O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
The coming of their secret foe, and ’scaped,
Haply so ’scaped his mortal snare:  For now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,
To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell:
Yet, not rejoicing in his speed, though bold
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt; which nigh the birth
Now rolling boils in his tumultuous breast,
And like a devilish engine back recoils
Upon himself; horrour and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place:  Now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
Of Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King:
Ah, wherefore! he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I sdeined subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome still paying, still to owe,
Forgetful what from him I still received,
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then
O, had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferiour Angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition!  Yet why not some other Power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heaven’s free love dealt equally to all?
Be then his love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
O, then, at last relent:  Is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent.  Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.
With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery:  Such joy ambition finds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state; how soon
Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore?  Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow,
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall:  so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging, peace;
All hope excluded thus, behold, in stead
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell, hope; and with hope farewell, fear;
Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new world, shall know.
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld.
For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear.  Whereof he soon aware,
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge:
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel once warned; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort; his gestures fierce
He marked and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
Access denied; and overhead upgrew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend,
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung;                        

Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed:
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landskip:  And of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair:  Now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.  As when to them who fail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambick, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend,
Who came their bane; though with them better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none, so thick entwined,
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that passed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet.  As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold:
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles:
So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality.  So little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him with new wonder now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room, Nature’s whole wealth, yea more,
A Heaven on Earth:  For blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,
Of where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar:  In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained;
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden-mould high raised
Upon the rapid current, which, through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy errour under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers:  Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall
Down the ***** hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirrour holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.  Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise under the Ethiop line
By Nilus’ head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day’s journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw, undelighted, all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight, and strange
Two of far nobler shape, ***** and tall,
Godlike *****, with native honour clad
In naked majesty seemed lords of all:
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their *** not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame
Of nature’s works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man’s life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence!
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight
Of God or Angel; for they thought no ill:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair,
That ever since in love’s embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and, after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers:
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind,
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream;
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they.  About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His?kithetmroboscis; close the serpent sly,
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the ocean isles, and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad.
O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold!
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,
Not Spirits, yet to heavenly Spirits bright
Little inferiour; whom my thoughts pursue

I do not want to play in your garden of Eden
Pluck the sweet cherry apple from your tree,
Full it with the white christ evil that fills our core.

I do not want to play in your garden
But to walk naked with his creatures of all colours, sizes, identities and terms
And marvel at our beauty.

Princess,
With your pink hair and overgrown beard,
You are Eden’s finest.
Who are they to say what is beautiful?

We are slaves in our garden of Eden,
Swimming in her curves.
We are not to touch her
Though we are evil creatures of moral standards and consciousness.

Ebony came and stole with it our ability of doing things without reward.
Firmly grasped by whats right and wrong yet still,
We want to destroy her gaze with our rotting fruit.

There was ****** in the Garden of Eden,
Slaughtered puppets who steal the night with misheard approval and labels.
Child, you are not a bad person for wanting something that they did not.

The lion is not the devil for killing the deer.
He is not filled with vile for kissing the creature with death.
Though we will say it was evil as we pluck the fur from his mane
and wear it around our shoulders

We are the makers of The Garden of Eden and its slavery.
We full its nucleus with verdict and creed.
Enslaved men with torn backs and sable,
now cover their backs in suits and ties,
Still whipped.

Hang our bones in a science room
and teach the children where it hurts
Do you think greatness dies young
because the earth got jealous of its beauty?

How is it we spend our lives miserable and thoughtful
when the others spend their days chasing bees and lapping up rivers?
How is it we know so much about wrongdoing and yet the doing we do is so wrong?

I have played in your garden of Eden,
And I have let the labels loiter my mind with judgement.
I have felt ashamed of my Fathers illness for that would make him weak
And felt disabled as a woman for no want of children and marriage.

Yes God, I have faced your garden, tasted the sweet nectar from your tree and sinned in the eyes of Eden.

These are poems about Adam and Eve, Lucifer aka Satan aka Mephistopheles, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the forbidden fruit, "original sin," the Fall and its bitter aftermath...



Eden
by Michael R. Burch

Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden.
Apples burgeoned and shone—unplucked on sagging boughs.
What, then, would the children eat? 
Fruit indecently sweet, 
redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma...

Why did the biblical god want to keep Adam and Eve in an animal state, not knowing good from evil and running around naked like animals? Good parents want their children to seek knowledge, so why did Yahweh ****** Adam and Eve for seeking knowledge? And why did Yahweh tell them it was evil to eat the forbidden fruit when he had denied them the ability to know good from evil? It was like putting poisoned milk before two cats and saying, "It's evil to drink the milk!" Of course cats have no concept of "evil" and just do what comes naturally. So, too, with Adam and Eve. If there was a fall, they were obviously set up to fall, by a terrible father.



Outcasts of Eden
by Michael R. Burch

There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson, 
the very color of blood, 
that bloomed in that garden.

The most dazzling of all the Earth's flowers, 
men have forgotten it now, 
with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents.

Beasts with lips called the goreflower "Love."

The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there, 
four horrid dark creatures—chattering, bickering.

Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve's matted hair; 

he was lost in her arms
till dawn sullen and golden
imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air.

Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open.

Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled
in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me
in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh.

"We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us."
As though his anguish conceived in insight's first blush
might not pale next to mine in Sheol's gray realm.

"Shining Creature!" he named me and called me divine
as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales.
"Help me find me one rare gift to put Love's gift to shame."

"There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance
as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name.
Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches..."

"But red is Ehve's preference; while Envy is green."
He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment...
"Ah, but red is the color of blood!"

Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



Temptation
by Michael R. Burch

Jesus was always misunderstood...
we have that, at least, in common.

And it's true that I found him, 
shriveled with hunger, 
shivering in the desert, 
skeletal, emaciate, 
not an ounce of fat
to warm his bones
once the bright sun set.

And it's true, I believe, 
that I offered him something to eat—
a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach.

Hardly the great "temptation"
of which I'm accused.

He was a likeable chap, really, 
and we spent a pleasant hour
discussing God—
how hard He is to know, 
and impossible to please.

I left him there, the pale supplicant, 
all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave, 
imploring his "Master" on callused knees.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



lust!
by michael r. burch

i was only a child
in a world dark and wild
seeking affection
in eyes mild

and in all my bright dreams
sweet love shimmered, beguiled ...

but the black-robed Priest
who called me the least
of all god’s creation
then spoke for the Beast:

He called my great passion a thing base, defiled!

He condemned me to hell,
the foul Ne’er-Do-Well,
for the sake of the copper
His Pig-Snout could smell
in the purse of my mother,
“the ***** jezebel.”

my sweet passions condemned
by degenerate men?
and she so devout
she exclaimed, “yay, aye-men!” ...

together we learned why Religion is hell.



You! 
by Michael R. Burch

For forty years You have not spoken to me; 
I heard the dull hollow echo of silence
as though strange communion between us.

For forty years You would not open to me; 
You remained closed, hard and tense, 
like a clenched fist.

For forty years You have not broken me
with Your alien ways, 
prevarications and distance.

Like a child dismissed, 
I have watched You prey upon the hope in me, 
knowing "mercy" is chance

and "heaven"—a list.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 

I call mercy "chance" and heaven a "list" because the bible says its "god" predestines some people to be "vessels of mercy" and others to be "vessels of destruction." Thus mercy is reduced to the chance of birth and heaven is a precompiled list of the lucky chosen few. Of course there is no reason to believe in such a diabolical "god" or such an unjust "heaven"... but billions have, and do.



Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity
by Michael R. Burch

“We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)

We had a common sky
before the Christians came.

We thought there might be gods
but did not know their names.

The common stars above us?
They winked, and would not tell.

Yet now our fellow mortals claim
our questions merit hell!

The cause of our damnation?
They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ...

but still the stars wink down at us,
as wiser beings might.



One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch

Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .

I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .

But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,

thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .

How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and ******.



what the “Chosen Few” really pray for
by Michael R. Burch

We are ready to be robed in light,
angel-bright

despite
Our intolerance;

ready to enter Heaven and never return
(dark, this sojourn);

ready to worse-ship any gaud
able to deliver Us from this flawed

existence;
We pray with the persistence

of actual saints
to be delivered from all earthly constraints:

just kiss each uplifted Face
with lips of gentlest grace,

cooing the sweetest harmonies
while brutally crushing Our enemies!

ah-Men!



***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
You made the stallion, 
you made the filly, 
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped?
life's a pickle, dilly.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 

Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 
They say I should worship you! 
Oh, really! 
They say I should pray
so you'll not act illy.
Isn't it silly, ***** Nilly? 



Adam Lay Ybounden
(anonymous Medieval English Lyric, circa early 15th century AD) 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Adam lay bound, bound in a bond; 
Four thousand winters, he thought, were not too long.
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, 
As clerics now find written in their book.
But had the apple not been taken, or had it never been, 
We'd never have had our Lady, heaven's queen.
So blesséd be the time the apple was taken thus; 
Therefore we sing, "God is gracious!"



No One
by Michael R. Burch

No One hears the bells tonight; 
they tell him something isn't right.
But No One is not one to rush; 
he lies in grasses greenly lush
as far away a startled thrush
flees from horned owls in sinking flight.

No One hears the cannon's roar
and muses that its voice means war
comes knocking on men's doors tonight.
He sleeps outside in awed delight
beneath the enigmatic stars
and shivers in their cooling light.

No One knows the world will end, 
that he'll be lonely, without friend
or foe to conquer. All will be
once more, celestial harmony.
He'll miss men's voices, now and then, 
but worlds can be remade again.



Bikini
by Michael R. Burch

Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming, 
by the shell's pale rose and the pearl's white eye, 
through the sea's green bed of lank seaweed worming
like tangled hair where cold currents rise...
something lurks where the riptides sigh, 
something old and pale and wise.

Something old when the world was forming
now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye, 
and with tentacles about it squirming, 
it feels the cloud above it rise
and shudders, settles with a sigh, 
knowing man's demise draws nigh.



Ceremony
by Michael R. Burch

Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring, 
heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see
the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling
their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me.

Shimmering hordes of blue-green bottleflies sing
their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near
with the strange droning hum of their murmurous wings.
Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here
and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair, 
whispering, "I do!"... as the gaunt vultures stare.



Exile
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We have often heard of Adam's banishment from Eden, 
but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden.



Where We Dwell
by Michael R. Burch

Night within me.
Never morning.
Stars uncounted.
Shadows forming.
Wind arising
where we dwell
reaches Heaven, 
reeks of Hell.

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



What Immense Silence
by Michael R. Burch

What immense silence
comforts those who kneel here
beneath these vaulted ceilings
cavernous and vast? 

What luminescence stained
by patchwork panels of bright glass
illuminates drained faces
as the crouching gargoyles leer? 

What brings them here?
pale, tearful congregations, 
knowing all Hope is past, 
faithfully, year upon year? 

Or could they be right? Perhaps
Love is, implausibly, near
and I alone have not seen It...
But, if so, still, I must ask: 

why is it God that they fear? 

Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) 



Double Cross
by Michael R. Burch

Come to the cross;
contemplate all loss
and how little was gained
by those who remained
uncrucified.



Dabble Dactyls
by Michael R. Burch

Sniggledy-Wriggledy
Jesus Christ’s enterprise
leaves me in awe of
the rich men he loathed!

But should a Sadducee
settle for trifles?
His disciples now rip off
the Lord they betrothed.



I, Lazarus
by Michael R. Burch

I, Lazarus, without a heart,
devoid of blood and spiritless,
lay in the darkness, meritless:
my corpse—a thing cold, dead, apart.

But then I thought I heard—a Voice,
a Voice that called me from afar.
And so I stood and laughed, bizarre:
a thing embalmed, made to rejoice!

