Should we invite the neighbors over for dinner?
Their politics so different from ours.
All the more reason. Combat anomie!
He's worried the town's losing population
but opposes immigration. I like immigrants
but hate passing people on my morning walk.

The whole mountainous western region of the state
is losing population at a rate of 1% per annum.
The young move out, the old stay put but
young artists priced out of big cities move in
looking for affordable studio space. How low
can the population go as long as rents stay low?

We did agree about the fire department expansion
being premature (him) or unnecessary (me).
He argued we should renovate the high school first
the roof is caving in and walls crumbling.
But you can teach under a spreading chestnut tree
or baobab and science needs the world for a laboratory.

I teach at the old 2nd St. jail in Pittsfield
a town that doesn't know if it's coming up or going down.
A few shootings last month, no deaths.
They're holding their breath but also trying to attract life
science businesses to the industrial park. The local bank's
expanding, buying smaller banks in neighboring civilizations.

Eventually our fire department got the vote they wanted,
just called another meeting and packed the auditorium.
The final winning argument was we can do the school,
the fire house and the police station all at once.
Don't accept defeat, limitations. Defeat anomie!
Anomie means lawlessness and purposeless in Greek

so that's not exactly what we're trying to defeat.
It's the mismatch between our aspirations and resources,
no, the dissonance between our tribe and nation,
the individual as ****** animal and intellectual,
the farmer and the banker, the loved one and the litter,
whatever happens to you after you die and belief in reincarnation.

For me, it always boils down to mortality
every conversation, which is why no one comes to dinner.
Whether the fire department buys an exorbitant parcel
at the expense of a future school renovation
in a town slightly losing population but still viable
with a college, bank, artists and a few working farms

is everything and nothing, as Borges says.
Deutsch says death ought to be curable.
The new high school or fire station, conditions like anomie
v. democracy, new life forms, self-conscious species
from the laboratory or the biome. How de body?
Today ok. Tomorrow I don't know. Potential

energy, lover, killer, anomie. Karl Popper
had such faith in the rational whereas Niebuhr
acknowledged man's ego is uncontrollable except
by force. Conflict is inevitable. But at dinner
we agree it doesn't always have to be violent or terminal.
We can do the fire department, police station, the school and anomie.

Barely Walks.
And does not sleep

day squinting
night in trance;

Moonblinked


& Anomie doesn’t speak 
What she thinks
Until she drink
Apart; life projector spreads in sheets




Anomie not loveable
so off she goes
with dogs in sheets
that bark and bones

& in the padded womb
zaps milky-Light
synthetic-filtered-bright
A spotlight for the bees
Getting Drunk between her Knees

Confusion explodes confetti
disorientation takes the plow
*** the only how
An ******; or a fake hopeless meow
She lives in mental corners
watching window borders
They push in; she falls out

Brand new day
Teeth on pillows crack
Anomie's mind
has to react
She's fast to split-
Spit out a rebuttal
method witty-tactix kit

No one tells her time to go
But when Bee's belly full
She-goes - Self-loathes
Morning Glories still shriveled in their pods
They own the glory of her story and her song

Hiding in sarcastic retreat for clean feet
under ***** water bathes
wipes off the meat

Not your friend
She's trouble to love
The dirtiest dove

Anomie is naked and she's hated
Take away the curtain glove
eye slit under sunlit
She recovers

Don't judge
it's all her love
but you ****** Anomie anyways
just because
The Thrill

What luxury to get mad
about last night's basketball loss
and watch the full moon descending
at the speed the earth turns.

Things could get worse
personally and for the community.
Bombings, killings, anomie
boiling frogs and witches cursing.

The changing climate,
typhoons in the Philippines,
volcanoes and tsunamis, WWII which I missed,
Thanksgiving nor'easter, Easter twister.

What abundance to fast or feast,
your choice, stay inside by the stove
or go outside, climb the mountainside.
Live in a city or small town.

So I raged at the coaches
for their lazy zone defense
like an alien in the bleachers
unable to affect the outcome.

When my sons came home
I yelled at them too. What opulence
to be angry about nothing of consequence
neither stopped by the cops nor slipped on the ice.

So this is what they call anomie?
A grayness,
A blank,
All things devoid of beauty?
When the eternal arms,
Have left me to my own devices,
To toil in deaden land
To paint futile pictures?
I’m wading through waves, through fires
Surely to send a man to delirium,
And as though it never came to pass
I sip unsweetened tea.
What rips men apart,
What fetters pull him in twain,
Simply move me with sway
And don’t move me at all.
Tears rush like the flume
Admonishments thrown
And I can only sigh in frustration
At all this petty emotion.
For man fills his stage with characters,
And bleeds ink all within his works
Aspiring to his own audience, the god he is,
I simply abuse this alchemy
To bide my time till death.
Call meaning what you will,
Fill your life with love,
Fill your life with gold,
with God,
with spite,
with studies,
with yourself.
I cannot,
I do not,
I know not these simple pleasures
Perpetually I am not full,
For there exists where faith should be
A deep impartial hole
If I could be normal,
If I could be normal,
If I could love,
If I could believe,
I’d turn away from it,
And choose to stare uselessly into my faithless hole,
All things beat on, as they be,
And this conviction, be it ever so keen,
That existence and living are useless things,
I’d still see what believers still see
That being the world as beauty,
I’d only see it with a more grayish hue
(Without the pretension to know what is true!)
And see the sense it lacks to see
And commit myself to this anomie.

the disease of despair
gambling
suicide
hate
sadism

symptoms, not causes
of the brown blood
drained from swines'
pockets

gather up your coat
and your hat
for the primetime
event

letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading

this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges

Beautiful summer day. You know you're gonna die
that's why you know no joy.
Obsessed with self, there is no answer
unless religion, tv, stories, sports matter.
So what if nothing rhymes and I don't
bring my life into an expressible state
or fight purposelessness, anomie. No one writes.
Running the gauntlet alone. A good day to die, the Apaches say.

For men like us dying's easy, it's living that's hard.
And since dying's much like living, that's hard too.
There's some contentment in letting community decide
your place in it. We're not talking to you.
Really, it's a perfect day. Every leaf is out
that's coming out. The grass is high
and unidentified yet another year. Being knowledgeable
is the best defense against your insignificance.

Can't stop the quince from blossoming
or my sons from smoking, speeding.
The best that can be done or said's a blessing.
Less tv, less guessing
about the effects of your anger unless
you want to be an angry man forever.
Coming from the funeral with friends,
talking on the telephone. OK about being alone.

