Whack! Whack!
His mother’s heels click down
On to the hard wood floor
He claims to be Cinderella
His father looks down
And his first emotion is fear
For his young son’s life
It won’t be easy
He bends down
Picks him up and holds him tightly
“My beautiful son,
Be back before midnight”

Whack! Whack!
His bat strikes the baseball
For his first home run in Little League
His heart was never in it
But his father encouraged him
To try new things
And his mother is his biggest fan
He starts to notice
How tight baseball shorts are
They’re not very comfortable

Whack! Whack!
Towels leave bruises in the locker room
He laughs at his teammates
Running from his quick wrist
And wet towel
He’s the starting quarterback
And they just won states
He was voted
Homecoming king

Whack! Whack!
His heart duels against his ribs
The first time he kisses another boy
It’s nothing like the girls
There’s a new rush in his blood
His mind is in space
And his stomach in his throat

Whack! Whack!
He brings the axe down hard
Sunburnt metal splitting fibers
Sending woodchips everywhere
His father making him learn
The lesson that only hard work can teach
Nothing worth having comes easy

Whack! Whack!
The hammer comes down on the nail
As he finishes his daughter’s swing set
He watches through the window
As his husband
Hands her the first slice
Of her birthday cake
She just turned five
A number you didn’t get to see

They say when you die
Your life flashes before your eyes
They don’t say
It’s always your past

Whack! Whack!
His mother’s heels click down
On the hard wood floor
He claims to be Cinderella
His father looks down
And his first emotion is fear…

Whack! Whack!
His fists clench
Whack! Whack!
They come raining down
Whack! Whack!
He can’t seem to get away
Whack! Whack!
Why can’t you be a man
Whack! Whack!
Why can’t you be a man.
Whack! Whack!
Why can’t you be a man!

Why can’t you!?
You were his father!
And you
Were his mother!
You broke a child
When you were supposed
To build him up
So now the world
Had to bury his dreams in pieces
Shattered like glass slippers
You were afraid of him
While we
Would have loved him

His name was Zachary.
Zachary Dutro-Boggess.
I wrote your name
Onto a piece of paper
And folded it into a daisy
Because something beautiful
Had to come out of your story
Your birthday curled down
Over one of the petals
3 days before the day you died
You turned 4 years old
I wonder what you wished for
When you blew out your candles
I wonder what you wished for
When you first met God
Way too young
And he showed you
What love really was

This old man, he touched one as soon as he did they where gone.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went walking home.

This old man, he hugged two they hit the ****** with a shoe.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went hobbling home.

This old man, he kissed three he brushed his ***** on their knee.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went strolling home.

This old men, he fingered four
He would have fingered a whole lot more.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went running home.

This old man, he licked five he really wanted to **** dive.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went crawling home.

This old man, he ****** six he ****** on all those fellows *****.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went drooling home.

This old man, he bummed seven that gay ******* was in **** heaven.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man went driving home.

This old man, he wanked eight he chocked their chickens it was great.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man got the bus home.

This old man, he ****** nine both men and women the ***** swine.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man took a taxi home.

This old man he ****** ten soaked their ***** so he did it again.
With a **** shat ***** whack gave the man a bone this old man never went home.

For a week
a blue fly
buzzed around our apartment
subsisting on our Pomchi’s water,
kibble
and kitchen counter crumbs
and dodging attempts
by my wife to swat it.

I used to catch flies
quite easily in my palm
and release them back
to their natural estates
but since my colon surgery
the bugs are always winning.

Today,
there was a grey spider,
maybe a brown recluse,
silently gazing
at the bathtub drain.
I could not find a container
to capture it,
so I turned on the faucet
to the lowest cold
and highest flow
and watched the creepy crawly
circle the drain three times
before it vanished
into the mercies
of the Chattanooga sewers.

I was convinced  
that it could survive
by rafting itself  
onto to the nearest ****,
both a source
of refuge and sustenance,
that my Puerto Rican
family of Marine Tigers
living in Miami
(at the time
when Castro refugees
all mythically made
the 330 mile trip
on ten fallen coconut palms
thatched together,
and audaciously declared
eight street,” Calle Ocho”
and their new land,” Little Havana”)
contemptuously called,
back in my racist youth,
a “floating Cuban.”

When I came into the bedroom
my wife was waving around
her big brand-new blue fly swatter,
the one she bought at Dollar Tree.

Our Pomchi, also on the bed,
resting on her back
with her legs up in the air
and stomach joyfully exposed
was barking for a good hard belly rub.

Whack, whack, whack
went the fly swatter,
squarely hitting our little girl
in her sweet spot,
generating ******* squeals.

The blue fly,  
affectionately    
called Mike Pence
for its habit of landing
unnoticed on
any old white thing for
two minute and three seconds,
and now, a visiting family member
that had overextended its stay
more days than
were humanely bearable,
was buzzing around my wife’s head.

Its movement was noticeably slower
and when it landed on the faux leather arm
of my multi position reclining chair,
I was almost able to snag it in my palm.
Too tired to buzz afar,
it rested again on the arm,
weakly regurgitating its own spittle.

I called my wife over,  
a former professional chef
and therefore an expert
in the art of
preparing, cooking and eating
dead things,
knowing she be eager to try out
her new instrument of death.

A sure aim sent the Blue
to the skin colored **** carpet,
and in its last struggle
I started to sing inside the only
song that would be
a proper elegy:

La cu-ca- | ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha
| ya no pue-de ca-mi-nar
por-que no | tie-ne, por-que le fal-tan
| las dos pa- titas "de" a-trás. —

("The cockroach, the cockroach /
can no longer walk /
because she doesn't have, because she lacks / the two hind legs to walk.”)

I imagined it
crying out
“Help me! Help me!”
like the half human,
half insect creature
caught in the spider web
at the end of that
old Vincent Price
creature feature
were death by big rock
was a mercy
compared to
arachnoid decapitation.

Whack
and the Blue’s head
was severed
from its thorax.
Whack
and its wings
flew East and West.
Whack
and its abdomen
closely followed.
Whack
and its legs
buckled under it.
Whack
a final time
to make sure
it was dead.  

My wife had
over-killed,
and the worst
cardinal sin,
had over-cooked
something that
was meant
to be tartare.

Still our Pomchi
sniffed, licked
and eventually ate
the Blue,
her smile
declaring it
the best thing
she swallowed
all week.  

For a half hour
my wife rewarded her
with the swat, swat, swat
of blue belly rubs.  

Note:
Marine Tiger was the ship that carried people from Puerto Rico, and so the white people in New York started calling all the Puerto Rican people ‘Marine Tigers.’

Throw rocks at my window,
Hold the boom box up high.
Send me on scavenger hunts,
Make me search far and wide.
Let me be your favorite song,
A tune you can never get out of your head.
Recall your fondest memories,
Those of when we first met.
Take me out to ball games,
Introduce me to all your friends.
I want to be your now and forever,
I want the cheesy moments to last a lifetime.
Take me in now and never look back,
We can have a life we create out of whack.

first line lips are false as a beach next mcarthur’s in chicago next the big blond takes the elevator down next pearl on the lip next shalimar stirs the canine **** all right I like that let’s start a new one do it what what do you have don’t **** up wheres the apostrophe ******* you’re cruel now back now whack it again whack it again I want it to go back whack it press it whack it okay new line

i want elevator i want uh i want don’t ask the bellboy for the time just take the elevator to what? to notions? to the lingerie shop? ah ******* grandma new line

all right one more time okay **** the gin-socked tongue that’s “soaked” period once again the elevator down paint the pretty tie (cough cough) thai next big buick big *** like fish put a ? after fish take it back take it back you ***** okay that’s not bad you do all right ah **** song of india in the desert at night put “” marks around song of india & desert song in capital letters hit shalimar then cadillac red lips then **** like a seashell with a gin-soaked tongue start new line

all right does mcarthur stick his socks in the bathtune at night that’s bathtub the dog howls at the moon buries it in the backyard snakes lose their skin cocoa butter slick water on the brain of the big dark blond song of india **** **** **** big fish *** big v8 you ***** keep up with me painted rocks like a pretty tie fast car long legs and a broken heel now dead no not dead yet um estee lauder goes down on price-waterhouse in a swedish bath bellboy watching this is his reflection in the mirror no silver one-sided next line

big blond trampled by elephants with wrinkled knees starch is not chic all gone shalimar stirs the k-9 **** sequined *** in the moonlight cadillac red lips hungry dog eats tail becomes himself bad dog play dead okay what do you suggest bad doggie bad comma bad comma hungry dog go for the tongue you dumb ***** keep going new line

what do cactuses(i) have??? fronds fur what are their things called new line

dog hates gin go for the breast stupid ***** good dog dry dog poor dog pour blond water of life **** yellow a thai like painted rocks period next

i want head down legs up i want sequined *** only ****** level damp dampened dampest ***** panorama **** **** **** blue blue down there feminine azure with clouds too got it odalisque in blue period have mercy on me no no new ******* line what are you filling that thing up with okay stop it for now

Who is the boy?
Sophia's father asked.

