if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

For those among us who lived by the rules,
Lived frugal lives of *****-scratching desperation;
For those who sustained a zombie-like state for 30 or 40 years,
For these few, our lucky few—
We bequeath an interactive Life-Alert emergency dog tag,
Or better still a dog, a colossal pet beast,
A humongous Harlequin Dane to feed,
For that matter, why not buy a few new cars before you die?
Your home mortgage is, after all, dead and buried.
We gave you senior-citizen rates for water, gas & electricity—
“The Big 3,” as they are known in certain Gasoline Alley-retro
Neighborhoods among us,
Our parishes and boroughs.
All this and more, had you lived small,
Had you played by the rules for Smurfs & Serfs.

We leave you the chance to treat your grandkids
Like Santa’s A-List clientele,
“Good ‘ol Grampa,” they’ll recollect fondly,
“Sweet Grammy Strunzo, they will sigh.
What more could you want in retirement?

You’ve enabled another generation of deadbeat grandparents,
And now you’re next in line for the ice floe,
To be taken away while still alive,
Still hunched over and wheezing,
On a midnight sleigh ride,
Your son, pulling the proverbial Eskimo sled,
Down to some random Arctic shore,
Placing you gently on the ice floe.
Your son; your boy--
A true chip off the igloo, so to speak.
He leaves you on the ice floe,
Remembering not to leave the sled,
The proverbial Sled of Abbandono,
The one never left behind,
As it would be needed again,
Why not a home in storage while we wait?
The family will surely need it sometime down the line.

A dignified death?
Who can afford one these days?
The question answers itself:
You are John Goodman in “The Big Lebowski.”
You opt for an empty 2-lb can of Folgers.
You know: "The best part of waking up, is Folger's in your cup!"
That useless mnemonic taught us by “Mad Men.”
Slogans and theme songs imbibe us.

Zombie accouterments,
Provided by America’s Ruling Class.
Thank you Lewis H. Lapham for giving it to us straight.
Why not go with the aluminum Folgers can?
Rather than spend the $300.00 that mook funeral director
Tries to shame you into coughing up,
For the economy-class “Legacy Urn.”
An old seduction:  Madison Avenue’s Gift of Shame.
Does your **** smell?” asks a sultry voice,
Igniting a carpet bomb across the 20-45 female cohort,
2 billion pathetically insecure women,
Spending collectively $10 billion each year—
Still a lot of money, unless it’s a 2013
Variation on an early 1930s Germany theme;
The future we’ve created;
The future we deserve.

Now a wheelbarrow load of paper currency,
Scarcely buy a loaf of bread.
Even if you’re lucky enough to make it,
Back to your cave alive,
After shopping to survive.
Women spend $10 billion a year for worry-free *****.
I don’t read The Wall Street Journal either,
But I’m pretty **** sure,
That “The Feminine Hygiene Division”
Continues to hold a corner office, at
Fear of Shame Corporate Headquarters.
Eventually, FDS will go the way of the weekly ******.
Meanwhile, in God & vaginal deodorant we trust,
Something you buy just to make sure,
Just in case the *** Gods send you a gift.
Some 30-year old **** buddy,
Some linguistically gifted man or woman,
Some he or she who actually enjoys eating your junk:
“Oh Woman, thy name is frailty.”
“Oh Man, thou art a Woman.”
“Oh Art is for Carney in “Harry & Tonto,”
Popping the question: “Dignity in Old Age?”
Will it too, go the way of the weekly ******?
It is pointless to speculate.
Mouthwash--Roll-on antiperspirants--Depends.
Things our primitive ancestors did without,
Playing it safe on the dry savannah,
Where the last 3 drops evaporate in an instant,
Rather than go down your pants,
No matter how much you wiggle & dance.
Think about it!

