Widgets and gadgets
gizmos and apps.
Whatever happened
to cause the collapse
of my simple world?
What happened to the
simple pleasures?
The joy of simply living;
the joy of simply loving?
All consigned to the limbo
of a thousand electronic
gizmos.

I used to love a lass.
I gave her all I had
in time and space
and multiple delights.
But it is not enough
to satisfy her nights.
Without apps
she snaps.
That *****
needs her gizmo.
Without widgets
she fidgets.
She must have
her gadgets.

I’d like to bury hatchets
in her gadgets.

To lessen liabilities,
to lower costs and
make the world more,
more productive; exacting...

To make everything easier,
a life more fulfilling...
...more predictable, perhaps,
more equal than now.

To eliminate sadness,
anger, depression, anxiety.
To work less at everything,
they will do it all for me.

The planet will be saved by the extirpation of human activity...

...for who needs humans to trade stock?
...who needs humans to make widgets?
...who needs humans to clean things?

Who needs humans at all?

As fridge-rator to beer in the head between the ears adorned with flashy widgets with which to trap the hoes he hopes that he can pull into his poles. His gravity whips wide so hands find and feel up erthing that gots the tail, he wants to rail so hands out he walks and tilts to one side and back holding his glass. ******* limp around the rim, dipping his fingertips into the juice like he wants to dip into you, pinkies as he holds your head forcing you to **** like you want his come as much as he wants to come. Then when done zips up, runs out, "***** sayonara", switch rerun mode without emotion. He floatin. He floatin. He gloatin.

Head on the couch back making tired, one eye open scoping everyone's glow as they move, when up he comes sittin in my face, spittin what he thinks I want him to say, I'm like, "****, guy control that tongue, you spray like that always I'm afraid I won't take that wild ****, as tool is to you as to yo *****." Right ******* ****** spittin harder in the lean up perhaps the lead up to fist flung to react. "Man you too loose, I gotta tell you, I've got just what you do." "Your uh ******?" Man watch ya flavor of language, I got just enough ****** left to get hard and stomp you, heel first in boots bought to stomp, pre-emptive to deal with the bullwhip effect where first you droolin to **** me, then retract like a bowstring because my ***** resembles a ****. "What you want, *****? You wan **** this **** for real?" (For real?) He floatin. He floatin. He floatin the room, he ghosting.

Lick my lips, cept it's not a tongue. For this purpose it's strobe lights, in light show, and like snow, black and white between sheets of plastic TV screen on get settled into my flow, rip back and forth like prongs on a fork on your ******* blindfolded and scolded right angle, bent like an L-shape repenting for **** by taking the ******, flash cards, held up on headboards, trying to teach you metrics and standards lacking in you to tune you into the lifestream, no empathy and no tact to show, remember this hell well while you sail through life preying, I'm praying and making marks in meat coats. But he floatin. He floatin. He gloatin.

For ****'s sake.

How did we end up here again?

The soothing, annoying word flickers on my blue-back lit screen and I am ****** back to the tumultuous moment when once upon a time it yelled bipolar.

And here we go again.

My thoughts flick, flit, floss between teeth made for biting and real meat. They need plaque, collection, to grow and accumulate mass to progress. But there my flicking thoughts go, flossing.

I've always struggled focusing, but I just got excitable, got manic, and it would solve everything. Mania was my monster, my red bull, and now that its sated and off to Wonderland...

I'm left here, face to face, with a twitchy white rabbit wondering why I would ever think to use my pretty little head when its such a good projectile into the sky.

I had always wondered, in those whispering nights, when my hands couldn't stop moving and my head wouldn't shut up, if something was wrong. But it was silly, I had two already, full of worry then full of poles. Couldn't be another, could it?

Of course, a Grace of Wonderland always knows best, and here we are. Another bottle to drink to keep me sane.

I wonder if my fingers will thank the capsules when I might stop biting them? Or my toes? Is this why my toes always twitch and dance, why they stand center-stage in so many of my mild fantasies? After all these years, the divas that my lower digits have become may not appreciate losing their star titles.