Sophia looked at him:
the greying moustache,
dark eyes,
short,  
but solid build.

A friend from work,
she said.

Her mother walked
in the background
never interfered.

What's his name?
The father asked,
examining her,
eyes searching
her features for signs
of lies or deception.

Benedict,
she replied,
good Catholic boy,
nurse.

The father
walked past her,
then circled her.

She thought of Benny
having nodded
and spoken briefly
to her parents then
had left the house.

Good ***.

Miał dobry ****,
she said to herself
in Polish,
pretending she was
talking to her father.

Not dare.

Good Catholic?
Her father said,
he come to the house
and no one to safe guard
your honour here?

We talked; had coffee,
she said,
thinking of the safe things.

Those outside
may think otherwise,
he said.

Who?
Sophia asked,
sensing her father
walking behind her,
as he did when
she was a child,
then WHACK WHACK,
he did to her as a child.

Now he just walked
around her, hands behind
his back.

Neighbours see
these things,
think what they think,
he said,
in front of her
staring at her eyes.

Those who sin, see sin,
she said,
holding herself firm,
eyeing her mother
in the background,
no words,
not a sound.

This Benedict,
he likes you?
The father asked.

Yes, he does,
she replied,
thinking of Benny
******* *******.

He must consider
how it could looks
to others,
her father said,
not come while
we are out.

She nodded,
looked at her feet,
wiggled her toes.

He may come while
we are here,
her father conceded,
eyeing her firmly,
walking away,
hands behind his back.

She breathed out
relieved
no whack
whack whack.

Many believe they know the law
Because they were arrested;
Others know how to teach
Because they too were tested.
If you have a religious question,
They attended church;
Mention you've an ache or pain,
They diagnose your hurt.
Should you bring up politics,
Republican or worse,
They'll explain Democracy
Cause they've been free since birth.
Admit your car is pinging,
Your faucets aren't behaving,
The oven isn't cooking right,
Your fridge is warm and shaking,
The air conditioner's out of whack,
Your furnace has turned blue,
They'll tell you what to do:
Change the thermo-coupler.
It's always their one answer.
Say you like this stock or bond,
An investment that's appealing,
They'll  discourse that all agents
Are cunning conniving stealing.
On Monday mention the big game,
They'll re-play, play by play,
As if you slept right through it.
If you hear a rousing band,
Attend a movie or a play,
Know-its are informed critics,
Once they were stagehands.
They pose as friends and family,
Waiting for an opening,
To disrupt with diatribe,
To display how much they know.
I know what I'm on about,
So let me advise you,
I'm a Know-It-All poet,
All I write is true.
So,
Never miss the opportunity
To keep your mouth shut too.

I know you’ve heard these words before
I've said them many times before
I wish that I could use them more
To make things better like before

There was a time these words had meaning
Sheathed in heartfelt cries and feelings
But a shaman who can't heal
Is just a man and nothing more

Like worn-out, old and ***** pennies
Now diluted by the many
There's so many, many pennies
Don't care there's one on my floor

My cries of “wolf” no longer heeded
When these words are truly needed
To the darkness they've receded
Blindly searching for that door

In my chest still beats a heart
While pained regret tears it apart
Can't fix or go back to the start
And you don’t want me anymore

My anger and my finger pointing
Foolishly like I'm anointed
Not the one you are annoyed with
You were wrong; I was so sure

Attentively I listened to you
In-and-out my ears your words flew
Silenced; Gave no value to you
Truth revealed strikes at my core

Awakening I newly have
With gained awareness of how bad
I took for granted what I had
A rolling tide erodes the shore

Alone I sit and think of when
We were not lovers just good friends
Fun times together that we’d spend
And from that my heart starts to soar

Reality then brings me back
Jolts like a sudden heart attack
A deep sharp pain gives me a whack
I scream until my lungs are sore

Can't fix the memories or replace
My nightmares wake me; Teary-faced
Past filled with guilt, shame and disgrace
Start questioning what life is for

White man, right man
Seriously uptight man
Black man, whack man,
Cutting him no slack man.
Red man, dead man
Never be the headman.
Brown man, down man.
Treat him like a clown man.

Stereotypes, stereotypes!
Notice how it rhymes with hype?
The habit of the ***-wipes
A bitter fruit that’s always ripe.

Poor man, for sure man,
Can’t afford a ***** man.
Waiting on the shore man,
Sweeping out the store man.
Broke man, stroke man
Too poor to smoke man.
Struggle under yoke man.
**** of every joke man.

Stereotypes, stereotypes!
Notice how it rhymes with hype?
The habit of the ***-wipes
A bitter fruit that’s always ripe.

Fey man, gay man
Nothing more to say man.
Please just go away man.
No equal rights today man.
Liberal man or little man
Nothing but a middle man.
Playing second fiddle man.
Never solve the riddle man.

Stereotypes, stereotypes!
Notice how it rhymes with hype?
The habit of the ***-wipes
A bitter fruit that’s always ripe.

begin end begin he writes come to party in my room ashtray spilled on sheets mirror smeared clothes scattered everywhere i’m reclining on floor pulling on ***** hair writing lonely-hearts poem i don’t care about your photograph i just want to know will you come to party in my room? i have confidences to share secrets to reveal no one to give my body to i need to feel warmth of another there is food if you are hungry i’ll just watch listen to you will come won’t you? please this is no prank are you there? i just wanted to invite you to party you’re my only guest i need you i sound desperate you want to know how long i’ve been this way kind of let myself go grown used to this room that keeps my secret used to sleeping alone in big double bed i think i shall go take hot bath don’t come another night perhaps i can do it quite well myself thank you you probably would have felt out of place anyway - london 1971

nothing wrong with beating off but i prefer female sometimes pretty thing replies Odys you have a way with words actually he prefers woman all times tends to be too impatient rough handling himself needs woman’s gentler slower adoring touch

i wouldn’t mind wife if she is simply **** in residence leaning against doorway posing between me and kitchen he considers let’s get cruel in cruelty one finally realizes one’s own true self-interest who am i? am i cruel enough to be sick-hearted *******? am i capable of oppression torture? do i honestly desire *** slave? do i believe all hope of becoming normal human is gone? he hears her words i have cuffs crop leg spreader flogger hood paddle cane like swelling bruises on my *** never touch my face arms legs i like to be spit on while you pull hair i like servicing man who takes pleasure in giving brutal intense pain *** on my face **** **** on me i'm looking for white muscular egotistic man who is into sadomasochism i enjoy abuse part just as much as *** part is he lightweight no stomach for collared sadism? He mumbles to himself bottom line i respect love women this existence is killing me ignores his thoughts sings aloud we’re used to being rude to each other used to getting crude with each other come on now pretty thing sit next to me

female fantasy number 1 man’s ******* is like handle on slot machine if woman pulls it right way 3 cherries line up in his eyes ***** jingle ring money shoots out ***-hole female fantasy number 2 science invents way in which more money woman spends shopping more weight she can lose

i imagined you were plateful of pancakes you giggled when i poured syrup on your face i smiled pondering how lovely you would taste we sat for a while gazing into each other’s eyes until you got cold rubbery i didn’t want to eat you anymore

maybe he is not so charming anymore maybe Odysseus has become blunt  difficult he tries to be respectful but sometimes he is excessive self-willed time place names have lost any mearing during lively discussion with pretty thing creativity versus craft he confronts original invention requires destruction surely you realize that? pretty thing replies Odys i didn’t realize you were so dominant you seem so playful puppy-like in daytime i never would have guessed you’re such a chauvinistic ******* he questions chauvinistic ******* what’s that suppose to mean? i don’t know what you’re talking about she answers don’t play dumb Odys i know you’re smart at semiotics he asks semiotics what does that mean? I don’t know the word listen you’re right and i’m wrong i apologize i didn’t mean to get so argumentative he reaches for dictionary on floor next to chair pretty thing crosses legs speaks i’m very careful to use simple words everyone can understand but i’m just sign painter isn’t that right Odys? what would i know? he pleads you’re not making any sense we both use brushes paint similar techniques that’s beside the point i apologize she insists you’re way off the subject Odys he begs you’re right i’m wrong whatever i said made you get so upset please forgive me her voice cold terse i need to go home Odys you scare me you’re way too fanatic

thinks to himself promise her anything but give her the finger just when she’s finally starting to fall for whole scam give her the slip 6 to 12 weeks is average life expectancy for modern romance it’s fast world we’re all expendable can’t hear what you’re saying music is too loud rule number 1 no matter how beautiful she is there’s always someone who’s sick of her rule number 2 why would you even be talking with her if she didn’t have *****? rule number 3 they’re all ******* ******! he tries to recall if Bayli ever behaved like ***** he concludes no never did she become one?