Think cemeteries, my Geezer friends.
Of course, your first thought is
How nice it would be, laid to rest
In the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Born a ******. Died a ******. Laid in the grave?
Or Père Lachaise,
Within a stone’s throw of Jim Morrison--
Lying impudently,
Embraced, held close by loving soil,
Caressed, held close by a Jack Daniels-laced mud pie.
Or, with Ulysses S. Grant, giving new life to the quandary:
Who else is buried in the freaking tomb?
Bury my heart with Abraham in Springfield.
Enshrine my body in the Taj Mahal,
Build for me a pyramid, says Busta Cheops.

Something simple, perhaps, like yourself.
Or, like our old partner in crime:
Lee Harvey, in death, achieving the soul of brevity,
Like Cher and Madonna a one-name celebrity,
A simple yet obscure grave stone carving:  OSWALD.
Perhaps a burial at sea? All the old salts like to go there.
Your corpse wrapped in white duct/duck tape,
Still frozen after months of West Pac naval maneuvers,
The CO complying with the Department of the Navy Operations Manual,
Offering this service on « An operations-permitting basis, »
About as much latitude given any would-be Ahab,
Shortlisted for Command-at-sea.
So your body is literally frozen stiff,
Frozen solid for six months packed,
Spooned between 50-lb sacks of green beans & carrots.
Deep down in the deep freeze,
Within the Deep Freeze :
The ship’s storekeeper has a cryogenic *******
Deep down in his private sanctuary,
Privacy in the bowels of the ship.
While up on deck you slide smoothly down the pine plank,
Old Glory billowing in the sea breeze,
Emptying you out into the great abyss of
Some random forlorn ocean.

Perhaps you are a ******* lunatic?
Maybe you likee—Shut the **** up, Queequeg !
Perhaps you want a variation on the burial-at-sea option ?
Here’s mine, as presently set down in print,
Lawyer-prepared, notarized and filed at the Court of the Grand Vizier,
Copies of same in safe deposit boxes,
One of many benefits Chase offers free to disabled Vets,
Demonstrating, again, my zombie-like allegiance to the rules.
But I digress.
« The true measure of one’s life »
Said most often by those we leave behind,
Is the wealth—if any—we leave behind.
The fact that we cling to bank accounts,
Bank safe deposit boxes,
Legal aide & real estate,
Insurance, and/or cash . . .
Just emphasizes the foregone conclusion,
For those who followed the rules.
Those of us living frugally,
Sustaining the zombie trance all these years.
You can jazz it up—go ahead, call it your « Work Ethic. »
But you might want to hesitate before you celebrate
Your unimpeachable character & patriotism.

What is the root of Max Weber’s WORK ETHIC concept?
‘Tis one’s grossly misplaced, misguided, & misspent neurosis.
Unmasked, shown vulnerably pink & naked, at last.
Truth is: The harder we work, the more we lay bare
The Third World Hunger in our souls.
But again, I digress.  Variation on a Theme :
At death my body is quick-frozen.
Then dismembered, then ground down
To the consistency of water-injected hamburger,
Meat further frozen and Fedex-ed to San Diego,
Home of our beloved Pacific Fleet.
Stowed in a floating Deep Freeze where glazed storekeepers
Sate the lecherous Commissary Officer,
Aboard some soon-to-be underway—
Underway: The Only Way
Echo the Old Salts, a moribund Greek Chorus
Goofing still on the burial-at-sea concept.

Underway to that sacred specific spot,
Let's call it The Golden Shellback,
Where the Equator intersects,
Crosses perpendicular,
The International Dateline,
Where my defrosted corpse nuggets,
Are now sprinkled over the sea,
While Ray Charles sings his snarky
Child Support & Alimony
His voice blasting out the 1MC,
She’s eating steak.  I’m eating baloney.
Ray is the voice of disgruntlement,
Palpable and snide in the trade winds,
Perhaps the lost chord everyone has been looking for:
Laughing till we cry at ourselves,
Our small corpse kernels, chum for sharks.