Alive, almost sure of it. Whether I'm a visitor
to my life or the actual owner.
Mature poets steal, most are masturbators.
This house could use a good cleaning,
dusting for ghosts. I should subscribe
to the local newspaper, do my job well,
do less until one thing's done well.
What would that be? Old, and yet so young.

There are a million poets, I'm poet #500K.
Plenty of mysteries, infinite philosophies,
prayers, laws and unwritten rules.
That's why we go to school, life's complicated.
All I do not know: ATP, probabilities,
the glorious revolution, meiosis and mitosis
and all I'll never see, the bottom of the ocean,
the palm at the end of the mind, a wolverine.

There are certain indicators, undeniable,
inexorable. Forget-me-not, is that all I want?
To get lucky, you gotta be careful first.
To be great, you gotta be willing to sound BAD.
Although we cannot make the sun stand still
yet will we make him run. Brave revelers.
Signed engagement letter attached.
Attachment to self and to things to do.

Barbiturate is one of the few drugs capable of killing you painlessly, so of course the state has banned it. Instead we get paracetamol, a ****** over-the-counter painkiller that leaves you in pain for up to five days while your liver and kidneys shut down. Suicide prevention is a ******* joke. Secular appropriations of Christian values that assume life is worthwhile, whether you desire it or not. It’s long been known that rates of suicide rose dramatically with the birth of modernity—techno-scientific paradise for the middle-class which stresses efficiency over existence. New forms of automation, the human body disciplined into repetitious acts, the partitioning of workspaces so that no single worker could operate the whole—so that any worker could be fired and replaced with the minimum amount of training necessary for capital to continue circulating. The body is individualised, scrutinised, and punished by rich kids playing panopticon, so that any mass agitation is coerced into silence through the threat of destitution.

Slitting your wrists barely succeeds and more likely than not leaves you with tendon and muscle damage. Catalytic converters in cars now convert carbon monoxide into harmless CO2 and H2O. Drowning is one of the most painful ways to die. You cannot escape. The state places helpline numbers around suicide spots to treat life after the fact, rather than at the source of suffering. Vocal band-aids, ****** ******* aphorisms that seek to revert you back into a happy state-serving commodity. Things will get better. Life is worth living. Think positive. Alienation is omnipresent. Neoliberal discourse requires you to be subservient to the greater system of capital and the easiest way towards this is the instilment of comfort, of pleasant nullity, the circumscription of emotional capacity and reflectivity. Suicidal thoughts are abnormal, because life is worth living. Eat your packaged food item and watch Netflix.

For a drop into water to be fatal, it has to be 250 feet. Try to aim for your head to maximise brain injury. The most prominent suicide spot around here has a drop of 100 feet. They cordoned it off anyway. Your life doesn’t belong to you. The first time I tried to suicide my mother asked ‘why would you do that?’ as if it was the dumbest thing in the world. The second time, the doctor looked at me in an exasperated manner and prescribed me lots of drugs. Geettt bettterrrr. Nobody cares about you, they simply want you to return to normal. Normality as in serving your parents, serving your friends, serving the state, and serving the market. Normality as in not questioning social norms and institutions. Normality as in get a stable job (i.e. compete against other workers in an exploitative, undemocratic system that values and inculcates self-serving desires), get married (preferably to someone of the opposite *** who is middle-class and imbibes European culture), get pregnant/get someone pregnant (but only once or twice, because anyone who has more children than that is backwards), invest in housing (those students and lower-class families need to learn how the world works; really, it’s a benefit to take their money), watch sports (to instil national pride in your children; no son, we didn’t colonise the Pacific Islands, keep watching the man with the wooden stick hit *****), eat out every week (preferably exotic restaurants), go see the world (preferably exotic locations, so you can be served by exotic people, take in exotic sights, then leave without considering where any of your money has gone to, whether any of it has reached the slums, whether the beach you lay on is accessible to the people living there, or whether it has been privatised by the tourist firm so that only rich tourists like yourself can lie on it), join a club (those capitalists were innocent, it was the indigenous folk that were making a ruckus over the new golf course; it’s not like we’ve been colonising their land and culture for the past three centuries), donate to charity (but never any charity desiring systemic change; that’s crazy), consume, always consume (keeps the economy going; why question the desire for infinite growth in a world with limited land, resources and markets?), replace your phone every year (those poor workers in Asia need our help), repeat to the point of nausea.

The most successful method to suicide is a shotgun to the head; high calibre, slug rounds. Of course, with all these methods, the chance of failing may leave you disfigured, paralysed, mentally disabled or physically crippled (spinal damage, broken limbs, failed organs), with no guarantee that your family, or even your state, will allow for euthanasia. After all, the popular discourse paints suicide as selfish—an irony, considering liberalism places the self first and society second. It is viewed as sinful regardless of context—deontologically detached from anomie, alienation, material deprivation, social pressures, psychological affectations, any cause or structure. Life is worth living. This ignores that the subject is situated in existence. The subject moves through existence to live. Life, then, is the totality of the subject’s interactions. It cannot be universalised into a single state or judgement that merges all subjectivities into a catch-all worthiness. Worth is dependent of the subject.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe I just want everyone to **** themselves, because the world is ****** and the majority of people are ******* it worse. Most people think being nice makes them good. They turn blind to the systems of oppression they partake in. A while ago my mother was asking if I’d heard about the mass suicides happening at Foxconn, the largest electronics manufacturer in the world. This year she showed me her new iPhone. I don’t ******* understand. I don’t understand how people can be outraged at humanity abuses, yet do ******* nothing to help or change their ways. Yes, market solutions are ******* ****, but these commodities are still coming from somewhere, and while capitalism is in place, our money is still flowing back. I don’t understand how people can be concerned about ecological issues, then pour dishwashing liquid down the sink every night, dissolving the gills, eyes, and organs of fish in rivers and oceans. I don’t understand a ******* thing. I feel physically sick most days. I can barely function outside of university, because engaging with real people, in real systems, just reminds me of how careless, worthless, and disgusting they are. When I first turned vegan, my dad simply said plants are living too. Well no ******* **** dad, why didn’t you ask me my reason for turning vegan, rather than simply repeating the dumb **** everyone else says? If you were stuck on a desert island. Well I’m ******* not. I’m stuck on this **** world filled with nice people who don’t give a **** about anything. I’m stuck every week walking the same roads, to the same university, where I become more and more distanced from reality through abstract philosophical theories that no one else cares about. I’m stuck walking through the supermarket every week, to purchase overpriced commodities produced by transnational corporations I don’t support, but nonetheless have to buy to survive. What alternatives I buy are mocked because it's so funny being ethical in our day and age. Because it’s so much more normal eating pies, and drinking beer, and treating women like objects, and affirming nationalistic sentiments of white supremacy, and making fun of ethnic minorities while they’re incarcerated, and beaten, and killed. All lives matter, the liberal conservatives cry out, while doing ******* nothing to help any cause. I don’t understand this world, and I have no desire to be in it if this is all there is.