in restless sleep he dreams someone tells him Bayli is working at ******* bar he goes to see her Bayli looks young beautiful wearing thong nothing else many men are pursuing her he excitedly approaches but she seems to only vaguely recognize him she questions do i know you? he answers Bayli it’s me Odys! she answers my name is not Bayli Odys who? where do you know me from?” he pleads Bayli, look at me Bayli smiles hesitantly as she looks around for support points finger towards Odysseus 2 bouncers approach shove him against wall force him outside bouncer barks her name is not Bayli now get hell out of here you freaking loser! they go back inside slamming door as he walks away neighborhood kids throw apples at him wakes up confused sad from dream

he vows i don’t need love love is for those too lame to stand alone bear solitude self-avowal love is sign of weakness compliance control love is contract made between two people too spineless to take pleasure in own freedom love is way to take advantage exploit love is convenience pact for mutual security love is cumbersome weight tied around athlete’s neck love is suffering love is a lie illusion cover-up for everyone’s petty lame problems

1984 chicago suffers harsh winter furious winds blow across lakefront Mom and Dad take Odysseus to dinner at posh new restaurant in art galleries district on the way Mom and Dad argue about parking Mom wants to leave car with valet Dad insists they first look for space Mom gets annoyed the wind will ruin my hair drop me and Odys off at door then do what you want Dad says you’re going to miss me when i’m gone Mom snaps we’ll see when are you planning on leaving? Dad wears navy blue blazer white shirt burgundy foulard silk tie he is in good spirits winning personality keeps table lively Mom wears beige cashmere turtleneck darker beige wool skirt brown alligator high heels gold earrings she waves then greets roths weissmans who are led by young hostess they walk past table make brief polite conversation after several rounds of drinks Dad speaks you know, it’s about time Odys are you dating anyone in particular? Odysseus hesitates confesses he has had ****** relations with hundreds of girls his knees begin to shake under table he admits maybe I’m incapable of sustaining intimate relationship with one woman i’m conflicted blocking all these feelings inside never learned how to love can’t hold on to anything all i know how is **** and run Mom interjects don’t use that word! she suggests he travel get some fresh ideas Dad becomes irritated lights cigarette waives to waiter orders another Absolute on the rocks bursts out what the hell do you mean you never learned to love you grew up in a house of love *******! didn’t you learn anything? are you purposely trying to ruin dinner? you watch your step mister or i’ll whack you right here at the table! you make me sick with all your excuses one of these days you’re going to wake up Odys and I hope it’s not too late Mom immediately glances at roth’s weissman’s table then glares sharply at Dad she snaps Max lower your voice! people can hear you we’re in a restaurant can we please change the subject? she instantly regains composure continues i spoke with your sister Penelope today and she let me know she might be landing a new account she’s being wined and dined this evening by c.e.o. of prominent san francisco agency later waiter clears entrees asks if anyone wants after-dinner drink dessert Mom orders coffee apple pie with scoop of vanilla ice cream Dad orders coffee Mom asks what do you wish for in your life Odys? who do you want to be? he exhales long breath answers i used to dream of becoming renown painter but now i’m not sure sad to say don’t know what i want sometimes i think of priesthood but i’ve done too much sinning Dad grows irate who puts these ideas into your head? you ******* ungrateful kid! what the hell is matter with you? Mom interrupts Max don’t lose your temper we’re in a restaurant she glances at roth’s weissman’s table nods with big smile on face Odysseus feels entangled in web of desires deceptions debts he vacillates from one aspiration to next grown comfortable in his failures distrust

A shield I hold in one,
A sword in another,
I follow the battle to the end.
Glowing, I leap into the air with rage.
I fear not.

A whack of cold wind passes.

The rage is lifted,
Something curious creeps in,
Death is emerging,
I fall to the ground,
I wait.

I feel the chimes of birds,
Flowing in the wind,
My eye's close shut.

“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.

My insomnia is back
Mind is outta whack
This isn't really poetry
But I think you know that
Thoughts of something heavenly
Looking back on past memories

*******, I need to do something with my life
I write poetry
and have written a few stories
Tried programming as well as screenwriting
which I enjoyed immensely, but it costs too much money!
So here I am, back again with a poem
Another form of a story
I like it a lot
and have been writing them for about six months
And I'll write them again and again
Until my heart stops beating
Does this have meaning?
I don't know, it's rhyming
So it must mean something

Anyways, I don't know what to say
I thought I had it today
But in darkness comes the devil
His presence ever so powerful
Telling me I am special
But I struggle, yet he smiles
Saying that I have potential
Which I can't even fathom, not in this world of mine
That I'd like to abandon
Nah, I'm only kidding
It ain't too bad
No idea where it's heading
But I'm glad
Because I hate spoilers
Just as much as my handlers

That's a joke, I ain't controlled
I would go on and on
But I ain't going down that rabbit hole
My time is on a tight schedule, I don't got all-day
Another joke, ain't that funny?

You are wasting time though honestly
Reading this poem filled with much variety
Quite interesting though, wouldn't you say honey?
Yikes, a major yikes
That was pretty cringe, but hey
You're alive! maybe lost a few brain cells
But you already lost 6 billion from reading this poem
Ain't that swell?
You should see no difference though
You're already dumb
And quite frankly, appear to be a major eyesore
You look like something from Mordor
Now that's a joke

I'm sure you look great
A person that all should appreciate
Perhaps someone with heavenly energy
Something I wish to duplicate
But I can't, because I can't escape
Not from these snakes
I have a role I must play, which is fake
So many roles, so many faces
All  of which I can't break

I don't even know the real me, what I want to be
I thought I enjoyed writing
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy writing poetry
But I don't really have that same feeling
When it comes to writing stories
What I want in life is to be free and happy
No worries, that type of thing
Writing poetry makes me happy
But it isn't stable, it doesn't bring money
What other thing is there besides poetry?
Maybe I'm being naive
Maybe I need to sacrifice some freedom
To have a stable income
But.. that isn't me, oh, I see!
At least I think
Help me, please

Yeah, this was one wild poem
If you can even call it that
It might be random
but that's okay
Insomnia made it whack
But also made me open about my current problem
You know, me not knowing what to be
Will poetry ever save me?
I suppose we will find out
When I wake up
From a deep sleep.

Grab your pitchforks run him outta town,
only because his skin is brown.
If he knocks on the door don't let him in,
only because he lacks white skin.
Punch his face with a bang and a whack
only because his skin is black.
Pull out your gun shoot him in the head,
only because he grows his dreads.
Lock him in jail for nothing bad,
call him a loser and a deadbeat dad.

If you don't think you've gone too far,
you're wrong, your soul's as black as coal tar.

Up pops the blue hat out of his hole
Bop goes the bopper on in the game called
Whack a mole.

Its a teasing game. And a game of chance
If you stand out from
The group and pack.
Chances are you are gonna get whacked.

But that is the price that one must pay
If you plan to succeeed and go on your way.

Standing pat or sitting still can work at times
And keep one safe.
Standing your ground is sound stratigy.
But what works fory ou may not work for me.