I just want to be fine. I want to figure out how to move beyond all the strange misfires in my head. How did I survive so long without a notice? Inflates my ego to know I should have been caught by now.

Guess just like the White Rabbit, despite my widgets and worries, no one can stop me from running when I'm madly, absolutely, refusing to be late.

Graces only knows to fight with fire and fists. Tis the state of my Wonderland, and perhaps now things will only get better.

When He came home from work that day
He said “Enough’s enough”.
“Let others built the widgets,
I have done that long enough.”
I’ll live a life of leisure,
crafting poetry and song.
Perhaps I’ll write short stories
or play my guitar all night long.”
Such boundless optimism
didn’t take Fate into account.
Fate, the foe of youth and love,
was lurking there about.
That man thought that He had years of time
to write and think and putter.
Yet Fate was of another mind,
and a malediction muttered.
A tightness in the chest He felt.
A soreness in one arm.
He was sure that it was nothing.
Soon thereafter, He was gone

To bleed the binary
And speak fluent touch and
jaguar yawn
Is that asking for too much?

Think on it, friend

But there is no time to think
The hands circling
Always circling
Losing their clutch

Sloth
Downed from
The canopy

Little small
Specks of ****
Will be the end of him

All that is accomplished in cubes
-time well spent-
Mustn't ever reach
A white-eared Sibia
Alighting a Sakura tree flush in pink
Drenched
in the cool warm glow
Of a winter star that now must go

Swift quarter-inch turns of the head
Lazily nimble
In its slim space
-it could even fly away if it so wishes-

While he
files away widgets

His time is near
He feels it
thread stripped
From the twist the twist

I was thinking about things… feeling afraid to be honest

I didn’t know where I belonged anymore…
I didn’t fit into the wedges of their pie...too big, each time
And I don’t want to be alone.. Wheres my Comrades??

So I wrapped My Head around Your Arms,
and let myself be Held By Your Breath blowing through my Heart..

and suddenly it occurred to me
why I’m the Breeze that Blows between all things.. I AM
and then I realized… who can be free carving up the real-estate of the Universe!
I can’t do that!!! Thats not a Job for me.!!
I could feel that Leaping Joy Again! I must Be FREEDOM…
I’m the Aura !!
the one who creates the Filters to move between!!
I’m the Game Designer!! cause thats what this is..
a Game.. and we’re the  pac man widgets running the course

So I sent that genius-in-a-bottle-talent-scout-Company a suggestion or two..
Just this evening in fact.. they weren’t hard to find..
It was like sitting on the porch Listening to Granny from the Clampets…
dolling out the  fundamentals.. Wisdom..
What WE used to call Common Sense..

TEXAS TEA  for Goodness sake….
Already Bubbling UP! UP! UP!       JOY!!           Pure Joy Again..
You Cant Control ME!! thats why Your Afraid!!!! I’M FREEEEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!

Laughter is whats going to heal this Planet
It was the Wisdom that told me that..
Makes sense.. Pulls the toxins out of the Planet and all the people too
Thats whats holding in the Heat,
not air-conditioning Vapors from a parts store
Poisons of the Heart..Dyingness..  
Lifted UP on the Bubbles of Laughter..
The entire Planet all at Once!! A festival of JOY!!!!!
YES!!!   That could actually Work!! JOY FEST 3.0   
 (3.0…you know, not 1,or 2,  3.0…like we’ve been here a while..
as if we were actually the first Pick,
and not the last..   Wait, I was the first pick..
???????????????????????
ALL the time, God is Free,
God is Free, All the Time

Procrastination is the fundamental definition of what it means to be human.

Reality isn't patterns of phenomena perceived as such in accurate fashion; it's a collection of loosely coupled mind hacks that cut corners around certain blargh redundancies that need not apply. why? in order to create create create.

This is true fitness, in evolutionary terms:

to out-lazy Neanderthal, and in doing so grow an imagination which could then - by simply lying down in the grass and gazing up at that lingering monochrome blue sky, with cicadas thrumming, smells of summer bursting saccharine - engage the senses at a glance; and without even knowing it, effortlessly bring about the very notion of the wheel, or fire or propulsion systems of rocketry that will bring us home, from scar to star again.

