Disengage,
Grinning at what
Can't be erased,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
Like the sound of
Hopes cast into
The depths of hell,
Glinting tokens
You can't see
Seconds after you
Drop them in,
I'm the air,
I'm the disillusionment
That lets you know
When to be scared,
The anvil in
Your gut telling you
To stop,
I am the sweat
That drips
Like morphine
Into post-mortem
Pathways through
A needle
That needs sharpening,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
This is just a test,
As they say,
It'll all be ok
Once some obese
***** wails,
The levees are stressed
And the horsemen
Idle and wait for the fail,
For the flood
Of repentance,
Of common
Indecency,
For the blood
From Ahab's whale
To initiate
The shackling
Of the sorrowfully
Undeclared,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening."

when in the world’s leading democracy
a new president starts his office with

     making life more expensive for average home owners
     signing orders threatening the health of millions
     restricting the publications of researchers
     denying global warming
     encouraging coal and oil companies
     forbidding federal employees to talk to the media
     going on fantasy trips about “alternative facts"
          to justify his ridiculous lies
     blaming the media when asking questions and checking facts
     barring leading media companies from press conferences
     waffling about his Russian connections
     refusing to release his tax returns
     ordering to build walls to keep out all those aliens,
          like the old Chinese did, to little avail
     issuing poorly formulated presidential orders
          causing confusion and harm and even deaths
     banning even green card holders from entering the country
     filling his cabinet with all the alligators from the swamps
          he promised to clean during his campaign
          people who know how to avoid paying taxes and beating the     system
          but have no clue how to govern now that they ARE the system
          and think they can run the USA with its 350 million citizens
          as Trump&Cronies;, USA, Inc.,
          like their private family businesses, for profit
courting kings and monarchs & wannabe sultans in the near east
     'democratic dictators' in the far southeast
      and wannabe czars in russia
but hesitating to confirm ties to old allies
     in Europe, NATO, and the Far East
suggesting that having undeclared secret meetings
     is quite OK with his campaign team members
     his son and son-in-law

[ctd. fron line 2...] it is high time to seriously ask
what concept
    if any
of democracy he has in mind

....and who are we that Eton,Harrow do not see,
we are the sinking of the sun,the wreck of the S.S Great Britain has come.
Where once we were the universe,rulers of lands and seas,we have been brought down to our knees to slowly, slowly sink.

Drink and drugs the slugs and snails what ails us,do we know?
Council blocks and towers knock us down to build new towns and the green belt gets much tighter,landfills full up to the brim the doors of opportunity are locked,we can't get in,too fat,too thin,old school ties and gold tie pins and who are we?the
disenfranchised and despised by those that do not see the rising tide of poverty.

Those we passed on our way up are those who put a penny in this beggars cup and wave goodbye,the sky has dropped, the horizon dulled,pulled this and that way,can't pay the bills,drink and drugs the only thrills and betting on the three fifteen to race along another pointless dream,
horsemeat in the freezer section,the four fifteen was my selection which fell at the final fence.

Prozac helps us to relax,**** the council tax and income band just put two blue pills in my hand and make it seem like it's a dream and we're not sinking,what a scream,a film show,I should go and see the launch,exercise to lose this paunch.

Tomorrow I may rise to see my ship Great Britain back at sea or I could stay in bed and thread excuses on a needle,sew myself a sweater,keep the heat in,can't afford electric fires not like those out in the Shires where logs are burnt,money earnt is money burnt in my opinion.

Back to basics,Luddite hills and give me two more small blue pills,put them on the bills of lading,degrading I can do,but you have so much more and it's ship to shore on the radio,rise me hearties off we go,one more mad dash to make some more cash,undeclared that's only fair,
the revenue can go and ***** and spin upon that middle digit,fidgeting?it must be fleas,do fleas get brought down to their knees?

You see,
in this last scramble to the death I ramble on with my last breath,they haven't taxed my fresh air yet but I bet they will,drink and drugs for one more thrill,up anchor as I will at will to drift away into the sinking of just one more day.

Trail of trials and tribulations,
woe is we
woe is we
and alla what's amattah, real or un,
who but we imagines
either one
or the other, is it real? What we think?
The meaning
centering being with science used
con-science, with knowing, so-vest, in vest
in finding the undeclared variable,
what is woke, in 2021?
Sense of some old known new named,
in a since from then to now, knowing
uses of knowing, knowing needless knowns,
- skei-sharper seps, see useless knowns,
- hard bought lessons you never lived without

"the double minded man ever falls forward,
into the forest" formed
from all the gardens
gone wild when the gardeners died,
it was sudden
nobody's fault, just - happened- as just does\

inside jobs, chrons and tension twisters,
springs of inspiration,
gears of cogitation
wheels in wheels in wheels in swirls
of fore gone conclusions,
we know
secrets, some how, now. We know
there never was a hell,
but the pearling process is valid,
the gate grows wider and the way
more twisted and iridescent than
ever, in all directions, at a turn
to bend the reflection you had
recognized as me, in your
hall of mirrors, right,
uber nur hier auf recht, re
thinking creative critical thinking,
but any re-applicant replies, pearl-wise --
lay it on me,
app-lie the essence of the
shining thing glimpsed scene,
-with wishery and fastest fasting
yet, this kind comes forth, to wink,
and lead on, a totally made up
way, a shone way where none is
as a golden street with no traveling
save messages encoded on reflections
of what the mind in peace has to say to
gloss the truth in eggwhite, wonder baked
in riddles,
as in the left brain's hall of mirrors…
the old fool stumbles in to the knots
all the thread infringed upon, and entagled
your requests to know what imitation lovers love,
sink this deep down. Imitation anointing,
have you never witnessed the super,
superior power of wind over sun,
did you never witness a wizard
with a power of presence like unto
PanaVision, to a pre-lingual toddler male.

Ritual passage,  - far subtler than any beasty
under tilled tale, telling all the trees,
keep growing, expand the life,
expand the knowing, once
known, this is it, this is where,
the forgiven sense appears a force
urging each o each little piggie, we we we
all the way home, pigs can swim, remember.

find the inner child, hall of dark glass walls…
expand to our mutual horizon,
see me see you past the stood unders,
look up,

this is joy being as beauty is,
it may not be devoid of good, nor useless
if I choose to enjoy, invest my will to happiness,
engaging joy receptors cast aside,
by the inner child, so sure the reflections
are others,
come to keep the joy I form re forming
more than one may think or ask,

a worst so good, we accept it as the best.
See.
Today is the only day you read this first.
What you imagine next, line
after line, as we,

no, me, hall of mirrors, I hear me
recall
"You are the most self-centered man
I have ever encountered."

Encounters of the pointy sort,
soul piercing insights, into who
and what
we are, if words are all I make them out to be.

Fairfax Station’s socialite, a trustfundee
Still hallucinates on a lone hammock
In her penthouse.
Her ex-idols still burn the light green foliage
From the Tree of Experience. Her sister’s a screenwriter
Who lives near downtown in a cobwebbed basement.
Each morning she composes a page of dialogue. Usually
There the fragments of yesterday’s conversations
With an insomniac. She is the turned page
In a worn storybook.

Her shutter snaps mental photographs
Through a blurred lens. The girls’ father
Is a patient in an asylum, in his leisure, he treads
Water in a soiled bedpan. Psychotherapy and straightjackets
Cannot restrain his work ethic for Art. Before his admittance
To the institution, in his studio, on a giant canvass
He painted the green youth that struggles to
Grow in an elementary school. The socialite is undeclared
In her major. Unsure of faith leaping.

Remains pessimistic at charity functions. Vast
Auditoriums with smudged tablecloth. She’s accompanied
By an entourage of underdeveloped emotions.
On occasion she side glances from a hand mirror
At a potential love interest. It’s too soon.
The spring is a late bloomer, blue frost clings
To the edges of grass blades. At a coffee shop on
The corner of Main and North Harrison Street,
The screenwriter raps away at her laptop; talking
To herself.

Her coffee foams at the mouth with expired cream.
A welcomed patron to this local getaway;
This is where her father used to read her articles
From the Washington Post. He nearly hanged himself
After the car accident. His wife’s body smashed
Halfway through a windshield. Around his wrist
Is the Movado, she gave him for their anniversary.
For months now, for an hour before night class,
Our writer opens up her treasure chest of demons
To a word document.

She’s almost thirty. The divorce took her strength,
Along with her two legacies. Yesteryear, or
Was it the day before yesteryear? The talented
Family met at a Hibachi restaurant. They had a
Gift card to use. It was a day after the funeral; there black
Clothes were wrinkled, just a bit. Napkins lay
Folded over their laps. Silverware untouched.
Hot bowls of miso soup grew cold. Visits to
The bathroom were common. Tsnumai of
Mixed emotions: trickled, flooded, filled there eyes.

The foreign chef noticed their mood, he
Could only offer body language. In the air
Swan eggs were cracked into two halves.
The yolk sizzled on the aluminum surface.
Fire soared from an onion volcano. Mouths
Watered, and eyes were parched. Kobe steak,
Grilled vegetables, juicy chicken, fried rice.
They chewed their food with shut mouths
And gutwrenched eyes. They sat and ate
Until every last morsel disappeared.

Over her balcony, she leans on the railing
Of her loft. Ashtray spills Marlboro’s remains
That plummet onto a city of funny people.
She can’t use humor as a defensive mechanism,
Why should she? Her credit card is her alcohol.
Her eyes daydream of elevators
And clothing stores. She lays out in
Her hammock, wondering why an automobile
Had to be the antagonist.
They all live above the billboards, below the heavens.

A woman knows when a man loves her,
By Divine Grace she perceives such things;
Even when his love goes undeclared,
She can feel it vibrate her heartstrings

A woman knows when a man loves her,
Her heart opens when he turns the key;
From her face a noble radiance streams
Reflecting love's rare divinity

A woman knows when a man needs her,
Watchful she stands, ready to appease
With wise counsel and devoted love,
Putting both his mind and heart at ease

A woman knows when a man loves her,
She'll nourish  love's seed until it grows
Into their own Garden of Eden.
O, there is no doubt, a woman knows!

Consider the background to this war in the Ukraine, consider the effects of the accumulation of generated rage over the decades?

Russia has historically subjugated Ukrainians since the 1930s when Stalin, motivated by racial prejudice and a desire to dominate, implemented a policy of extermination which systematically starved the largely rural population to death in the phenomenon known as the"Holodomor"... and forbade any complaint being uttered by the suffering peasants with the penalty of being frozen to death in the gulags of the wilderness of Siberia.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent nation by popular decree. This was not received well by  Russia nor by the Russian speaking populace of the Donbass region in the East.

In 2013 revolution occurred in the Maidan Square in Kiev where protestors revolted against the thuggish government of Victor Yakunovych who had implemented, in the face of Russian pressure, a forced decision against the popular choice of the people for the Ukraine to join the European union.

The Maidan revolution resulted in the collapse of the Yakunovych government and his forced sudden retreat to Russia. Pro Russian separatist forces in the Donbass supported by euphemistically titled "Russian Military Advisors" in February of 2014, attacked loyalist forces of the Ukraine in  the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics. Military escalation continued through to 2018 including artillery exchanges and the decision by Russia to militarily invade and annex the Crimean peninsular.

An undeclared war began between Ukrainian forces on one side, and separatists intermingled with Russian troops on the other, although Russia attempted to hide its involvement. The war settled into a static conflict, with repeated failed attempts at a ceasefire. In 2015, the Minsk II agreements were signed by Russia and Ukraine, but a number of disputes prevented them being fully implemented. By 2019, 7% of Ukraine was classified by the Ukrainian government as temporarily occupied territories, while the Russian government had indirectly acknowledged the presence of its troops in Ukraine.

In 2021 and early 2022, there was a major Russian military build-up around Ukraine's borders. NATO accused Russia of planning an invasion, which it denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the enlargement of NATO as a threat to his country and demanded Ukraine be barred from ever joining the military alliance. He also expressed Russian historic views, questioning Ukraine's right to exist, and stated wrongfully that Ukraine was created by Soviet Russia. On 21 February 2022, Russia officially recognized the two self-proclaimed separatist states in the Donbas, and openly sent troops into the territories. Three days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Much of the international community has condemned Russia for its actions in post-revolutionary Ukraine, accusing it of breaking international law and violating Ukrainian sovereignty. Many countries implemented economic sanctions against Russia, Russian individuals, or companies, especially after the 2022 invasion.