In a nutshell—being the crazy *******’ve come to love-
Chop me up and feed me to the Orcas,
Just do it ! NIKE!
That’s right, a $commercial right in the middle of a ******* poem!
Do it where the Equator crosses the Dateline :
A sailors’ sacred vortex: isn’t it ?
Wouldn’t you say, Shipmates, one and all?
I’m talking Conrad’s Marlow, here, man!
Call me Ishmael or Queequeg.
Thor Heyerdahl or Tristan Jones,
Bogart’s Queeq & Ensign Pulver,
Wayward sailors, one and all.
And me, of course, aboard the one ride I could not miss,
Even if it means my Amusement Park pass expires.
Ceremony at sea ?
Absolutely vital, I suppose,
Given the monotony and routine,
Of the ship’s relentlessly vacant seascape.
« There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea,
And I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. «
So said James Russell Lowell,
One of the so-called Fireside Poets,
With Longfellow and Bryant,
Whittier, the Quaker and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
19th Century American hipsters, one and all.

Then there’s CREMATION,
A low-cost option unavailable to practicing Jews.
« Ashes to ashes »  remains its simplest definition.
LOW-COST remains its operant phrase & universal appeal.
No Deed to a 2by6by6 foot plot of real estate,
Paid for in advance for perpetuity—
Although I suggest reading the fine print—
Our grass--once maintained by Japanese gardeners--
Now a lost art in Southern California,
Now that little Tokyo's finest no longer
Cut, edge & manicure, transform our lawns
Into a Bonsai ornamental wonderland.
Today illegal/legal Mexicans employing
More of a subtropical slash & burn technique.

Cremation : no chunk of marble,
No sandstone, wood or cardboard marker,
Plus the cost of engraving and site installation.
Quoth the children: "****, you’re talking $30K to
Put the old ****** in the ground? Cheap **** never
Gave me $30K for college, let alone a house down payment.
What’s my low-cost, legitimate disposal going to run me?"

CREMATION : they burn your corpse in Auschwitz ovens.
You are reduced to a few pounds of cigar ash.
Now the funeral industry catches you with your **** out.
You must (1) pay to have your ashes stored,
Or (2) take them away in a gilded crate that,
Again, you must pay for.
So you slide into Walter Sobjak,
The Dude’s principal amigo,
And bowling partner in the
Brothers Coen masterpiece: The Big Lebowski.
You head to the nearest Safeway for a 2-lb can of Folgers.
And while we’re on the subject of cremation & the Jews,
Think for a moment on the horror of The Holocaust:
Dispossessed & utterly destroyed, one last indignity:
Corpses disposed of by cremation,
For Jews, an utterly unacceptable burial rite.
Now before we leave Mr. Sobjak,
Who is, as you know, a deeply disturbed Vietnam vet,
Who settles bowling alley protocol disputations,
By brandishing, by threatening the weak-minded,
With a loaded piece, the same piece John Turturro—
Stealing the movie as usual, this time as Jesus Quintana—
Bragging how he will stick it up Walter’s culo,
Pulling the trigger until it goes: Click-Click-Click!
Terrestrial burial or cremation?
For me:  Burial at Sea:
Slice me, dice me into shark food.

Or maybe something a la Werner von Braun:
Your dead meat shot out into space;
A personal space probe & voyager,
A trajectory of one’s own choosing?

Oh hell, why not skip right down to the nitty gritty bottom line?
Current technology: to wit, your entire life record,
Your body and history digitized & downloaded
To a Zip Drive the size of the average *******,
A data disc then Fedex-ed anywhere in the galaxy,
Including exotic burial alternatives,
Like some Martian Kilimanjaro,
Where the tiger stalks above the clouds,
Nary a one with a freaking clue that can explain
Just what the cat was doing up so high in the first place.
Or, better still, inside a Sherpa’s ***** pack,
A pocket imbued with the same Yak dung,
Tenzing Norgay massages daily into his *******,
Defending the Free World against Communism & crotch rot.
(Forgive me: I am a child of the Cold War.)
Why not? Your life & death moments
Zapped into a Zip Drive, bytes and bits,
Submicroscopic and sublime.
So easy to delete, should your genetic subgroup
Be targeted for elimination.
About now you begin to realize that
A two-pound aluminum Folgers can
Is not such a bad idea.
No matter; the future is unpersons,
The Ministry of Information will in charge.
The People of Fort Meade--those wacky surveillance folks--
Cloistered in the rolling hills of Anne Arundel County.
That’s who will be calling the shots,
Picking the spots from now on.
Welcome to Cyber Command.
Say hello to Big Brother.
Say “GOOD-BYE PRIVACY.”