At the mailbox, again:
“Who loves me, baby?”
Well, let’s see: there’s a flyer from Mercury Insurance,
Reminding me that most middle-income customers
Save an average of $4 million smackaroons when they switch too.
The Penny Saver USA.com is here,
Thank God, almighty!
So now I know that Thomas Roofing & Paving
Is having a special on 20-year leak-free flat roofs;
"All work guaranteed & insured.
No job too big or small.
Free estimates/Emergency services/License # I8U-69."
And thank you, Jesus,
For another $4.99 Farmer Boys 3-Egg Breakfast
Combo with Coffee coupon, and that
Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready, $5.00 cheese or pepperoni,
Mae-West-“why-don’t-you-come up and see me sometime?”—mailer. And, of course, another technology Siren’s song:
Verizon FiOS delivers entertainment this big,
Dish me up some dish NETWORK, $19.99 a month . . .
Are you ******* me?
For 12 ******* months?
AT&T;: whack me off on 120 channels.
DIRECTV.com - DIRECTV® Official Site‎
Worry-free 99.9%  . . . cue Joe E. Brown,
"Some Like It Hot“ Osgood:
"Well, nobody’s perfect!"
Time Warner/Sprint/T-Mobile;
And ******* Leather, Polk Street, San Francisco.
******* leather?
Must be for my neighbor: that ***** ****!
And here’s the weekly 8-page color fold-out from Stater Bros:
Lowering prices every day, large cantaloupes
(Jessica Lange, are you back?)
10 for $10.00, 32 oz. Gatorade
Or 24 oz Propel in 30 assorted varieties @ 79 cents
+ CRV: California Redemption Value?
Nice euphemistic cover-up for a TAX.
Nice, nice, very nice, CA elected state officials;
Nicely done, Sacramento.
Everywhere else in the country you get real money—
A fixed number of pennies, nickels, or dimes—
For your plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
But in California, the licensed recyclers
Get to pull the market price out of their *** each morning.
California Redemption Value?
What ******* genius government kleptocrat thought that one up? Conspiracy Alert: who gets all that CRV money?
And what are they doing with it?
Feeling plain, Jane?
Marinello Schools of Beauty, want you,
Offer you hands-on training in cosmetology,
Skin care esthetics, manicuring and vaginal deodorizing—
Just kidding, Babaloo.
Food tip for the Third World:
Never try to write poetry on an empty stomach.
Sizzler 6 oz juicy & succulent.
RENEGADE DEAL:
El Pollo Loco guacamole chicken sandwich,
Coupon free, small drink and small chips,
When you purchase a guacamole or jalapeno sandwich,
includes pepper jack cheese and a southwest sauce.
Gardenas sandia con semilla, 7 lbs 99 cents.
GARDENAS: “en precios, servicio y calidad, nadie nos iguaia.”
Bud Gordon’s Quality NISSAN:
One at this price after a $1500 factory rebate.
TERMINIX: get them before they get you!
The Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta
Bug up my *** again.
And a form letter from the VA
Asking me to please update my whereabouts.
And a form letter from the VA asking me
To please update my whereabouts.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Bite me, Mr. Frost!

An outing, at last.
I am going for a walk around the inside of my gates.
I live in one of those gated over-55 lunatic asylums.
There are gates. It is gated. Get it?
GATED! We feel safe here.
Probably a good thing at our age:
Self-imposed institutionalization,
Putting oneself in an asylum to ferment and die.
The fact that so many of us
Need it so bad at only 55
Says something itself about the current state of
Baby Boomer metal-fatigue.
I am now standing at the far end of the golf course.
I wait at the far end of the 18th Hole.
A ball bounces past my head and
Rolls off past the green into the far rough.
The 18th Hole is perched atop a small plateau,
Out of sight, far above the horizon for anyone teeing off.
I am Puck, invisible and impish.
I pluck the ball up.
I scamper to the green.
I pop the ball into the hole.
Which is better than popping a hole in the ball,
Surely, kind of a drag,
As we were once fond of saying.
Deflated Ball.
Deflator Maus.
OPERA can be ****.
Bodice-ripping corsets, whorehouses and naked ******!
Hardly what you might expect from
A night with the Welsh National Opera,
But they found their way into this production of "Die Fledermaus."
Ripe language, contemporary jokes and
Toilet humor thrown in, adding immensely
To the pleasures of Strauss’s operetta.
"Die Fledermaus," or The Bat’s Revenge,
Is all about drunkenness and adultery.
Despite being written in the 1870s,
It remains equally pertinent to today’s pub culture of excess.
Daring; Colorful; ****: PGA golf.
I steal a golf ball on the far end of the 18th Hole.
I pick up the Titleist and stick it in the hole
(Steady Jessica, not yours.
I hide behind your bush.
(Cue up PSA, First Lady Bird Johnson’s 1960s
Nationwide Beautification Campaign:
“I want everyone in America to plant a tree,
A sherrrr-rub, or a booosh.”)
The golfer now searching frantically:
Why is the cup always the last place they look?
Then, wham, bam, he looks:
A legend is born.
A hole in one,
His name forever immortalized
On a plaque over the bar, the proverbial 19th Hole.

As you know, I speak for all mediocrities,
Safe in my 55+ gated-community.
I go next to the Club House,
"The Lodge" as it’s called.
Each afternoon, the usual suspects
Claiming first come/first serve tiered mini-theater seats
Where Netflix matinee gems are screened.
It is two minutes to DVD show time.
I walk to the front of the room.
I stare at my audience.
I count the house slowly,
Making meaningful eye contact with each wrinkled face.
I cup my hands behind my back and speak:
“I assume you are all here for my lecture on Kierkegaard.”
No one reacts.
I turn to leave but do a double-take and smile.
One old woman in the top right corner of the amphitheater laughs, Perhaps the one other human being within the gates
Who has also smoked a joint today.
For an instant, I am overwhelmed with paranoia,
Perhaps I’ve gone too far over the line:
No longer “oh-he’s-a-character;”
I am now “that creep is ******* nuts.”
Is it time for someone to approach my family,
My next of kin, my “who-to-contact-in-event-of-emergency” number? Who will make the call on behalf of the HOA—
The Homeowner’s Association—
The Tsars, the Duma, the Supreme Soviet in these parts?
They are the power inside the gates;
Those who determine the state’s enemies,
Who govern its community norms.
Power within the gates.
Law within the asylum.
Little Hitlers one and all.
Hopefully they reach my sister first.
She’s been briefed.
KEY POINT IN THE NARRATIVE:
The new narrative is non-linear.
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We grow more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen;
We become more intimate with a legion . . .
Did someone say a legion? SPQR:
Am I having some sort of genetic-linguistic seizure here?
Am I channeling Benito Mussolini again?
Il Duce speaks to me from the grave,
Still blowing smoke up my Hopi-Jew-*** ***,
Filling in my insecurities,
Plugging the holes in my character
With delusions of classical Roman grandeur, glory and empire. Hmmmm? Quite an appetizing pitch for the average *****,
A message so completely, so ethnocentrically slick,
Olive oily, and so seductive.
A non-Italian would have thought
American Legion or Legionnaire’s disease,
Or The Foreign Legion, The French Foreign Legion.
The French: a virulent, promiscuous people.
Do you want fries with that, Simone?
No, I don’t get out much.
Only an occasional brisk walk around the asylum,
In and around the golf course, around but inside the gates. (LINKS) Bill Gates. Daryl Gates. Billy Bathgate’s Gates? Ghiberti’s Gates? The Hot Gates? Thermopylae? 300 Spartans/700 Thespians:
“The noun causing idiots to think of
Two girls sloppily eating each other’s mighty vaginas,
When they hear mention of someone being an actor.” http://www.urbandictionary.com
Not even close.
No, I rarely venture out.
This is Hemetucky.
There are methamphetamine-stoked
Teenage zombies at the gate.
Note to costume control:
Perhaps camouflage clothing is the safe choice?
No loud red Hawaiian.
No garish Indonesian batik.
Fleet of feet are these Hemet tweakers,
These cranked up Riverside County teenage barbarians,
These Huns & Visigoths,
These amped up, ravenous jackals.
And why stop there?
These Vandals & Vandellas.
A Motown flashback:
“Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
With or without Martha—
They remain dangerously lethal.
Yes, let it be camo clothes for me.
Those **** heads may be young.
They may be fast.
They may be able to run me down
On a dry grass dog-legged fairway savannah,
Tearing the meat from my carcass.
But the sons-a-******* have to see me first.
Besides, we know who are real friends are.
Hooray for our media peeps!
We become more intimate with a legion
Of television personalities on 125 different channels.
Most of these we know by name and context.
We know their families, their friends,
Their histories, their tragedies,
Their favored hyperbole and manner of speech.
Sometimes we establish intimacy with celebrities
Strictly on the basis of universal body language.
At times–in the absence of any other
Empathetic facility of identification–
We connect on instinct alone.
Instinct: perhaps animal at its core,
An animal kingdom affinity group,
Connecting on a bio-linguistic level,
Particularly when the Korean, or Spanish,
Mandarin, or Arabic,
Japanese, or even Hebrew language version is broadcast.
All languages cryptically alien,
A dense boundary, a barrio border wall,
Undecipherable, impenetrable concrete.
But we’ve never spoken to our neighbors,
Nor do we know their names.
Celebrities are the neighbors we know best;
Although the intimacy is an illusion,
Permission to invade their privacy presumed,
Tacit in the relationship between celebrities and their fans.
I am an independent contractor now,
An outside consultant to the NSA.
Try as I might I cannot crack the enigma,
Kim Kardashian remains far beyond my code-breaking prowess.
I repeat myself:
We can no longer sustain a narrative understanding of ourselves;
We are each an individual stream of consciousness,
All of us random, non-linear and disconnected.
We are more and more disconnected from others.
We may be neighbors in space and time,
But we remain deprived of any significant human contact;
Any spiritually significant human contact.
Our social circle narrows to what can fit in The Telescreen; we become more intimate with a legion . . .
Back to you, David Ulin:
“Sometime late last year—I don’t remember when, exactly—I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. Since I discovered reading, I have always been surrounded by stacks of books. I read my way through camp, school, nights, and weekends; when my girlfriend and I backpacked through Europe after college graduation, I had to buy a suitcase to accommodate the books I picked up along the way.”
Thank you, David L. Ulin.
I cannot help myself.
I grow more eccentric each day.
My eyeballs glued to that flat screen!

Cosmo Kramer: "The bus is outta control.
So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat,
I get behind the wheel, and now I’m driving the bus."
Jerry: "Wow!"
George Costanza: "You’re Batman."
Cosmo Kramer: "Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.
Then the mugger, he comes to and he starts choking me.
So I’m fighting him off with one hand,
And I kept driving the bus with the other, ya know.
Then I managed to open up the door,
And I kicked him out the door, ya know,
With my foot, ya know, at the next stop."
Jerry: "You kept making all the stops?"
Cosmo Kramer: "Well, people kept ringing the bell!"
(Share this moment with a stranger.)

I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.
Boom Chaka Laka. Boom Chaka Laka.
Boom Chaka Laka. BOOM!
Isn’t it time Salieri tempted Constanze–
Frau Mozart–with a plateful of Capezzoli di Venere:
“******* of Venus.”
You had me at hello, Kidman.
I know you too well, Nicole.
I knew you from before,
Way before Tom’s Oprah couch freak show.
Listen to me, Nicole:
We are face to face
With the most profound question in American literature:
"What is the grass?
The flag of my surrender?
The flag of my disposition?"
I resort to Socratic maxims: Know yourself;
The un-****** life is not worth living.
Is it stress? Is it lack of conviction?
Everything Jeff Lebowski neither wants nor needs in his life?
I watched you *** in "Eyes Wide Shut," Nicole.
Now I know you with my eyes and your legs wide open.
Thank you, Sidney Pollack.
Sidney knew.
Sidney dealt us cards
From his Hollywood Tarot deck.
We are intimate, Nicole.
I watched you squat.

Life's a game of Whack-A-Mole
You smack those suckers in their hole
Just when you've hit the rodent's head
He pops up somewhere else instead!

Life's a game of Blind-Man's-Bluff
But you can't quit
when you've had enough!
Red bandana 'round your eyes
Hard to tell the truth from lies...

Life's a game of 21
But the dealer's got a gun

Life's a game of Hearts or Spades
From the cradle

to the GRAVE.


SoulSurvivor
(C) 7/1/2016

This is for the outspoken racists
The short-sighted chauvinists
The one-sided misogynists
And every avid supporter of any form of intolerance

I think it's time I give you a piece of my mind
Allow me to crack through my cranium and you can
Extract whichever lobe of my brain you find suitable to fix your mental feebleness

Take my frontal lobe, I beg you because
Your so called conscientious thoughts
Permanently belong in the dumpster
Your brain flies confederate flags at half mast
As a constant reminder that even if
The South doesn't rise again you can still rest
Knowing you wave ignorance blissfully in the air

Or maybe you should have my parietal lobe
Since your manipulation of information is highly suspect
I suspect you've placed bigotry and hostility under solid ground
Equipped with enough racial slurs and misogynistic remarks
To blow up this whole town
Homegrown nouns and verbs conducting your own personal weapon of mass destruction
Corrupting the ears that welcome your mushroom clouds

Then again, your occipital lobe is out of whack too
Considering whether gray clouds paint the sky or
Royal waves reflect golden rays
All you ever see is black or white, gay or straight
Wrong or right, hate and hate
And I hate to break it to you
But you are blind to the beauty before us all
Your eyes fail to focus in on how we all
Lose scarlet plasma to paper cuts
Gain white hair and hardened scars
And share copper casket homes six feet deep

I almost forgot about your temporal lobe
That needs an entirely new design
Because it seems as though through all of this outrage
You can't process the filth in your mind
Like the smell of your own rotten attitude
Escapes your nostrils and pollutes the openness around you
Preventing any genuine intention the air it needs to breathe

Your entire brain is a train wreck
You need professional intellectual injections
Red pen corrections that can transform your neural network
Into a well-oiled machine fueled by tolerance
Overflowing with premium petroleum enhanced with high grade sensitivity to diversity

I want your synapses to fire positive discussions
Rather than recreate cerebric tyranny
I want your gray matter to mind its manners
To render exceptional positions
So your point of view refuses to point fingers
I want your prejudices pressure washed so far down
Your head's highway that they resort to becoming full-time pedestrians
I want your ability to communicate eliminated unless
You annihilate the venom from your vocabulary

But the choice is yours
You're voice is yours
And I won't take it from you
This is not a debate nor a dispute over your vernacular
Hate speech is undeniably your native language
And unfortunately you own the right to be as wrong as your words allow you to be
Instead this is merely a message that I hear your hostility
A not so subtle reminder that your narrow-mindedness is nauseating
And this society has enough deadly diseases to deal with
To drill your acceptance defect straight through your skull
But please feel free to take any part of my mind
And find the time to perform your own lobotomy
So maybe then you'll understand
That intolerance has no place in anyone's anatomy

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls ***** & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions   Families walk
Stunted boys    big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls   & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged    like elderly nuns
small bodied    hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food    since they settled there

on one floor mat   with small empty ***
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together    in palmroof shade
Stare at me   no word is said
Rice ration, lentils   one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days    eat while they can
Then children starve    three days in a row
and ***** their next food   unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road    Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue    cried mister Please
Identity card    torn up on the floor
Husband still waits    at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play    our death curse

Two policemen surrounded     by thousands of boys
Crowded waiting    their daily bread joys
Carry big whistles    & long bamboo sticks
to whack them in line    They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line   and jumping in front
Into the circle    sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward    on the mud stage
Teh gaurds blow their whistles    & chase them in rage

Why are these infants    massed in this place
Laughing in play    & pushing for space
Why do they wait here so cheerful   & dread
Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door   Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys and girls    Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer?    "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children  at once scream "Hooray!"

Run home to tents    where elders await
Messenger children   with bread from the state
No bread more today! & and no place to squat
Painful baby, sick **** he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months
Dysentery drains    bowels all at once
Nurse shows disease card    Enterostrep
Suspension is wanting    or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps    in hospital shacks
Newborn lay naked    on mother's thin laps
Monkeysized week old    Rheumatic babe eye
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison    thousands must die

September Jessore    Road rickshaw
50,000 souls   in one camp I saw
Rows of bamboo    huts in the flood
Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,
American Angel machine   please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies    merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine    food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam    and causing more grief?

Where are our tears?  Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this **** flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious of America brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--

Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet ****-field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve    in their mother's arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my *****?

What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New York
& sup this night's table on bone & roast pork?

How many millions of beer cans are tossed
in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost?
Cigar gasolines and   asphalt car dreams
Stinking the world and dimming star beams--

Finish the war in your breast    with a sigh
Come tast the tears    in your own Human eye
Pity us millions of phantoms you see
Starved in Samsara   on planet TV

How many millions of children die more
before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild
Armed forces that boast    the children they've killed?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes    in illusory pain?
How many families   hollow eyed  lost?
How many grandmothers    turning to ghost?

How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers   make no more sound?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons   nowhere to go?
How many daughters    nothing to eat?
How many uncles   with swollen sick feet?

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children    nowhere to go

                                        New York, November 14-16, 1971

Listen here listen here
The world is so **** *******
Maybe all these terrible things are happening because it’s trying to be renewed
Our president is so whack
He keeps stabbing innocents in the back
Praising Arnold Schwarzenegger by acting as if he’s the terminator
Pero his wife’s an immigrant too
American dream who

We pretend to honor the OG’s who created this land
But now your trying to get them all banned
claiming them all to be rapists and murderers
Be humble sit down i'm tired of all these racial slurs

He says “We cannot aid Puerto rico forever”
But really we need to be working on this together
Puerto Rico is just a metaphor for how this president sees all Latinos and people of color
He does not see us as his equals, nor does he sees us as his fellows

Having the mindset being male and white
Is the only possibility of being right
Were all humans , we all fit in the same race.
We should not be considered by the color of our face
Yet somehow the white get all the praise
Why are we still stuck in this racist faze

Since 1963 when Martin Luther King said in his speech
“It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later the ***** still is not free”
To this day even if they try not to say
The ***** is still treated so falsely.

Take a moment now to open up your eyes and stop all the self lies
Get rid that hate to open up the gate to a whole new perspective
A much more un discriminative kind
Then maybe just maybe the world wouldn’t be so **** *******

Kick Knack paddy whack
give the humanoid a bone
for i think he wants my soul
as i work for him today
laughing at his sad jokes
i do just think, that one day
he will have to laugh at mine.

lifeguards, free life vests, at least 15 lifeguards, always holding red flotation devices
always on the watch, telling little children to get out of the deep end
to give a rest break, a child looked faint, one guard approached, nothing
forever on the watch, no one gets hurt, required swim breaks,
guarding, guarding, keeping everyone so safe
I wondered how anyone could even cough water down the wrong pipe
here in this fully, totally, completely covered and safe lake and beach

waiting for an outdoor rinse, the screams of terror of a small child and tears
and then whack, whack, whack, and the crying increased and it took me
awhile to adjust, to reframe, that this, a deliberate endangerment, an infliction
of pain, could happen here, in a place so absolutely and intensely safe
but there is was again, the sound of striking and crying and harsh words in Spanish
and I gazed at the lifguards wetting down the sand where they had to walk to cool it
a lifeguard with that perfect surfer boy look, like the ones I grew up with
but again, the striking sound, in the relative darkness of the men's room
and a man followed by a tearful toddler emerged
the man looked like he's just performed a self satisfying act and the boy
followed him like a dog and I realize that
we as children are dogs, little animals who are abused
and follow our attackers home and live with them in order to survive
the man carried no obvious weapon, but I knew what he'd done
to be that two year old child, unable to soothe oneself, in a dark, strange room
with a man towering over him, inflicting pain for some trifle
I wondered what to do, but they walked by and dissapeared into the crowds of
picnics and music and the safe beach, with the lifeguards standing, always holding
their red flotation devices, all eyes staring at the water, the beach
it now did not look so safe at all

The great upside down **** WHACK
2. You're the child you have parents
3. Your living autobiography
4. Your the parent of your kids
5. Your kids are the parent of you
6. An unwelcome flowery parlor
7. tears
8. Slow decent into six feet of Hades
9. Scriptures read
10. Sprinkles of dirt; a rose on metal
11. More tears
12. Mound of flowers; mound of dirt
13. The catering
14. Remembrances
15. Hand shakes, embraces, kisses
16. Many more tears
17. The after clean-up
18. Empty building
19. More great primordial WHACKS for others
20. On going de'ja' vu

Yeah this rap goes out to them groveling phony fraudulent rappers, who think they some hot ****, but really their rhymes should be flushed down the crapper. I won't pitter-patter over the rap games floorboards; I bust through it and slice them up with my sword. Rap today has decayed, laid to waste by auto tuned ****** fruity puffs that only care about getting paid. So despicable, yet so typical for this day and age, creativity is deadlocked away underground in a cage. Only the critically insane ******* ever try to resurrect the rap game, because most get into bed with the devil so they can achieve easy fame. Illuminati in the media, in the music, and in the congress, corrupting the youth as if they were pawns as if life was like a game of chess. Oh father if there is a father up in heaven, we need help, I tried dialing your number but there mustn't be any service up there in heaven. Are you hearing me, I tried to show the corruption, but it keeps getting covered up by this convoluted industry. Yeah I went there, what you going to do, you just some phonies with some really low IQ's. Yeah I said this was going to be a Diss track, that points out how all this worldly **** is super whack. Fake rappers, fake society, trying to look real and happy in their greedy nobility. While other starve to survive, literally, but I forgot that the majority don't give a **** about minorities. Forgive me for all the honesty; I know I should probably see a specialist in psychiatry. **** it if go off the handle every now and again, I'm not here to make friends with filthy pagans. I'm just here to establish my lyrical ministry; I'm here to challenge everything and everyone's dignity and humility. I'm not in for cheese; I'm only in it because I want to shake raps monochrome foundation to its knees. Tear it down then build it up, there needs to balance just like pendulum, no time for sell out broken down ***'s. Diss the flow, get to know who the hell you calling out, otherwise it might come back to knock you out. Diss just business, its time to throw in the towel if can't finish, diminish all of those who can't handle this new improved business. Be a role model that anyone could look up to, and if you're not down to that then *******. Diss is the time to reinvent yourself, its ok if you need a little help cleaning out your shelf. Everyone deserves a second chance to change, to rearrange themselves so they can begin a new stage. Diss is not what you expected, but I hope you hear these words so that you can heal instead of staying infected.

Alice sits
in the room
with blackboard

and easel
and small desk
and small chair

with Nanny
stern and strict
pointing at

the blackboard
with her stick
teaching her

her letters
the grammar
paragraphs

sentences
by long rote
and command

and Alice
knows now that
any cause

of Nanny's
discontent
will bring her

punishment
her father's
hard hand smacks

whack and whack
she sits still
taking note

but bored she
stares out high
windows at

tall tree tops
and blue skies
thinking of

her mother
locked away
(ill in her

head Nanny
coldly said)
then she thinks

of her new
adoptive
mother who

works below
stairs(low stairs
her father

often says)
the one with
the red raw

fingers thin
and young who
secretly

said she would
be her new
adopted

mother but
to strive to
learn to do

her best and
so she does
but thinks of

the time when
lessons are
over she

can sneak down
below stairs
and along

passageways
to where her
adoptive new

mother works
and feel her
embrace her

earthy smell
her soft cheek
against that

rough cloth of
apron the
red fingers

caressing  
her long hair
whispering

words but still
the nanny
drones on the

lesson now
taking its
toll boredom

sinking in
wishing her
adoptive

mother would
come and take
her away

for a walk
to the horse
stables or

into town
holding her
hand the red

hand holding
her pink one
or dreams of

snuggling
up to her
in her bed

feeling her
motherly
tender warmth

but Nanny
still drones on
the long lesson

word on word
keeping her
from the arms

and caress
and earthy
smell of cloth

of her new
adoptive
young mother

below stairs
Alice yawns
secretly

her small hand
over mouth
knowing this

blowing soft
from her palm
to her young

adoptive
mother a
secret kiss.

Ramble on I do
with visions I have of you,
pink pussycats,
a falling star,
itchy palms,
the balm of this or that,
Casablanca,
Philadelphia freedom,
the Red, White, and Blue,
******* you to the wall,
egg rolls,
soul-stealers,
planting seeds,
the madness of Jack,
quack quack quack,
****** body parts,
kissing Detroit,
drunk on sunshine,
mountain zephyrs,
pixie-talk,
Kingdom come,
down dogs,
London fog
Vegas folly,
dead roses,
sweet sensations,
hurt,
pain,
pop tarts,
warm velvet,
porcelain orbs,
whack whack whack
universal soldier
lover.

As Lewis walked up to the door, it strangely felt like he had been here before. But he hadn't. She had moved here three years ago, and he never saw the place. It smelled like Nina's home alright, though. The faint whiff of hydrangeas, of roses, and of other flowers caught he keen nose, and he breathed in deeply and smiled reassuringly to himself. The he became serious, as if he had no right to smile.

Was this the right thing to do? He hoped so. Time would tell. It felt as if it was almost yesterday, instead of six years ago, as he knocked on her door.

After a few knocks, a minute or two, Nina opened the door to her house. Someone had to be home, for there was a car in the driveway. As she looked upon him, Lewis expected her to slam the door shut in his face, but she also acted as if she had just seen him yesterday. And it seemed like no big deal to her.

Without much emotion on her face, she left the screen door shut, but she kept the inner door open. Walking away, it was like she expected him to follower her non-verbal lead. He did, hesitantly.

In the kitchen, Nina poured him a cup of coffee. "You hungry?" she asked him. "I am about to put some cinnamon roles into the oven. I'm going to open up a can from the fridge."


"Oh?" Lewis responded, trying to be nonchalant, trying to hid the nervousness in his voice. "Not from scratch?" His heart was practically beating out of his chest.

Nina's back was towards him. She was finishing some dishes in the sink. "Yeah, I know I was always Betty Crocker. But I'be learned to make short cuts, and it tastes just fine. Makes life easier to not do everything like Grandma did it."  

After she separated the rolls apart, and stuck them into the oven, she just kept going about her business. She started to open some mail and sorted the items into piles of importance and priority, and into a pile that could wait.

Lewis was shocked. He couldn't believe her composure. After a while, she turned around, leaned against the counter top, and she acted like she didn't have a care in the world. She didn't look one bit stressed, angry, sad, shocked, disgusted--or anything.

Finally, Lewis said, "Nina, I don't get it." He felt itchy, and tense, as if he could scratch his skin off, as if he was waiting for a bomb to drop. "Why aren't you telling me to get the hell out of her...to go ***** off...or call me every name in the book."

Nina just looked him up and down. He began to chuckle, nervously. "Come on, Nina! I am surprised you just don't grab that pan of hot rolls in the oven, and whack me in the head with them!"

In response, Nina still said nothing, acting as if nothing ever happened.

Becoming quite unsettled with her unexpected composure, he went on. "I mean...come on..scream at me. Cuss me out! Slap me! Punch me! Something, for God's sake!"

Nina raised an eyebrow, and tried to resist smiling. She was waiting patiently for him to explain himself, not to go on like this. "Is that what you want, Lewis? Is that why you came her? To beat you into oblivion with a pan of hot cinnamon rolls?" She didn't try to make him look foolish--he was doing a good job of that on his own.