The Russian genocide handbook was published on April 3, two days after the first revelation that Russian servicemen in Ukraine had murdered hundreds of people in Bucha, and just as the story was reaching major newspapers.  The Bucha massacre was one of several cases of mass killing that emerged as Russian troops withdrew from the Kiev region.  This means that the genocide program was knowingly published even as the physical evidence of genocide was emerging.  The writer and the editors chose this particular moment to make public a program for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.

Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so.  Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.....and incidentally, recently Ukraine geophysicists discovered vast gas and oil deposits in the, then, Ukrainian administered segment of the Black Sea. These deposits would have had the capacity and potential to render the Ukraine, not only independent of Russian hydrocarbon dependence but also capable of being developed into a major commercial supplier of oil and gas to the European community. Russia's annexation of Crimea and the recent military occupation of the Eastern corridor effectively opens the door to Russian monopolization of these deposits...and closes the door to Ukrainian aspirations!

Ukraine bleeds, Russia’s Putin must live with the guilt of the suffering and destruction he has caused for the rest of his living days. Emotions are running high on the vast steppes of Central Asia, whatever the outcome of this turmoil, decades of hate and resentment, violence and vengeance have been wrought by this action, the birth of this animosity shall grow and pervade, unhindered, for centuries in the heart of the angry denizens of this poor, tortured land.

Ukraine, Ukraine...Cry the Beloved Country

M.
20 April 2022

My war with the mirror is undeclared
And every spoken word stings red
The glances are whispers unshared
I'm never sure what's in their head

I hate myself for the things I don't say
But I hate myself more for ones I do
My words, my only chance of being heard
Are always betrayed, delayed, pushed away

Smiles and giggles are all that I can provide
I couldn't, for a moment, push them aside
Because I hate myself for the help I need
I loathe every sentence that plants a wrong seed

Every conversation I could take back?
Well I might as well be dead
What good is a life if it cannot be spoken
What good am I if I can’t stop choking

Don’t call me sweet
Don’t you dare call me beautiful
Your words won’t fix this
But mine will.

when in the world’s (supposedly) leading democracy
a new president starts his office with

     making life more expensive for average home owners
     signing orders threatening the health of millions
     restricting the publications of researchers
     denying global warming
     encouraging coal and oil companies
     forbidding federal employees to talk to the media
     going on fantasy trips about “alternative facts"
          to justify his ridiculous lies
     blaming the media when asking questions and checking facts
     barring leading media companies from press conferences
     waffling about his Russian connections
     refusing to release his tax returns
     ordering to build walls to keep out all those aliens,
          like the old Chinese did, to little avail
     issuing poorly formulated presidential orders
          causing confusion and harm and even deaths
     banning even green card holders from entering the country
     filling his cabinet with all the alligators from the swamps
          he promised to clean during his campaign
          people who know how to avoid paying taxes and beating the     system
          but have no clue how to govern now that they ARE the system
          and think they can run the USA with its 350 million citizens
          as Trump&Cronies;, USA, Inc.,
          like their private family businesses, for profit
fraternizing with kings and monarchs & wannabe sultans in the near east
     'democratic dictators' in the far southeast
      and wannabe czars in russia
but hesitating to confirm ties to old allies
     in Europe, NATO, and the Far East
suggesting that having undeclared secret meetings
     is quite OK for his campaign team members
     his son and son-in-law & cetera
nominating well-known union busters
    into the Federal Office of Labor
    and a billionairess widely unaware
    of the existence of non-private schools
    as Secretary of Eduction
banning grandparents. grandchildren
     as well as aunts and uncles
     of gratuitously selected countries
     from joining their families in the USA
 believing that the US president & his cronies
     stand above the law 

[ctd. fron line 2...] THEN
it is high time to seriously ask
what concept
    if any
of democracy he has in mind

the designs
in the molding
on your face

features such
undeclared beauty
complete

with the ability of
foreign flight
to set sails
extravagant as the sea

the details exquisite
drawn so elegantly
magnificently
and hypnotizing