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Third Eye Candy Jan 2013
at the cafe on ruby toes and sugar pinch, we consent and reap the valdez of our perpetual cud.
we sip from octagonal spoons. there, we suture the fiend to the deed and the rail
to the runaway train. how else would you explain your dashing about
in the chum of our castanet. we cast our nets in the epibenthic  fumes of our unusual loveliness
and sweat the little things that vanish from the canon our interesting.
hup to it. vie for the offshore drill.
suppose you grow a dead thing and keep it astonished with flashcards
and nobody says a thing ?
psyche Jan 2018
loyalties change; so did you

what you see with your eyes isn't the truth. how much more do i need to see the truth that you can't see with your eyes?

the stars look really close together but they're actually really far apart."we learn that in class".what u see with ur eyes isn't the truth.

"how far apart is the distance that i need to close between me and-"
"it's because you don't know that you want to close that distance, right?"

who sees the human face correctly?
the mirror, the photographer, or the painter?

friend : everybody is beautiful in their own way
me : not if you're ugly on the inside and the outside

don't make me regret the things i do for you

something has tarnished our friendship and it seems hopeless to brighten it

what's the difference between "im jealous of you"
and "im disappointed in me"
it seems to me that there's none

i like machines better,humans break too easily
-Leo Valdez

it's difficult to make someone proud when all that notice are your mistakes

i already know i'm defective, u don't have to trouble yourself pointing them out for me

it's cold out here, i'm shivering
please, get me out of 'here'

there is suffering too terrible to name. we just learn to live with the unimaginable(hamiltrash)

it says "curiosity killed the cat"
in this situation curiosity killed me

True love isn’t Romeo and Juliet who died together. It’s Grandma and Grandpa who grew old together.(not mine)
all of them are mine DON'T PLAGIARIZE PEEPS!!
I
Hear the story of our oil –
Hail to oil!
From the glory days of Drake well we recoil,
To see seabirds flap and shudder,
Dolphins, turtles flop and sputter
With collective dying groan.
Hear our population moan
When the gasoline price geysers to the sky.
Still we drive, drive, drive,
To keep consumer binge alive,
Amid a maritime disaster fast evolving from the spoil
Of the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the gushing and the oozing of the oil.

II
Smell the ancient dark crude oil
Stinking oil!
Engulf the products made refining from a boil:
Guzzle gasoline flambé,
Drive-through fast food every day,
Raise our carbonated toast to Arctic roast…
Then drill more oil!
GM corn and corn-fed beef --
Both born of oil,
The shaving cream I slather on my face is made from oil,
Toothpaste, vitamins and lipstick,
Tires, everlasting plastic,
Come from oil;
All American affliction
Petrolopium addiction –
Truth is stranger now than fiction
And it does not set us free;
We are prisoners of oil,
And as slaves to OPEC pricing we all toil,
For the tapping and the lapping
Of the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the drilling and the swilling of the oil.

III
Soak in news of spilling oil –
Offshore oil!
In grim images of damage that the television splays;
First blow-out slimed in sixty-nine at Santa Barbara Bay
Then ten years next blew Ixtoc
In the Gulf of Mexico,
Two-ninety day gush tick tock
Slick slopped thousand miles away
To Texas shores!
In Alaska’s Prince William Sound
Exxon Valdez ran aground in eighty-nine;
Full tanker load erupted,
Left the rocky coast corrupted –
Prudhoe crude!
Seals and otters stuck in goo
Seabirds suffered coatings too,
Cruising tourists supped in view
Of the oil, oil, oil,
Thickened slick encrusted oil
On the shore!
How it clings and clogs and covers;
All aquatic life it smothers
Marsh and beach are left in cataclysmic mire!
Still we “drill baby drill,”
All our gas tanks gotta fill,
We must shop, shop, shop,
Lest our wasteful lifestyle stop,
So we run, run, run,
Take our car vacation fun --
At the beach…
See the sheen -- how it shines!
Pretty rainbow-colored lines
From the oil!
We love our oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For economy cachinging in the oil!