Luxuriating in the elimination of the quotidian reasserts the ability to imagine something other, something stranger, something so utterly complex that it squares itself and leaps exponentially forward like weird origami in pirouetted flux.. You know that feeling when you surprise yourself and do something epic? That. This is novelty at its finest. This is not just another life living. This is worth rolling out of bed for. That is worth the thousands small paper cuts wielded by -their- ordinary.

.. Of course, this hypothesis is completely bias, because I am almost pathologically procrastinatory. I'd rather write or space out or listen to a YouTube lecture on tree consciousness or supersymmetry or whatever..

The usual day without hiccup bores me to death; no, it scares me to the point of whispering death wishes out into the ether. I fear it like nothing else. Tasks? No. Obligations? Noooope. Running errands? How about I melodramatically run this sword through me first? I'm exaggerating of course, but kinda not really that much.

I'm horribly afraid of being known through and through, made simple, like an amoeba microscoped or a god put in a book. I'd rather not be reduced to maintaining widgets for the financial suits who rock cuff links which eclipse the GDP of Somalia, thanks.

I feel like bliss -is- somewhere out there in the void, like a blank white page with a blinking indigo cursor, full of potential, just waiting to be written on; rather than some subject of some religion or some subject of some state, waiting to be written down.

I feel like there's so much work to be undone, and so little infinity.

everyone lives ordinary lives
a list of similarities
found typical among us
would be very long, indeed
the fourth line proves the first
the very small widgets of ourselves
that are truly unique
become magnified to a large degree
when exposed to the theatre of this world
and has set about an order to permit ceaseless
displacement of the memory of past mistakes

it is always a war against something
and even an imaginary peace
cannot be created

My wife said ‘I’d like a new kitchen’
And I had a Saturday free
With ambition designs for the project
We both had a wild spending spree

We picked up a range made of flat pack
And then went to the café to eat
The choice of hot food was extensive
And we both had a Swedish meat treat

My mancave was short of some gadgets
So, I thought I would pick up a few
You know, gizmos I’d need for the project
You can find in a big B & Q

Like chrome plated long nose snipe pliers
With a bright coloured high friction grip
A high-powered well-balanced hand drill
With a full set of carbonised bits

To help with the cutting and drilling
I bought me a fancy work bench
I got several adjustable spanners
And an American style monkey-wrench

With devices galore in my kitchen
A heart full of hope and a song
The flat pack was open and waiting
And a belief that nowt can go wrong

The kitchen was stripped of its cupboards
(Destruction sound so much like me)
The skip filled with trash and detritus
The air filled with cursed deities

The cupboards assembled, but wobbled
With left over dowels and screws
They collapsed right back into flat pack
And the air turns a little more blue

It can’t have been too many gadgets
So clearly, I needed some more
And after a hot steamy cuppa
I bought most of the rest of the store

I picked up a taper pin punch set
The label said “high tension steel”
I don’t know if that makes a difference
I just thought that it had a nice feel

Who needs a wall grooving chisel?
I don’t know but had one to hand
A magnesium carbon disc grinder
In case I was tempted to sand

I tried ultra-thin premium somethings
A large milling thingamajig
A jig made for holding a widget
And widgets from small up to big

By midnight the flatpack was kindling
There was no Sunday roast the next day
There were no scrambled eggs Monday breakfast
For a week we just ate takeaways

Come Friday raw bacon and sausage
Were beginning to look appetising
The wife gave me fairly blunt warnings
That showed her blood pressure was rising

It was time for a nail gun and ladder
And extension bars for my all sockets
It was taking so long I bought knee pads
And a tool belt with 15 large pockets

The riveting gun seemed quite boring
But I just loved the boring device
I had not a clue how to use them
But simply to own them was nice

Counter sinks for sinking the counter
A compressor for compressing some air
I also bought 3 different augers.  No reason
But because they were there