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

Descending kind of flight
Of thought
Associated free
Comprehending blind of sight
We sought
Delay of anomie
Pretending find the right
Forgot that
Which we can't agree
Defending lined the fight
That bought
Every hidden fee

ESSAYS ON
LEADERSHIP FRONTIERS OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
By
Alexander   k   Opicho




Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents                                                                                                                Page
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE 4
THE CURRENT EAST AFRICA IS NOT A LITERARY DESERT 27
AFRICAN WRITERS HAVE CULTURAL RIGHTS TO FORMULATE AND CREATE ENGLISH WORDS 31
LIKE PUSHKIN, AFRICAN WRITERS MUST CREATE THEIR OWN PROFFESSION OF LITERATURE 35
THERE IS POWER IN THE NAME ‘ALEXANDER’ 40
KENYAN COURTS AND PARLIAMENT ARE BETRAYERS OF HUMANE GOVERNANCE 47
AFRO-CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO RADICAL LITERATURE IS GOOD AND SWAGGERISH 50
YUNUS’S SOCIAL BANKING IS A GOOD BENCHCMARK FOR THIRD WORLD ENTREPRENEURS 54
HEROISM IS NOT GREATNESS BUT HUMILITY IN SERVICE TO HUMANITY 57
KENYAN STUDENTS; YOUR MOBILE INTERNET CULTURE IS ANTI- ACADEMICS 61
WHAT IS THE MAGIC IN THE WORD ‘DRINKARD’ OF AMOS TUTUOLA 63
SOCIETIES IN AFRICA HAVE TO MENTOR BUT NOT CONDEMN THE LIKES OF JULIUS MALEMA 66
AMERICA WILL NOT WIN THE WAR ON GLOBAL TERRORISM 69
AFRICA CAN OVERCOME A MENACE OF **** IN EVERY 30 MINUTES 71
COMPARATIVE ROLES OF AFRICAN-BRAZILIAN LITERATURE IN THE POLITICS OF RACIAL AND GENDER DEMOCRACY 76
NEO-COLONIALISM IS NOT THE MAIN VICE TO THE GAMBIAN POLITICS 85
RELATIVE MEDIA OBJECTIVITY IS ACHIEVEABLE IN AFRICA AGAINST POWER CULTURE AND TYRANNIES OF TASTE 89
READING CULTURE IS GOOD FOR BOTH THE POOR AND THE RICH 96
VIOLENT DEATH IS THE BANE OF AFRICAN WRITERS AND ARTISTS 100
AFRICAN WRITTERS AND ARTISTS MUST ASPIRE BEYOND A NOBEL PRIZE 104
WHAT ARE CULTURAL RIGHTS OF AFRICAN ENGLISH SPEAKERS? 109
WHY IMPRISONMENT OF WRITERS CONTRIBUTED MOST TO AFRICAN LITERATURE 113
DORIS LESSING: A FEMINIST, POET, NOVELIST, WHITE-AFRICANIST AND NOBELITE UN-TIMELY PASSES ON 121
Amilcar Cabral: Beacon of revolutionary literature and social democracy 127
How the State of Israel is brutally dealing with African refugees 131
Historical glimpses of language dilemma in Afro-Arabic literature 146
THIS YEAR 2013; IS THE YEAR OF GREAT DEATHS 153
AFRICAN LITERATURE WITHOUT POETRY IS LIKE LOVE WITHOUT VAGINAL *** 156



















PROLOGOMENA
BARRACK OBAMA READS MOBY ****
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
American president is reading Moby ****
Ja-kogello is reading Moby ****
Ja-siaya is reading Moby ****
Ja-merica is reading Moby ****
Jadello is reading Moby ****
Ja-buonji is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his father
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his mother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death to his brother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took the grannies
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman  
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Baba Michelle is reading Moby ****
Baba Sasha is reading Moby ****
Baba Malia is reading Moby ****
Baba nya-dhin is reading Moby ****
Sarah’s sire is reading Moby ****
Ja-sharia is reading Moby ****
The ****** is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes audacity of hope
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes dreams of fathers
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes yes we can
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes American dream
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you readings?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because American president is like whale hunting
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Obama is a money making animal
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Osama is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Gaddaffi is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because coming to Kenya is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Guantanamo prison is a bay of whales
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Snowden is a Russian whale
Because launching drones is whale riding
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading, Moby ****?














CHAPTER ONE
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE

I am writing this article from Kenya on this day of 23 September 2013 when the Al shabab, an Arabo-Islamic arm of the global terrorist group the Al gaeda have lynched siege on the shopping mall in Nairobi known as the West Gate where an average of forty people have been killed and a hundreds are held hostage. The media is full of horrendous and terrifying images. They have made me to hate this day. I hate terrorism, I hate American foreign policy on Arabs, I hate philosophy behind formation of the state of Israel and I equally hate religious fundamentalism. Also on this date, all the media and public talks in Kenya are full of intellectual and literary tearing of one Kenyan by another plus a retort in the equal measure as a result of the ripples in the African literature pool whose epicenter is the Professor Taban Lo Liyong .He is an epicenter because he had initially decried literary mediocrity among the African scholars and University professors, Wherein under the same juncture he also quipped that Kenya’s doyen of literature Ngugi wa Thiong’o never deserved a Nobel prize. Liyong’s stand has provoked intellectual reasons and offalities to fly like fireworks in the East African literary atmosphere among which the most glittering is Chris Wanjala’s contrasting position that; who made Liyong the prefect and ombudsman of African literature? This calls for answers. Both good answers and controversial responses. Digging deeper into the flesh of literature as often displayed by Lo Liyong.
Liyong is not a fresher in the realm of literary witticism. He is a seasoned hand .Especially when contributions of Liyong to east African literary journal during his student days in the fifties of the last century during which he declared east Africa a literary desert. In addition to his fantastic titles; Another ****** Dead and The Un-even Rips of Frantz Fanon, Professor Taban Lo Liyong also humorously called Amos Tutuola the son of Zinjathropus, what a farcical literary joke? I also want to appreciate this Liyong’s artfulness of language in this capacity and identify him in a literary sense as Taban Matiyong Lo   Liyong the son of Eshu. He is an ideological and literature descended of the great West African Eshu. Eshu the god of trouble which was dramatized by Obutunde Ijimere in the imprisonment of Obadala and also recounted by Achebe in the classical essays; Morning Yet of Creation Day. I call him Eshu because of his intellectual and literary ability to trigger the East and West Africans into active altercation of literary, cultural and political exchanges every other time he visits these regions. Whether in Lagos, Accra or Nairobi.
Now, in relation to Ngugi and intellectual quality of Kenyan University literature professors was Liyong right or wrong?  Does Liyong’s stand-point on Ngugi’s incompetence for Nobel recognition and mediocrity in literary scholarship among Kenyan Universities hold water. Are Liyong’s accusations of East Africa in these perspectives factually watertight and devoid of a fallacy of self-aggrandizement to African literary prefecture as Professor Chris Wanjala laments. Active literary involvement by anyone would obviously uncover that ;It is not Liyong Alone who has this intellectual bent towards East Africa, any literary common sense can easily ask a question that; Does Ngugi’s literary work really deserve or merit for Nobel recognition or not ? The answers are both yes and no. There are very many of those in Kenya who will readily cow from the debate to say yes. Like especially the community of alumni of the University of Nairobi who were Ngugi’s students in the department of English in which Ngugi was a Faculty during the mid of the last century. Also the general Kenyan masses who have been conditioned by warped political culture which always and obviously confine the Kenyan poor into a cocoonery of chauvinistic thought that Ngugi should or must win because he is one of us or Obama must win because he is one of us or Kemboi must win because he is the son of the Kenyan soil. These must also be the emotional tid-bits upon which the Kenyan Media has been based to be catapulted into Publicity feat that Ngugi will win the Nobel Prize without reporting to the same Kenyan populace the actual truths about other likely winners in the quarters from the overseas. I am in that Kenyan school thought comprising of those who genuinely argue that Ngugi’s literary work does not befit, nor merit, nor deserve recognition of Nobel Prize for literature. This position is eked on global status of the Nobel Prize in relation to Ngugi’s Kikuyu literary and writing philosophy. It is a universal truth that any and all prizes are awarded on the basis of Particular efforts displayed with peculiarity. Nobel Prize for literature is similarly awarded in recognition of unique literary effort displayed by the winner. It is not an exception when it comes to the question of formidability in a particular effort. However, the most basic literary virtue to be displayed as an overture of the writer is conversion of theory into practice. This was called by Karl Marx, Hegel, Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, especially in Freire’s  pedagogy of the oppressed as praxis.History of literature and politics in their respective homogenous and comparative capacities has it that ;There has been eminent level of praxis by previous Nobelites.Right away from Rabitranathe Tagore to Wole Soyinka, From Dorriss Lessing to Wangari Mathai.Similar to JM Coatze ,Gao Tziaping,Alexander Vasleyvitch Solzhenystisn and Baraka Obama.This ideological stand of praxis is the one that made Alfred Nobel himself to to stick to his gun of intellectual  values and deny Leo Tolstoy the prize in 1907 because there was no clear connection between rudimentary Tolstoy in the nihilism and Feasible Tolstoy in the possible manner  of the times .In a similar stretch Ngugi wa Thiongo’s literary works and his ideological choices are full of ideological theory but devoid of ideological praxis. Evidence for justification in relation to this position is found back in the 70’s and 80’s of the last century, When Ngugi was an active communist theoretician of Kenya. His stature as a Kenyan communist ideologue could only get a parallel in the likes of Leon Trotsky and Gramsci. This ideological stature was displayed in Ngugi’s adoration of the North Korean communism under the auspice of the Korean leader Kim Yun Sung. This is so bare when you read Ngugi’s writers in politics, a communist pamphlet he published with the African red family. By that time this pamphlet was treated equally as Mao tse Tung’s collected works by the Kenya government which means that they were both illegal publications and if in any case you were found with them you would obviously serve nine months in prison. And of course when the late Brigadier Augustine Odongo was found with them he was jailed for nine months at Kodhiak maximum prison in Kisumu ,Kenya .O.K, the story of Odongo is preserved for another day. But remember that, this was Ngugi only at his rudimentary stage. But when Ngugi got an opportunity to get an ideological asylum, he did not go to Russia, nor East Germany, Nor Tanzania, nor China but instead he went to the USA , a country whose ideological civilization is in sharp contradiction with communism; a religion which Ngugi proffessess.In relation to this choices of Ngugi one can easily share with me these reflections; is one intellectually  honest if he argues that he is a socialist revolutionary when his or her employer is an American institution like the university of California in Irvine ?
Ngugi was not the only endangered communist ideologue of the time. There were also several others. Both in Kenya and without Kenya. They were the likes of; Raila Odinga, George Moset Anyona, ***** Mutunga and very many others from Kenya. But in Africa some to be mentioned were Walter Rodney, Yoweri Museven,Isa Shivji,Jacob Tzuma ,Robert Mugabe and others. The difference between Ngugi and all of these socialist contemporaries of him is that; Ngugi went to America and began accumulating private property just like any other capitalist. But these others remained in Africa both in freedom and detention to ensure that powers of political darkness which had bedeviled Africa during the last century must go. And indeed the powers somehow went. Raila has  been in Kenya most of the times,Anyona died in Kenya while in the struggle for second liberation of Kenyan people from the devilish fangs of Moi’s dark reign of terror and tyrany.Walter Rodney worked in Tanzania at Dare salaam University where he wrote his land mark book; How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Later on he went back to his country of birth in Africa, Guyana where he was assassinated while in the revolutionary struggle for political good of the Guyanese people. Yoweri Museven practically implemented socialism by fighting politics of sham and nonsense out of Uganda of which as per today Uganda is somehow admirable. Isa Shivji has ever remained in Dare salaam University, inspite of poverty. He is now the chair of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere school of Pan African studies. Jacob Tsuma and Robert Mugabe they are current presidents of South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. The gist of this reference to African socialist revolutionaries as contemporaries to Ngugi wa Thiong’o is that a socialist revolutionary must and should not run away from the oppressor in to a zone of comfort. But instead must remain and relentlessly fight, just like in the words of Fidel Castro; fight and die in the battle field as long as it is a struggle against the enemy of the revolution. This view by Castro is pertinent as it’s a Revolutionary praxis which actually is redolent of practice of an ideology that has to be held for ever above ideological cosmentics.Ngugi scores badly on this. So if the Nobel academy looks at Ngugi in terms of defending human rights then it must be reminded that Ngugi have no marks on the same because he only ran away from the practical struggle. Anyway, Politics and ideology has its own fate. But let us now come back to literature. Ngugi and his books. As at  this time of writing this essay  Ngugi has published the following works; Weep not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Black Hermit, Petals of Blood, Devils on the Cross,Matigari,Homecoming,Decolonizing the Mind, Writers in Politics, Ngugi Detained, Pen Points and Gun Points, Wizard of the Crow,Globalectics,Remeembering Africa, Dreams in Times of War and I Will Marry When I Want as well as the Trial of Dedan Kimathi which he wrote along with Micere Githae Mugo.Out of this list the only works with literary depth that call for intellectualized attention are ;A Grain of wheat, Wizard of the crow and Globalectics. The Grain of wheat is simply a post colonial reflection of Kenyan politics. Its themes, plot, lessons and entire synechedoche is also found in Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomie as well as Achebe’s Anthills of the savannah. My argument dove-tails with those of Liyong’s stand that rewarding Ngugi’s Grain of wheat and forgetting Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and A man of the people would be a literary ceremony devoid of literary justice. Wizard of the Crow is indeed a magnum opus. I am ready to call it Ngugi’s oeuv

Betrayal and heartache are the resultant of the most sorrowful of circumstances
It comes from losing yourself in the one you love the most
And losing them as a result of being a complete fool
This duo has a way of eating at the soul
It sneaks up in the most beautiful of disguises
It uses you for your love and your generosity
Planting itself in the thing that attracts you most
It makes you need it to survive
Takes all advantage of you and ***** you dry
Leaving you for dead without a way to sleep, breathe, or function
You've become a soulless body
And a heartless being
A dark feeling of anomie
Depressed and meaningless

In nature, as in civilised homes, there is evidence of conformity
      That only significant study would make apparent,
      but his studies were suspicious and neighbours would talk

The nose is bleeding and his pretty song is skipping
on the jukebox by the bathroom door
Anhedonia now is constant, the pathos inherent
As their mother went missing years ago
While they read Proust by the window,
and the day was drawing closed
Their father was sick with Absinthe shakes
whilst little duck starved in the pond behind the house

On disagreeable days,
profound introspection
becomes not more than
subversive ******-babble
and the words he speaks
are dust on the tongue
a bother and little more

Purported to be perpetually depressed, his cool demeanor left an impression
on his sister, as she would gaze upwards at his face, displaying world-weariness
So Weltschmerz they called him and his cool was palpable
but only her smile could bring colour to his fa-

16 Million
16 million babies each year are engineered by teen mothers
But lets look a little smaller
273,105
Girls who annually contrive babies to life in the United States
But lets divide that number down further
35,249
Adolescent girls whose lives become defined by a child in the state of California alone
But once more lets focus in even smaller
1.
One Athena Young.
Standing slightly over 5 feet tall, with chocolate kissed skin shelling her strong build and a wide white smile full of joyous laughter that covers convincingly that which you would only know if you asked her: that she is a teen mother whose heart and soul has sufficiently suffered.

Perhaps from birth she didn’t stand a chance
Pushed out of the womb to a path of dissonance between success and endurance
A low class family whose glance rests not on her best advance but on their personal pleasure
So on they prance leaving her alone at night to fend for her own life.
And as she navigates this path she is stopped in a trance of seemingly endless romance
That swept her up into a dance that waltzed whimsically one night to her bedroom where she let this boy advance into her pants.
And that once seemingly endless romance crash lands as he implants into her the blow that log jams her path of success and sling shots her to side of endurance.
Fraught and distraught because she was never taught how to not by the people who brought her into the world
Or maybe to spite the strife they have placed in her life because as words from her sorrowed soul said “its when you don’t care about disappointing someone that bad things happen”…
And happen they did as we bid goodbye to the boy who didn’t try to be a father to his joy and pride or a husband to a bride
But instead strode out of sight with a gun at his side to a land that didn’t care whether he lived or he died because he refused to stay true to the girl tangled in his tango.
Left her glued to a growing womb
A single struggling parent, seclusion and confusion in raising a brilliant baby girl in this wicked world she had not yet navigated herself.
And grades started to drop as her life was dragged and dropped to 4 different spots within 3 sun cycle slots.
She said if only they had known that chaos that was going on at home
And the baby that was growing then they could have shown her grace and love…
But they would soon know and throw her out with doubt that she could complete courses while her veins coursed with blood to flood nutrients to nourish her new fetus.
Alone.
No comfortable home.
A lack of understanding left her with no friends to call her own.
No potential for preferential favor on this jagged darkening path too well known.
Abandoned
When suddenly a light landed and handed her a second chance to better advance
To move past her heart-break romance
Her families abstinence,
Her friends distance,
Her schools disinterest.
What was this glorious light?
The alternative high school Mark Twain,
Provided shelter in the acid rain of isolation and pain,
Tamed the sinister storm that reigned and splayed her life into disarray.
For Shanti, a beautifully big-eyed bubbly baby,
Twain gave certain shelter and care from an elder so health could bury deep and fester while her mother, her positive protector, could center on gaining a degree that in theory will better their cumulative future.

But perhaps the hill to highlight is the hunk of hamlet handed to her.
A gallant group of life-giving girls, warrior women who baked and bore and breathed life into children.
Allowing her alienating anomie to be history by fulfilling her need for meaningful community. People who can share relating stories of baby daddy drama, family problems, baby progress. They understood and gave value to a valiant victor whose violent world had previously brought her bitter.
There was room to be a mother,
And room to be just another teenager
A people that taught her to lead her daughter to grow up with honor of her soul’s armor so the similar story would not cycler any further.
And her giving advice to her fellow friends raising soon to be men to avoid the vice she strides against, to teach their boys “to not leave the girl”, striving and fighting to brighten the bleak world that they are no longer merely surviving but thriving in with the aid of the high school who looks past the “normal” and “socially acceptable” and to the broken and vulnerable.
Now she sits.
Waiting.
Anticipating.
The degree her hands will soon hold.
The college campus her calloused feet will soon conquer.
Seeing her dreams of being a military general driving down the street towards reality
Thanks to the inspiring community.

So 1.
One Athena Young.
One out of 16 million moms
Whose once overcast life has forever been spun to the ever-brightening sun
By a school that showed her love and
By friendships that fought to rise above.

My father, gone fifty years,
A transplanted German,
Arrived early, in the 1920's,
Fleeing the worldwide depression,
That decided to follow him to America.

Traveling salesman, raconteur,
A busy man who decided he
Found the right girl at age forty,
But by the time I was teen,
He was, then uncommon,
An older man, an older father.

Raised three kids,
Working six days a week.
Unlike the other fathers,
White shirt and tie every day
Even Sunday.

No backyard in the city,
To toss a base or football to his son,
Though he wouldn't, couldn't,
While his son grew,
Grew up worshipping
Three Gods:
Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and
The bold, the bald Y.A. Tittle,
Heroic sports figures.

The son who went to Yankee Stadium
For the first time,
There he saw the color
Emerald  Green in the Bronx,
In The House Ruth Built,
Whispered Hallelujah,
There, courtesy of someone else's dad.

Goatee he wore, and on Saturdays,
Wore a black jacket, striped pants
And Homburg hat to the synagogue.
Custom of his Hamburg upbringing.
The only one, the only dad,
Of course, dressed that way.
Proud of his style, his heritage,
Helping me not to fit right in.

Yet twinkle twinkle did his eyes sparkle,
Such that all the other children loved him,
Better and best.

But I was the son with the unlike,
The father, unlike any others.
Age thirteen, he's asked me this:
Now you are a man, I wish of thee this,
Accompany me to synagogue every day,
As is my custom, and all your father's,
Twenty generations before me.

When he passed, the stories of
His saintly deeds, his help,
How he saved, brought many to
The United States of America,
Including his five sisters and their families.
During, after WWII, became legends,
all the while, trying to make a living.

One time, I was listening to
Rock n' Roll, on the radio,
In the den, study, his home office,
Where
The Stereo,
proudly sat.

Chased me out,
Paperwork to do,
But stopped me first,
Listening to the song.
That happened to be next.

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
Up on the roof
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat race noise down in the street
Up on the roof

On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let's go up on the roof
Up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling, you can share it all with me
I keep a tellin' you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I've found a paradise that's trouble proof
Up on the roof
And if this world starts getting you down
There's room enough for two, up on the roof
Up on the roof

Up on the roof
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, baby
Up on the roof
Oh, come on, honey
Up on the roof
Everything is all right
Up on the roof
Say that, "It's alright"
Up on the roof
Oh, we gotta go up on the roof
Up on the roof
The Drifters - Up On The Roof

He listened carefully,
Pronouncing with an austere smile,
"That I like, now go."

Now fifty years later,
Having failed spectacularly as a
Father, family man, having never saved a
Soul or life, I remember the outcast days
Of my growing up years,
With a different kind of father
Than all the kids who
Played catch, had big suburban homes.

I never understood much,
Always struggled to be one
Unsuccessful in fitting in,
In my high school yearbook,
They outed my anomie,
"Either apart or ahead of us,
Nat stands, uniquely individual."

So here is a poem, an apology,
No, more an anthology, an anthem,
Of, and,
To my pop, for resenting, misunderstanding,
How
You were more than unique,
How you were special, in ways
No teenager could see.

I am have written some of this before.
Tender apologies, but when I awoke this
Post Thanksgiving Day, at
6:00 Ante Meridiem,
In not my bed,
In not my city,
Pandora surprised me
Real Good,
With an old song,
Up on the Roof.

These words,
The ones you are reading did not drift,
Nay, they spilled out in shades of
Tearful regretful guilt-filled,
Pooling tears that cannot n'ere erase
Prior youthful errors, grievous sins.

Of course,
They like to surprise you,
At the end of their song,
Twisty surprise ending.

I will say it, not you,
In some ways, not all,
I grew up to be just like him,

And for that,
I will give thanks,
Not just one day, every day,
Until it is among,
My last thoughts passing,
Proceeding me,
Preceding me,
As I depart this globe.

As long as there are teenagers extant,
Anomie and alienation of
an unripened generation
Shall spill upon this site in cliched cries,
Dabbling with threats of pills and lies,
The endless pain felt gives one fright.
To this old soul who wonders silently,
Will these thousands of pained children
Make it through to their next incarnation

So much angst, so much anger,
I wonder if God created poetry
To salve their wounds

Their unknown futures loom,
But all I read is  hurt and doom.
You shall survive, children.
Awful poetry, some good,
you will write.
But write and write
till your heart be calmed

For even ancient kings felt the anguish  of the soul,
And we profit even today by King David's psalms.

This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.

For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, quiet like, praying,
Hallelujah, spoken in the original,
The tongue of his ancestors

Alone in a vast emptiness
the sand, his feelings
that face above the sky
eyes staring wishing to be blind
the sound of tears falling
drops of emotions
wasted feelings
on blood as thick as his intentions
will there be an oasis in the afterlife?
or just more shadows burning to find reasons
will he leave it to the cross?
drive a nail through every frustration
or just let the thirst run its course?
too many questions
for a mind thirsty for answers
too much time
for a mind that wanders-
alone, with so many eyes watching.

Dedicated with great pleasure to
Stephen E Yocum and Ilion Gray,
Don fans both.*
---------------------------------------------

Created: Mar 26, 2011 10:56 AM

Written the day after a Don McLean
concert at Town Hall, New York City*
-----------------------------------------------

We stood shoulder to shoulder,
for our voice was soon to arrive,
we were friends of Vincent's friend,
a starry night decorator,
chronicler of our youthful days,
who tonight, returned to us,
harmonizor of memories
of long ago,
one more 'last' time

our bodies we pledged to him,
our allegiance we displayed
via our uniforms,
most of us decorated with badges
of our mutuality,
medals of weary grey,
lives worn, patient sat to hear our
youthful anthems and
dormant dreams,
re-populated in our hearts, live,
alive,  resurrected, babes once more

Chevys and levees and then
by God,
we were dancing in the aisles
Like we used to,
one more time,
grassy odors enhanced our
recharged our voices,
we swore fealty to our memories,
said goodbye one last time, again,
to our youth and American Pie

I swear it's true that
this anthem of tribute and attribute
to who we were, makes
tears stream down my cheeks,
a taste mixed, salty
but also, bel canto sweet,
always simultaneously

forty years blink disappear
and I am ****** on
a summer nite in Sixty Nine,
sitting on my porch,
high up in Cleveland Heights,
and "future," was not yet
a ***** word

My red 65 Mustang makes me
a big shot,
I fall in and out love
and/or so many woman's beds,
pillow talk of how we won't be
like our parents cause
we are gonna make over this lousy world
they bequeathed us,  
how we're gonna let the Cuyahoga River
burn off fifty years of industrial waste,
the future will be born anew,
the urban orbs,
we will plan and rebirth,
they will be human beautiful

Earned my summer wages in
a Republic steel warehouse
where this college kid
who then was car-less in Cleveland,
a sin, hippie bicycled to work where
he was mocked & crowned
on his hard hat,
"The Macaroni Kid" -
he had foolishly revealed
to his ha ha,
Fellow American Co-Workers
his student budget dietary staple

but when in he was deep in the belly
of the railroad cars
where they lowered him
to chain together
the custom shaped steel rods,
on their way to be
the skeleton bones for the concrete blocks
to build the Jane Jacob's
neighborhood-killing bland apartment buildings,
that we both so despised,
building blocks of the
USA's cities of anomie

In the railroad cars, this kid
sang Don's songs softly
to himself and was happy

Lamenting the loss of our
carriers of hope to the
trajectory of assassin's bullets,
I cut my hair, shaved my beard,
for the music had indeed died.

Returned to the NYC in '72,
lived on Bleecker Street,
scrounged the streets
of the Village by nite,
a seeker of urban truths,
loose women, and junk "wood"
to burn in the fireplace of
my third floor walkup

working daytime office jobs,
at night, we drank new drinks of
tunes of english imports
and unbelievably, later on, disco

but we never forgot a single word
of our Bye Bye song,
ode to our wonder years

So on a March chill night, 2011,
the now all grown ups
were petitioned to come,
meet at Town Hall,
on the agenda,
a motion of recall
to bid one last
fare thee well
to the glory days before
we crossed the line from
rebels to voting citizens,
from spirited rock n rollers
to grumbling taxpayers,
from kids to parents

So I weep and smile and
do so for all of us
for I will go out
booming, singing, way too loud,
no decorum for this adult,
bid adieu to our best days,
one more good old boy,
now just a good old man
drinking whiskey and rye
smiling, crying, all mixed up,
sad, happy, touched inside
one last time, by the lyrics,
you know 'em well from
from so long ago,
so long, Bye Bye,
My American Pie

To be alone
Is to be complete

They say
No man is an island,
But isn't everyone?

We're all stranded on islands of self-interest
Connected to others
Through flimsy bridges of temporary alliances
Mutual interests and gain

The more connected we are
The more isolated we become
Pictures and blog posts
Nothing more than facades

Anomie is the word of the decade

The individualistic
The self-sufficient
Is reviled
For refusing to play the game
To participate
In the masquerade
To jump through the hoops
Of social niceties

Somehow
To sit and squirm
Through ******* contests and gossip
To flap and flutter
In the howling gales of hysteria and contrived laughter
Is preferred over
Sitting alone
Revelations and epiphanies
Splayed out before oneself
Playing solitaire with one's reflections
In peace

Baby showers and mixers
Celebrated
The impenetrable silence
Of one's hermitage
Eschewed

The people-pleaser
Preferred
Over the lone wolf
The team player
Over the independent agent

I suppose
In an age of open doors
A locked one
Raises a few eyebrows
They'd knock and rattle
Then bang and kick and shout
Before leaving in a huff

Authenticity is now the rarest commodity
Valued over saffron and platinum
So people settle instead
For knockoffs

Alcohol-plied sincerity is better than nothing
A China-made Rolex still looks better --
Flashier, if nothing else --
Than a Timex

No man is an island,
They say,
Smirking
Frowning
Clucking with disapproval
Peering behind perfectly schooled masks
Nary a hair out of place
Looking at me
In all my artless imperfection
Paper, pen, and cigarettes for company

Well
Which of us here
Is truly alone?

It’s only ever once
I’m inside the box
of your mind
that my tongue turns
misty blue
and in small whispers,
I pass away,
dying in some nonchalant way.
Oh how the days race on by
and how you pretend not to notice
that I’ve got my eagle eyes on you.

Easy shells,
we’ve made a mockery
of legitimate feelings
but I cannot deny such vraisemblance

You are a beach
in September,
or a summer in
rigor mortis.
I think we were both dead
when we met,
only just beginning to beg for rebirth
and I brought you maps of no-man’s land
so now here we are

Stuck in the mud
of a pneumonatic love.
I will always be the coughing Queen of Anomie
and you’ve still yet to unleash
your lungs.

Gallimaufries Incondite in-risible pules from anomie.
    Recondite jeremiadtions of every pessimal influence.
Yearning for the Quid-am Xanthochroi to sybaritic in the manner I long to LOVE,
   Unrestrained                  The pennicle of BATHOS
        observations of  human
                                          hopes and dubietys of mankind  
An anodyne, the demersal soul
                      attempts at pawky insights often written whilst
inebriated and Katzenjammered!

Her eyes jaunted through my
Oppositional ghostliness,
Her hair screams “soft” in my
deaf but imaginative hands,

Her wineglass-visage stripped
My hollow strings of anomie,
Her uncorked skin spraying
On my lust-parched and sobered soul,

Her moonstruck glow poisoned
The rivers of my reveries,
Her poise dialectic
With wonders of the infinite,

Her breathe is shattering
The nihilistic love below,
Listless ears loosen by her
Magnetic harmony, “Hello”

Appointment to have ***** removed by robot-assisted surgeon.
Air-conditioned, no mosquitoes in the OR. When you arrive
You'll remove all your clothes. Naked before the ladies, nurses
Who have seen it all before. Mainly remember you're not unique.
Think about the government while they're mixing up the medicine.
There's always governance even if there's little or no government.
Back to counting backwards. Inside out, if I die, will I know it?

At 70, Jack's running the gauntlet with some skill!
Benny Golson wonders aloud what might have been
Had Clifford Brown not been killed in that auto accident.
Jack's girlfriend once said he was the reincarnation of Clifford
But he doesn't believe in ghosts, karma or an afterlife.
Benny's old girlfriend Betty inspired the tune Along Came Betty
And that's the most afterlife Benny or Betty's gonna get.

The Trojan bench being not as deep as the Greek
Once Sarpedon and Hector go down even the lucky shot
To Achilles' feet is not enough to save the town.
Aeneas is no match for wily Odysseus
Although unbeknownst to all he has the last laugh when Rome
Conquers Athens, the Myrmidons, what's left of Ilion
And the whole known world from India to Britain.

It's not bad to acknowledge death's primacy
Although after a while you stop remembering
To fear. That's when everything becomes clear
Purpose v. purposelessness matters less,
Anomie v. rule of law, that's a preference
Love v. loneliness, worth about 25 cents
Or a million bucks in the light of the holocaust.

Nothing but light, love and the majesty of death in the room.
Machines stand ready like marines, their beauty is in the motion
That overcomes inertia. The food supply is deeply compromised
So eat whatever you want. Mourning the dead is part of the business
Of healing and staying alive. When you get to the afterlife, walk with
      eyes open,
Ocotillo and cactus may be in flower. The robot does the work,
      imposes
Its own small order, like a ******* a bicycle with disorder in her hair.

I want to forget
Not have to worry about
What was just forgotten
From a mere 10 seconds ago

The time involved is an
Excruciatingly long prospect
Minutes being not finite
Measurements any longer

I'll refuse to leave this place
This room, much less
For at least two days
Nothing but hydration and cigarettes

Wonder aloud about anomie
And if I'm afflicted
A ridiculous thought
Of course I am

Not long
after you pass out
exhausted from playing
the futile game of anomie
hoping to slumber with Eros
here comes Trickster
up out of the pillow
like mist

he just wants to talk
about a great stone hearth
the fireplace of the gods
at the paradoxical center
of a groundless void
and everyone there
is laughing and smiling
and you know they love you.

I don't know what to do from here.
It just seems as if the entire world is fixated on some infinite screen.
So all encompassing, yet images flicker in fantastic frivolity.

Such absolutely aimless anomie
erodes the mind, heart, and soul of everything.
To the point of true societal insanity.

Where we'd rather chemically synthesize the taste of an apple,
than to plant an apple tree.
Nations wage wars in the name of peace while
Corporations, not people, enjoy freedom of speech.

Is this what it means to be a human being?
Are we encoded with DNA or with binary?
What of your beating heart? if it still pumps.
Or have your cells of blood all become zeroes and ones?

Do you look out upon the shimmering sea to be humbled and awed?
Or do your eyes map out it's marketability, growth index, and overhead costs!?

Oh, what of a metaphor for societal insanity.
To depict society as an orchestral piece;
They are all strings vibrating in the very wrong key,
resonating on a global scale in such horrific harmonies.
Yet they'll incorporate,
they'll advertise,
they'll trade the stock publicly!
They'll call it a symphony.

here, i've built up
a collection of kilometers;
a fever, written out in stains,
coffee against fingertips; an
indomitable anomie. this
room gets messier by the day,
it won't be clean come
winter. spring. the day you
decide to break down and
call. there are twigs between
these disheveled sheets.
                                        i'm
stagnating. i'm fluorescing,
only for you. only, you can't
see it. just yet, at least.

increments grasp in quiet
moments. sometimes this
clay in my eyes takes your
shape. sometimes i wonder.
sometimes i wish you'd come
over. all times i fall a little
further down.

i've been here before.
but not like this. drowning
on open land. quietness
by any other name.
propinquity, or inertia.
or simple lonesome.

predictably, i lose dreams.
you lean in close,
eyes alight.

He says he wants to be a city planner. Wants to build things. Things that don't go together. Things that don't make sense. Pyramids upside down, floating buildings, a strip joint next to a church. And I know he'll find himself a place to live. That place to build. In a truth of man, never a truth of mankind.

So he blew up of his rock on a rocket ship, left Anomie, now heading towards Anarchy. That's where he's meant to be. Where they should have raised him. Anarchy's no building rules. Even more so – no truths. He's of that same structure. Blowin' up from his family and friends. Blowin' up from his girl, his entire world. Seeking out his true passion. The one deep set inside him. The one that never left.

That one was born after his birth. As a child, visiting New York City, there were no rules. None to their gravity or structure. He was raised to sell insurance, but understood their architecture too well. Always had. Traveled the city often.

And they'll say he's a genius. Limitless ability for building things. Things in the present, so he doesn't build for the future he moves. He's followin' no guidelines, there's none that he should. None of their rules could lead him like his own.

He says it's about the strategy, less about the tactic. Not about how tall or long of what he wants. All about the resources and where they're placed. The way he needs them used and when. How well he will when he's penniless. A mental checklist.

So now he's flying to Space City.

Originally posted to this site on May 23, 2014
a backwards trek, to learn where to step next...*

Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland


As long as there are teenagers extant,
Anomie and alienation of an unripened generation
Shall spill upon this site in cliched cries,
Dabbling with threats of pills and lies,
The endless pain felt gives one fright.
To this old soul who wonders silently,
Will these thousands of pained children
Make it through to their next incarnation

So much angst, so much anger,
I wonder if God created poetry
To salve their wounds.
Their unknown futures loom,
But all I read is hurt and doom.
You shall survive, children.
Awful poetry, some good, you will write.
But write and write till your heart be calmed,
For even ancient kings felt the anguish of the soul,
For we profit even today by King David's psalms.

This wizened fool has his hands full,
Mouths to feed, bread to earn and bake,
As midnight is almost nigh,
He rests prone and adds a verse to this old poem
He long ago scribbled down, grimace-smiles now,
Realizing there is little difference tween him and the
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland.

For poetry salves his wounds still, even now,
Unashamedly, he thinks, hallelujah!

I long, like you long for a place to rest my head
You long, like I long for a warm silky bed
I long, like you long for the lights to finally dim
And you know, like I know I do not want to float
I would rather swim

And I know, like you know
I long, like you long

I am tired, like you are tired of the anomie
And I am scared, like you're scared
Of disenfranchise and insanity
I drown, like you drown in a hidden river in the woods
And I frown, like you frown
At how our methods have failed us

I wait, like you wait
And I hate, like you hate
And I regret, like you regret

Like a wildfire in dry hills
Like an animal scratching its cage
Like an exploding light bulb
I run, like you run.

I just want to treat you right
Someone that I actually like
Someone that will stay the night
Who doesnt leave before it turns light
In my dark times
I look for people i can fight
Ones that **** up my life
That don’t care what’s inside