IV
Hear the praise of offshore oil,
Miles deep oil!
For the goal of independence on our oceans now we toil,
Till ungraceful conflagration
Twenty April rocked the nation
On the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Eleven lives were lost in blast
As the deep crude spewed out fast,
Gushing Hell!
Couldn’t stop it with top ****,
Junk shot, golf *****, caps wouldn’t still
Gushing well,
And the spreading, spreading, spreading
In a steady surging crawl,
Gulf coast residents all dreading
That their livelihoods might stall,
Now the fish and shrimp are ill,
Tourist business will be nil,
And still oil spews…
We must thank God that there’s *****,
For there’s nothing but bad news
And the ooze, ooze, ooze
Oily ooze.
Who will pay, who will pay?
Who will make this go away?
Who’s to blame? Who’s to shame?
Many pointy fingers aim –
Lefty points to rich BP,
Righty points to rock Obama,
And there’s six sticks pointing back at you and me!
We will pay, pay, pay,
At the gas pumps we will pay,
So we can drive, drive, drive,
And keep America alive;
Despite the grim disaster that arises from the spill,
The way we live and spend won’t easily end;
So we’ll still say “drill baby drill,”
Each time our gas tanks get a fill,
And we will shop, shop, shop
To do our patriotic duty --
Spend our *****, *****, *****
For the oil.
For the oil, oil, oil, oil,
Oil, oil, oil,
For the gushing and the oozing of the oil!

Drafted 6/8/10, revised 6/14/10
Best read to the "tune" of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells"....with apologies to Poe for repurposing his meter scheme for a theme less cheerful!
Pete Badertscher May 2010
Mirror Opposite

I am what I am?  What am I?  Hedonist, Activist, Devil, Bodhi, Perverse Geek?  I am what I am.  

I am violent tempered but always happy. I am sickened by the worlds decay but delight in the cause of the infections that lead to that same decay.  Opposite ends of the same slide rule.  I ask myself daily; “Self, what are you today?’  The response is never the same and always confusing. I am what I am.

I AM, isn’t that what God said in Genesis?  Was God indecisive too?  Fool, you are not a god!  But, I do believe a god rest in each one of us.  

I am pleasure.  Who doesn’t like to find pleasure?  Come to me.  The sweet, sweet embrace of another, the moisture of the kiss, the exhilaration of the something new, dangerous and palpable, that causes an alkali sensation to rise from your throat.  

I am what I am and that’s all that I am.  Are my forearms as big as Popeye’s?  And, just what caused that deformity anyway?  Surely not *******, as the midnight comics suggest or we would all be his brothers.  

I am Buddha.  My inner being screams in disgust at being reborn again and again and again.  I know how to break the wheel of karma but, that Ferris wheel holds wondrous deprivations along the way and who am I to not try on one or two of those hungry ghosts.  

I am Fey.  My wings clipped and banality killing me slowly.  Where is my golden acorn to plant under a full moon to renew my magic?  I am attracted to hell and repelled by a chorus of angels.  If there is really nothing better then cloud-sitting in heaven then why bother, Give me Valhalla.  At least in Valhalla  you could get good tickets to a fight.  I am a mirror.  

I reflect what society tells me while struggling against the media-ocricy that streams into my sensory organs like polluted waves from the Valdez.  A elephant seal of anarchy covered and drowning in my own conservative opinions.  

I am female hear me roar.  If for no other reason then being told that, however in touch, I can not be a feminist.  I pay homage to Aphrodite upon her shell, Dianna by her stag?  O.K. Maybe not a feminist.  How about sexist, or racist, or bigot or xenophobe?  Maybe.  

I am  Worm fodder.  I wish to believe in another world after this but hide behind science and its violently anonymous creator.  When dead will we all lie quiet as the grave in out grave as the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms get in my guts no doubt.  Would that be so bad?

I am the shade of Inubus and Quatezecotyl, Crowly and Repoche.  Lapping up their words and making a **** pile of their experiences.  What am I?  

I am what I am.  Silent when I should be loud, and an abomination when I need to be beautiful.  Polar opposite made flesh with a grin.  

What am I?  I am a Questioner.  There is no knowledge that can withstand time.  Every question is correct and every answer is wrong.  How do I know what is truth.  Is there really TRUTH or just Memorex.  

I am a Seeker of arcane thoughts and novel philosophies.  Everything has been said.  But, can it be said in a manner that makes sense at this point at this time grasshopper?  How many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop?  I want to know!  

I am the Thinker. Elbow on knee, hand on chin.  Why did they **** Copernicus?  Was it really just for a heliocentric universe or something much more political?  ROY G BIV are the colors of the rainbow but what if we could see ultraviolet and infrared?  What if I stood inside the rainbow would it be back as all the colors mixed?  I am what I am.  

I am the Adventurer.  Sword in hand and cod piece attached correctly.  I head out in search of what I question and seek and think about.  How else would you find your own truths.  Truth, not beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  If every grain of sand is an universe unto itself then I wish to explore each and every one to delve into their faceted trivialities and pillage the knowledge from them.  

I am an organic being content to take over a new world each night in my dreams and complacently ignore my biological clock counting down to unknown oblivion.


Wolff
This is fairly crap, but its my piece of crap.  Please let me know if you would, for some unknown reason, want to use any or part of it.
I can hear your cries,
I can make your suffering stop,
I will wipe your tears away,
I will bring you peace,
We will find your light,
You'll never be alone,
It will be you and I.
Reply to cries by Daniel P R Valdez Jr
Showman Apr 2013
Who are my characters? John Prat or Marvin Prat. John Ector or Marvin Ector. Then there is Mrs. Valdez and Autumn. Who are they in relation to John and Marvin? What do you want your characters to show? Who are they? Are they funny? Comical? Tragic? What? What do they want? I want them showing me. I want them as extensions of me. I want to take everything I have learned and put them into my characters. They are facets of my imagination combined into one giant ball, clusterfuck and **** of people that is my life. I want them to display my hatred. My disheveled hair. My looks. I want them to be oddly reminiscent of my family and my personal life. I want them to ignore their own feelings and not be happy. I want them to be happy. I want them to love and cry and weep and feel pain. I want the world to hate them and I want them to hate themselves, I want the world to love them and I want them to love themselves. I want them to fall from grace. I want them to fall down so many times and be on the verge of not picking themselves up. To say **** this  I'm done with it all. I want them rejected and rejected and rejected and keep losing. I want them to win. I want them to destroy themselves. I want them to create themselves. I want them to create their own world filled with imagination. I want to **** them. I want them bleeding and bruised. I want them to end up homeless on the street with nowhere to go with needles sticking out of their veins. I want them to find god. I want them crawling through a river of **** and coming out clean on the other side. I want them to enjoy the little things and hate the little things. I want them to come to life. But ultimately I want them to make me cry. I want them to touch something inside of me that laid dormant for years. I want them to understand and feel my pain and empathize with me like no one has. I want myself in these pages. These sticky pages that combine to make a story.
Jesus once walked among his sinful children.
One holy child who shouldered a worldly burden.
Saints were part of his life long journey.
Everyone was fed with bread and fish when they are hungry.
Peter the first known pope once denied him but was given hope.
Humbly killed by a spear while nailed to the cross, fear not for there was no lost.

Valiant son of the almighty.
And prince of good that enlights we.
Lifting our spirits with joy and hopes.
Divine mercy from the holy ghost.
Enter we shall to his holy plain.
Zapped by his grace and kindness for he reigns

May his name be in your heart.
A mighty king and the son of god.
Cry no more for he is coming.
All the world will gather to praise him.
Gone will be the days of hurt and pain.
United we shall be while he reigns.
Bestowed upon us are his blessings.
All of the world pray to the king.
No more suffering and no more hate.
God is with us so lets keep the faith.
Edward Coles Jul 2014
There is a beer can bobbing on the horizon.
It poisons the sea; La Cerveza Valdez,
an opposable thumb to flip the swtich.

I think being human is an artwork.
Pierce me, flay my arms in tribal shapes,
kiss the rag of religion, break your soles

for the Hajj. Let's overpopulate the party,
trading red for blue in an endless procession
of masks. Let's straitjacket our sanity,

and document our depressions in late-night
emails, and early morning black coffee.
I lost my mind when I turned sober,

remembering what it means to forget.
There is a hospital bed in the future.
But there are pills I can take for that.
c
Who is that girl? 
that I refuse to see
staring back at me
who could she possibly be?
Flaws delicately pointed out
but virtues waiting to be touched.
Like flowers on a spring morning
there's a voice inside her
shouting and roaring.
Drifting apart everyday
and the memories
don't seem to stay.
She seeks for help
but they just don't tell
what their baby girl needs
is not on sale.
How much time is going to
pass by?
Before they realize,
that it's too late,
that this love that she needs
just can't wait.

-Andrea Dayana Valdez
Ken Pepiton Jun 2020
2020 - day 160

Monday, June 8, 2020
6:46 AM

Dissipated selves linger, ghost-like,

suggesting no new motives toward sur
rendering my heart and mind to spiritual,
haunting dreads, from
others interferring as rioters in mobs
so far away as to be
non materially consequential,
immaterial matrickulaters and haters of those
peaceful
stochastic bits of me, extending beyond
my reach,

as I was taught, a man's grip ought not
exceed his grasp.
A man's grasp must extend his reach, as
knowing expands my point,
hold on

do not let go
re
ify me, ifier, ify me, make me hold this truth,
self
evidence, of exceeding complexity phasing out

in an alluvial fan at the bottom of the fall.



Escape velocity, achieved, see the glimmer...

pop. Fear, as false evidence appearing real,
comes clowning into the per
ifery, with haps, suggested I
happen to see a you reflection in me,
touch, eh

weak to strong to breakout, as when
a farmer breaks a dam to loose the flow,
click
electrical and chemical process-easy to imagine,
from now, limenal
information
lingering from ads absorbed for seventy years,

be a man
smoke Camels
be cool, smoke Kools,
be peaceful and green, smoke Salems
be separated from the common filters, smoke
Parliaments with the recessed filter,
for discriminating taste, less tar.

be seen as longer than thy fellow smokers,
by a millimeter, a silly millimeter,
smoke Benson & Hedges 100s.

Spit Redman. Sublimenally, on my shoe.
Three doors, front and back and cuspidor, ha ha ha
-
what's a cuspidor, Grandpa?

Really? In public, in the halls of Congress?
Seems really gross, as in yechy.

Imagine the smell.




A murmuration of sardines, or tiny noseeums, or starlings;
how much data is being fed into
the wee controlers of motion,
using seven degrees of separation
-- there is an algorithm,
boids, minimum distance
match velocity
move to center mass of neighboring seven

interacting as equals, but
do such birds
crap on one another?

Cellular automata, made living thoughts,
if you think life thoughts,
happened with no reason.


--- life is software
Rule 110 for class four cellular automata

in seers see where darkness was and wonder,
what would this reveal outside
the edge between order and chaos?

a phase transition in a heaping scoop of sugar
slipping into my coffee,
seeming to change the taste ... see

Disney-if-ication, drawn from a silly song you
can never un get, once it gets used
metaphorically on a difficult
person who thinks wrong.




Be entertained by the nobel's
jewels...

struggling to overcome, come over, entropification,
bursting into ever
as if
nothing
is real, and we feel it

we, me and my seven touch points




knapping is a step
by
step knack passed along by seeing
and doing,

those who see and do, see more life,

"I came that they might have life, and that,
more abundantly."

Practice, patience makes practice possible.
Once the way is known,
epigenetical throat clearing noises made
the teacher
imagine drinking knowing straight from god
for showing how,

{like those gurus who claim snot is brain juice with gut messages}
to find
edges, between big gap, ligandary leap

speak

foxpeatwogene meme, mimic try

we do get by, thinking past the next imagined by
the mass of enculturated human flesh
eating itself alive, from fears
loosed to drive the heard,
to the edge

Stone knapping, see, this knack my grandpa had
ai ai ai, mustathought that
in code, rule 111,
there were no words we knew how to say
this is the body of knowing,
this is the bubble of mutual being,

this is spaceship earth, coming online, all hands on deck...

pass it on... we are no neutral observants to a realm,
realized long before there were words for
right and wrong, once the purpose
became living to learn to teach,
how to live,
once again, now, this becomes the knowable why, this
is the reason
things are ... at all, balanced
on the edge,
of any universal
reality....

see, we get what we see, it is many levels deeper,
the reason for that, is many plexities deeper,
but

we had to learn to speak your thoughts.

"the same yesterday, the same today,
the same forever, is"
an idea en and in corporating
conservation of energy in its ever dominant position
in opposition to entropy,
in
thus, the good versus evil trope, where death is evil
and living is good...
breaks out from Disney-ified,
ifery-wishery
trippy tropes to insert non-player observers who steer,
pilot,
infantile minds making distinction
of sharp and dull
"between soul and spirit", judge the message as the messenger,
in a word,
by being a word,
two-d between tweened being, double minded, as an

egg the size of the bubble of knowns, think:

deep space looks like those big detergent and corn syrup
bubbles sweeping in a dance following your

seeing eye, hearing words now, where, a while ago
you could have seen that guy
on the beach making bubbles so huge they swallowed us

whole
and here is the edge of reality and what we imagine.
Word worlds of pure, merest of mere, in formative goo

see, do, see doe, see, see, see
spot
run, fetch the thread we started with, aha

edges, once past, appear as threads in future patterns...

the day is fast approaching
when we,
the we who find our names in the book life keeps,
we bet on reason being balance...
we cheated, knowing we won,
having read the book before the movie,
and we became,
we trans-formed our mind, as if oil left a film
of frictionless space
we fit right in
between the inner and outer bubble, see, look,
that big bubble walled in Dawn and Kayro,
we watched the bubble man make
{beach bubblers are faithful to Dawn, for the Exxon Valdez ads}
that bubble
is two conforming bubbles, one in the other, and
in
between the walls of those bubbles, is water,
liquid flowing water,

I think life is like that out where order and chaos phase
shift at a human scale, see
on the surface of the earth, amidst coast chapparel in spring,
I am watching life being done on all sides,
counting my center as one point,
I have seven points to project perception through,

this may be the quantum foam of universes, seen up close,
and we effect slight sight tugs or shoves and a neuronic
approach to create
an ifity network of knowns,
anonymous in ever after,
but a happy place.
My point in being.

It has life every where you can imagine looking.
It was here when I got here,
so nothing I did deserved this,
this rest of the story,
after the maze, my self evidence flowing into expansive reality never
earned, via service, not my pay for
right usefulness having,
been made of me,
my being
good for something. Having a knack, or a green thumb,
no,
but I was an amusing child.
And
amusing children are assumed good, by the goodness in us,
not the goodness in them,
they are good for nothing but the medicine laughter brings
from a truly happy child.

- perceptron, eh? mebbe exclusive-or gates, xor-gates,
- support vector machines favor Feynman's series 4 NANDs
- time travel back into favor, default mode, on a grand scale
- neuronic capital interest come
- pounding
- on your door
- think harder, pay attention, once the rest is known,
- no body forgets the point in getting there.

Right, activate knowledge wholistic algorithm, give Turing his due.





We alter the unfolding of the universe, somebody said,
in the per-ifery of possible attention
holding places,
handles for grasping and gripping to hold still,
a
moment,
con sci useness, settles into sublime wonder, sound familiars
shhoo sue-serated edge, silken webbing
slipping through
-- look, see that lizard's blue belly? did you? I took a picture,
but the optical translation chip can't see that color.

pines whisper selah.


Richard Feynman, bongo player in the band that built
the most famous mushroomcloud in history,
suggested to my mind, in a book, surely
you're joking, mr. feynman,
a sort of time travel information can handle,
a redo before next result
sort of action
and
that there may well be time to start all over.
He thought a series of not-and gates in the flow of time
might --- no
this was me meandering, NAND gates in threes

those were what I was thinking while Rupert Murdoch
layed out a priori assumptions, re
things in threes, spiritually having a point...

for me to ponder, remotely, and ... drift along in wonder ifity,
if the rest is not the perfect reason for growing old in 2020,
and not earlier... I don't know what is.
While walking in Pine Valley, listening to an Audible Great Course suggested by my AI, an aspect of which is measuring my steps, with GPS. I am never lost. No path I have been down kills you for good. Also still feeling the after glow of curious grandchildren.
Cedric McClester Jan 2018
By: Cedric McClester

They’re empty words
That have no meaning
From a man
Who’s been convening
Sycophants
That you’ll find leaning
Towards his message
Of spring cleaning

Immigrants he says
Are bad
From his perspective
When you add
Chain migration
Past the dyad
Of the nuclear family
It’s a launching pad

Give him his wall
And so he says
He’ll spare them all
‘Cos he’s the Pres’
As long as they’re
Not named Valdez
Or they’re not
From places like Juarez

He wants us all
To kumbaya
But that may be
A bridge too far
For most to ever
Reach that bar
Because he takes things
Much too far









Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.
Butch Decatoria Jul 2020
Desert black birds caw
The hellish summer / outside
Loud thin malnourished looking
Sin city birds / squawks & screaming sirens
Outside in the cooking heat
Our global warming...

They have an intelligence To them
Don’t you think?
Those things outside, look inside
Their pitch beady eyes,
Inside they’ll see us coming
Little black flyers thinly quilled,
Scrawny birds,
Looking as though dipped in
The Valdez spill...

Yes, we have met before
Steel of will
The blackness of a desert / cooler at night.
Don’t get those birds all angry, aight?
They have a keenness to them
Little black buggers
Outside in the heat of Cruel summers...

Beach ****** cohorts, march boulevards,
Steel willed from the heart, Love’s wounds
Spilled sprawled out...
Homeless haberdasheries
At home to roam, For some unknown,
Reasons they lie / outside /
Who let them inside ?
Fly black birds, fly!

(None shall suffer alone.)
“All I wanted to do in my painting, the story I wanted to tell was: Look around you; they’re still here.” - Vincent Valdez

Years ago, I stood in front of it,
Anger, sickness, heartbreak,
All at once.

This is modern day.
Men in fancy watches,
Women in nice jewelry,
Holding their children.
In the background, a new truck,
One on his smartphone.

Angry, they hid behind robes,
Faces unseen, hidden, uncalled out.
Angry at their entitlement,
White, racist, arrogant.
Angry, knowing they were just a part
Of a bigger, uglier whole.

Disgusted, this was their normal,
Walking society's paths,
Believing their false superiority.
Disgusted, upper-class arrogance & bigotry,
Feeling more entitled, undeserved.
Disgusted, holding their children,
Teaching hate instead of love.

A grandmother walked in,
With daughter and granddaughter,
Seven, maybe.
This grandmother, strength personified,
A history facing all phases of prejudice.
The daughter, resentful,
Hardened acceptance,
Knowing this is our world.
The youngest, bright-eyed,
Clueless to the view,
Happy and innocent,
Listening to her Grandmother’s and Mother’s words,
Eyes uncertain, back and forth,
Until the words and the painting settled in,
Turning innocent eyes hollow & dark,
Shifting her spirit.

I broke, walked away,
Stomach churning, heart aching.
What is it like to be judged,
For just existing,
In a world so prejudiced?
I imagine so much like this moment.

I wanted to hug them,
To say it will be okay,
But I’m a white stranger,
And I know it isn’t.

Fixing this goes deeper
Than government’s reach.
Racism taught to infants,
Raised to hate, a cycle unbroken.

I watched George Floyd,
Helpless in the face of it.
Engraved racism, an impossible fight.

Yet, I see many stand,
Speak up, come together,
And in that, I find hope.

— The End —