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

Remember that day we glided along rice fields,
me and you lagging at the back,
while the 12 of us pedaled bicycles?

The clouds drooled down daylight,
and I was feeling lonely and crap.
You glanced back on the road and waited. "You alright?"

your eyes said.
And we chatted about our problems, time chopping away on an x-asis,
as we passed fields, motorbikes, and watersheds.

Those shared moments every day
with you, our friends, and our Vietnamese teaching staff,
it aligned my universe like a human astrolabe.

I'm so glad our group traveled across the world,
riding bikes and drinking beer unbounded by maps.
It ***** being home now, far away. I miss you and I'm always bored.

when the day has made you weary with it's harsh exacting tolls
and the night is unrelenting with the demands it makes of you
and when sorrow takes your strength through all it's bumps and rolls
let your chambers bring you solace as you bid what's passed adieu
the mountains will watch over you; a sentinel of earth
cradling you in slumber and holding your gentle bed
the rivers will cleanse and bring a gentle rebirth
with dreams that are flowing from oceans to watersheds
the wind with all it's might will take you far from danger's way
blowing away everything that desires to do you wrong
the flame is a reminder of the dawning of a new day
and a light to guide you through into the dreams where you belong
because all the light you bring warrants kind and gentle rest
so no matter what tomorrow brings you'll be your gorgeous best

Rain clouds hover in the night
veiling the crystal moon -
spraying steady showers
on the hills and plains below.

The Missouri stirs from slumber
spreading claws of water up its banks
as rain sheets, lashed to horizontal
saturate the fields and valleys.

Illumined by the misted moon
The river’s shoreline grows
by inches through the night -
stealing into ever higher ground.

Daybreak finds new ponds conjoined
and spilled across low lying roads
and TV teasers sound their alarms.
'Stay tuned, tape at 10: 00.'

Downpours to the west and north
saturate Mississippi valleys and
Saint Louis flood gates rumble closed.
Farmers abandon all hope for harvest.

Our screens chant nightmare litanies
of sandbag crews and second floor rescues,
crumbling levies and sunken vehicles -
a twisting farmhouse claimed for driftwood.

The clouds’ reservoirs at last are spent,
the inland sea recedes to lakes
and our weary cousins stumble home
as the Mississippi quietly relearns it banks.

March,  2008

*This poem is a recollection of the great flood of 1993 but as it was written the rivers around St. Louis passed over flood stage and the city flood gates were closed.  While protecting the city, the gates and levees ship the problem   downstream where it intensifies the plight of small towns that are now under water.  Continued rain in the Missouri and Mississippi watersheds could cause the current flood to rival that of 1993.

I (a youthful sexagenarian)
can no longer quip being
a country boy at heart,
but me as urban cowboy,
I declare would never
so fuhgeddaboudit dear reader
nothing 'cept bucolic existence
laboring organic garden
harvesting fruits and vegetables
by the bushel and quart
constitute an appropriate start.

Don't get me wrong;
Every cell comprising
body electric of mine,
would yearn to prolong
and relish those bygone salad days,
whereat (R)oute (D)elivery #2 Level Road
also known as "Glen Elm"
or hundred acre wood,
when Mister Leiper and family
originally owned vast estate
(turn of twentieth century)
once awash, flush, and plush
with webbed wide world

analogous to miniature Hindu Kush;
one of the great watersheds of Central Asia
forming part of vast Alpine zone
that stretches across Eurasia east to west;
and runs northeast to southwest;
and divides valley of the Amu Darya
(the ancient Oxus River)
to the north from
Indus River valley to the south.

Rather than complain about mein kampf
and hard times,
which ain't no Christmas Carol,
fraught with the battle of life
amidst great expectations,
yours truly much prefers
crafting poetic verses
precariously perched on edge of chair
clicking Macbook Pro keyboard;
Every now and again taking stretch
to access excellent outlook
from powerfully pointed bedroom window.

Thus yours truly doth
poetically lightly kvetch
or tease out commonplace natural phenomena
nevertheless unremarkable flora and fauna,
or maybe even a dog
and her/his owner playing fetch.

His immediate observation when peering out
rectangular pane (more long than wide) of glass
constitutes plethora of dandelions
populates the greensward;
said wildflower proliferated nearly overnight,
cuz smattering yesterdays ago
Taraxacum officinale, the German "lowenzahn"
(which means "lion's tooth"),
and French "pissenlit"
Ligules the yellow “petals” of dandelion flower
carpeted the lawn, and quickly regenerated
soon after landscaping crew cut the grass.

A dandelion seed is the plant's mature fruit,
known as a cypsela to botanists,
and its parachute-like structure
known as a pappus.

The pappus develops
as calyx of each floret dries and matures.

There are usually 150-200 seeds per flower
and up to 10 flowers per plant.

Seeds can be dispersed long distances
by wind because they move in updrafts,
yet upon making landfall
scant number squarely take root.

And how they burn so
and Heaven ask me how
How I've lived till now
I tell them I know my Father

I guess they never understand
How spiteful and gross their lifes has been
But life began again in their watersheds
The day the silver spoon jumped over the moon

And yes, they know how base life can be
The shadows follow them giving state milk
And the night won't set them free
But they don't let the evenings go down
Now that they find the Ale houses in insanity

And how they hate and burn too
Their thoughts are just for me
They call my spirit but its soars free
I'm happy they still can't let go and do theirs

The book of life is brief and same for all
And once a page is read what's left is hearts
All but ours is nowt but the whispering breeze
That is my belief for the winds of fortune is hybrid
And yes,…they still hate and burn