Meanwhile, you’re spending most of your time
Fretting ‘bout your last rites--if any—
Burial plots on land and sea, & other options,
Such as whether or not to go with the
Concrete outer casket,
Whether or not you prefer a Joe Cocker,
Leon Russell or Ray Charles 3-D hologram
Singing at your memorial service.
While I am fish food for the Golden Shellbacks,
I am a fine young son of Neptune,
We are Old Salts, one and all,
Buried or burned or shot into space odysseys,
Or digitized on a data disc the size of
An average human *******.
Snap outta it, Einstein!
Like everyone else,
You’ve been fooled again.

In a great sea of unknown,
what does it mean that
shadows are all around
trying to grab light
from each other.
The hands are tied
behind all their backs
but they act the same
like they are saved.
Words can do that.
Like doors, until you open them
nothing exists behind,
like the cat in the box.
Werner would be proud of me.

Who knows if Werner Heisenberg
rammed his head into the wall
after discovering the uncertainty
of the electrons of his lover.

Imagine having a brain the
size of Utah and not knowing,
with certainty, where to find
her nucleus.

Part of me is half awake in this world
Eyes wandering the classrooms and halls
My mind is hardly active in this world
And then, part of me roams my memory
Half of me is off trekking smoky mountains
I'm riding a ski lift up Mt Werner, snow.
It's autumn here in the Smokies, crisp
The leaves are vibrant reds and yellows
And a mountain stream trickles by
My feet go numb in the icy stream,
Here is where I pop off my skis to listen
To the sweet sound of alpine fir trees
Here is feeding the squirrels in Yosemite
And hiking to a water fall, testing my faith
Cramming snow into my mouth,
Followed by hot chocolate at a cabin
Here is Appalachian Summers and picnics
And Rocky Mountain Winters and snow
Or slipping under the turquoise blanket
And exploring underwater caves in Hawaii
Memories are so dear, and always reappear
When everything around me is monotonous
I let myself rediscover what was once mine
And I don't even have to close my eyes
To be part of this beautiful world

An afternoon of dark flowers.
Werner told me,
                            there were bad men in flight.
Then we sat in a broken circle,
                            as if the air was forbidden
                            with stopped time,
                            the room choked with dust.

We share hurt
unbearable pain
our truths are not always pretty
but we have each other

We get excited about the little detail
and absorb aches in the aftermath
of hope ... lost
often we believe love is not ours to have

But we are friends
and we love each other
no matter what
to infinity and beyond, my friend, my Werner.