Lewis turned red in embarrassment, and started to smirk. "Well...yeah...would make more sense to me."

The timer went off and the rolls were done. Putting her oven mitts on, Nina pulled them out of the oven and let them cool on top of the counter. The silence was eerie, awkward.

She poured him another cup of coffee, and finally addressed the elephant in the room. As he still looked up at her, dumbfounded by her, she said, "Lewis...if you have the ***** to come here...than I can certainly let you in and hear you out."

With that said, she filled a plate full of rolls, places them in the center of the table, pulled out a chair and sat down across from him at the table. "I'm listening", she said, her expressions still low-key. Yet Lewis thought that her eyes and mouth seemed ready to mock him, positioned to put him in his place. His guilt wouldn't allow him to think, otherwise.

Why would she serve him food and coffee? Why not just get it all into the open and demand that he spill his guts?

Lewis didn't want to beat around the bush any longer, but spoke plainly in his confession. "Nina, what can I say? I'm an ***." She didn't nod her head in agreement, nor say that he sure was an ***, yet a "look of  suspicion was growing upon her face.

"OK, OK", he went on. "I should never have left you--of all days! What a frickin' wimp! I should have manned-up and told you I wasn't ready to get married. Instead, I stood you up at the church...of all places...in front of your family...your friends. A complete no-show--I made a mockery of that day! It was supposed to be one of the best...and I made it the worst! Some in my family haven't really gotten past it or have forgiven me. Not fully. A few barely talk to me. My best friend, Steve, thinks I'm a *****--a dumb fool!"

Nina sighed with relief. This was what she wanted to hear. The tears started flowing.

Lewis told her, "So I just don't get it. I don't get why you are not furious with me! It just blows my mind!"

Lewis grabbed for another cinnamon role, and Nina handed him a napkin. She wasn't crying anymore, and he was glad. Why was she being so nice though? So hospitable? Did she have something up her sleeve? Did she mean to get back at him? Maybe poison in one of his roles? Lewis had to laugh at himself. Actually, that might alleviate some of his guilt right now.  

Picking at her role, Nina explained, first more sharply. Then she was soft in speech. "It's not all about you, ya know! Look, Lewis, don't think that for a moment that just because it is more OK now that it was OK back then! Well...I guess you already realize this. You see, I'm different now...changed...grown a lot since. I did a lot of soul searching, lots of growing."

"I can see that. It's wonderful."

"And I wondered what I did wrong...at first. Then I hated you, blamed you. I wished that I never said I would marry you. I did plenty of screaming at you--plenty. I bring things in a rage--mirrors, a clock, a dish or two--bruised my fists up pounding things."

She paused and continued, all the time looking at the intricate, lace doily on the center of the table, under a vase of fresh daisies. Finally, Lewis saw the gamut of emotions. In one moment, her face would pinch in frustration and anger. It would then evolve into a soft sadness, and other emotions within.

"Wasn't so composed about you back then, Lewis. Let's see...I swore at you. I wished you were dead. I ripped up every picture of you...put some in the shredder, wishing they were you, instead..prayed that you would die. Bitterness isn't event he word for it. I thought you were the worst thing that happened to me, that you ruined my life forever. I cursed you up and down, Lewis. I'm sure I even invented some new curse words."

That was enough said. She looked up at him and slightly smiled. Lewis smiled back, for at least she felt real to him now, quite natural. She admitted, But I think I cried far more than I hated you. I still loved you."

Lewis wanted to sit right next to her and hold her. "Oh, baby...I'm so sorry..."

Nina quickly interjected. "Honey, you weren't ready for marriage. We were both young, only in our mid twenties...we thought we had it so together. It took me a while, but I finally realized that you needed to find out who you really were, came to that conclusion for a while now. And, boy, did I need to get to know myself more, too!"

"No!", he insisted, emphatically. "Don't make excuses for me! I did not do right by you!"

Nina reached across the table and put her hand upon his. "It seemed like hell at the time, but I needed to learn about me, too! Crazy as it sounds....if it did not happen...I never would have..."

She stopped short. Lewis had tears in his eyes, and one began to roll down his cheek. "Met Gary", he said, finishing her sentence for her.

Surprise flashed across her face. "You did your homework!" Nina stated. She was quite impressed and smiled.

"I wanted to know what happened to you", Lewis responded. "You probably wonder why I didn't walk away for good. I intended to....but you deserve some answers, and I'm here to give them to you. Sure, I could have walked away, and stayed away. I could have saved myself the embarrassment of facing you, again. I could have pretended to have some dignity left."

"But you do have some dignity left", she insisted, sweetly. "It takes a lot of courage to do this. I'm glad you did."

"Are you happy now? I mean...I hope you are."

"Very."

Lewis didn't even have to ask. He could already tell. They sat in silence for a moment. Nina finally said, excitedly, "Gary's a great guy! We both love art. We both love nature, the outdoors, to travel.  He loves other cultures, and learning other things--like languages." Her face was beaming with pride. "Gary is trying to learn Portuguese and brush up on his Spanish. This year ,we are planning a trip to Portugal and Spain!"

Nina always did keep a nice home, and she decorated it with art that was acquired from different places. Where Lewis didn't have a sense of what looked good, she had a good sense of style. When they were both together, the talked of going to different places that they never traveled to--Africa, Asia, Australia--backpacking across Europe. They were big dreams.

Nina did not want Lewis to feel punished, but his agonizing expression of remorse would have been punishment enough. It already was for him, and it showed his sincerity.

"You know how I met Gary?"

Lewis shook his head. "A support group for divorced people! she admitted, gleefully, as if that was the most amazing thing to say.

Lewis looked embarrassed. Perhaps, he misunderstood her.  "What? For divorced people? You were never married before Gary, were you?"

Perhaps, there was something she wasn't telling him. Nina burst out laughing, seeming so carefree as she threw her head back and clapped her hands. Her laughter was beautifully contagious, and Lewis loved to hear it. "No, of course not!" she said. I have no secret past before I met you...or even now. It's just that a divorce support group was the closest support I could get. After all, there are no support groups for jilted brides and grooms!" She laughed even more.

They were talking so easily now, getting along so well. But why? It still seemed so surreal. Lewis laughed along with  her, as if this was just an encounter  to revisit the good, old times. When hearing of Gary, Lewis felt the pain of his loss, as well as some jealousy rise up. As if he had the right!  

He truly was an ***! He never deserved her!

Nina soon became serious, again. "So did you just come here to say you were sorry?" She was thinking he wanted something else from her, something else to say.

Lewis was once poised to take off in a real hurry. Now, he felt more at home. "Yeah...I came to say I was sorry to you...hoping to stop feeling sorry for myself... I guess. I'm wishing I could just turn back the clock. I swear I'd do it all again, differently."

"But the past cannot be change, and we both know it", Nina stated, resolutely.

He nodded in agreement. She didn't burst his bubble, for to think otherwise was a childish, fantasy.

"I don't know what else to say, Lewis". Nina's eyes reflected sorrow, not pity. "Life does really go on...if we let it. We have to let it, though." She now turned the conversation onto him. " So how about you? I hope you have some good news to tell me, something in your life."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I've had a few, short relationships", he admitted. Where there any displeasing looks on her face? Lewis didn't notice anything, now. "Not all that bad, I should say. But I just don't want to settle down until I finish my Masters in business. I'm nearly done."

"Good for you! That is great news!" Nina truly was glad for him, and it just showed him what a great woman she was. But then Lewis already knew this.

"Are you still teaching?" he asked, hoping she was, for she strove for the job, and loved it so much.

"Yes, I teach kindergarten, and Gary teaches science at Darland College."

"Well, what do you know? Both teachers. That sounds like a perfect match for you. And what about kids? None yet?"

"In time...sure. We just aren't ready right now."

She offered him more coffee, but Lewis declined. He was thinking he should go soon.  He said. "You know we used to talk about having a boy and a girl--and in that order, too!"

Nina rolled her eyes. "Yeah, boy oh boy. Like we had complete control over it".

They both laughed. It was fine to reminisce, and they did for a while, Lewis realizing that this would be the last time. He lived three hours away. And why should he come back? He did what he set out to do.

Nina would tell Gary about the visit after he came home from work. As husband and wife, there were not secrets between them. Nina was sure he would be surprised,f or his ex-wife never came to apologize for the pain she caused him.

"Gary's wife had an affair on him, and then left to marry that man", Nina revealed. "Thank God there were no children from that marriage."

"Wow, that is ******! Thank God I never did that to you!. I would have never cheated with another woman...or I might never have tried to face you. It would be easier to slink back into the ditch and stay there! This is hard enough as it is!"

"Maybe so, Lewis. Maybe so." Nina quickly added, "You aren't a bad man. I know this and I wholeheartedly mean this, so don't keep beating up on yourself. I've forgiven you for everything. I forgave you then, and I forgive you now. "

"Nina, that means everything to me!" He started to choke up, and more tears came.

Listen, Lewis. You need to forgive you, too."

He lowered his gaze, as Nina held his hand and gave it a squeeze. Never was Lewis so contrite before. Like many men, he never was overly emotional, and so this different side of him was a refreshing experience.

"Yeah,  it's time to move on", he stated, using a napkin as a tissue.

"Yes, it is. And I loved what you did. It was helpful for us both. It's the closure we need."

"Yep", he said, wiping away more tears.

"You are a guy with guts, Lewis. you do have courage, and more integrity than you think, and I hope you see it."

Nina offered him more coffee, and he accepted. Why couldn't they chat a little while longer? It was no harm, and it made the visit even more meaningful. Sitting and shooting the breeze more was not a bad thing.

The kitchen still held the fragrant smell of cinnamon, as they polished off more rolls and spoke more of good times.

I’ve discovered my strange passion for whack a mole
And mind you, I’m the mole
Whacked away
To the point that I’m buried deep deep under
And the saddest part is?
I’m also the one doing the whacking

P-Postponing all those things until another time
R-Rostering them for attention down the track
O-Offering all sorts of excuses stalls one's climb
C-Constantly one defers the mounting job stack
R-Repeatedly ignoring their pealing bell chimes
A-Acting upon them requires an assertive knack
S-Still one avers in responding to their rhymes
T-Taking not a step forward nor any back
I-Initiative and get in and do it isn't one's paradigm
N-Never does one heed their ever tolling clacks
A-Always sitting in an idle non moving show time
T-The day shall arrive with a great waking whack
I-Into motion one shall soon be called to climb
O-On one's toes the chores are waiting in the rack
N-No more disregarding the many sounding chimes

And now...

I have come to realize how truly strong a person you are. Stronger than anyone I have ever met. To keep a secret like that, and never tell without crumbling.

And now...

I have come to realize what a selfish, self-centered ***** I really am to be so caught up in my own dumb mind with my own worthless problems that are NOTHING compared to what you withheld. I won't dwell too long on what an awful unsupportive friend and person I have been because that would once again be drawing attention back to me the selfish way I have been doing, but I feel like I have to say it at least once: I am so. so. incredibly. sorry. I never noticed or asked how you were or saw that something was wrong. I'm so so sorry I wallowed in that pathetic self-pity for so long just over my stupid issues that are so miniscule compared to yours, I basically want to whack myself in the head with my guitar I'm so ****** at myself. I am SO SORRY I wasn't there and I'm SO SO SO SORRY I surrounded you with my own dumb unnecessary negativity when you had enough of your own. I'm so sorry. I cried for nearly an hour last night out of anger with myself for not being a good friend and out of sorrow for your troubles and the pain you must be going through. You can almost always tell when I am upset somehow but that is like your odd supernatural inexplicable talent and I don’t have it. I wish I did, but I can tell when someone likes another person somehow almost always accurately but what use is that? I’m just so sorry from the bottom of my heart and I promise that beginning NOW and today I swear I am going to be here for you. I am so sorry for not being there. Okay, I’m going to stop going on about it now.
And now…
I can see everything I didn’t pick up on when I needed to so clearly.
And now…
I just want you to be okay. I JUST want you not to be in pain. I don’t know how to fix you but I’ll do anything I can to try.
And now…
I want you to know how brave you are, to go at it alone.
And now…
I want you to know, two years ago, we agreed “No Secrets”. Well, since then we have kept multiple secrets from one another. All of us. Since then that agreement has become less and less realistic. There will always be secrets and that is just a part of life.  I understand why you didn’t tell me sooner and I just want you to know that I am always prepared to drop literally everything of mine, physical, mental, and emotional to listen to you and care more about your problems than mine because yours are always and have always been far greater than any of my pitiful woes. I will always understand why you keep things from me, but when you choose to share it, in your own time, then I will always be there to listen and understand.
And now…*
I will never abandon you in this.


-Love Ember

I woke up to the sound of a train and it was raining. I might be dreaming.
My mom has always loved
the sound of a train and here I am in someone else’s bed thinking
about how much I love the taste of blood and the smell of sweat.
My plant has a pulse but my eyes might
be playing tricks on me, I have a way of forgetting to separate my dreams
from reality. Sometimes
I share too much of myself with people too soon. I told
him that my grandma had green eyes
and that’s where I got mine and that I’ve got nightmares that test
my patience night after night
with grotesque new realities on display before my eyes
and that my nails are stained from pomegranate and that
I got straight As and I told him to bite me because
I like it
but I shouldn’t have said it all so soon.
When I’m hurtling home in my metal death trap
powered by explosions I take pictures of the sky to show myself that
I’m alive and beauty is only here now and a deer
could leap or someone could swerve and ****
me or the airbag could rip off my jaw and I’ll
spend my life bearing my ******* way that I didn’t intend. I’m the writer
with no jaw that everyone reads out of pity and to get a glance
in the windows of a ******’s life.
When I wake up my jaw is still there
but I’ve been clenching it again.
No adderall, no *******, no caffeine, just the pressure
I put on myself and the weight of life knotting up the muscles in my back
until my ribs start to tighten and constrict my breathing so I pull at the ribbons
laced up and down my sternum
but it is too late and the bone corset pulls me in,
pulling pulling pulling until
my organs burst out of my skin.
He tells me,
“You’re hard to read, you know.” I giggle
but I find it tough to explain the rich cascade of emotions that are tied
to the lunar tides and make me crave coffee at midnight in terms
that don’t make me sound completely crazy.
Well, tonight I am eating dinner and attempting to read while the television
babbles at me from another room
about something I don’t need to hear but I hear
a cracking sound and my teeth are sharp and jagged and crumbling
as I run my tongue across them. I wake up sweating.
When it was sunny I bought socks from the little girl section and I drenched myself in perfume. Later on we were drinking chai tea
and getting *****, so I **** on your fingers
while you choke me and in the morning you make pancakes
and I eat it
but I’m afraid of the flour and the substance because it rises up
under my skin and collects in unwanted pools on my body.
I shouldn’t have drank any beer but
I had three
and I spilled my secrets the second I felt the warmth of trust.
God ******* ****.
I drive in silence.
The poster’s eyes have been following me
all night and I don’t know if it is a matter of perspective
or some delusion convincing me that I’m not alone
word vomiting on notebooks and textbooks and gushing
piles of words onto my comforter. I pictured
growing a human being inside of me and my heart
started trying to run from my chest
I scared myself into an anxiety attack
picturing years flashing before me. Before I told him
that I’m not like most girls
he kissed my forearms
and then he kissed my neck. Maybe I’m crazy for believing in astrology but
last night I was hearing your moans
as roars like the lion you are purring, nuzzling me
until you fell asleep and I remembered
being five and wishing I was Belle, marrying the beast. I don’t know.
I don’t know if I’m crazy.
I kept losing my earring in your bed like I secretly wanted to leave something more tangible than my scent or stray blonde hairs for
you to find and remember me by. I think you like me too much and I’m
afraid of what you’ll find when you get in my mind and see the battlefield
that rages inside of a pretty head.
I used to see the world with the eyes of a child but today I feel like I’m senile and looking at the world from the future and dissecting the past
because I lost track of time again and no one knew where I was for seven hours. I might have been wandering but I think I was asking
a fruit fly for directions when she flew into my pupil and laid eggs on my optic nerve causing the light to fraction
and my thoughts to be projected onto the wall ahead.
People passing by could see it all streaming out of me,
every emotion, every desire, every fear and every image,
even the smoking **** on the cement
from when he left got stuck on my screen
and the dream I had the night before
about a man with gigantic hands
and a woman shielded her eyes
as I thought about the way you use your tongue on me. When I finally
stumbled home the projection had stopped
but the maggots had started and I stared at the mirror
and branded myself with the word ugly.
The pill is folded in the dollar and I whack it with a lighter,
the white shards scatter out and I lay the bill flat and crush crush crush
until the powder is free of chunks. One two three
making ten perfect lines, five on each side and my nostrils are on fire.
I **** smoke from a pipe and get so high that my entire face feels like melting
off and I’m so determined to sleep that I can’t
and I anticipate
gritty dreams but I never drift off.
Three glasses of white wine later I drive to his house and I can hear the train hitting the breaks while we throw empty beer bottles at the moving cars
from the roof of a crooked house. And then, the willow tree
draped over the train tracks
grabs the wind with her branches and she summons
sheets of rain that come blasting down.
I’m afraid of heights and I’m not sure why but I think falling
from the apple tree at age thirteen was the first time I realized that
bones break and they never heal the same way and my hands are shaking but

I stay on the wet roof with you and I let myself melt into this
momentary reality.