With the credit card pushed to its limits
And a month filled with heartache and trouble
I was craving hot food or a cuppa
From a kitchen all gadgets and rubble

But every contraption just vexed me
I was starving and then lost my cool
I condemned all of the useless devices
My wife just blamed one useless tool

We had not had a hot meal in ages
Since the meatballs we bought at IKEA
I guess gadgets are pretty much useless
If the one using them has got no idea

finally I awoke  before the sun
one tenth alive
no coffee
donuts just glare
from the window above the sink
facing east
now that I opened
one eye
peeped out from beneath
the cover
discovered  that
life has continued
without me
urges and craziness insane
people who chase shadows of success
lunge fight obsess
over tidbits of
popular gadgets
widgets and fair maidens
in this nowadays
fermenting slow to be done
nicotine fit
searching the ashtray
the floor
under the couches
an analogy
for hope when hope
has long gone  the way of
community spirit
so
I turned over
and went back to sleep

didnt care
really I didn't
anymore

Clanking his tired copper bowl
absurdly on the dry pine
a frosty reminder that hidden in the
dark dank garret of my abode

where the yawning, sloped
ceiling met the filthy crooked floorboards,
he occupied a sliver of cramped space,
amongst the boxes of forgotten Kodak's,
a hollow where the truth was
free to sit and rest a while

Fragments of blinding bone white
and Tuscany yellow sought refuge
for half days, illuminating dusty
trunks filled with the
keepsakes of my juvenescence

Intimate company, nothing more
than transient guests, were
distracted by my warm and
inviting home, oblivious
to the sequestered occupant
in the above

Skylights softly guiding the
tangerine glow into
the wool fabric of the
boorish night  

The facade was festooned with
baby’s breath and lavender that
dangled from freshly painted arches
cloaking the rot beneath

Rusted, wind chimes played
off key sonnets for the lesser rabble,
who danced where the
woodland greeted the blue

Inside, heavy fall linens were
folded square, the perfume of
yesterday’s respite lingering,
a strident reminder that, all things,
even love, ceases to exist after
perpetual misuse and
changing seasons

Ninety-degree angles issued a decree,
demanding a strict alignment of all the
handsome trinkets, widgets, and gizmos
that defined me, placated me,
if only for a breath, filling the space
between empty brass picture frames
on the dust free mantle

Mutual secrets were held captive
behind pursed lips
Fearful of callous abandonment,
I predict his return from the
vile, decrepit part of my home,
where he sleeps

When the jubilant laughter of
my guests would break the
lonely apprehensive silence,
his boisterous uneven footsteps
would protest his confinement
and send them away  

I am left alone with bottled potions,
worn out diamonds and
stationery inked with
words of dissolution

Once again, he reminds me that,

I am home, an abandoned widower,
comfortable in my attic of pine

The
machine,
billions of
years in the
making.
Our very
being
to the
molecular level
fabricated,
wired,
controlled.
Controlled by
the machine,
the system.
Fabricated,
simply
fabrications
are we
by the
system.
Like machines
mired
by the
hardware
influenced
by the
software.
Products
of the
environment.
All we know
programmed.
How we’re wired
predetermined.
Everything
scripted by
the system.
The machine’s
system.
Freedom
an illusion.
All just
components.
Widgets within,
simply
functioning
as designed.

While out Christmas shopping at Mall Of America with Our Spanky Gang of Little Rascals, who should we bump into but, Scrooge, Fezziwig, Fred, Bob Cratchit, Mrs. Cratchit,Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley main fictitious characters drawn upon under belly, of real life mid eighteen hundreds lowliest British (thermal unit) poverty stricken caste. Das scribe sketched out their soul full collective misfortune, without virtue, but plenti via a vice, which storied lives depicted (i.e. being penniless, dime a dozen, a day late, and dollar short penury) courtesy, sans prolific imagination of Charles Dickens “ Christmas Story”. They unexpectedly, uninhibitedly and unwittingly broke the binding loose after being bound within whirled wide web of make believe close to two hundred years. Freed from the paginated constraints (analogous to a prisoner, who broke free after long confinement to solitary confinement, when initially handed down life sentence for terroristic sabotage resulting in deaths per scores of innocent people), an utter lack of social graces immediately, plainly, and shockingly exhibited by various aggressive behavior. Crowd (then ground) control to Major Tom couched via heavy duty security details appeared helpless. The muddling, middling, maddening motley crue swarmed, rampaged, and quashed an attempt by the Police (who crafted a spurious Sting operation predicated on the baddest Beastie Boys Culture Club, who excelled at being Foo Fighters), which immediately appeared ineffective against a handful of raggedy, pesky, and nasty Marxist/Leninist lumpenproletariats. Helter skelter, mayhem and bedlam found these hoodlums, hooligans, hooting imps a indistinct English dialect. Even Tiny Tim showed braggadocio defying his lame physical state. Scrooge attested to be in seventh heaven, or the closest he would get. Despite total ignorance apportioned these anachronistic figments gross, heedless, insubordinate jubilant kooky lust (made manifest marrying narcissism ogling pricey quirky random  tchotchkes. Any civility escaped filthy hands hoisting incredibly jealous mannikins. Sir real quite peculiar phenomena overtook natural mundane lives. The growing horde of astonished onlookers (under a sheltering sky) made haste unsure if the ghost of Marley will scare away oblivious buyers (eyeing various and sundry widgets, trinkets, thingamabobs, knickknacks gimcracks, gewgaws, fribbery, bibelots baubles) where (timid) Tiny Tim (who tip toed thru the Tulips) frightened aggressive, purveyors of said merchandise. Insult against ideology, modernity, reality took a giant leap, who of all people, but The Merchant of Venice made a cameo appearance issuing forth asper a tempest in a teapot, a dome mass scandal, and danced the night away with the Ghost of Christmas Past, where the hallowed purposelessness purchasing presents per perps, squirts, twerps, et cetera essentially the intended  thread to weave warped  wonderment of mine, but (dippity and Scoobie) doo to a very bad hair day, my ability to communicate in a clear concise manner compromised sprung extremely flat limp follicles that usually puff up on the head (as big as a Soundcloud) of this GoDaddy, who will help fend off feisty Goo Goo Dolls.

1) i make lists in my notes app

staring at the page – struggling
something here feels wrong
pronoun use too direct? as though attacking –
perhaps a different one would work better

2) they spiral out of my (still wrong) thoughts, pale white bone on dark dark dark

3) you think (yes, that’s the one) surely it cannot be that much

4) i (no. go back) make lists for:

5) ways [ ] have hurt [   ] friends ; work in progress

6) what [ ] want to do when [ ] get older; if i get older

7) friends birthdays ; and

8) ways to annoy [   ] mother -

9) ways to make [   ]  father like [   ] again ; and

10) times [ ] have recognised that [ ] am poorer than most ; the first entry dated for the day i turned twelve

11) topics that cannot be mentioned at all ; ones that evoke ridicule / shame / regret or ones from aborted attempts at conversation

12) bets ; this note i label as the crux of this problem – it is cowardice in every form / a way of communication without vulnerability / only one bet has been made / this note has served its purpose

13) plans for days [ ] am left alone ; neatly segmented into one hour blocks / five minutes allotted between each

14) train routes and bus times and math ; thirty minutes early is better than on time / a statement that i am willing to die to prove

15) and you see the problem now, don’t you?

16) these lists are created as a means to an end

17) desperate attempts to keep this whirling mind attached to its base

18) because communication in a void is better

19) than no communication at all

20) here is a list of things that nobody else knows: i am slightly gap-toothed / when i smile it feels like stretching a cloth or mask or cover or slip or hood over my face. like a suffocation / i cannot imagine a future without you in it / this scares me

21) and you see the problem now

22) don’t you?

23) i have turned this poem into a list / i will turn you into a list / my acts of devotion are harmless words dotted in the corners of journals, sticky notes, widgets on my phone / they spiral endlessly from me / a besieged writer chased by their words

24) and i still haven’t figured out who to pin the blame on