god, what an awful 48 hours,
     insomnia without my anti-depressant
25mg pops and
            painkiller: pain-keeper...
**** sicks from the top
  and you get a chance to form a reply,
or rather, a reply comes out
    to the sithering event horizon
                           like... anything might...
i blame the change in climate,
after all an island climate is so much
different to continental climate...
       vaguely, what the hell did i do
for the past two months?
             spent it with my dementia prone
grandfather and:
     a neurotic grandmother...
             watched one act of lunacy that
you probably wouldn't forget,
trying to stop my grandmother
   from calling my grandfather names
e.g. to idiot! debil!
                          while he decided it
was 9am at 2am in the morning,
    walking out of the house in his
pajamas...
             and: lost... an abyss behind the
days... fell, broke his coffee table,
looked at me with bulldog mouth nearing
frothing...
               lunacy theatre...
               but try calming a scolding
woman while trying the dementia prone
old father to go back to sleep...
                      even though i did cook
for them for two months,
   sometimes we'd sit on the balcony on
Sunday and eat, the most perfect
poultry roast, roast tatties and a zingy
salad...
                    and i'm not that bad at
fixing up a kitchen,
    the bare minimum since these aren't
the sort of people who need fancy-fancy
details...
          freshened up the walls in a pale
canary yellow,
     painted the furniture sides and details
white to match up with freahly
bought grey wooden chairs...
       refreshed the floor,
          sure, linoleum... but it was
originally linoleum, and...
            i'm apparently pretty good at it...
        not to mention i did manage to
  to finally finish H. Sienkiewicz's
   nights of the teutonic order (krzyżacy) -
because i had to watch
            the Aleksander Ford film...
only today i remarked to my mother who's
not even 60 whop began walking
with a walking stick,
     matriachal and murmuring under
her breath in the candle:
                             to imagine such will...
(a) not enough teutonic knights for my liking,
(b) the film had to avoid so much
plot embedded in the book...
    (c) why the hell do i identify
   with these knights?
                introduction with conrad,
  i'm guessing,
       and all the fanciful names...
                 e.g. frederick von wallerond...
names as pristine as **** uniforms:
                     you almost want to have them...
but this is a story about the dawn
of the 15th century...
               you have Hastings 1066 in
the west...
               and you have Tannenberg of
1410...
                  maybe because
gott, mit uns! sounds so hard-on
                          while listening to
                an alle krieger by und ein...
or?
            see... speaking english,
                     the "almost" unrecognisable
version of german...
      you... become fanciful,
    with a history...
                    almost attempting to be closer
to home...
         with an intact psyche at least:
not bothered by a tongue per se...
                   werner von tettigen:
                                      kommen auf!      
and that lightning krieg just last weekend?
    public houses in Marienburg...
               angel session:
   ****, forgot my genitals!
                forgot my genitals i said to her,
can we pretend
               i am both the mouth
of Vul'              and the tongue of Phal'?
                          Lusva was born
                          leeches stuck to
        the mime language of hearts.
                             funny you should say...
        **** usually sinks to the bottom
and then back up...
    michael rotondo...
                         we heard that one surface...
but only a week later,
   in a respetable english publication
             that's the times:
   style supplement...
               a certain francesca segal
moved back into her mother's house...
            two children and a husband
  towed...
                         but no... nothing of
the ordinary:
                       mickey was saying:
   i'm like air... sometimes there...
           can't defend him either...
                                  i know, the minor
detail... 6 months in...
            but then there's the oddity of work...
can anyone even comprehend
michael getting the sort of job
francesca has?
                      now all that i want to do
is work in my pyjamas, within arm's reach
of a well-stocked fridge
                            and a hot kettle...    
it's these little intricacies of
the story...
               i'm happy to have "suffered"
past the 48 hours thinking:
                 why did i accidently steal
ten quid from a teenager that
started to mouth me off when i bought
him 40% rather than pissy-juice friendly...
and the moral conundrum is
   with the already drunk or sober teen
who can't keep his mouth shut...
    ****... when me, Peter and Kieraan
were growing up, we'd be buying
      cheap cider from the local indian corner
shop and play snooker at
                 the local youth club...  
   ah man... there's hardly a point...
     there's a psychotic itch, a taunting line
you don't want to cross confined
    to the word:              loo       sir...    
****, that's hardly metaphorical...
                                      low       ner(d)?
                see, already soo'unds better...
****... why did i even begin this
                                               narrative?
oh, right...
                         the fatherly concern for
the oedipus son...
                                      yet the daughter
always has a hard time with
her mum...
                        household grievances...
it would have been a nice theory...
had i not the capacity to look for
          Charon with two coins on my eyes
when i look at a *******...
****... it's like the heart could never be
as pristine as to involve a me
                            in the whole affair...
it must be the whole oedipus complex
inverted-stigma...
                      apart from the commentary
*******...
              i guess i'll have to bury mine...
properly... unlike i buried her cat that
was poisoned by my neighbours...
               poor ******... hope you like
the piece grave i hacked off...
                   don't worry, it didn't belong
to anyone,
      stacked like in a jewish cemetary...
who knows...
          maybe i buried a holocaust victim
into a body of a cat, that now lazes
                        around ha-shem's throne?
i still need to find that teenager
before his "uncle" finds me and give
him back the ten quid...
                     drank the ***** though...
funny...
     michael wouldn't have this sort
of problem if...
                                            grandparents...
but then you wonder about
  michael's parents...
             so... we much of your parents
lately?
                   there's a 1 in 4 chance that
                              one of them is still alive;
     mine was 3 in 4 till about 5 years ago.