I ran ungainly-legged to see
who spoke my name, and then I knew
him by the light. His name is True,
and now he is the life in me!

I never died again! Believe!
(Oops! Seems it was a brief reprieve.)



To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch

To know You as Mary,
when You spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.

I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard You exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom

my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?



Prayer for a Merciful, Compassionate, etc., God to ****** His Creations Quickly & Painlessly, Rather than Slowly & Painfully
by Michael R. Burch

Lord, **** me fast and please do it quickly!
Please don’t leave me gassed, archaic and sickly!
Why render me mean, rude, wrinkly and prickly?
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re an expert killer!
Please, don’t leave me aging like Phyllis Diller!
Why torture me like some poor sap in a thriller?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, we all know you’re an expert at ******
like Abram—the wild-eyed demonic goat-herder
who’d slit his son’s throat without thought at your order.
Lord, why procrastinate?

Lord, we all know you’re a terrible sinner!
What did dull Japheth eat for his 300th dinner
after a year on the ark, growing thinner and thinner?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Dear Lord, did the lion and tiger compete
for the last of the lambkin’s sweet, tender meat?
How did Noah preserve his fast-rotting wheat?
God, grant me a gentler fate!

Lord, why not be a merciful Prelate?
Do you really want me to detest, loathe and hate
the Father, the Son and their Ghostly Mate?
Lord, why procrastinate?



Star Crossed
by Michael R. Burch

Remember—
night is not like day;
the stars are closer than they seem ...
now, bending near, they seem to say
the morning sun was merely a dream
ember.



The beauty of the flower fades,
its petals wither to charades...
—Michael R. Burch



the U-turn poem
by michael r. burch

Life so defaulty,
Life so unfair,
why do wee prize U,
what do U care?

LORD who lets unborns
drown in a flood,
CELESTIAL ABORTIONIST,
r U sure Ur understood?



Hellion
by michael r. burch

cold as stone,
cold to the bone,
so cold inside even icebergs moan,
such is ur Gaud on hiss icy throne.

lines written for a luverly Gaud who cant be bothered to save pisspot peeple who guess wrong about which ire-ational re-ligion to believe.

“Hellion” is a pun on “he-lion” as in the “Lion of Judah” and “hell-lion.”



yet another ode to a graceless faceless Creator albeit with thoughts of possibly rescinding prior compliments
by michael r. burch

who created this graceless universe?
why praise its Creator? who could be worse?
why praise man’s Berater with obsequious verse?
job’s wife was right: he’s nobody’s nurse.



ur-Gent prayer request
by michael r. burch

where did ur Gaud originate?
in the minds of men so full of hate
they commanded moms to stone their kids,
which u believe (brains on the skids)
was “the word of Gaud”!
                     debate?
too late & of course it’s useless:
please pray to be less clueless.

The title involves a pun, since the “ur-Gent” would be the biblical “god.”



Religion is regarded by fools as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Non-Word to the Wise
by Michael R. Burch

The wise will never cry, “Save!”
The wise desire a quiet grave.



sonnet to non-science and nonsense/nunsense
by michael r. burch

ur Gaud is a fiasco,
a rapscallion and a rascal;
he murdered lovely eve,
so what’s there to “believe”?

and who made eve so curious?
why should ur Gaud be furious
when every half-wit parent knows
where bright kids will stick their no’s(e)!

no wise and loving father
would slaughter his own daughter!
ur Gaud’s a hole-y terror!
CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF ERROR:

though ur bible’s a giant hit,
its writers were full of sh-t.



We Know It All
by Michael R. Burch

We rile. We gall. We know it all
because we’ve read the Bible,
which tells us genocide’s “God’s will”
along with bashing in kids’ skulls
and other forms of libel.

The earth is flat, our Book says so!
The Lord will torture our rational foe!
(We lack the compassion to tell the fiend “No!”)

God’s on his throne, the Angels are winking,
applauding our lack of critical thinking.
We’re drowning in crap. We’re stinking and sinking.

Eve once petted friendly T-Rexes!
A “witch” should be ****** for unprovable hexes!
It’s a “sin” to make love if one’s lover has exes!

Girls were enslaved and ***** by their “masters”!
Our Book is the source of so many disasters!
The earth’s overheating? Let’s burn it up faster!



Yet Another Sh-tty Ditty
by Michael R. Burch

Here’s my ditty:
Life is sh-tty,
Then you get old
And more’s the pity.

Truth be told,
We’re bought and sold,
Sheep in the fold
Sheared lickety-splitty.

But chin’s up,
What’s the use of crying?
We’ve a certain escape:
Welcome to dying!


Snap Shots
by Michael R. Burch

Our daughters must be celibate,
die virgins. We triangulate
their early paths to heaven (for
the martyrs they’ll soon conjugate).

We like to hook a little tail.
We hope there’s decent *** in jail.
Don’t fool with us; our bombs are smart!
(We’ll send the plans, ASAP, e-mail.)

The soul is all that matters; why
hoard gold if it offends the eye?
A pension plan? Don’t make us laugh!
We have your plan for sainthood. (Die.)



Breakings
by Michael R. Burch

I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.

But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?

I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.

But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate in all such matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.



A coming day
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, due to her hellish religion

There will be a day,
a day when the lightning strikes from a rainbowed mist
when it will be too late, too late for me to say
that I found your faith unblessed.

There will be a day,
a day when the storm clouds gather, ominous,
when it will be too late, too late to put away
this darkness that came between us.



Hellbound
by Michael R. Burch

Mother, it’s dark
and you never did love me
because you put Yahweh and Yeshu
above me.

Did they ever love you
or cling to you? No.
Now Mother, it’s cold
and I fear for my soul.

Mother, they say
you will leave me and go
to some distant “heaven”
I never shall know.

If that’s your choice,
you made it. Not me.
You brought me to life;
will you nail me to the tree?

Christ! Mother, they say
God condemned me to hell.
If the Devil’s your God
then farewell, farewell!

Or if there is Love
in some other dimension,
let’s reconcile there
and forget such cruel detention.



Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch

As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.

These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.

Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.

God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.



Advice for Evangelicals
by Michael R. Burch

“... so let your light shine before men ...”

Consider the example of the woodland anemone:
she preaches no sermons but — immaculate — shines,
and rivals the angels in bright innocence and purity —
the sweetest of divines.

And no one has heard her engage in hypocrisy
since the beginning of time — an oracle so mute,
so profound in her silence and exemplary poise
she makes lessons moot.

So consider the example of the saintly anemone
and if you’d convince us Christ really exists,
then let him be just as sweet, just as guileless
and equally as gracious to bless.



Heaven Bent
by Michael R. Burch

This life is hell; it can get no worse.
Summon the coroner, the casket, the hearse!
But I’m upwardly mobile. How the hell can I know?
I can only go up; I’m already below!



Winter Night
by Michael R. Burch

Who will be ******,
who embalmed
for all eternity?

The night weighs heavy on me—
leaden, sullen, cold.
O, but my thoughts are light,

like the weightless windblown snow.

Published by Nisqually Delta Review



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Flight
by Michael R. Burch

Poetry captures
less than reality
the spirit of things

being the language
not of the lordly falcon
but of the dove with broken wings

whose heavenward flight
though brutally interrupted
is ever towards the light.

Published by Katrina Anthology



Ave Maria
by Michael R. Burch

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
listen to my earnest prayer.
Listen, O, and be beguiled.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
be Mother now to every child
beset by earth’s thorned briars wild.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
embrace us with your Love and Grace.
Let us look upon your Face.
Ave Maria.

Ave Maria,
Maiden mild,
please attend to our earnest call—
When will Love be All in All?
Ave Maria.

Copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Burch



A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch

Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember–we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death—
Gethsemane in every breath.



Birthday Poem to Myself
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, be no longer this Distant Presence,

Star-Afar, Righteous-Anonymous,
but come! Come live among us;

come dwell again,
happy child among men—

men rejoicing to have known you
in the familiar manger’s cool

sweet light scent of unburdened hay.
Teach us again to be light that way,

with a chorus of angelic songs lessoned above.
Be to us again that sweet birth of Love

in the only way men can truly understand.
Do not frown darkening down upon an unrighteous land

planning fierce Retributions we require, and deserve,
but remember the child you were; believe

in the child I was, alike to you in innocence
a little while, all sweetness, and helpless without pretense.

Let us be little children again, magical in your sight.
Grant me this boon! Is it not my birthright—

just to know you, as you truly were, and are?
Come, be my friend. Help me understand and regain Hope’s long-departed star!



Learning to Fly
by Michael R. Burch

We are learning to fly
every day . . .

learning to fly—
away, away . . .

O, love is not in the ephemeral flight,
but love, Love! is our destination—

graced land of eternal sunrise, radiant beyond night!
Let us bear one another up in our vast migration.



The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch

Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms

this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least . . .

The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies . . .

Faint scent of roses, then—a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
"My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true?"

"Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call—ecstatic crew!—
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You."



Come Spring
by Michael R. Burch

for the Religious Right

Come spring we return, innocent and hopeful, to the ******,
beseeching Her to bestow
Her blessings upon us.

Pitiable sinners, we bow before Her,
nay, grovel,
as She looms above us, aglow
in Her Purity.

We know
all will change in an instant; therefore
in the morning we will call her,
an untouched maiden no more,
“*****.”

The so-called Religious Right prizes virginity in women and damns them for doing what men do. I have long been a fan of women like Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, who decided what’s good for the gander is equally good for the goose.



Kingdom Freedom
by Michael R. Burch

LORD, grant me a rare sweet spirit of forgiveness.
Let me have none of the lividness
of religious outrage.

LORD, let me not be over-worried
about the lack of “morality” around me.
Surround me,

not with law’s restrictive cage,
but with Your spirit, freer than the wind,
so that to breathe is to have freest life,

and not to fly to You, my only sin.



Everlasting
by Michael R. Burch

Where the wind goes
when the storm dies,
there my spirit lives
though I close my eyes.

Do not weep for me;
I am never far.
Whisper my name
to the last star ...

then let me sleep,
think of me no more.

Still ...

By denying death
its terminal sting,
in my words I remain
everlasting.



Keywords/Tags: Adam, Eve, Eden, Lucifer, fall, sin, temptation, heaven, hell, salvation, God, Yahweh, Jehovah, creation, Jesus, Cain, Abel

It was on this day Eden came back to us..
Eden was 200 machines that left earth over 150 years ago.
These machines were to find and gather information on how to restore our dying planet...
One could be seen on course to earth..
It was Eden 157..
It was set to land in South Texas on Monday Oct 10th 2150 a.d..

Oct 10th 2150a.d
The army awaited the return of Eden 157..
And there it fell from the sky..
It looked like a slow comet falling from the heavens..
Eden 157 then landed..
There was a silence among everyone..
Eden 157 went through a check cycle before opening..
2 days later Eden 157's doors had opened..

Welcome to eden
where fruit grows lush and ripening
Apples are everywhere
sweet sin and blooming night
Won't you follow me into the garden?
Sin is shining and burning and
Piercing into my skin without consequence except
The obvious one
Falling all around me in this heavenly nightmare
Welcome to eden
God is dead
And opening its flowers all around me
Is summer sadness
Where my soul is too big for my body
Buds and tainted polaroid pictures
Skateboarding and bleach tipped hair
Everything is destruction
Welcome to eden
Find or lose a person and make them your religion
Welcome to eden where
I was always Eve except now i’m the snake

Eden’s Weeds (Andrew Crawford)


“seed buried somewhere six feet deep beneath dry bones
and brittle debris, lost in all of eden's weeds” Andrew Crawford

<><>><>
you tripped exploring mine own eden's weeds,
more precisely, tripped me up, your poring over,
my one hundred year old poems, flawed, by
many spilled tears, aged old, for and over them,
and now, once again, je vous réponds s'il vous plait

this poem planned, title chosen, well before you
exercised my memories, disinterring by your fingers,
(surprise!} but the content you also now provided,
@ ten to midnight, your privacy invasion, a very fine
sleep deprivation excuse to compose one more time

who knows, perhaps this next one could be ”flawless”^
not likely though, flawless never found amidst the weeds
though in Eden chances are, chances are, not impossible,
for that’s the place where slow, simple songs get replayed,
celebrating lovers of life, its pleasant harmonies, go figure

over, over again, like a rolling stone, until friction finally wins,
yes ”my own chosen speed”^ is a-slowing, direction home, finally,
the mosses occluding new words and combinations, concealed,
like a moss, got no roots, birthed by shedding spores airborne,
my new old poems, plucked from air, words passing by in phrases

your phrase,
eden’s weeds,
hit my irises,
insisting it deserved,
instant cognition,
two words,
demanding special education,
accolade recognition,
perhaps if I
stick around,
for a few more poems,
I’ll learn to write
as beautiful as you.

I have observed brightly lit stores...
window displays welcome
with wide open arms.
Kaleidoscope of colours,
dancing to catchy music...
adding on to the allure and charm.

Droves of shoppers have identified this
as their slice of heaven.
Flagging retail therapy
and finding their
pocket of Eden.

I have observed some laying down.
Relaxing...
unwinding...
On patches of grass.
They stare at the sky
with much adoration,
as wispy clouds float on by.

These skygazers have chosen this
to be their little slice of heaven.
With the ground on their backs,
grass between their toes
and azure as their witness...
this is their pocket of Eden.

I have observed a couple of lovebirds,
seated at a café...
immersed deeply in conversation.
In their own private universe,
their own little bubble.
Employing hugs and frequent pecks as punctuation.

There's nowhere else they'd rather be.
From their eyes I know,
they've found their unique slice of heaven.
In each other
they've found their pocket of Eden.

I have observed myself...
I thought myself to be lost
for the longest time.
Seeking a place
for the voice in my head
that only spoke in rhyme.

All is not lost when
I finally found that place.
My little slice of heaven.
For almost a year ago today
I decided on Hello Poetry
as my pocket of Eden.

No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar us’d,
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam’d. I now must change
Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: on the part of Heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery
Death’s harbinger: Sad talk!yet argument
Not less but more heroick than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous’d;
Or Neptune’s ire, or Juno’s, that so long
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea’s son:                        

If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplor’d,
And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:
Since first this subject for heroick song
Pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroick deem’d chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havock fabled knights
In battles feign’d; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroick martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, imblazon’d shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshall’d feast
Serv’d up in hall with sewers and seneshals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroick name
To person, or to poem.  Me, of these
Nor skill’d nor studious, higher argument
Remains; sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depress’d; and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear.
The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter
“twixt day and night, and now from end to end
Night’s hemisphere had veil’d the horizon round:
When satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv’d
In meditated fraud and malice, bent
On Man’s destruction, maugre what might hap
Of heavier on himself, fearless returned
From compassing the earth; cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried
His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim
That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line
He circled; four times crossed the car of night
From pole to pole, traversing each colure;
On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse
From entrance or Cherubick watch, by stealth
Found unsuspected way.  There was a place,
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part
Rose up a fountain by the tree of life:
In with the river sunk, and with it rose
Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had searched, and land,
From Eden over Pontus and the pool
Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctick; and in length,
West from Orontes to the ocean barred
At Darien ; thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search; and with inspection deep
Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field.
Him after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake
Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding; which, in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolick power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured.
More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old!
O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred
For what God, after better, worse would build?
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concentring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence!  As God in Heaven
Is center, yet extends to all; so thou,
Centring, receivest from all those orbs: in thee,
Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man.
With what delight could I have walked thee round,
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,
Now land, now sea and shores with forest crowned,
Rocks, dens, and caves!  But I in none of these
Find place or refuge; and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torment within me, as from the hateful siege
Of contraries: all good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no nor in Heaven
To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven’s Supreme;
Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such
As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroyed,
Or won to what may work his utter loss,
For whom all this was made, all this will soon
Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe;
In woe then; that destruction wide may range:
To me shall be the glory sole among
The infernal Powers, in one day to have marred
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days
Continued making; and who knows how long
Before had been contriving? though perhaps
Not longer than since I, in one night, freed
From servitude inglorious well nigh half
The angelick name, and thinner left the throng
Of his adorers: He, to be avenged,
And to repair his numbers thus impaired,
Whether such virtue spent of old now failed
More Angels to create, if they at least
Are his created, or, to spite us more,
Determined to advance into our room
A creature formed of earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,
With heavenly spoils, our spoils: What he decreed,
He effected; Man he made, and for him built
Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,
Him lord pronounced; and, O indignity!
Subjected to his service angel-wings,
And flaming ministers to watch and tend
Their earthly charge: Of these the vigilance
I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist
Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry
In every bush and brake, where hap may find
The serpent sleeping; in whose mazy folds
To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.
O foul descent! that I, who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast; and, mixed with ******* slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the highth of Deity aspired!
But what will not ambition and revenge
Descend to?  Who aspires, must down as low
As high he soared; obnoxious, first or last,
To basest things.  Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils:
Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed,
Since higher I fall short, on him who next
Provokes my envy, this new favourite
Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite,
Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised
From dust: Spite then with spite is best repaid.
So saying, through each thicket dank or dry,
Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on
His midnight-search, where soonest he might find
The serpent; him fast-sleeping soon he found
In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, well stored with subtile wiles:
Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den,
Nor nocent yet; but, on the grassy herb,
Fearless unfeared he slept: in at his mouth
The Devil entered; and his brutal sense,
In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired
With act intelligential; but his sleep
Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.
Now, when as sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed
Their morning incense, when all things, that breathe,
From the Earth’s great altar send up silent praise
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill
With grateful smell, forth came the human pair,
And joined their vocal worship to the quire
Of creatures wanting voice; that done, partake
The season prime for sweetest scents and airs:
Then commune, how that day they best may ply
Their growing work: for much their work out-grew
The hands’ dispatch of two gardening so wide,
And Eve first to her husband thus began.
Adam, well may we labour still to dress
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower,
Our pleasant task enjoined; but, till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labour grows,
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,
One night or two with wanton growth derides
Tending to wild.  Thou therefore now advise,
Or bear what to my mind first thoughts present:
Let us divide our labours; thou, where choice
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct
The clasping ivy where to climb; while I,
In yonder spring of roses intermixed
With myrtle, find what to redress till noon:
For, while so near each other thus all day
Our task we choose, what wonder if so near
Looks intervene and smiles, or object new
Casual discourse draw on; which intermits
Our day’s work, brought to little, though begun
Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned?
To whom mild answer Adam thus returned.
Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond
Compare above all living creatures dear!
Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts employed,
How we might best fulfil the work which here
God hath assigned us; nor of me shalt pass
Unpraised: for nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study houshold good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labour, as to debar us when we need
Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet *******
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food;
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined.
These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long
Assist us; But, if much converse perhaps
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield:
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm
Befall thee severed from me; for thou knowest
What hath been warned us, what malicious foe
Envying our happiness, and of his own
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame
By sly assault; and somewhere nigh at hand
Watches, no doubt, with greedy hope to find
His wish and best advantage, us asunder;
Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each
To other speedy aid might lend at need:
Whether his first design be to withdraw
Our fealty from God, or to disturb
Conjugal love, than which perhaps no bliss
Enjoyed by us excites his envy more;
Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee, and protects.
The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.
To whom the ****** majesty of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austere composure thus replied.
Offspring of Heaven and Earth, and all Earth’s Lord!
That such an enemy we have, who seeks
Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn,
And from the parting Angel over-heard,
As in a shady nook I stood behind,
Just then returned at shut of evening flowers.
But, that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt
To God or thee, because we have a foe
May tempt it, I expected not to hear.
His violence thou fearest not, being such
As we, not capable of death or pain,
Can either not receive, or can repel.
His fraud is then thy fear; which plain infers
Thy equal fear, that my firm faith and love
Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced;
Thoughts, which how found they harbour in thy breast,
Adam, mis-thought of her to thee so dear?
To whom with healing words Adam replied.
Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve!
For such thou art; from sin and blame entire:
Not diffident of thee do I dissuade
Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid
The attempt itself, intended by our foe.
For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses
The tempted with dishonour foul; supposed
Not incorruptible of faith, not proof
Against temptation: Thou thyself with scorn
And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong,
Though ineffectual found: misdeem not then,
If such affront I labour to avert
From thee alone, which on us both at once
The enemy, though bold, will hardly dare;
Or daring, first on me the assault shall light.
Nor thou his malice and false guile contemn;
Subtle he needs must be, who could ******
Angels; nor think superfluous other’s aid.
I, from the influence of thy looks, receive
Access in every virtue; in thy sight
More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need were
Of outward strength; while shame, thou looking on,
Shame to be overcome or over-reached,
Would utmost vigour raise, and raised unite.
Why shouldst not thou like sense within thee feel
When I am present, and thy trial choose
With me, best witness of thy virtue tried?
So spake domestick Adam in his care
And matrimonial love; but Eve, who thought
Less attributed to her faith sincere,
Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed.
If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endued
Single with like defence, wherever met;
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?
But harm precedes not sin: only our foe,
Tempting, affronts us with his foul esteem
Of our integrity: his foul esteem
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns
Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared
By us? who rather double honour gain
From his surmise proved false; find peace within,
Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the event.
And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed
Alone, without exteriour help sustained?
Let us not then suspect our happy state
Left so imperfect by the Maker wise,
As not secure to single or combined.
Frail is our happiness, if this be so,
And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed.
To whom thus Adam fervently replied.
O Woman, best are all things as the will
Of God ordained them: His creating hand
Nothing imperfect or deficient left
Of all that he created, much less Man,
Or aught that might his happy state secure,
Secure from outward force; within himself
The danger lies, yet lies within his power:
Against his will he can receive no harm.
But God left free the will; for what obeys
Reason, is free; and Reason he made right,
But bid her well be ware, and still *****;
Lest, by some fair-appearing good surprised,
She dictate false; and mis-inform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid.
Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins,
That I should mind thee oft; and mind thou me.
Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve;
Since Reason not impossibly may meet
Some specious object by the foe suborned,
And fall into deception unaware,
Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warned.
Seek not temptation then, which to avoid
Were better, and most likely if from me
Thou sever not: Trial will come unsought.
Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve
First thy obedience; the other who can know,
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?
But, if thou think, trial unsought may find
Us both securer than thus warned thou seemest,
Go; for thy stay, not fre

(a whispered prayer)


I. The Forgiveness of the Moon

We forgive the moon,
you and I—
the ancient tides that pulled us
long before we knew how to swim.

We forgive the heavy hand of the father,
the silent absence of the mother,
the bloodlines too tired to be gentle,
the nights too cold to hold a child right.

We forgive the ache written into us
before we ever spoke our first word of longing.

---

Today,
we bow.
Not because we are already whole—
but because grace has come for us again.

Grace,
measured by the strength we can offer today.
Grace,
poured into cups only as deep as our humility.
Grace,
rising new with every sun that dares light our faces.

We are not finished.
We are not flawless.

But we are forgiven.
And so we forgive.
And so we rise.

---

I forgive your moon, beloved—
the hunger it placed in your bones,
the war it started in your heart.

You forgive mine—
the quiet shatter I still carry under my ribs,
the tides I fight in my own blood.

And together,
we build grace upon grace—
one breath,
one trembling sunrise,
one more day
where love becomes stronger than history.

---

II. The Comfort of the Wellspring

Blessed be the Source of all Comfort—
who first comforted us
when we had no hands strong enough to hold ourselves.

Blessed be the One
who gave us the rising sun
when we still believed only the moon could rule us.

We forgive,
because we were forgiven.
We comfort,
because we were first gathered into arms not our own.
We breathe,
because Mercy breathed into us again
when our breath had long since failed.

---

Every morning,
the sun rises new over us.
Not because we earned it—
but because we are still beloved.

Every morning,
the wellspring opens again:
water for the broken,
water for the tired,
water for those who dared to believe
that forgiveness could outrun bloodlines,
and grace could rebuild a home
even over shattered stones.

---

You are no longer bound, beloved.
You are not the wound they left behind.

I am no longer bound, beloved.
I am not the ruin they called my inheritance.

We meet now at the river's edge—
and the river is rising.

Boundlessness waits for us—
not because we are perfect,
but because we are willing.

We step forward, hand in hand,
forgiven and forgiving,
reborn not just for ourselves,
but for all those who come after us.

This is how love becomes a lineage.
This is how morning becomes an endless beginning.

This is how heaven sings on the earth.

---

III. The Embrace in the Blood of Eden

We meet here.
Not above the brokenness.
Not beside it.
Inside it.
In the blood of Eden.
In the inheritance of sorrow.

The man and the woman,
the woman and the man—
standing barefoot in the floodwaters,
stained but unbowed.

---

I reach for you—
not because you are pure,
but because you are willing.

You reach for me—
not because I am faultless,
but because I am faithful.

We touch now, trembling,
skin to skin,
heart to heart,
forgiving the moon,
forgiving the night,
forgiving the tides that carried us far from each other.

---

We fall into each other’s arms—
not to erase the past,
but to hold it in mercy.

We kiss—
not to claim,
but to cleanse.

We lay down together,
in the blood of Eden,
and we let the river of grace
wash over our battered bodies.

We sleep,
wrapped in one another—
the man and the woman,
the woman and the man—
warmed by a sun that rises new
because we chose to forgive,
because we chose to be forgiven,
because we chose each other
when everything else said we should not have.

---

And so we end with this prayer:

  "In the blood of Eden—
   lie the woman and the man;
   with the man in the woman,
   and the woman in the man.

   In the blood of Eden;
   We have done everything we can.
   And so we end as we began--

   With the man in the woman
   And the woman in the man"

(1965) Transcript

Recorded December 12, 1965 (released 1971, produced by John Judnich and Frank Zappa)

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Hahahaha, you like this? Be weird I have no pants on…

The ecumenical council has given the Pope permission to become a nun…just on Friday’s.

I can’t work with this thing..it’s a…isn’t that funny? Backstage I really loved it and I fooled around with it, but I can’t it’s too…uh…I’ll work around it.

Does it look religious? It looks sorta religious…

Yeah, heh heh…that’s it. That’s faith and goodness. And veneer.

There’s more Churches, and people that work for the Church then I think there are eh, courthouses. And Judges. So actually what it is, Catholicism is like Howard Johnson, and what they have are these franchises, and they give all these people different franchises in the different countries and they have one government and when you buy the Howard Johnson franchise, you can apply it to the geography, whatever’s cool for that area. And then you pay the bread to the Main Office, and you have to keep a certain standard. Which is cool. But it is definitely a government by itself, and I think that’s what we’re doing in Vietnam. Because the Communists are a threat to those jobs. That’s where it’s at, and I think that’s what it’s always been, that those two factions are always *******’ and fighting with each other, and so actually we have the Catholic government inside our government, and they have this ***** with the Communists because they’re always fighting over the work, you know, and when they take over they do them out of a gig, so what happens is that… because Catholicism is here, and the people who work for it are here.

And that’s another big problem, the people can’t separate the authority and the people who have the authority vested in them. I think you see that a lot in the demonstrations, because actually the people are demonstrating not against Vietnam, they’re demonstrating against the Police Department. Actually against police men, because they have that concept of the law that the law and the law enforcement are one, and it started:

“So we’ll have to have some rules, that’s how the law starts, out of the facts, let’s see. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll have a vote: we’ll sleep in Area A, is that cool? OK good. We’ll eat in Area B, good? Good. We’ll throw our crap in Area C.” So everything went along pretty cool, everyone is very happy. One night everybody is sleeping, a guy woke up pow got a face full of crap, and said, “Hey what’s the deal here, I thought we had a rule? Eat. Sleep. And crap. And uh, I was sleeping and I got a face full of crap.” So they said, well, ah, the rule is substantive. That’s, see, that’s what the 14th Amendment is, it regulates the rights, but it doesn’t do anything about it, it just says that’s where it’s at. We’ll have to do something to enforce the provisions, to give it some teeth. Here’s the deal, if anybody throws any crap on us, while we’re sleeping, they get thrown in the craphouse. Agreed? Guy goes, “Well, everybody?” Yeah. “But what about if it’s my mother?” You don’t understand, your mother will be the fact, it has nothing to do with it, it’s just a rule. eat, sleep, and crap, anybody throws any crap on us they get thrown right in the crap house. Your mother doesn’t enter into it, everybody’s mother gets thrown in the craphouse. Priest, Rabbi’s, they all go. Agreed? OK, agreed. OK, now going along very cool, guy sleeping, pow he got a face full of crap. Now he wakes up he sees he’s all alone this guy, and he looks and everyone is having a big party. He says “Hey! What’s the deal I thought we had a rule? Eat, sleep and crap, and you just threw a face full of crap on me.” He says “Oh it’s a religious holiday! And, uh, we told you many times that you were going to live your indecent life and sleep all day you deserve to be thrown crap on you while you’re sleeping, and the guy said “*******”. A rule’s a rule and this guy started to separate the Church and the State right down the middle pow. Here’s the Church rule and here’s the federalist rule. OK, everything going along very cool, and guy said, “Wait a minute, although we made the rule and…how we gonna get somebody to throw somebody in the craphouse? We need somebody to enforce it. Law Enforcement.” OK, now they put the sign up on the wall WANTED LAW ENFORCEMENT, and guys apply for the job. “Look, here’s our problem, see we’re trying to get some sleep and people keep throwing crap on us. Now we want someone to throw them right in the craphouse, and I’m delegated to doing the hiring here, and, so, here’s what the job is…They won’t go in the craphouse by themselves, and we all agreed on the rule now, and we firmed it up, so there’s nobody get’s out of it, everybody’s vulnerable they get thrown right in the craphouse, but you see, I can’t do it cause I do business with these ******* and it looks bad for me, you know…So I want somebody to do it for me, ya know, so I tell you what, here’s a stick and a gun and you do it. But wait til I’m out of the room, and whenever it happens see I’ll wait back here and watch you know, and you make sure you kick em in the *** and throw them in there. Now, you’ll hear me say a lot of times that it takes a certain kind of mentality to do that work you know and all that *******, but you understand that’s all horseshit, just kick em in the *** and make sure that it’s done. So it happens that…

Now comes the riot, or the marches, and everybody’s wailing and blopblopblopblop. And you got a cop there who’s standing with a shortsleeve shirt on and a stick in his hand, and the people are yelling Gestapo! at him! Gestapo? You *******, I’m the mailman! Gestapo!?

Now. What it is, I think that the people really want to beat the devil. Where that started was with the early, early missionaries. I think that they didn’t really…that’s why the people never could really separate the authority and the people with the authority vested in them. Because, you know with the savages they would teach them the religion, and after the speech the savage would go, “Well, are you God?” “Well, no…but heh heh, what the hell, you know…well, just never mind that, and eh, I can do you a favor, you do me a favor that’s all and, I think that’s the hang up in our country right now, is that, cause you always hear that kind of story about the peace officer who pulled the speeder over and the speeder turned out to be the governor, and he had the audacity to give him a ticket. So the fact that the people repeat that story, so much, that means the people don’t believe that the governor could ever get a ticket, man. So then it’s just the degree of the law that the governor could break. That means he can kick you in the ***, but it’s *******, it’s really not that way, cause everybody’s vulnerable, yeah everybody’s *** is up for grabs. It’s really a groovy, eh… groovy system, and I think that, well the problem I had a long time of understanding the law is because of the language in the law and the fact that instead of taking each word and finding out the case that the word related to, once when I get lazy, and I would apply common sense. And then I got really ******* up.

That’s really weird, I went to the Supreme Court three times trying to get a writ of mandamus, and they kept sending it back, the clerk, they kept saying what the language said append the copy of order in respect of which the writ is sought. And I keep sending this copy of the lower court, they keep sending me back in respect of which the writ is sought. Then I dug, in respect of which, They use the word “of” like I use the word “to”. And ‘respect of’ means this kind of respect. In respect “of it”. So what they wanted, the Supreme Court, we want our judgement that these cats should respect us.

Now the Supreme Court, right now there’s some ******* now with obscenity. There’s an obscenity circus that’s been going on for five years. And I think, I really can’t believe that it’s not settled yet. An illiterate view of the law is that, what’s obscene is ***** ******* and fancy *******. If a guy can tear off a piece of *** with class, then he’s cool. But if the author depicts factory workers, who are not expertise with stag shows, then it’s obscene. Which is just nonsense. A lot of the confusion maybe with the obscenity laws is this: it’s that, the judges who are confused just didn’t read.
Here’s how it works: if a guy gets busted, see, and he raises a federal question and the appellate court answers it, that answer is mine, and yours. That’s equal protection from the law that decision, that one court. So in 1933 when a judge got Ulysses trying to come in the country, you dig, and the customs and tariff people said uh-uh, you can’t bring that book in, you can’t come in the country, it’s obscene. So these people said, no we want the book to come in and we want to knock of the injunction to restrain and they move forward. The judge said OK I’m gonna read the book, but I’m not gonna apply this Hickman rule anymore. The Hickman rule says that, uh, we should judge this book by the part, the portion of it, to the guy who gets *******, quickest. The most corruptible mind in the community. I think, said this judge, we should apply to the average man, the reasonable man, the man with the normal, average *** instincts. To that cat. Then they add the balance, contemporary, to his average age, so to the guy, the average *** instincts, to his average age, his society, that’s all attested. So that means that that rule, when any judge has to judge any work, he always has to apply that rule first, and that was cool. Now goes, they said, well we better narrow it, because what’s happened here is that there is a lot of works of art, that may get people *****, and there’s a Los Angeles ordinance now in 1961 this guy got busted behind, and the judge said “I don’t need any art critics, I know what’s obscene.” But the judge didn’t know in that local court that that wasn’t the question this guy was asking. He said this ordinance is unconstitutional because it doesn’t have knowingly in it, and that’s the principle of the whole American law system, your intent. So how could I know it schmuck when these people told me in the book jacket that this is art. So it, doesn’t, the intent has to be there. So the lower court said *******, and the Supreme Court said ******* to the lower court. And that’s when I started getting into trouble. Because from ’61 on came the argument between petulant lower court judges and the Supreme Court and spoiled rotten D.A.’s. When they lost the case…the city attorney in Los Angeles, every time he’d lose in Washington, I’d get my *** kicked when he got home. Just *******’, *******’, *******’, and still freed the Supreme Court, they keep movin’ ahead, movie’ ahead, their gonna do it their way. Now comes the California legislature, 1961. And the legislature here are geniuses and they came up with some kappa words. They said, what’s the sense of making the artistic merit of a work the defense to a prosecution? Because after the guy’s busted his *** is in jail. Then he has to defend himself. Let’s take it out of the defense to a prosecution move it to an element of the offense. Now it’s a crime to be utterly without artistic merit. That means the guy who makes the complaint the burden is on his ***, to prove it. He’s got to schlep up 50,000 art critics. And after they, if they would accomplish that…You know a lot of people say, well jeez, can’t you find anything that’s obscene, is there nothing obscene? Why we have this desperate need for it now is so many lawyers lost their *** on it, that it seems only right that we should have it. I mean, can you tell me nobody can commit treason? I mean Christ, then to you nothing’s treasonous. No it’s very tough, it’s very tough to stop the information, that’s where it’s all it’s at. Because the word the guy says is of no consequence. What the Constitution forbids is any bar to the communication system. They want nobody to abridge the right to say it one time, and one time to hear it. Nothing in the middle, nobody to tell you before hand that this isn’t too cool, because the information makes the country strong. A knowledge of syphilis is not an instruction to get it. And only if the country can know about…that’s why the Church and the State have to be separated all the time because the Church only wants a certain kind of information from their government, but since we have a lot churches and a lot of different people in this country, we gotta know about all the bad, bad ****, the worst of everything. The knowledge of it to be protected against it. Because if you don’t have a knowledge of it, and you just know about the good, and they just let the good come through, seeping through what they think is good, you end up like ******, cause he really got ******* around by that. He kept saying, “Am I doing it right?” “You’re doing great, they love you.” “Don’t *******, they don’t like me” “They love you, don’t listen to those liars. **** him, who said that?” You really gotta separate the judicial, executive, and the legislative…and the most dangerous department, just the department itself, is the police, the District Attorney. Not the man, but the department is very dangerous for him. Cause it will gobble him up, and the whole reason for the Constitution was that there was like one King, he was the executioner of everything. So they said how we’ll do it now we’ll really make it safe, we vote on the rule, eat, sleep and crap, that’ll be the law constant, then if anybody busts us for eat, sleep, and crap, breaking the rule, they have to go first to the judge, the judge has to look up the book, and then he’ll make a round robin. Otherwise, no one guy. What happens, two hundred dollar police undercover girl investigation. Two hundred dollar call girls. Now there was no warrant for search. Now the Fourth Amendment and all those things because of a bad kiss *** newspaper have been turning into protection for thieves, but it’s not. It’s to protect the executive branch from becoming thieves. Because what happens, without judicial superintendents, in other words, if, if the executive branch can make any inquiry at all without a judge signing it, then he can go the ***** house every night, and he can spend two hundred bucks a night getting laid every night and when he gets caught, “What are you doing?” “I’m investigating.”

But if he’s got a ***** house warrant for search, then there’s no *******. Then when the crap rule comes in, you, you, you, you, and you, no I’m investigating, there it is, cool. Describes particularly what I was searching for, what the complaint was. Because what happens is that you’ve… the money spent on a two month undercover investigation of hookers…maybe $15,000 dollars,, no when you go to court, the ***** is on the stand she’s not gonna say she got $15,000, she’s gonna say “I didn’t get a nickel!” Cops gonna say, “Well, what do you expect from ******.” Maybe he didn’t get the fifteen grand. And that’s where, that’s always the desperate need to control vice. That’s what all the bull, that’s what all the ******* is. If you check the records, there’s not one citizen that bought a ***** book. Every case has been initiated by the police department. So it’s not literature they, just, it’s a big smokescreen. There’s money spent on those books. A fortune ****** away. How many copies of Henry Miller? And they don’t even read em, so it’s all *******. Uh, five dollars, OK, three dollars, certificate…then when it really gets dangerous is, see, what happens, it’s poor people who, like, get hung up with good and evil, except it’s like, right and wrong. It’s like Prohibition. Chicago is still crippled from that, from the disease of Prohibition. What happened is that the moralists who thought they were moral didn’t realize what was happening, they kept saying “yes keep the Prohibition on” meanwhile the cops are making bread on gamblers, and nafka’s and swinging. When it’s the law out in front, then nobody has any excuse. No priests can be in a *******, blessing, kissing them, saving them. No cop can be, no *******, everybody’s up for grabs, that’s it. Stay out of there, that means everybody, no protecting, no local home rule ******. My position is that, since the Constitution says that, there has to be judicial superintendents, that there, no peace officer has any place talking to anyone or making any inquiry whatsoever, search warrant is prerequisite to the inquiry. Because if he’s allowed to make any investigation, for a noise even, then he’s allowed to make determinations of who looks suspicious, and the only people who look suspicious to Jews are Irish drunks, so it’s all ******* conclusions. Who could look suspicious? So we got suspicious looking people, we got N i g g e r Town, ***** Town, ****** Town, **** Town. Yeah, it’s … you can’t hear the noise, unless he sees the crime, solid. Otherwise he can take the police car, and stick in two ex-convicts, friends of his, and say “Look, here’s the area that I’m sworn to protect. We’re gonna break in this warehouse and I’ll lay outside dead. We’ll haul the **** away in my car, if anyone comes on us, we’re investigating, and if we get caught in the interim, we just caught you. Alright, solid? Solid. Well the Sally Stanford thing for Christ sake, they had a different gimmick there, the guy was off-duty, he had an off-duty detective agency, so that gave him an excuse to carry a piece. Yeah, that’s really…that’s a lot of bread, a lot of money. What’s happening, the crime rate see has disappeared almost, and the task force that we hired, are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. There’s never any layoff in the Police Department. Well, here’s what I think happened to the crime rate. First thing, the basic need to steal is like for coal, you know, you’re hungry, alright, so now the economy is up, so that went disappear-o. OK, now there’s a second need to break the law was for some sign of, you’d have some status, there’d be some virility. OK, the fact that now we have health and safety, give these people analysis, that ******* that in the ***, cause no one wants to be sick. So as soon as it could be helped, that ******* up that whole scene. Now there’s just nothing left.

Narcotics, now they finished with ******. I think in 1951 there was like about seven thousand dope fiends in this state and 50 narcotics officers. Today there probably about 15,000 narcotics officers and four dope fiends. 1500 nihiling, testing stations, lupometers…and they got four ***** junkies left. Old time, 1945 hippies. One guy works for the county, undercover, the other guy works for the Federal heat. OK, so finally they went on strike. “Look we don’ use dope anymore, we’re tired.” “C’mon out, we’re just after the guys who sell it.” “Schmuck! Don’t you remember me, you arrested me last week. I’m the undercover guy for the Federals.” “Uh, I thought he was the county guy.” it’s like ***** running around the tree. He works for the Federal, he works for the County. “Look we’re after the guys who sold it to you, OK” “Nobody sold it to me, I bought it from him, I told ya.” “Um, well we…just point out one of the guys.” “Don’t ya know him? There’s four of us, I told ya that.” “Just tell us the names of the guys, cooperate now. Tell us everybody.” “OK, he was a Puerto Rican. He drove a Green Buick.” “OK, we’ll wait for him, OK.” Three days of that schmucky investigation…”Is that him?” “Well I think it’s so an so…I think he was Hawaiian anyway..” “OK, don’t forget, if you hear from him.” “OK, I’ll call you the first thing.” OK, now they finished up with that nonsense, and they says, “Let’s see now, we’ve got all these hospitals, you mean to tell me you guys are going to ***** up that rehabilitation program? You mean to tell me that you’re, if you’re not using any dope, you certainly know some people that need help.” We don’t know anybody, we don’t know anybody, please…I can’t use anymore dope, I don’t like it.” Well, you really are selfish, that’s really, you really don’t care about anybody but yourself. You know we have a center to rehabilitate people with 1500 empty beds?” “I know I’m ****** that way. I’ll try, but…OK.” OK, so now they’ve got dangerous drugs. Now the insanity in that area, is that the reason that ****** is verboten it’s no good for the people. Its…it destroys the ego.
And the only reason we only get anything done in this country, is that, you wanna be proud of it, and build up to the neighbors, and if the ****** schleps all that away, and the guy goes, the top comment he’ll come up with, the guy who builds the building, is “Hey that’s cool..” and that’s it. So it’s no good. It’s no good for everybody, and that’s why it’s out. But that’s…the Source is no good. That’s where it goes right to the source. But dangerous drugs, the connection is Park-Lilly. It’s Olin Mathieson. The source is not bad for the people, so the only difference between the felon is the guy who can’t afford a prescription. So they legislate against poor people, which is really schmucky. Marijuana…I don’t smoke ****, I’m really glad that I don’t smoke it, I’m really gonna…in five years it’ll be legal. But then no one will smoke it anymore, you’ll see. Most of the law students I know smoke marijuana, that’s why it’ll be legal. Yeah.

You know what I’d like to investigate? Zig-Zag Rolling Papers…Yeah, bring the company up on that. Now we have this report Mr. Zig Zag, certainly it must’ve been unusual to you that Zig Zag papers have been in business for 16 years and Bugle tobacco has been out of business for five years. This committee comes to the conclusion that the people are using your Zig Zag cigarette papers to roll marijuana tobacco in it . Aww, ****, that’s right. Lot’s of it. Rolling it and smoking it. You know, I really felt sorry for that cat, what was his name, Wallen….Grand Kleagle cause it’s a repeat of the Communist witch hunt. The fact that the Ku Klux ****, one guy lynched people, that means that anyone who ever belonged to it and knows about it lynched people, which is *******. So what they do, and it’s really… when your *** is on the pan like that I’m sure it’s really frightening, especially when they take you…did, they didn’t…where did they hold that investigation? Oh, that’s really outrageous then, cause they can’t do that, it has to be in the district, he has to be tried by his peers, no matter what, in his district. Because when you take him out of his district, there’s one trauma, cause you take him in a whole different geography, and Southerners are, they’re people of the Earth, they don’t…they’re…it’s a different country. Religious people, and the talk is different then North, and they’re rappin’ questions at him, and he like hears one out of every ten words. And he just, is really frightened, just… Dig those schmucks, they’re ******* – “You’re really not real Ku Klux ****, you’re not spending the money on rope. You’re having good times with it.” Is that ridiculous? This poor cat didn’t want to admit that he was an American citizen. He kept saying I refuse, I refuse, I decline, and that ******* Time magazine, really make always make it seem shabby, the Fifth Amendment. he declined so many times, he mumbled it, and declined, declined. naturally the cat didn’t want to admit anything cause the last time he admitted anything at the Constitutional Convention the carpet baggers ******* his grandaddy ***, that was it, bye-bye, so he’s very weary and wary of the North, because he knows it’s a whole different scene.

And it’s amazing that the Southerner, has no hostility for the *****, the same way as the court has no hostility for me, they have the hostility for the people that defend me. That’s why they yell all that ****/play drop the n i g g e r, to bug them. So it’s the banner fighting between those two people. Oh. Lotta dues. Lyndon Johnson, they didn’t let him talk for the first six months. It took him six months to learn how to say knee-grow. Nig-ger-oh. OK, let’s hear it one more time Lyndon, now… OK, let him pose again, ok..neig-ar-oh…no…can’t you say, look, say it quick, knee-gro! like that. N i g g e r-oh-oh n i g g e r-oh…I can’t help it! i can’t say it that’s all! I can’t say n i g g e r-oh, ******’ in bed and everything, stuttering, I can’t, what the hell, big n i g g r o-oh nahg-raw…let me show em a scar…no no no. Just say it, and say it, that’s it…yeah, he’s completely confused. Well, really, that family is so…that’s really…there’s a certain kind of non-Jewish look, that, they could pass any test. They are the biggest non-Jews in the world. No question they walk right through the line. The wife with the white flannel satchel, a zipper up the front, with red nail polish…she’s beautiful. She looks at home in a trailer park. Yeah. Dig.

There’s…here, it’s so strange. Not the people necessarily involved with the religion but the religion itself, Catholicism. A genius religion. Three years ago I was wondering, I used to do a bit, four years ago, Religions Incorporated, so my view at that time was here’s a rich church, Catholicism, next door is poverty, so it’s hypocrisy. Obvious view, So I started digging, digging, reading really getting into it, and I realized, the reason for the baroque Church, the grand Church in the poverty neighborhood, is that, what the Church is is a school, it’s a method of instruction. And people who have no understanding, who need instruction, don’t know about Philosophy, they can only understand material things. So a raggedy *** guy won’t go into a raggedy *** temple. “I live in a *******, why’d I gotta go in one for?” But if you show him something nice he can understand then you can instruct him. So the ecumenical council really are geniuses and they make some tremendous moves. So I figure there’s a group looks to undermind them. Somebody talked Lyndon Johnson’s daughter into converting. That sent the religion back two-thousand years. That dress she had on, she looked like a Guatamalen slave. Real Philomena at the wedding there, with it’s, terrible, looked like a National Geographic picture. He’s-uh…yeah he’s it’s…showin’ his scar is beautiful, that’s just-uh, that’s just where it’s at, he’s a **** kicker. He’s just a….Yeah, it’s a…it was a mistake. Yeah, cause the presidency is a very sophist….Kennedy was just, yeah just a genius at organization, a sophisticated man, and sophistication just means knowledge, learning a lot of background there. And the other guy is, uh….I’d like to get some tapes of those people, what goes on…yeah, that would really be a treat to hear them. I was just thinking of the guy, you know the picture of Oswald when he got shot. That’s Lyndon Johnson’s relationed face to the other guy, with the big, you know that guy with the hat on? Like a big Texan, “Oh ****”. To be that obvious, to be able to react, “OHHH EAAHHHUH”. Check out that practice, so you don’t get yelled at. “UHHHH UH EAAAHHHUH” You know, why Ruby did it, uh, this is subjective, but….cause he was Jewish, and uh….You know I really wanna…I’d really like to tell you that, I wanna tell Christians that…that….Why I can tell it to you because it’s all over now, ya know. I wouldn’t cop out when it was going on, but it’s, it is all over now. Up to about six-seven years ago there was such a difference between Christians and Jews that, but maybe you did know. But…you…shewww…forget about it, just a line there that was just…And the brotherhood of Christians and Jews was like some fifth column *******, I dunno, it was like a phony dummy board. Yeah, because…No, I don’t think so, I don’t think the Christians did know it, because only the group that’s involved…it’s like the defense council knows it because he has a narrow view, where the D.A., he’s hung up with a bigger practice, so it’s the same with the Jew is hung up with his **** and maybe the Christian…because, uh, when the Christians say, “Oh is he Jewish? I didn’t know, I can’t tell when someone’s Jewish” I say well that’s *******. But he….can’t, because he never got hung up with that ****, you now, who is he Jewish, and Jews are very hung up with that all the time. Why Ruby did it, see…when I was a kid I had a tremendous hostility for Christians my age, the reason I had the hostility is that I had no ***** for fighting, and they could duke. So I disliked them for it, but I admired them for it and there was a tremendous ambivalence all the time of admiring somebody who could do that, you know, and then disliking them for it, and the neighborhood that I came from, there were a lot of Jews so the problem, there wasn’t a big big problem, and my elders were not concerned with punching. But Ruby came from Texas, and a Jew in Texas is a tailor. What went on in his mind, I’m sure….”If I **** a guy that killed the President, the Christians will go ‘Shewww…boy what ***** he had! We always thought the Jews were chicken **** but look at that. A Jewish Billy the Kid rode out of the West!'” And the Christians will hug him and kiss him, and love him, and boy they’ll say ‘Oh boy he saved everybody’. But he didn’t know that it was just a fantasy….from his grandmother, telling him about the Christians, who punch everybody. Even the shot was Jewish, the way he held the gun, it was a ***** Jewish way. Ha ha! Real d’Artagnan. He probably went ‘nah’ too, that means “there” in Jewish, “nah. Nah” Yeah, it’s…and Belli didn’t um…he forgot the geography. No, it’s the same kind of law, it really is in the words, you just have to speak them slower in that area and you have to dress…there’s just a few kinda changes, but they don’t change the substance of the law, it’s like, as good a case as I can have with you, if I pick my nose, although it’s not dishonest, it’s just gonna lose it, ya know. So Belli didn’t wear the right suit, because anybody who’s suit fits em good in the South looks like a **** ****. And he should have known that but the fact that he was offended with the judge chewing tobacco, see, cause that’s the natural thing down there. There was like a ***** picture I saw going around and it said “This is your local Police Department” and it showed some kinda cops in a Southern place, and they were laughing and the guy, oh, smoking a cigar, that’s was it. But that’s just the behavior in the Southern court, and the fact that everyone was laughing they don’t know that Southerners are just…they’re child-like in that area, they’re not sophisticated with picture taking. They see a picture, you smile. That’s why they’re always smiling in the pictures , they’re not arrogant, but they’re just, you’re supposed to smile when you take a picture. And the Northerners are just hipper, they do the cool…So Belli trying to sell those jurors anything, the voir dire must have just broke their *****, you know. That qualifying must have really got ’em good and crazy, you know you have two days to…whadda ya….yeah any attorneys here forget that, the…If I was an attorney I would grab the…here is here’ll be my pitch to the jury. First place, no qualifying, I pick… no challenges at all. First jurors come up, there the jurors. “You jurors, you people think a lot of the community because you vote, and that’s why you’re jurors. Give’em all a hundred bucks a piece and get ’em laid, and that’s it.” I’d be a terrible Law Professor, “What’d he say at the end there?” “Give’em a hundred bucks and get ’em laid.” “Professor, can we talk to ya…the conclusion that you made there, give ’em a hundred bucks and get ’em laid” “Yeah, yeah get ’em laid, it all counts.” “But that don’t fit with the beginning of the conversation.” “Well it’s all *******, you gotta figure round.” “Ah, he’s bottled out, get him..” Yeah, Belli talking to those people, he sounded to that jury like the Southern attorney would sound to Greek-Irish-Italian Northern jurors. “Look here now Jurors, I like Italian people, that’s first off, I see we got some Italian people here by the…I’m gonna take you, a little story now, this buck n i g g e r and this Jew boy wahhhhhh! “What’d the hell everybody get so hot for?” “Just shut up, don’t say anymore.” “What’d I say, it’s a cute story, everybody gets a kick out of it.” “No they don’t, just shut up….I can’t explain it. You look South, you’re hairs wet, I don’t now what it is. Just dummy up, that’s all.” uh-huh….F a g g o t s….Dig, isn’t the argument against ******* that, what the pornog–selling the *******, making it available to the public, is that the man is happily married, or he’s just a happy cat, and you come along now with some matter that the main ****** of the matter, the predominate appeal is to his prurient interest, and what you’re doing is entrapping him, you’re inciting him, something that the guy wouldn’t be thinking about ordinarily, you’re getting him *****. You’re getting it up, and you’re not getting it off, and you’re creating a clear and present danger and it’s worthless…and so that’s the objection to it, and that’s a valid objection. But the consistency necessarily follows that the guy who–when I hear about f a g g o t s who get arrested in toilets, and I say, “How’d you get arrested in a toilet?” “Well, I accosted a peace officer.” Well, ha-ha, that’s certainly no concept of reality there. “Well I didn’t know he was a peace officer.” “Whaddaya mean?” “Well, he didn’t have a uniform on.” “Well he wasn’t wearing a costume was he? He wasn’t wearing a low-cut gown, because what a low cut gown to a f a g g o t must be is tight Levi’s and a padded basket, like uh…I mean, he wasn’t wearing Levi’s and leaning up against the ****** like sultry like that…cause if he was that’s *******. Because he was appealing to your prurient interest, and entrapping you. You can’t do that. It’s a funny thing all the different stages that we’ve all…my generation was, well…me, I’m amazed by any guy who can go into a public toilet and do anything but **** and leave. Guys who can wash their hands are amazing to me. I just go ehuhehuhwwwshhhupout. Don’t ‘I want to talk to you’ “Not in there, are you kidding?” Yeah, cause if someone says, “What are you doing in the toilet?” “I don’t know…” “The hell are you doing in there? Did you make?” “Yeah, I did it…” “Alright, now hang around here, okay..”

So I saw, dig what I saw, a beautiful change. I went to…Phil Spector had like a big rock & roll jamboree at Tammi’s, filming it, so I went there and I see this ten year old kids there all kids, like nine and ten years old, with no parents. So my first thought was like, what the hell, unattended, but I saw it’s like a whole different generation, everything was very cool. Nine and ten year old kids! It’s ten o’clock, eleven o’clock at night…My generation, children out at night, lurking in the bushes….I would never have the nerve to talk to any strange chick. She’s a really beautiful chick, I’d never have the nerve to hit on her. In a house, somebody introduce, solid. But guys who can like drive past in cars and go hello even, the reason I have never had the nerve is that my mother and my aunt, the way they reacted to guys, the way they told me, everyday they would come home and tell me stories about some guy that was behind the bushes exposing himself. There was a band of dedicated perverts who spent their whole life in trick positions…”Ok jim, whoo-hoo hello lady there, eh bup-bup the bushes there, ok aging seven you’ve got your position by the book, eh the newspaper, you flash, the hat, ok…you-hoo here we are here! Find the schmuck in the bush. Yeah. invidious discrimination. All waiting for them. So I know what everything is. I said “Nema, you’ve got the market cornered! We’ll film these guys, I mean they’re amazing how they…the elevator doors open up “Whoo-hoo here we are!” How do, when they separate my mother and my aunt, one’s running and so and heh, and pocketbooks, and they’re ready, boy. That pocketbook. I figured that after all these years they were really ******* stories, like little guys always telling about, “And I said you big ***** you.” Those little guys will always tell you about they knocked the **** outta this big guy, so it’s my mother and my aunt telling me this nonsense story about a pocketbook ‘and I give a hamayoupow.” Maybe that was a ***** lie, telling me they were good women everyday, right. Missed a guy, and I give em a good pocketbook, a ***** ******* pocketbook at everybody. With a good parrot scream byeahhh!! Eh-heh! I know my aunt never did it to anybody. Ever. I just know it, I know I know I know. She was bald. My aunt was bald, the bald headed lady. Little teeny teeny hair. And wrinkled. And a cameo. A little little lady, she was very neat. And go “krinphkrinphkrinph” like that all the time. Krinphkrinph. There aren’t those kind of people with tics anymore, someone who go, guys really like, drive across country with those guys you’ve really had it. Ticcers, heh-ha. They’re gone all those. I think midgets are gone. And they’re only certain kinds midgets who are real midgets. They’re are no Jewish midgets. A true ****** is, he’s got ***** blond hair, and neat as a pin. Little brown shoes and they’re this big. I wonder if….are Pygmies midgets? Colored midgets. Wonder would a colored cat get offended, listen any relation between Pygmies and midgets? Wouldn’t Governor Wallace ****? Demonstrating, a bunch of Pygmies. Ahhhhgh! Give em salt, give em salt, that’s all, that’s a, yeah…yeah, it’s really…Little teeny midgets, those kind I’m talking about, they’re really patties. And where do they get they’re bread from? Who supports them? They don’t pay any income tax at all. There’s a lot of people ******* our government. So don’t be too nice to them. Cause we’ll drag you up before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Just by encouraging them, by omission. It’s your duty as a citizen to bust their ***, and demand, “Where are you getting your money from?” They hate to be picked up, they hate that. That’s why I hate them, they don’t want to be hugged. Heh-heh, I picked one up, see, and he got mad. “Put me down!” “Ok, but you’re so cute, I pick ya!” They comb their hair with soap. Bela Lugosi’s son is an attorney. Is that weird, he passed the Bar. He must hear those ***** jokes all the time. I loved that, when he got arrested, he was a dope fiend, Bela Lugosi, I almost ****. The Monster. He was the worst advertisement for rehabilitation, he was a dope fiend for seventy years, he cleaned up and dropped dead. The scene is…I was gonna relate him to Christ. Did you read that in the paper? Was it geologists, this is a vague recollection I have of it. That it was the custom at the time, Christ was crucified, for Jewish women to give the people who were about to be crucified a drug that would put them in a death like trance, and that this happened, that Christ’s mother gave him the drug, and that he was…that’s, wow. That’s amazing if that’s true. Ruby gets paid back. How the ***** and the Jew got into Show Business. The ***** had a boss that worked him twenty hours a day. So he wanted to get off a couple of hours, and the guy “Get back to work.” “I don’t feel good today.” “Don’t mind that ******* get back to work, back to work.” He kept coming up with different gimmicks, “my kid’s sick” “back to work.” Couldn’t–kept trying to come up–how can I “Hmmm hmmm ohhh Lord” “Hey! I didn’t know you guys could sing.” “Ohh oh Looord ohohhh Lord.” “Hey, put the *** down, come over here, lemme hear that again.” “Llooord oh my Lloorrdd” “Can he sing? He sings” “Ohhoh Lloorrdd.” “Hey get some wine, this is ok.” They partied, and the weeds went over everybody, right? And sang their *** right off the farm. Now the Jew had a hipper boss. You couldn’t ******* the Egyptian that quick. No. Jew kept working at it, working…”Never mind the horseshit, thank you, we’ve got the pyramids to build and that’s where it’s at. We’re gonna get it up, it takes your generation, next generation, you do a nice workman like job, here.” “Oh thank you.” “Get outta here with that horseshit, now stop it now. Becoming very fine, very fine.” What a gig, right, you know you got another forty years on the job, shewww…what, that’s a, shewww…you still can’t get a piece of straw through there. So the Jew kept working at being charming, working at it, even though he never carried it off, but he got so good at it that was his expertise. “Hey, let’s go watch the Jew be charming. Hey Jew, do that charming bit for us there. We know you’re bullshitting, but you do it so good we get a kick out of it.

So now the Jew has got theater. He’s the actor. He’s the charming actor. Now he has the show business industry knocked up. He has the film industry, he controls it, he’s writing the pictures, making the images that people are the good people and bad people.

Now you never see any Jewish bad guys in movies ever. Ever, ever. And you see a lot of pictures about Christ, a ton of religious pictures. In the most respectful position. And the reason that is, I’m sure, the way of the Jew saying “I’m sorry.” That’s where it’s at. And I wanted to do a film showing, because I’m sure that day in the cell, it’s just like, it’s in the tank, you know like four, five, six people in the cell there, and there was Gestas, Dismas, and okay they’re gonna get crucified, this guy was probably crapped out in the corner, Gestas and uh…”OK, you two.” “What?” “You’re gonna get crucified today.” “Oh, get my file down here, that’s *******.” “Ok, get ready all you guys, you’re all getting crucified in this cell.” “Look, I’m the good thief, what are you bullshitting me for, I’m in here for checks!” “C’mon you get ready, you’re getting crucified.” “Heh-heh, I’m not getting crucified, get my file down here. I’m the good thief, I’m here for petty theft, you understand? Checks. I’m not gonna get crucified now. I don’t know what the hell this guy is doing, but, uh, good luck to him.” OK, now he sees their getting them all ready and they’re moving him. “Hey! What the hell are you kidding with this ****? I’m not getting crucif–hey, mister, do me a favor, there’s a mistake here, they think that I’m with you for some reason here. Christ says, “Don’t worry you’ll be with me.” “C’mon with that, I’m not with you, now tell em, c’mon it’s no joke now, we’re going up the hill here.” He’s praying, and everybody’s praying and pushing him. “Hey c’mon wit—get the Public Defender. C’mon this is ******* now!” Now they’re up on the cross. “Hey mister, please before it’s too late, do me a favor, ok? Tell em?” He says,”Don’t worry, you’re with me…” “Stop saying that, will you? I’m not with you, ok? I mean I’m with you, I like you, but stop telling these ******* that I’m with you. They think I’m with you means that I’m with you, that I conspired with you, I don’t know. Look, don’t be pushy, I like you, ok? I don’t know what you’re talking about, I woke up I’m getting crucified, I’m here for checks, I can’t get crucified. I’m being denied due process, I’m entitled to do my time for checks first. And I don’t wanna get crucified, I can’t go now, ok? I’ll meet you later. C’mon, don’t be pushy now, okay? Okay, mah? they all went. And the guy came back…”Hey? You’re right. I knew you weren’t bullshitting, but heh-heh, I had a lot of faith in you, but you meet a lot of weird people in the joint, you know? You relax, I’ll talk to the press, that’s all. Then he started to wonder about if the Messiah is gonna come back. Moses is hanging it up. They tried to get him back like five times already and he will not come back because he’s embarrassed. Charlton Heston is 6’3, he’s 5’1. And he’s vain. “I can’t I’m a schmuck…” “It’s what ya got up here” “Nah…I ain’t got no clothes anyway, I’ll look weird. And I’ll get my teeth fixed.” “Nah” The Pope is too much. He looks like the Birdman of Alcatraz and Eichman combined, yeah. He waver…”Arrive arrive…” He’s really cute, he’s a little bird, bloobloobloo….I wonder what was goin’ on in his head there. Spellman looks like Shirley Temple. That’s what I got in trouble for in New York, for saying that. Heh-heh…but a Priest told me that! That’s what burns me up. Ha-ha! That’s what really ****** me off. That’s a spynce Shirley Temple. Ha! That’s funny Shirley Temple, that’s good imagery, right? The Post Office. Do you know how much I love the Post Office? I love the Post Man so much. I really feel that’s the only place where the authority and the man are one. That’s the man, they’re incorruptible. I don’t know anybody who knows the Post Man’s name. They’re really snotty man, it’s a…who’d have the audacity, “Come on over have a drink, leave the truck there..” I feel that the Post Man, the people that work for the po–and it’s amazing, no, there’s no, they’re maintaining any order there, no police authority, just cool Post Office. There’s always a Japanese guy behind the registry window and zaszu…Heh, it’s a trick thing to have a treaty, one ***, one szchupbupup, heh! I know, that they’re the true Law, because with the Law, the Law’s not concerned with your purpose, with how noble it is. And the Post Man wouldn’t let a package go three cents light for the Rabbi’s Priest’s ***. He won’t get off it jim. “Are you kidding you want all those people to die for four cents?” “Sorry, knupk” Who would have the audacity to ever to try to cross that line? “Look I know where the package is..” You kidding me with that? “Open the box up right now, it’s mine…” hmm-hm. No one would even say that to him. Even if he had a gun, hmm-hm. There’s always a certain kind of wait, always somebody…if I ever heard of a theft at the Post Office I’d die. “What?” “Oh yeah, they opened up the mail and they’ve been reading letters, and…” “Nyaugch” Like that, Post Office, going through snow and sleet. But they don’t like when dog’s bite them. That’s one thing they won’t put up any ****. The dog bites? That’s it, we’re not delivering anymore mail to you. Dig what ***** the Sheriff in Sacramento county had. His dog bit the Post Man, Post Man said no more mail, he said ******* we’ll give you no more protection. Haha-ha. Schluffa they don’t need it. They got the stamps hidden.

I have a book here I want to show you. Debby is a Nun. It’s another trick, a little Lyndon Johnson trick. This is a Bess magazine. What if he catch me reading this **** all the time? “This is your reading material?” “It certainly is. Photoplay, are you kidding?” “You’ve got guts!” Editorial page, ayda-eda look at the ads, Cutex, World’s Most–oh it’s all lady kinda ads…Adjustable Dress Form…I didn’t finish the story about uh, the Nun story here, lemme find it…there’s no more movie stars. Doris Day. Rock Hudson. Why Elvis locked himself in his bedroom for three days. Patty Duke. The few: There’s too good to be true, that’s the end of the two stories, now the fold out Post Man, heh-heh. Smart. The Study of Art. Hudson. Blew it, there’s not an interesting thing, I can’t lie to you. Try one more time. Okay, let’s see…Dorothy Malone’s First Interview After Her Brush With Death. Frozen. Look at that balcony up there…hope none of you guys are doing your usual chicks in the balcony. Don’t bring any heat on me, you know. Do your pervert stuff in the newsreel theater, but not…no, ya gotta time and a place you know…..heh. Ok, oh ok, I Increased My…With The Fabulous Mark Eden method I increased my bust measurement from a 34-B to a full 36-D i just eight weeks. They always give you time limits right? Just so you know you got something to look forward to. Ding-boom. Barbara Hayes received her Mark Eden Bust Developer and course on April 1, 1965, on which time her bust measurement was 34-B and eight weeks later n May 20, 1965 her bust had increased to a full and lovely *******! A lovely 36-D! That ***** is hunchback. But we kept our promise we didn’t say it was comin’ here somewhere. The Mark Method just builds your back up. This amazing increase–I know that they put–they, the guy that makes the copy for these must know that these are gonna be read in jail because that’s the onlybody who’s got time to read all of that ****…hah. Just forever and ever and ever. This amazing increase in bust size and contour is achieved solely through the faithful use of the Mark Eden bust developer and of course during that time Barbara was adding these firm and lovely inches to her bustling, her weight did not change, her eating and living habits did not change, the only change she made in her life was to spend a few minutes each day practicing the fabulous Mark Eden method. Her bust line developed in the privacy of her own home. As you can see from her after, in quotes, photo, she has certainly achieved a most attractive, full, and shapely bust line for her efforts. She wants real numbers like that, hunch over, elbows pushing forward there, and standing on her head. Uh, Barbara Hayes is one of the many many hundreds of women across the United States who have ordered the Mark Eden Bust Developer and who through its use, are reporting gains–that’s good devious writing. Barbara Hayes is one of the many many hundreds of women across the United States who have ordered the Mark Eden Bust Developer comma and who comma through its use comma are reporting gains of two three four and even more–that one letter we got was tough. She says “You name it, it’s not stopping.” We get letters from women who were flat chested and now feel like real women for the first time because of Mark Eden…Who are you Mark Eden? A **** rascal, you, hah-hah.” Are there any real **** left? **** your silicone. Are they real? I told you they’re real. How will I ever know though? Will you take a lie-detector test that those are your own ****? Yes, I told you. I can’t believe, you can’t….they’re too real to be real. Here’s the thing, this-this, I don’t see any chicks that turn me on anymore, ya know…but think, I ah-h, here’s how I now I’m getting old, cause I really did go through, I says, I haven’t seen any girls that really stimulate me, that look good to me. And you, it’s really corny, but dig what I miss: lipstick and powder. Is that weird? I like em with paint on em, ha-ha! To smell like ladies. Lily, lipstick, and powder. Now if I really get ****, pancake makeup. And a cheap, black, crepe dress that’s low-cut. Make a book up, see, and the book on its face will look like….it’s one of those very erudite How To Make Out, Same-*** Marriage, those kinda nut books, ya know. But if you follow the instruction of this book, you never make out at all. Ever. Really constructed so that’s a zero no-score. Sell it for $45 in plain wrapped brown paper. Now in it says, it says, Instructions: Always go over the house for dinner and meet the folks. And don’t forget when you go over the house and meet the folks, you compliment, and it’s just the dialogue the guy is supposed to use, say, say to the father, you know, “Oh Mr. Johnson, boy your daughter’s got a terrific shape on her, ha. God bless her, boy she gotta a body I’m telling ya. And your wife has got a nice shape on her too.” Then, when you’re out on a date, they like little jokes, it’s, then there’s a certain kinds, maybe not for this generation, my generation, certain kinda things that you just couldn’t say, just verboten, that just cringe, embarrassing things, that no one ever, here’s a kinda….stab your heart joke. Just keep saying’, “Whaddaya got the rag on?” Keep saying that, they like that, they get a kick, they like people who are frank, “Whaddaya got the rag on? Whaddaya got the..” keep saying’ it all night, that’s ah okay. And then, when you’re in the car, if you just ask them in a nice way for it, just say, and be cute about it, use euphemisms, double entendres. Say, “Oh, I wonder if I could get some nookie?” That’s very cute. “Oh boy, I wonder who’d give me some nookie, boy I wonder.” And they just think that’s so cute, and you’ll get it right away. And just say extra things, like “Boy I would, would I appreciate it, hah, that always, boy I’d appreciate that boy. I’d tell everybody what a nice person you were too.” I think that, a lot of marriages went West, ya know they went split up, uh, my generation, ladies didn’t know that guys were different, I mean different…it’s very tough for chicks to realize that although we speak the same language, that yer, you can have babies that’s j-j different ya–your so, it’s like, no guy ever cheated on his wife, ever. But ladies….would get hurt and wanna leave the husband because they thought the husbands cheated and they never did cheat because what cheating means I know. To a lady, it means kissing and hugging and liking somebody. You have to at least like somebody. Guys that doesn’t enter into it, all the time, no. Ladies are one emotion, and guys detach, not consciously detach, but they just do, detach. Like, a lady can’t go through a plate glass window and go to bed with you five seconds later. But guys can have head on collisions with Greyhound busses. In disaster areas. Everybody’s laying dead on the highway, not in the hospital, in the ambulance, guy makes a play for the Nurse. “How could he do a thing in a time like that.” “Well I got *****” “What?” “I got hot.” “How could you be hot when your foot was cut off?” “I don’t know.” “He’s an animal! He got hot with his foot cut off.” “I guess I’m an animal, ess-es-eh…” “What didja get hot at?” “The Nurses uniform..” He’s a *****, that’s all, he’s just an animal, he’s a…. No it’s…guys detach, and has nothing to do with liking, loving. You put guys on a desert island, they’ll do it to mud. Mud. So if you caught your husband with mud, some how you could get over seas there, “Mmuudd!! Don’t talk to me, that’s all….you *******, leave me alone, that’s all. Go with your mud, have fun. You want dinner? Get your mud to make dinner for you” that’s all. That’s-a it’s just that’s you can’t get angry at them, you can’t wanna leave them for that at all, no, it’s hum…You know, and that’s just subjective, in retrospect I really got a kick out of it.

Getting divorced, the only true get even device, because I’m really convinced that no guy ever leaves a chick, you know. When chicks get cold, they really get cold, sshwooo…That’s, it’s over, really, when it’s over with them it’s really over, and guys can’t ever figure that out, they always figure there’s one more time there. And the guy is like, ss-I can’t-ss, well, I boump-boump-boump. Yeah, cause-eh, here’s what I figure it is, you always hear chicks say, ya know, “Oh I wish I could meet a man, someone with some dignity, a guy I can walk all over, you know, can really be a man-a man” but chicks don’t know that, it’s, guys are like dogs. You know you take a dog, you beat the **** out of him pow! ” Keep a “NEUUH-NEUUH-NEUUH”. Pow keep coming back. Ladies are like cats, you yell at a cat once, Siamese cat, shhhht their gone. So that kinda quality that ladies are looking for, you really want a guy to act like a lady. Cause those are lady like traits, that kinda ***** and they don’t need anything. I forgot what the **** I was talking about…heh. I blew it completely. Where was I? I went up to za-zuh…hum…hah. Those television shows, really. Once in a while if I lose it you know and then try to ******* and do this a while but then if it’s really gone it’s gone, so….Ya see, that’s where, the problem of being a performer, and a Judge can get away with that ****, ya know. “Hmmmmmnnn”, you know just completely dunked out, ya know. “That’s, I’ll take that under consideration” yeah, yeah. Let’s see I was here….oh, oh yeah I got it, good. I won’t lose it again but I’m trying to think where the thread of it was…oh yeah, OK. The Get Even. So the only Get Even you can have with a chick, cause they leave you, are the kids. That’s the only Get Even, that’s the sweet revenge: Get the kids. But you can’t be that obvious with it, you know, just get the kids because I want to get even with you, you ******* you. So the, all the struction, the foundation is “I went over there the kids wet” heh. Schmuck, then all of a sudden “The kids, I’m not gonna, the kid’s not gonna live like that, every time I go over the kid’s wet, the kid’s wet. Everytime, the kid she don’t take care of the kid, the kid’s wet, and uh that’s it. I’m taking that kid away from her because the kid’s wet. She’s having guys over there. “You saw any guys?” “No, but, when the kid’s are wet, that’s it. Take the kid, I got custody of my kids now, I love my kids. You’re not gonna be with that ***** anymore, blah-blah-blah…” “Where are the kids?” “With my grandparents.” Very good, uhm-hmm-hm….Now it’s, usually what happens is break up time, just like the first…if you’re gonna break up with your old lady, and ya live in a small town, make sure you don’t break up at three o’clock in the morning cause your *******, there’s nothing to do. You sit in the car all night, park somewhere. Yeah. So make, at least, ya know, make it about nine in the morning so you can go to the five and ten and ******* around and, worry them a little and come back at seven at night, ya know….”Oh, yeah never mind….I’m getting an apartment, that’s all, that’s eh..” Yeah because if you, eh, a bad break up then it’s like a long time break up. If you’re married seven years then you gotta kick for two. Oh yeah. I think there must be a mitzvah time. i think if you’re married fifteen-eighteen years, you get divorced, then you must lose your mind. Yeah they get senile, then they people, they get whacked out. There’s a certain critical area they’re married about seven-eight years where you really throw up for a couple of years. No really just “ORGHJK-YKKGGHH”, you know. And, the weird, if you broke up and you go anyplace alone, there’s always mamzers who ask you about you’re wife. “Where’s your old lady?” and I said, Chinese restaurants, “Where’s Momo? How come you don’t bring Momo in here anymore? Such a beautiful girl, where’s Momo?” “Look, I’m divorced.” “Oh, you better off. You don’t need her.” Where’s Momo…Now if you, go back together, the danger time, and here’s back to the religion again. There’s only one person you’re supposed to confess to. They are. Not anybody else. Priests, solid. But not husbands. They have no authority vested in them to hear any truth. So don’t listen to any of their ****, ya know, because what happens, when this–go back together, guy calls up, “Hello Vera, the only reason I called you, you left some of your crap over here. I don’t know a handkerchief, a gloves. Listen I wanna come over, we’ll shoot the ****, let’s see. Pay the tax bill.” Alright, back together, maybe kissing time, hugging time, in bed time. After bed time. “Hey Vera, uh, when we were broken up, didja make it with a lot of guys? Don’t be silly, said I don’t mind you can make it with anybody, don’t ******* me….what the hell, it’s good for the goose, good for the gander. We were legally separated, I made it with a lotta lotta chicks, you’re entitled to make it with a lot of guys. I’d just like to know, for the hell of it, didja make it with a lot of guys? Howmanynanac’mon don’t ******* me, I’m not gonna hit you now, I wanna know! I’m not gonna get mad, just for the hell of it, who did you make it with?” Don’t tell him, don’t cop out. Never cop out, if they got pictures deny it. Flat out. Just tell ’em it was some *** hair dresser, that’s all…thatsezya. Because if you ever do cop out, oh yeah, shih-shooo! “C’mon I’m not gonna get mad, tell me, I’d just like to know for the hell of it.” See, that’s what chicks don’t know about guys, that they…it’s that entrapment. Maybe it’s because their father’s did that to them. “Just tell me, who? Him? Pfff…I don’t give a **** but, but this is….that’s a shocker, that’s heh…heh, that’s the only thing is that it shocks me, I’m not mad but it, sfyeh what a kick in the *** that is, like…how the hell could you…you know what, you know why it shocks me cause you told me that you didn’t like him, you told me you didn’t want him over to the house, and ya go…how could you make it with him? That fat, disgusting piece of–you **** pow. There’s a Peace Bond, schlepping away time, ah yes, with the Jewish mother in the middle with the teeth flying out vah-vah-vah!! The chenille robe, and uh…Yeah, that’s a…ha-ha. Wouldn’t this be, always wondered if ya get married again, the only problem with ever getting married again, if ya go, you have to go to some country where pfshhh…you have to marry somebody who speaks a different language and doesn’t speak any other language. Cause just in case, no but you’d always be afraid cause when your with the second old lady then you might say something in bed, and your wife would jump up behind the bed, “You aaa—-you said” oh god, “how could you say that to her when you said it to me?” “I just ******* her, I don’t love her…I just said that cause I knew you were behind the bed, that’s all.” Uh-huh…Jewish mothers, there are none that’s the expose. Oh another expose, I really want to confess to you one thing you never knew about me and….I have a pen name. Ralph Gleason. I’m Ralph Gleason. And I always wanted to uh, and you’re taking it good, I always thought you’d get ******* at me for that. In fact I wrote the column for years and just drifted into this and decided I’d like to do a little comedy on the side and uh, you liked me and I thought I was doing good, so what the hell a few write ups don’t hurt anybody. And uh…you’re taking it good, that’s lovely. I want you to know that, another thing too that I’ve never been in jail, never been arrested, that’s all borshit. What it is see, I got a publicity agent that’s dynamite, and we have nine phony cops that work for Pinkerton, and we go from town to town the same *******, ya know. I get busted, I write the column the next day, and that’s where it’s at…heh. A few words now about Alaska and their stupidness…and ind-a…Alaska, don’t know if you know it or not, there are people up there that we’ve given a lot of money to and try to help them. Given a lotta lotta money to Alaska, to create some kind of image, we gave them statehood and they’re morons. They got one image, after all these years, some schmuck in front of a shack holding a fish knock. That’s all they’ve come up with, and some other nonsense fantasy that hookers get two-thousand dollars a minute for talking to people. If you probably go up there there’s ten-million stranded ****** waiting to talk to somebody. “What’s the deal I thought there was supposed to be some talking, or…we just got *******, right, there’s nobody? Just hookers up here….and Admiral Byrd. Heh-heh, he don’t go for a nickel. Now here’s a thought, I-I-I’ve….this is hearsay. Somebody told me–see they were using–the report was monkey glands on people, so you know, rejuvenate them, they live longer. Ok, now somebody told me they came back from Mexico, that they’re using human glands. “So-oh yeah? Well where do they get them?” “Has to be from live people.” Well people, there was–dying, and uh…it’s very expensive. So that’s what I said, what does it costs about a thousand dollars ya now…so I got hip, a lot of people are dying a lilschip-schzzch that’s uh, oh yeah, the hospitals a lil-bop-plah-bup, yuh, he’s dead, he’s almost dead, the hell is-uzza….Sure you’re gonna see is the more demand, the first place the state insane asylums are gonna be emptied out quick psshhhh! Yeah, that’s the first thing, all the nuthouses emptied out. All died very quickly, oh yeah, definitely. Because, all we have to do…see our moral concept is what’s–what, it’s–what’s accepted, what we will agree upon, that’s what the moral concept is. We–if we agree, that…killing a few will save the biggest, then we’ll agree on it. Like that’s–that’s was the objection that Catholicism had for many years, that contraception is ******. It doesn’t matter the degree of the ******, but-but since we all agreed on it now, contraception–*******, it’s cool. So it’s just the degree. So..if it comes right down to it, if we wanna live a little longer, it won’t-it won’t be accepted, just the sophisticated class, the gentry will cook with it first, ya know. Yeah, “Listen, I know a place and it’s ya now…” Yeah, and as soon as–the first time the government control–then they’ll have the farms. Yeah, raising people to, uh, to live. It’s a good liver, good heart, yeah. You’ll accept it, yeah, you’ll see. When it comes right down to the go-you go bye-bye, “These people don’t know anything, they’re raised for that purpose.” “Yeah, ya sure?” “I’m telling you…they like that.” Heh-ha! OK. “I wanna paper saying that he gave it up…oh and I can’t take the guys liver and his heart and his *****, all that stuff?” “Sure, are you kidding, he’s better off without it. He gets it the next time, don’t you know that? Nine thousand years I’ve been living now, it’s a…yeah, it’s a…schhhwoo….”