.it's almost akin to the germans, having experienced, discovered thought... strange, though, they "learned" to think, but were able, to write, prior. isn't that strange? they were made, illuminated by the sight, prior to hearing the runes, of, the, squabbling, ruined! ruined: rune bound. have the germans, ever thought? i gather: they never have; sie noch nie haben...

why wouldn't i believe in the existence
of the gods,
when i see so many people,
borrow, traits from them?
                        Loki:
             e.g. agent provocateur...
who am i to think of?
      to pledge allegiance to?
if ever: the death of god,
then the rebirth: of the gods.
         i would believe in the death of
gods, if i didn't see
iconoclasm of the mundane whipe
and whiff presence of my fellow
mortals...
                  fame and a god-riddled
status-presence...
        with my own,
                    augen zu sehen!
moimi okami: widzieć -
     oczem: niet oko...
                      not eye...
   oczem:
                        paraphrasing...
oczem: with an eye
  (oczyma - using eyes)
via                         o czym:
about what?
                czyn: deed.
                      
can't people even understand
personification in form?!
does it always require a conjuring
of some quasi-fictive altruism?

         no wonder i can't solve a single
kreuzwortpuzzle...
              the polacks,
and their perpetual noun
                   crisis...
                     kommen sie
von ein sprache
           das schwer leiht...
                woda / voda...
    wódka / *****....
                        oh, really? the soviets
were so bad in east Berlin?
you, you really want to know,
how the allies treated
the west berliners?
                 wir, kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo,
christine F.,
                              how did the allies
flood western Berlin with,
what speaks synonym-esque
tactic of the British Empire with
the ***** trade in China...
        i'm having to start to believe,
that the Germans? zee: Gyrmans?
sado-masochists...
                     1981...
         western berlin,
in western germany...
              it's not so bad,
in the east, living in chicken shacks...
at leat you were allowed
to live under a roof...
       western germany?
plagued by a ****** epidemic...
          what's not, to, "love"?
                    detlef R.,
                            lutz F.,
              catharina Sch.,
        andreas W.,
                            babette B.,
           werner H.,
                       michael S.,
            bärbel W.,
                             karin S.,
            livia S.,
                        rudl H.,
                              dirk L.,
                                detlef R.,
                  
this is how criminals are allocated their
media presence...
         ruf!
                     well, grand,
westsächsischjurisprudenz...
what do you call a deterrant?
   abschreckend?
                         ja?
                  when you have a jurisprudence,
that, works, as a, deterrant?
when you, actually, cage criminals?
rather than comedians,
who, are not caged, or sentenced,
and roam freely...
making the free people, a joke?

       one example: Tomasz Komenda...
i am a sick *******,
  but i'm thinking of...
those instances of ol' Jimmy S'ah-vil...
in the jurisprudent complex
of the saxon,
  the victim, sure, the victim is
allowed redemption and justice: death...
the accused is also given
redemption and justice: death...
              
   the philosophy of passing law,
incubated by: presumed innocent,
until, proven guilty,
over, guilty, until proven innocent...
i would think the latter,
to be a deterrent...
   if you have method of passing
judgement, against all favours...
            ascribed unto you...

            ich, mein herz:
                                          zu du.

i don't want to speak of justice no
more...
         simply because:
the justice i crave,
will not be served,
not with death, at least,
                    and whatever justice,
what comes with death,
i am, prone,
to at least mind
in making myself forget...
         if the reverse is true,
innocent until proven
guilty,
rather than guilty until
proven guilty...
  then... come my saving
mother, death,
             i wait for "giving" birth
to my ego...
detached from a body...
               i wait for the day,
when i am guilty,
akin to nibbling
on the fruit,
akin to the religiosity,
original sin,
   guilty until proven
innocent....
                                             ­      whatever.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate