Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

He'd been hanging around for some time now, indeed... he'd become rather proficient in that direction of late and although it would probably be rude to point, you could hardly accuse him of loitering... and certainly not with intent, which would have been of some considerable comfort to Norman's Mother, given his current situation, particularly since the latest complication in his otherwise dull and uneventful life, had left him predisposed towards looking a little more drawn in the face than was usual for the time of year and a decidedly deeper shade of green.

     Barely discernible, only the deeper scars now remained to  mar the roadside foliage, bearing scant witness to the motorcycle's recent and untimely misadventure... regrettably with Norman still mounted astride.  Having lost all adhesion with the freshly resurfaced country lane the motorcycle had promptly slewed sideways and across the wet grassy verge before plunging down the wooded embankment, there to encounter its own humbling demise and land in the shallow watercourse below, but it was still early Summer and already the verdant undergrowth had begun to recover.

     At the point where his motorcycle, having determined without deviation or interruption to take the most direct route to its final resting place below and follow the downwardly allure of gravity... Norman being somewhat lighter and more aerodynamic than the former had been propelled, amid a flurry of leaves and twigs headlong through the outermost branches of the nearest tree... and promptly snapped his neck... Far below a dog-eared circular proclaimed 'kidz do it better on wheelz'!!!

       In many ways it was the most handsome beech tree you could ever wish to lay eyes upon, majestic in stature and albeit stationary in nature, was full of life, contrary to its uninvited guest who decidedly was not... but who definitely was just as static as the beech tree... and which by any stretch of the imagination had far more right to be there than Norman did.
  
     The sudden and unforeseen turn of events of the previous forty eight hours had cast grievous, Holiday nullifying inevitability directly into the path of any plans Norman may have prematurely made in that direction... and for the moment at least to be left hanging high and dry in the lush, verdant canopy far above his motorcycle, currently languishing in the sparkling clear waters below... and it has to be said, without so much as a pair of galoshes between them, and having little else to do other than hang around nodding his head in the warm Summer breeze he swayed gently up and down in the light country air.

     Pausing mid-twitch on three legs between Norman's deceased neck and his equally demised shoulders, an inquisitive squirrel was now the prime mover in our eponymous hero's sudden and discontinued modus-operandi as it provoked involuntary nods from Normans head, gestures of consent as the prying rodent set itself to investigate in great detail the darkest, innermost depths of Norman's inside breast pocket.

     Norman's unintentional leave of absence had finally extinguished once and for all any further thought of future remittance towards the outstanding balance due on the motorcycle hire purchase agreement, which as luck would have it was just as well, because his equally unintended leave of absence, so it transpired, had also extinguished Norman... and thereby deprived him once and for all of any further thought of his outstanding ability to pay them or indeed, any further thought at all.

     The squirrel meanwhile, having brushed aside the meagre contents of Normans pocket finally emerged victorious into the subdued light of the dappled canopy, brandishing a hard won paper-tissue proudly clenched between its teeth... before moving on to other, far more pressing matters on the branch opposite... then paused to scratch its ear...  Now it may be of some interest to the reader at this point... or not, as the case may be, but the squirrel allegedly knew a friend of a friend, who incidentally runs the little B&B; further down the road and who would be prepared to swear on Norman's other-worldly life that she'd seen far worse looking faces peering back from the bathroom cabinet mirror of a Sunday morning after a ***** night out with the lads... than anything she could ever possibly imagine exercising squatters rights way above in the majestic beech tree.

     Flies seemed to be one of the few living creatures that morning who hadn't raised any objection to Norman's ill-mannered intrusion... indeed, were currently hatching plans of their own in that particular direction and take intimacy to the next level with regard to lunchtime seating arrangements... and who had assured him from day one, that while their long term prognosis for Norman attaining ***** and independent posture was by no means cut-and-dried, he should nevertheless be moving about, not necessarily under his own steam in no time at all... and by the look of his complexion, it would seem that in the interim period he should be thankful for the company.

     As the balmy Summer afternoon steadily drew to its own happy conclusion Norman, without a care in the world and now in the early larval stage of being in the family way, so to speak and shortly to shed a little life of his own... stared vacantly out at what had recently become his own neck of the woods, rapidly becoming a permanent fixture in the pastoral landscape... and while his sudden relocation may have been a real eye opener for some, for Norman he'd discovered the true meaning of be at one with nature, about the birds and the bees and especially the flies in the trees...  

     So there we must leave poor Norman with his recent and enduring affliction, nodding in the dappled shade of the majestic beech tree, playing host to the countryside and the following seasons crop rotation, leaving his Mum to worry as to whether her Son had fresh underwear that morning... or not as the case may be... the County Constabulary making their door to door enquiries as to Norman's current whereabouts... his former employer re-adjusting next months pay cheque... accordingly and the hire purchase company about to dispatch final demands indiscriminately left, right and centre for financial delinquency.  The only other claim you could probably make with any degree of certainty was that Norman's full-face motorcycle helmet had by no means achieved that which was expected of it for his ultimate well-being that day... and was doing little more than keep his hair dry and his spectacles from slipping further than his chin.
                                                           ­  ­                                                                ­ ­                                                                ­ ­             ...   ...   ...**

A work in progress.                                                        ­                                                     1122

If I thought about you,
would you think about me?
If I give
and you take,
could I ever expect you to give?
Why,
when I'm
with you
I feel I can live,
but time progresses,
and words dissipate;
the need for words
seem less provoked.

You're insufferable.
The humor in this
is what I've become
at my own expense.
This shadow
clinging onto
a discontent
disposition.

Delusions
deemed
deeply drastic during
decomposition,
decidedly.

I decided.
Lights turn on.
Light bulbs flash.
Shadows dissipate.
The same as our words,
decidedly.

Raised
in this floating
world, forever
deep.
You can’t drain the ocean

Decidedly from down
south of here
You can’t un-trace the roots.

You can’t lie and say,
“This isn’t where I grew up”
You can’t deny the fruits
of what was planted two generations ago
when your grandpatents arrived from the Philippines, seeds in tow
soil for the taking
You can’t confiscate what they claimed
when they planted their flags
into the moon-white sand of a beach in Florida
on a far side of the planet
their forefarthers have never seen

You can’t say those flags weren’t there
when wind came
You can't ***** out that pride
of country,
cut off its native tongue and its acquired taste, or pass up the plate of fried lumpia and rice passed down from the kitchen of your Daddylol
feeding seven kids day in and out with tomatoes he planted,
chickens he raised, Malonggay leaves he grew
with thumbs so green they wrote in the papers about it
He was a farmer
Your grandmother, a nurse
And i was writer
And this is our story

You can’t erase the letters of your name,
your lineage written all over it
like a map
of everywhere we been
You can’t take back the words in Tagalog and Chavacano
your Lola Shirley must have sang your mother to sleep with
You can’t take their dreams

You can't just wake up one day and undo
the ripple effects their moves
created across waters 10,000 miles east of here,
the rolling waves they curled into
or the faraway shores they washed up upon
Bottled messages in hand
Our legends held within
You can’t say centuries from now that they won’t feel it
when their feet hit the sand of their own frontier
beside the waves we stayed making
a history written in deep water
for those who come after you
to sail above and beyond.

What does it mean to be human?
Does it mean that your body is flesh and bone?
My body is made of plastic.
What are you made of?
What makes a person whole?
Is it fulfillment? Happiness? Soul?
Whatever the case, I am not whole.
Are you?
Are humans intelligent or ignorant?
I am both.
Which one are you?
Are humans kind or wicked?
I do not know which one I am.
Do you know?
Do humans get to choose who they are?
I have tried to mould myself as best I can, into the person I want to be
Have you?
Are you human?
I am, decidedly, not human.
I am that which I do not know of
I am that which I do not wish to discover
I hope never to know who I am.
Who are you?

THE STORY OF SARA

OR A REFLECTION ON OURSELVES

Ayad Gharbawi

Chapter 4: THE HALLOWED PURIFICATION PROGRAMME




  One night, Omar began to thunder on:
  "No more of the disgusting concepts and ideas created by the Pigs! We should eliminate from our minds every single Pig that is influencing you, and I must say to you all, that I'm not seeing any progress."
  The audience suddenly went all quiet.
  Our leader was not satisfied with our emotional progress.
  We were not purifying our minds in a manner and speed that was satisfactory to the Great Noble Leader Omar.
  "I am looking at you all. I see you; yes, I, Omar, see each one of you. Your eyeballs seem to me to be unsure of what's behind them – I mean, your brains."
  Omar's voice began to talk in a tone that was almost a whisper, whilst the vast audience strained their ears to catch his every precious word.
  "And inside your brains lies our minds. Well, I'm talking about your minds, my friends. I'm not seeing progress. Yes, you do this riot; you **** this Pig; you burn this Pig school – and all of these acts are crucial to our holy cause. But, what about you yourselves? What about your own minds? Maybe you, too, are tainted with some of the Pig mentality yourselves? Now, how about that? Yes? What do you think?"
  The audience gasped.
  Omar began to raise his voice again.
  He was taunting this audience.
  Mocking them.
  Sarcastic.
  "Why, you really are telling me, that you think and feel and believe, that you have the right to **** Pigs?"
  At this question, Omar stopped.
  The audience gasped louder.
  I knew what they were thinking.
  Is our Great Noble Leader questioning our faith in him and in the cause itself?!
  He screamed, almost blowing away the microphones!
  "Why, who gives you the right to be soldiers in this unforgiving, merciless and ferocious war we are waging every day against vastly superior forces? I'll tell you 'who' gives you that right."
  The audience waited in tense anticipation at our leader's answer.
  It was so silent in this vast stadium, you could hear a pin fall.
  "What gives every man, woman and child the right to be a soldier in this brutal struggle is when that soldier has the purest heart and mind. It's as simple as that. And to be 'pure', my friends tonight, is the one who has not a shred, and does not have one ounce of Pig matter. That's right, you heard. Pig matter. Any dog that has even a fleeting Pig thought, is a Pig him or herself!"
  The audience now began to whisper among themselves.
  They seemed to be receiving the light from the words being delivered by Omar.
  Many were saying among themselves, that, 'Yes, we do have Pig thought and ideas and emotions and feelings in our hearts.'


  Omar continued, in a soft voice, after allowing his audience to digest his last words:
  "Yes, that does come as a surprise to you, doesn't it?"
  "Yes!" roared back the audience who now fully submitted to his question and answer.
  "So, I ask you – who are you?" he screamed!
  And the crowds immediately screamed:
  "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs! We are ***** Pigs!"
  Again and again, the crowd seemed to be going a little bit hysterical.
  Some began tearing off their clothes, as if they were trying to 'cleanse' themselves from their Pig thoughts!
  "That's right!" screamed back Omar, furiously and wildly staring with those maniacal eyeballs, like some trapped, ferocious animal, at his audience:
  "Why you yourselves are Pigs! That's right! Come on now! So, what are going to do about you? If you give yourselves the 'right' to **** Pigs, then why don't I have the same 'right' to order my best elite troops to **** you too?"
  "Save us! Save us!" screamed back the audience.
  "Save yourselves!" Omar screamed right back.
  "We are filthy! We are Pigs!" the audience began to insult themselves in all sorts of words and phrases.
  At this point, Omar was shrieking!
  "That's right! You are filthy Pigs yourselves, aren't you now?”
  The audience continued to scream and you couldn’t understand what they were saying anymore.
  Omar went just as suddenly silent.
  He just looked at his followers, and allowed them the need to express themselves.
  After some twenty minutes o this chaotic screaming, Omar became impatient and quickly motioned his followers to be quiet.
  Silence.
  He continued, with a soft tone:
  “So, I hereby announce the following."
  Once again the entire audience become tense.
  What was Omar going to order now?
  "I hereby allow you all, and I mean all our soldiers and not just those sitting with me here in this stadium; I order all of our soldiers to purify themselves of every Pig matter. You will have three months. And then, after that term ends, we will establish courts, to decide wether you have succeeded in cleaning yourselves from these cancerous and murderous feelings and emotions you have. Our courts and our hallowed judges will next decide, case by case, wether you are clean or not!"


  Later, when it appeared that our mostly pathetic, ***** and sick 'soldiers' were simply unable to cleanse their minds from the Pig establishment in three months – since they had no instructions or guidance - Omar, in his eternal grace, patience and humanity, decided to help them, by allowing classes to be held where one teacher would help each and everyone to 'cleanse' themselves.
  Personally, I thought that our Great Noble Leader was decidedly wrong in being so gracious to these so-called soldiers, because, in my opinion, this lot were not worthy of being in our party, and they ought to have been immediately expelled.
  "But, Sara," Omar would gently explain to me in his humble office, surrounded by his most trusted officers, "if we were to purge every undesirable element in the party, I would be left with practically nobody!"
  I took in his gracious words. and then thought about it.
  Why, he was correct, yet again, in his thinking!
  Indeed, if we did purify our party from the filthy ones, we would be left with little more than a handful of true, faithful and clean combatants and that, obviously, meant our self-destruction!
  "You're right, Sir; as usual, I think too hastily. That's why you are the only leader for us; my God, if I, God forbid, were leader, why I would have destroyed the party and our eternally holy cause years ago!"
  "Indeed, indeed, my dear," Omar softly said, but he seemed to have already forgotten my words, and, he was already somewhere else, thinking deeply about another problem.
  And so I, of course, went silent, so as not to disturb him.


  "You know what?" suddenly he asked me, his eyes sparkling with passion.
  "Yes, Sir?"
  "These 'classes' I was talking about. You've studied psychiatry, and I believe that we must use psychiatric methods to purify my subjects."
  Suddenly a strange feeling overcame me; I found the word describing the party members as 'my subjects' a little bit odd.
  Also, didn't Omar call psychiatry a Pig subject for all those years? Indeed, he said everything they taught us at university was evil, and that even the institutions of universities were dens of evil. And, yet, now, he was asking me to help him using what I was learning from my university days?
  "Yes, I can see the path I am talking about Sara. We need to get psychiatrists, like yourself, to tear out, yes, tear out, the filthiness in our party members."
  Suddenly, he got quite excited by his visions.
  "That's right, my dearest one, Sara. Yes, and I appoint you to supervise this programme of purification. That's right, and I shall call it by its simplest name, the 'Programme of Purification'!"
  Suddenly, I got excited as well, forgetting my previous disturbance.
  "That would be such a heroic move on your part, Sir." I gleefully told Omar.
  I feel that not only was he the saviour for our nation, but that he was also a personal saviour for myself.
  "Yes, I see my vision where it is leading us to. My dear Sara; you will set up these classes and you will bring the psychiatrists and you will purify the ***** elements in our classes."
  I got nervous again, for I just realized the magnitude of the job Saviour Omar was demanding I do for him!
  "And therefore, I Omar call for an immediate ceasefire against all Pigs!"
  Everyone in the office stood there in a state of shock!
  A ceasefire against the damnable Pigs?!
  Holy Omar could, of course, read our faces and smiled.
  "But Holy Sir," one officer softly asked, "how can we have a ceasefire against the most evil forces in the history of our country?"
  "And, Sir," asked another officer, "if we stop our eternally pure and humanistic battle against the disease-ridden pigs, wouldn't the latter take that as a sign of weakness on our part?"
  Next, saviour Omar raised his hand.
  Everyone went silent.
  He looked at us.
  There were no words from his mouth.
  We waited humbly.
  Geniuses take their time to formulate the right structure of words, not because they don't know what to say, but they do so that we fools can understand what they have to say.
  It is out of concern for us.
  Omar finally spoke:
  My clean, pure soldiers. We must declare a ceasefire, for I have no other choice. As a humanist, how can I allow impure elements from our party to fight and **** Pigs, when they themselves are still 'impure'? Where is the morality in that?"
  Suddenly, I couldn't help but feel such fanatical love for this man; I can only describe his man and his words, as pieces of Heaven coming down to us inferior beings, and if we are decent, then we must grab every shred and piece that he utters, so we can, in turn, save our impure souls.
  "Beautiful thoughts indeed, my Gracious Leader!" I said.
  Then I turned to the listeners:
   "What's wrong with the rest of you? If, one of our 'own' party members was impure, then by what right does he and she have to fight and **** Pigs? We must cease all out activities, until we have a purified party! It's simple and obvious!"
  Thereupon followed silence.


I was speaking the obvious.
  Finally, a voice spoke:
  "So, how exactly are these psychologists going to 'purify' the 'minds' of our party members?"
Good question – one that I had not thought about.
  Indeed, how, and by what means, were we going to purify the undesirables?
  And then, just at the right moment, Omar spoke his words:
  "Yes, that is a great question. There's no use giving orders that no one knows how they are to be carried out. You see, it will not only be the job of psychiatrists who will purify the filthy ones. No, we will force the filthy ones, to ***** out every filthy thought, feeling, and idea; and we shall make sure that all these impure thoughts and feelings and convictions will be screamed out of their minds."
  At that last phrase, once again, I found myself pausing and thinking, what an odd thing to say!
  I got lost in my thinking.
  After all, Omar always, and I mean always choose his words carefully, for he would always make it a point to be so careful with the choice of his words, so that his credibility would never be in doubt and so people do understand that that he means exactly whatever he says.
  I must confess, I was completely confused.
  On the one hand, I had such deep reverence, complete love and a total need for Omar, and then, there was a part of me, that simply didn’t understand what he was talking about!
  I remembered, once more, how everything was so nice and easy and simple with Tony.
  But, I assume, that Tony was a general doctor, whereas Omar was a surgeon, and so, with Omar, we had to face a far more complex situation.
  "What do you mean by that, Sir?" asked one of the officers, waking me up from my thoughts.
  "I mean, it shall be the duty of every party member to purify every other party member. We must all be psychiatrists! This will be done, of course, under the supervision of the leader psychiatrist in each class. He or she will guide you, as to how to get every party member to rip out every Pig attribute in our party members. It's as simple as that."
  At that, Omar gestured to indicate that the meeting was over, and so we left.
  I kept thinking that his idea was, I'm sure, utterly brilliant, but how in practice were going to do this?


  He left his office far too soon.
  We had too many questions to ask, and yet, by leaving us, Omar was, in effect, giving us a 'programme' to do, but without clear, precise orders.
  So, how were we going to carry out his orders?
  What did he mean that 'we must all become psychiatrists'!
  That was absolutely absurd!
  Untrained people cannot simply 'become' psychiatrists, even if they are 'led' by psychiatrists – or to use Omar's words, to be 'guided' by psychiatrists.
  So, Omar's idea seemed to me, to be really a recipe for a catastrophe for our party.
  The more I thought of it, the more I found my mind asking myself the question: why was Omar insisting on this 'purification programme' in the first place?
  Couldn't the party and its members simply continue the struggle, without having to enforce this ridiculous programme?
  And didn't Omar realize that his insistence on us carrying out his orders to do the purification programme, was going to cause absolute chaos, disruption and ultimately mass desertions and expulsions from our party?
  In other words, Omar's sudden 'need' to 'purify' our own members seemed to me to be a self destructive act that would seriously damage the party.


The ceasefire announcement was barely noticed by the Pigs – which came as a shock to many of us.
  The government didn't seem to actually care at our ceasefire announcement.
  Indeed, the Pigs declared that what they termed as the 'social troubles' was, in effect, 'over' and so, therefore, the country could breathe a sigh of relief, and people could now be 'happy'.
  I didn't believe what the government was saying.
  I was of course nauseated by the hypocrisy of the Pig leaders, because, their pronouncements were lies, as usual, and they would of course, continue their merciless war against us, while we had to cease our fire.
  Yes, Leader Omar was probably correct, but I was **** frustrated, because it seemed to me, for the first time since I joined the party, that the Pigs may now well win the struggle.
  It was obvious to me!
  For how on planet earth could we 'win' a war, when we were not allowed to fight, while the same eternal enemy would continue his war against us?!
  Also, to be very honest, I'm not sure that we could 'purify' Pigs in the first place.
  It seemed to me to be a contradiction!
  I would simply have to swallow whatever Leader Omar ordered us to do.
  God knows, he's proven to be correct every time before, and maybe, he will confound us once more with his superior wisdom.
  Have faith, Sara, have faith!
  Never question the Great Leader, for he is superior to all of us; after all, that’s why he’s the ‘Great Leader’ in the first place!
  Keep the faith!
  How can we understand what a su

Chasten Calypso declared to be clear;
humming a mumble inside of mine ear.
Always heard, but ne’er understood,
a whisper so willing, decidedly good.

The rapture of doomsday is said to be near,
but an ounce of the evidence has yet to appear.
There are several factors that could end it all;
the pride of mankind is destined to fall.

Hastened Calypso declared to be clear,
rumbling a rumble, fueled by a fear.
Often forgotten, yet forever engraved;
those who are faithful have already been saved.

Dwindled and swindled, the man may soon ask,
“Your person is puzzling; take leave of your mask.”
Now the raven is calling, to bring out your soul,
but all you have left is a void with a hole.

With chastened Calypso declared to be clear
she is tumbling a bumble who’s drunken with beer,
and thought the cliff it is climbing is sharp, and quite sheer,
if the bumble dose stumble it won’t shed a tear.

Where we are looking and what we will find
is based in illusion we have made in our mind;
Always is heard, and is ne’er understood.
It’s a whisper so willing, decidedly good.

Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried *****,
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.

Wasted human.

Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?

If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."

Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.

But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.

The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.

I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.

I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car

away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."

There were 100 people in a village  
One was a girl  
So beautiful  
She was decidedly the most beautiful among them  
The 99 others decided  
She made them feel ugly  
So she was sent away  
When all she wanted to do was stay  

There were 99 people in a village  
One was a girl  
So beautiful  
She was decidedly the most beautiful among them...

Gather 'round children
To hear the story of
Obsessionman
Our extremely watchful protector

Bitten by a radioactive trumpeter at a young age
He obtained the super power
Of constantly thinking about the moment he was bitten
His power only grew stronger with time
When people told him his power was ****
His power grew
When people mentioned the toxicity of his radioactive waste
His power grew
And when he encountered his arch nemesis; the trumpeter
Everything grew

You should've seen how fast he flew
He soared quicker than
All the ******* he had once considered important
But when flying at such high velocities
Civilians become interlopers
And interlopers become super villains
Which is no laughing matter
Aquaman went comatose
And Comaman got aqua toes
Sacrifices we were willing to make
But then God intervened
And Obsessionman ***** Him
Which we all agreed was kind of ****** up
Decidedly so...

I mean...
What can you say about your hero when he ***** God?
But that's the beauty of Obsessionman
All he requires from us
Is our disgust, indifference, and hatred
To feed his strength
Until the day he is powerful enough
To fulfill his destiny
And face his arch nemesis
The trumpeter

Tried by
color, a
color stayed
its coloration...
the second
wind of
infinity's prostration...
here...decidedly
empurpled.

I do love
But it ain't quite
like the Discovery Channel!!!

I want so much more than
the collective desire of Park Avenues

I believe like,

With exactly no doubt
like zero are the hours
which can never count
upon the seamlessness
of my perceptions

I do but I don't
I am and therefor not

I talk in mirrored tongues
I observe in uncanny detail

Micro and macro all a flow
overly ever rushing torrents
moving galaxies about

Pouring in
more rushes out

You can picture it
over the mighty edges of
and rushing to, fro and about
every swirling an obstacle stout

Though such knows not
one another in such ways
inseparable upon one journey

As She manifests from her he, Self
He's giving for he gets the She of,

An ever persuasive passionate,

Play... .. .

Greater than the dreams

We know of love yet
Shy to conceive

They, their passion
.........
  .....
   ...
    "
    '
We inwardly receive

Those torrential lovers
pourings do spillover
and on and over
and rush upwards
ah ever more easily!!!

Vast sensualities
******* rhythms
of this a, Our universe
in micro exotic intoxicating
allure, irresistibly entwining
the smallest tastes and teases
of songbirds loving symphonies

As butterfly and a bee in the ever
sweet scents of psychedelic sighting
wavings in ever inviting ever ripening
ever flows of heavens manna sweets, but
sours the way short where some say sinners
ought never see or be, though such is silliness see,

For such shy glimpses of what is less than momentary
which is not countable, when our greatnesses will carry on
beyond our redemptions of what only we shall see clearly so
simply, one day twas the dark night of a soul, here blasphemed
about the sacredness of all ever evident being so close found fondly,

Sweetly, though lost in those ever aching wishes of our journeying together

Would death be ****** abandonment at all a freaky thing unconceived
dark night of the great light conceived viewed in our ever grace and beauty
but she lets you feel her he's and all the glory, all the glory an unrealized being
in all our collectiveness has not yet seen but in the depths of where it's consider dark
for simple decisions we all have and must have made to function here, there

and at all,
at once...

No time, no space, no EMC squared's
yet in Newtonian fashion the soul spirit remains
carries on in infinite motion and motions of our choosings
and for better and worse we do all about the same for we
were never thrilled about all the separation we discovered
in reluctance and or in blessed joys of great companies
of loving hearts, eyes, ears, arms with tender loving
caring hands of nurture enough twas enough for
you are still here now and those who have not
have forgiven all other misguidance eagerly
when it is easily found tis only our own
choice to be and set free freely

And I can want any petty desire too
and put myself up for adoption to,

The petting zoo
and you...

For hell yeah I want to be here
all the way and with you
my wayfarers

I Do...

do do dee da da
oo la la and ma mama

childs all of such grace
we oft just call gods

And greater love seen
dispensed philosophically
by self proclaimed atheism's

Denialism can rather be the truth
of atheism, self pitying so deeply
resenting the here now for some
overly wishful thinkings and
of mournful emotionalism's
about the 'it just ain't fairs'

Beware they will take you
to their wheres, wearing
their wares of self hate
while glossfully
painting in
glitterings
of fools
gold

Feign not thou
we are co conspirators
already decidedly agreed
agreeably dancing on the sharp
end of one pointed pin, hand holding

But remember if we were ever shaken
off of binding bonds ever closefully as
the chasms of divergences really are

We still ever dance ever lightly on
the everly fine poignancy of pin

And the illusion of being
garden casted for some
shamefully blameful
denials of the snakes
sly fashion to even
ones need of feed

And or wither from
the long and short
of journey with
the ever's of

here now...

Paradise
Perfectly

Paradoxically

In our
every
way

So I am
in great hunger
greater thirst firstly

For the one great illusion
desert stricken for not seeing
the forest of paradise for every
tree and every grace of all possibility

Without such would come from impossibility*

Once Again...

Elli had never thought that the walls were strange.  Really, she didn’t think of them as walls precisely; they simply marked where her world ended.  After all, they had always been there, looming grayishly about one hundred feet from her back door.  Occasionally, strange shapes would appear at the top of the wall, silhouetted by bright lights so that she could never say what they looked like.  The sky was a perfect circle of blue or gray, depending on the weather, and it hung rather flatly overhead.  Elli’s house had pristine white walls with a red tile roof, exactly like the other four houses in her little slice of existence.  There was one other child besides Elli, but he was a baby who barely spoke.  

Not that anyone else said much either.  The adults seemed happy enough she supposed and treated her with kindness, but they all looked at each other knowingly, with resignation.  

Elli couldn’t understand why that was so; they had everything they needed here: food, water, clothing, each other.  The weather was even cooperative for the most part, raining just often enough to keep the trees and flowers alive, and never getting cold enough to warrant anything heavier than a long-sleeved shirt.

She had to admit, though, it did get a little boring occasionally.  But, just as soon as she thought she would cry with boredom, a new toy would appear, or a new type of flower for her to discover.  When she asked her mother where these things came from, she would go tight-lipped, then relax, and say gently that they were gifts from Above.

What ‘Above’ was, precisely, no one could (or would) tell her.  So she made it up.
Elli thought that Above was quite mysterious, but it must be benevolent because it gave her so many gifts.  She would talk to Above sometimes, but it never answered; it only came with more presents when she had tired of the old.  Often, Above’s presents to Elli were in the form new discoveries, and very occasionally in the form of an actual toy.

One day, Above gave Elli a mysterious gift: a sketchbook and three pencils.  She was unsure what to do with them at first, but after some experimentation she discovered that one end of the pencil made a mark, and the other end could make the mark disappear.  That discovery alone delighted her, and for a while, she busied herself simply with the process of marking and erasing.

Next, Elli started to put the marks together in ways that pleased her, and eventually filled the entire sketchbook with abstract drawings.  She thought she would erase them all and start over the next day, but when she woke up that morning, another sketchbook and three new pencils were stacked on top of the old.  She squealed with glee.

Elli took the sketchbook out to her favorite tree that day, and as she sat in its shade, it occurred to her that she might be able to replicate what she saw around her on her paper.  
Elli began to draw.  

She explored everywhere for things to draw, and as she followed the curve of the concrete wall late that afternoon, she saw a strange object on the ground, half hidden by a large bush.

Bending down to take a closer look, she noticed that whatever the object was, it was flush with the ground and seemed to have space below it.  Elli thought that was odd; she had always assumed the ground was utterly solid, and to find that there was a seemingly endless hole underneath was disconcerting.  She set her sketchbook and pencils down and reached out for the object.

It was covered in a reddish dust that came off on her fingers.  She grabbed the grate and pulled a bit.  It rattled invitingly.  Acting on impulse, Elli grabbed the cover with both hands and heaved; it was heavy, but not unmanageable, and she soon had it off and found herself staring down a dark tube.  She knelt down, stuck her head in, and shouted.  The echo of her shout leapt away down the tunnel.

Elli backed away from the hole and sat down, contemplating her discovery.  One thing was certain: her little world was not as little as she had thought.

Eventually, Elli decided that the peculiar hole would have to wait.  She was getting hungry, and the thought of her mother’s cooking enticed her.  So, with some effort, Elli pulled the cover back over the hole and dusted her hands.  It would be waiting for her to explore tomorrow.

The next morning, Elli raced out to the hole and dragged the off the cover.  Again, she shouted and listened to the echo of her voice leave her behind.  

She wondered where the echo went.

Finally, curiosity got the better of her, and dragging her sketchbook and pencils with her, she lowered herself into the darkness.  

As her feet touched the bottom, she noticed that the hole had become tall enough for her to stand in.  Looking up, she realized that she would not be able to go back that way. She shook off that thought, and turned her face to the darkness.

The tunnel was damp, so Elli slid her sketchbook protectively under the front of her shirt.  The further she got from her entry point, the darker it became, until she could no longer see anything.  

For the first time in her life, Ellie knew fear.  

She thought of her friend, Above.

I don’t like this; I really don’t like this, Elli said to Above in the darkness.  Can you hear me, Above?  I’d like a gift to help me get out of here.  Please?

No answer came, but Elli knew that that was what would happen.  Above never spoke to her.  She felt wetness well up in her eyes, felt it trail down her face, and touched it with her fingertips.  Her fear abated a little as she stood in the darkness and nothing extraordinary happened.  Elli sniffed.

Picking up her courage, she continued forward in the darkness, feeling her way along the damp walls of the tunnel.  Suddenly, she heard a loud scraping noise overhead.  She jumped back, stumbled over her feet, and dropped her sketchbook in a puddle.  A sliver of light appeared in the ceiling, widening as the scraping noise continued.  Elli looked up, frozen, fear returning vengefully.  Light filled her section of tunnel.  She looked up, blinking at its brightness.  

A strangely elongated hand appeared, silhouetted against the light, reaching out for her.  Elli gasped.  It’s all right, the hand said, I will help you.  I am here to get you out of the tunnel.  Elli didn’t move.  Another strange hand appeared, and together, they reached for her, grasped her, and hauled her out of the darkness.  

Elli looked at the owner of the hands, into a face entirely unlike any she had seen before; the eyes were much too large, and the irises were an iridescent purple.  It didn’t have a nose, and its mouth was decidedly small.  It looked upon her with what she could only fathom was worry and concern.  There were others, standing, watching.

Who are you? Elli asked.
We are Above, it said.
And Elli knew nothing at all.

So let us now place monetary value on information.
Let us return to the source,
Mining & prospecting that fertile intel seam.
To wit: WWII and G-2 shenanigans.
Wild Bill and OSS-capades,
Artificial disseminations.
Partial recriminations.
And PSYOPS:
A literary nightmare--
THE CYCLOPS from The Odyssey,
For example,
If you lack your own,
Your own personal Bogey Man.
Or men. For me:
Allen Dulles or Richard Helms.

The Intelligence Community:
It was a small tightly knit crew,
Less than battalion strength in 1942;
A few myopic soldiers,
Who, although could barely type,
Were still too cerebral to
Waste as infantry fodder.
It was a huge converted Army-green warehouse,
Space strategically partitioned,
Sectioned off into cubicle-like spaces,
By giant 4-drawer file cabinets
Standing tall like MPs,
Sentinels & Guardians,
Monuments to pre-electronic storage,
Data relatively comprehensive, and an
Archive secretive & intimidating.

Within the Army-green incunabula,
Scattered throughout the intel landscape,
Here and there a few commissioned officers,
A smattering of college psychology majors,
Personalities with predilections,
And penchants for mind games.
These self same WWII vets,
Would morph into Cold War Mad Men.
Stalwart, stouthearted men of Eisenhower,
And J. Walter Thompson,
De-mobbed, as they say in the UK.
Consumptive.
Self-indulgent,
Particularly when it came to the kids;
Children of the peace,
Called Baby-Boomers,
An entire generation enabled & destroyed.
Who would produce little of value
Except medical marijuana and
Coupons, clipped by that sober ruling class—
Fat interest-bearing college-loan portfolios
Held by that neo-Calvinist Elect: The 1%.
Fat cats one and all,
Loaded dice & canasta cronies--
In concert a stacked deck,
“Una mano lava l'altra.”
The words of my namesake--
My grandfather Giuseppe--
His vowels reverberating,
Rattling in my dreams.
Not friends, but
Fiends in high places, like
The Fed and dark liquid pools.
Thank you, Barack, for
Fooling us again.
For giving us
“Belief we can believe in.”

But I digress.
It was when the Government Secrecy Act,
In all its transnational incarnations,
Embraced capitalism in a big way,
Elevating the ideology to whole-Earth saturation,
Systemizing the ethos of Darwin,
Into one global Moby ****,
One solitary leviathan,
A multi-level marketing labyrinth,
Where wealth is the end game--
Greed: pure, unbridled & unrestrained.
Bond--James Bond—
Did his bit, supplying catchy
Slogans & tag-lines:
“For Your Eyes Only.”
“On a need to know basis.”
“Confidential Information.”
“Top & Ultra-Top Secret.”
“Hush, Hush & a Bag of Chips.”

The sealed letter sits in a locked drawer,
In that stout desk,
In the Oval Office
In The White House,
“To be opened by my VP in the event of my death.”
Another staggering work,
Of achy-achy-heart breaking genius,
The culture commoditized,
A disease containing its own cure,
Assayed, graded,
Portioned & packaged.
Priced accordingly,
To a logic that goes something like:
“Anything this tightly controlled,
Anything the government deems to be
This illegitimate and/or & secret
Must be really, really God-awesome,
Must really be Da ******* Bomb.”

Brother Coolidge was right:
“The Business of America is Business.”
And INFORMATION:
“The Most Valuable Commodity on Earth.”
So said Stanford Stuyvesant Whitehead III,
19th Century robber baron, and
Consummate Fat Cat.
Get the picture:
We were smoking cigars and sipping cognac,
Mighty comfortable in leather armchairs,
Muted billiard clicks,
Punctuating the atmosphere
In this spacious lounge,
His East Side
Downtown & private
Manhattan club.
I, his guest, had not the slightest idea
Why I was there.
"By God, man," he went on,
My eyes speared by his laser gaze,
His bushy eyebrows,
His monocle.
His bulbous nose;
His thick wet mustache.
And those EYES:  
Those crazy,
Insane eyes.

"I am talking about a profound change,” he continued.
“Back when the steamship
Gave way to electronic wireless radio."
He puffed smoke,
Removing the cigar from his mouth,
Holding it,
Examining it critically for a moment.
"I'm talking about communication,
Instant communication
With business associates, &
Cronies far away,
Way out there,
Far beyond the places we know well.
Picture it:
You're running a fleet of
Ramshackle Filipino banana boats,
Out of some nameless cove,
Indenting the south coast of Mindanao.
A cyclone comes out of nowhere.
Good God--there’s sixteen banana-packed
Coal burners lying on the bottom of the Celebes Sea.
Think about it:
You've got telegraph radio.
Everyone else has the post office.
Now, I ask you:
‘Who's going long,
Who’s getting rich on the
Caracas Banana Exchange?’
Good Lord, man, it would be
Like being omniscient!"
“This very conversation,” he went on,
“Could well be a verbatim transcription
Of a conversation right here in this very room,
Between people like: J. Pierpont Morgan
And some lesser Gilded Age nabob;
Some Astor, some Rockefeller,
A Gould or Vanderbilt,
Whitney or Duke,
Some Frick or Warburg--
To name just a few, old sport.”
He stopped suddenly.
He looked down at his hands,
As we both realized he had counted these names
Out on his fat curled fingers.
He looked at me and smiled.
I was afraid.
Why had I been invited to this meeting?
I smiled back at him,
Doing my best to mirror his
Carnivorous menace.

I knew it.
He knew it.
He knew I knew it.
Mr. Whitehead’s growling rabid jowls,
His slobbering canine smile held me steady.
“Okay. Touché. ‘Ya got me.”
He shook off the phony smile,
An absence, accentuating
His stare: lethal, carnal & rare.
“I never had much formal schooling.
I’ve been hungry.
Hungry enough to know for sure
That the correct fork,
Don’t mean ***** from shinola.
When I’m dining out, fancy-like,
Me manners is the least of me problems,
Far less important than
The dinner chit they
Hand me after I slake
My thirst & appetite.”
Again, he stopped suddenly,
Recognizing that, perhaps,
He’d revealed too much of his
Bedford-Stuyvesant pedigree.
He turned again and stared at me.
“None of that,” he said.
“None of that means squat to me, Boyo.
What matters now is I’m rich.
I’ve got mine, By God,
And ******* It!
Tough ***** on the rest of you losers;
The rest of you fecking whiners can go
**** yourselves over at Zuccotti Park.”
He pounded the armrest,
The padded armrest of the rich Corinthian leather—
( . . . ***, Ricardo?
Get your Montalbán
Mexicano ***, back in
Random Access Memory Land,
Where you belong.
**** ya’ Fantasy Island
Hospitality, Mr. Roarke,
Go be wrathful Khan Noon Singh,
Somewhere else.
Now is not the time, or,
Let me rephrase that:
This narrative will not allow your meme here . . .)    

Whitehead pounds the armrest again.
“My point is this:  
None of JP Morgan’s decidedly,
un-nattering lesser nabobs of negativity . . .”
BAM!  Again, he pounded the leather . . .

(Back in your ******* hole, Spiro!
Do you realize just how far back,
Just how far back
Maryland’s reputation
Has been set back by your venality?
Not to mention any shot at ethnic assimilation,
The rest of us grease ball non-Wasps
Have in this country?
You ******* Greek!)

I stopped thinking
When I realized Stanford Stuyvesant Whitehead III
Was reading my mind.
“So that’s what it’s really all about,” he said,
Rank smugness in his voice.
“So, I’m just a nouveau riche upstart,
A socially inept parvenu,
Yet they still let me
Join their tony clubs.
It chaps your ***, Boyo, don’t it?
I’m still Scotch-Irish, and
A WASP, Laddie.
Something your skinny
Greaser-Guinea-****-Spaghetti-*** ***,
Ain’t ever gonna be.”
But I digress, again.

So I joined one of Uncle Sam’s
Lesser-known clandestine services,
An assignment appropriate to my ethnic identity,
Namely GLADIO in Italy,
A NATO stay-behind operation &
Cold-War comedy.
I infiltrated the Brigate Rosse.
I drove the Aldo Moro kidnap vehicle.
I cooked minestrone for General Dozier.
I sliced off J. Paul Getty’s ear in Calabria.
Ironically, I lost my hearing during
The Stazione Bologna bombing.
I am consequently pensioned off,
Off both the radar and the payroll.
Years later now,
I live in one of those gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55, sunny southern California
Lunatic asylums.

Most days I am drunk at 9 AM.
I fill Bukowski mornings,
Conjuring up Jane Fonda,
Jazzercised in camo spandex.
She is high atop a Vietcong tank in Hanoi.
Or Daniel Ellsberg
Enjoying a second act in American politics,
Praising Snowden & Assange,
& Bradley Manning,
I summon up the ghosts of
Julius & Ethel,
Benedict Arnold,
Rose of Tokyo & Mata Hari—
And Ezra exiled at Rapallo,
And John Walker Lindh,
A Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Born in Washington,
District of Columbia,
By way of Afghanistan,
Taliban Americano,
Kangaroo-courted,
Presently residing at the
Federal Correctional Institution
At Terre Haute, Indiana.
Spies.
Traitors.
Saboteurs.
And Poets?
No longer capable of keeping secrets.
Desperate now to tell
The truth.

One day, I found myself falling like Alice
But without a white rabbit
Just me
Alone
Abruptly tumbling down
The floor having been decidedly yanked from beneath me

I found plummeting both terrifying and boring
The same panic over and over
Gets old after a time
Yet the bottom was little better
Devoid of a fluffy tail to follow
I have no guide in this empty place
Walled in with my thoughts
Hoping for a path to Wonderland

"Drink Me"

I'm not sure how I got here
Searching endlessly for answers
To questions that I have not even posed
Gazing helplessly at the chasm
Wondering if I can back out

"Someday you'll be Queen of Wonderland
Drink Me"

I was certain I could play the long game
Persevere to be better off in the end
Yet I lay here ******-knuckled
Having beaten solid rock
Hoping it would turn into
A Door

"You'll never leave if you don't hurry
Drink Me"

I hear tic-tock-ing through the walls
And I'm sure it's just the pressure now
I'm never getting out of here
No amount of wracking my brain
Will produce an escape plan
And it does not seem as though any creature
Will be appearing to assist
I am never getting out of here

"Don't be frustrated
Drink Me"

"Feeling stuck?
Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

1.     I really tried
2. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough
3. Why did I always think everything was about me?
4. You were my angel
5. My demons were too strong
6. I never look people in the eyes because I'm afraid they'll see through my windows and see that there's not light inside
They'll see my secret pain
The monsters gain
Persuasion in the argument
If I should live or die
7. The mask wasn’t supposed to stay on forever but people seemed to like it better than my sadness and sadness doesn’t always cooperate with my plans. Like sometimes sadness just wants to stretch his legs across my face leaving traces that look like tired eyes and furrowed brows. Sadness, like water, will take the path of least resistance from the world to heart and back. Self-endulgend, sadness begs for hosts without every bothering to host the party because sadness doesn’t mind if he overstays his welcome.
8. I was 17 when he died, it has been eight years
9. If I can't win the fight to stay
If I lose and go my way
I have to believe things will be OK
Because your grief won't come
From the fact that I am gone
Maybe you'll think about what
We could have done to better get along
10. You won’t often think of me
So let me go, let me be free
Your mind is the sun
Confidence and clean
11. My mind is a terror
That doesn't deal in dream
In years to come, perhaps
You think of us
A memory we shared
12. I wish I let you in and feel a connection
Isolationist tendencies are decidedly not the best strategy
So my island is a prison
Not a blessed reclusion from the judgments of my mental illness
I'm simply in denial to any sickness at all

We buy them in colors we like
Because we drive them for years.
My black pickup is shadowy and morose,
But decidedly so - and I am unashamed.

A few are Marlboro Red, Canary Yellow,
Lake Placid Blue, and Classic White.
Some built for speed, or for comfort.
Some built for utility, or for economy.

Most are silver.
They make up a buzzing hive of polite,
Tame, courteous, ordinary, bland worker-bees
Who would never pass out on their neighbors' lawn,
and who would defend her majesty, Queen Normalcy,
With unmatched ferocity.
They seat five to seven people,
With plenty of room in the trunk for the American Dream.

Mine is black, old and faded,
But decidedly so - and I am unashamed;
With only enough room in the cab
For one other person,
And its towing capacity is the mass of the observable Universe.

A battered VW Beetle named Dusty
Whose bodywork was decidedly rusty
        Still was able to travel
On tarmac and gravel
In a manner observably trusty.

Ana,
I used to play with you when I was younger.
I remember you were so proud
the first time I weighed 125,
I guess those stomach problems came in handy
for keeping you by my side,
I'd go days without eating,
and you'd smile.
I never let you influence me too much, though...
Not until now.
I've always had you on my mind.
You are inherently deadly,
you are addictive in your toxicity.

I'm not hungry.

I can't help but wonder when Mia
will get me on my knees again.

I'm not hungry.

I'm one of those people who
******* about romanticising mental illness
and eating disorders, yet here I am,
giving a name to you.

I'm not hungry.

All the poems about how my razor
takes my blood and breath but gives me life,
but I've written none about you for a while.
Blood drips from my arms and thighs
and, pinching the soft, scarred skin,
I think of you.

I'm not hungry.

You are a decidedly perfect example
of deadly willpower.
You are one of my several methods
of self-destruction
and yet another thing for me to fall in love with,
I am an addict itching for a bit
of self-hatred, and you are an easy fix.

I'm not hungry.

Maybe if I was just a little bit thinner,
then maybe I'd get there.

*I'm not hungry...

You felt a Monster
when your Hamster Wolverine  died
Did that almost turn your head to Sylvia Plath
Yet you are decidedly amongst the living
and should never pilgrim with Mannequins
When Life's bedevilled by doubt
can your wise  friend find rhyme with you
perhaps to Scarborough and back again
on some weekend decider.

Those onion dome cupolas,
Sheer Slavic sublimity,
Instructing us:
Perhaps Peter the Near Great--
Rather than picking a pack of pickled peppers--
Decides to provide us a solid reminder
Of just what Greatness implies.
The near great never so
Great as Greatness requires.
According to a foremost authority
On pre-Mongol Russian architecture:
“Whip me up some beet soup, Bubala.”
Mike Myers, of course,
Doing “Coffee Talk with Linda Richmond!”
Yeah, a bowl of borscht and a plate of pirozhki.
Feed the stereotype: Ivan, Boris & Natasha,
All obviously Down’s-Syndrome-Feeble-Minded,
Pre-Mongolian Idiotic, as we once said.
Our weltanschauung—
Our World View--
As Good Neighbors Reinhard or Wolfgang,
See the business of global politics.
www.wikipedia.com “The framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it.”
Thank you, Huns--
Wayne Newton singing:
“Danke schön.”
You always,
Always Hungry Huns.
Danke schön, you Campbell Soup
Man-handler-Hungry Huns,
Fueled on Goethe & Nietzsche,
Zoroaster & ***-ner
Germany:  A Nation of Militarists & Conquistadors,
Just when the Cold War could have been over so quickly,
So prudently averted by asking one simple question:
When have the Russians ever been the
Aggressive party in any conflict?
Be they simple border disputes,
Or true malice aforethought.
Some Napoleonic,
Or Hitlerian.
It was a simple case of HUAC histrionics.
No, decidedly not.
The Near-Great Peter’s was--
If anything--
An Open Door Policy,
A diplomatic Welcome Mat,
A soft squeeze of one’s ball sac,
Pleasant & promising,
“Mi casa es su casa,
Try the Chicken Kiev.”
No Iron Curtain,
If I might, coin a phrase.
But a strong shot of Oswald Spengler,
Pessimistic & carnelian,
Jogs us to Stalin & Khrushchev,
Brezhnev & Putin--
Putin--Vladimir, of that surname--
Perhaps the scariest
Bond villain, yet.
Putin makes a historical first:
Invasion of Crimea.
Invasion of Ukraine.
Maybe those Cold Warrior masterminds,
Actually did us a favor.
(Come out of the closet, J. Edgar.
A retrospective tribute is in the making?
Tom Hanks playing a likable you?)
Tom Clancy & Company
Whipping us up like smoothies,
To fight the good fight,
Noses to the capitalist grindstone,
Building for Divine-Right Nabobs.
New shrines & tombs,
New Coliseums
& Amphitheaters.
New terrible fears of Ivan.

With space colliding
and consciousness demoted to
electrical charges
the beep of a car horn can

break you from a reverie of
spinning atoms and cracked coffee cups
in ****** cafes in
broken towns where

news of invasions flicker across screens
and disinterested teens discuss apps
and buildings collapse and governments
speak of

fascism being a ***** word something
decidedly non-PC
something slanderous
how dare thee

We are not Nazis
we are just looking out
for you

they know what’s best for you so
drink your coffee and
enjoy your technology
just don’t
say the wrong
words

He’d been able, after some gentle persistence,
To wheedle his way into the place
(He’d been vaguely recognized by the caretaker,
A certain affable familiarity his stock in trade, after all)
And he had been decidedly deliberate in his search for the shoes,
Though he’d been quite certain where he’d left them,
Simply hoping to drink this all in just one more time
But though the rooms were ostensibly unchanged
(He'd noted the odd knick-knack and piece of bric-a-brac
Had been secreted out, to be preserved or pawned)
They held no fascination for him now,
Simply concoctions of hardwood flooring,
Decorative wall coverings, staid pieces of furniture
(Indeed, the paterfamilias of this whole mélange
Increasingly beyond his recall-- he could hearken back
To a certain hail-fellow-well-met in his demeanor,
And he'd had an affecting smile,
But he was unable to conjure any further details
From the recesses of his memory)
And with nothing else to moor him to these silent rooms,
He'd slipped on the ostensible reasons he'd come in the first place
(Their uppers maintaining their whiteness
Through any number of bleachings,
The soles worn to a near smoothness)
And, nodding perfunctorily to the mansion's steward,
He slipped away, heading to some other party
Carrying on in more or less perpetuity,
The battered bottoms of his shoes
Leaving just the faintest marks as he crossed the dunes,
Soon to be buffed away altogether by the breeze.

Like 5 or 6 ...was i ....doesn't matter
but little,a small one for sure
Sure of that not because i remember seeing myself in mirror
But everyone else was so huge
Their palms big enough to be afraid of
Most of the world was above us
To amaze or annoy us
Can only be reached by our little eyes
Transfixed a little more than now
Ogling , making sense and befitting it in our own world of limited understanding
But few things were there
Seemed Precisely sized up for us
As if Toyed down for me and
those friends-as big as me
Never had to look up above or below
Right in level casting our surprised eyes on each other smiling through the eyes first in approval and acceptance; that tacit truce
As if we've found refuge in each other
in that big world


They made order with us -chaos (filled minds) and confused, wondering mostly
What suddenly happened; what and why I m doing it and
How far (in distance and time) is the home.
My home.
The school became "My" school to in few days

All of us dressed same, loaded with our loaded bags
Fobbed off to school in the morning
In a different world.  Our world
With more of us there
Used to stand in same row at the morning
Prayer/assembly,
height wise.....was it ?
Pushing on toes to peek over each others over those glistening oiled and then combed hairs
stacked primly to stay there for some time

Puffy reddening cheeks due to .... always smiling ....was it ?
A little henkey in left pocket always,
seldom used though
Dressed immaculately in halves
Those action shoes......was it ?
Singing prayer in unison
Eyes closed but stealing glances
Opening an eye,tilting head
And enjoying the moment secretively
Glorifying in the maneaouvre just accomplished
Sometimes yawning and snapping it back to that plumbed, more ***** posture
Thinking that too went unnoticed...Did it?
Standing through all that rut daily
That "aaj ka vichar"(today's quote)twice
A poem also ..... was it?
Finally the "jan gana mana"( national anthem)
Pressing the fists hard sidewards
pulling them down
***** and loud
In oblivion,in spirit
Head shaking in rhythm unknowingly
At every other syllable
And yeah
At last but not the least
That "bharat mata ki jai"(hail India slogan)
Loud and from heart
As if waiting for it all the time
Thrice.....was it ?
Racing to the classroom
in an unannounced competition
and extol the victors briefly.
Legs hanging from those little chairs ....
No, benches ......was it ?
Few already waiting for the teacher
Looking through the wall outside the door
Quietly
Few making the most of it
Sharing some secret laugh,loudly at the end
Showing some prized possession acquired yesterday
Rejoicing the
Silent faces in awe of that thing.
That thing ....seasonal it used to be
tattoo stacks,card stacks -wwf and cricket too
Or a geometry box....was it ?
Nodding approvingly and decidedly to that thing with conviction promising self to get something better if more of that thing only.
Not on their seats
Relying on that good samaritan
Positioned perfectly in front row
to detect the incoming teacher and a loud shussshhhhh......was it ?
Rushing to ones seat
In sonic speeds before teacher enters
Hopping and throwing oneself - thuds!!
That momentary Commotion before the muteness
Head held high,supressing a giggle
Proud of the last act
And together saying...
No, almost singing

Goooooood morningggggggg maeeammmmm
Or sir.....was it ???

Gramma always had cookies in her cookie jar
No one ever ate them but me
The jar was her self-portrait
The silvery bun was it's lid
The slight clanging of it as it opened or closed
The smell of it
Even the thought of it,
filled me with joyous anticipation
of its internal goodness
When I was sad, or did a good job
When I worked hard, or was a good helper
When I was sick, or had a rough day
But particularly when I was in trouble
That is when it was most special
She would sneak me off to the kitchen
With a steady hand, like that of a surgeon
She would lift that lid slow and steady without a sound
A feat I have yet to accomplish
Then, in silent winks and sideways glances
When the coast was clear
I got to choose a decidedly undeserved treat
It was in the belly of that cookie jar
That I learned that she would always love me
No matter what

That cookie jar, abandoned and dusty upon a shelf
Recently found and cleaned
Laid in wait upon the table
It had been weeks sitting silent before my visit
I noticed it the moment Ma opened the door
Before the hugs, "hello"
We reminisced about that old empty jar
The jar that never matched her kitchen
The one that was poorly painted by hand
To her its beauty was hideous
She obviously did not know the secrets it held
Our secrets, mine and Gramma's
Happy to be rid of it,
The torch has been passed
As it takes its place of honor in the center of the counter
I notice that its yellow dress and red apron
Match my yellow walls and the red flecks in my curtains
It is at home in my kitchen
Even if my kitchen was purple
Now, its lessons of unconditional, eternal love
Are to be bestowed, unknowingly to my children
They will learn just how much a cookie can fix
And the secrets that are kept deep within
The belly of the cookie jar

the oddity of it all, i can sound like a 70 year old, writing in 2016, by simply writing about 2004 - and that's the excuse everyone gives for lazy English text form: 2 (abc), 3 (def), 4 (ghi), 5 (jkl), 6 (mno), 7 (pqrs), 8 (tuv), 9 (wxyz) - where you had to press a button several times to get the right letter (even with spellcheck helping you shorten the digit-bag sequence) - but that's no excuse with digital phones and a complete keyboard... but that's how it looks, after only 12 years... i'm actually aged 70 given the advances of the technology advent... let's forget the technology of the 1990s... i've circled round and met up with people who collected vinyls... that's how old i am in respect to my buying habits... we're the silver-compact-vinyl kids: the ghouls of the 1960s, born in the 1980s and not getting down with the kids... and to readdress just two books: all that stream-of-consciousness made the latter end of Ulysses a bit like writing by candle-light... as was reading the plagiarism of the above stated in Sartre's iron in the soul... or as the puritans said: we're filling for at least a ¶ (pilcrow) to be inserted: not to mess up the idea of a river and "thinking aloud" where punctuation marks mean: stopping suddenly because you become self-conscious... i just needed a ****** bookmark! the monks at the time of Charlemagne used the ¶ quiet often, condensed bibles, ink was worth 20 camels and paper was worth 20 dresses for a queen... ah, the times when paper was as precious as silk... so the puritans condensed writing, they weren't as sparing in their inner feng shui - a room the size of St. Paul's... and two words in it: Jesus Christ... they were like modern day delivery guys, packaging words together, they didn't have the luxury to write paragraphs with the now established spacing afresh, i.e.:

            and Jimmy went up a ladder into the loft etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
             Florence was making a cup of tea when she heard Jimmy yell: 'my long lost golf clubs!' etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

i.e.

¶ and Jimmy went up a ladder into the loft etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

alternatively the ¶ went out of fashion in the literary world, once writing became affordable and changed into a profiteering case of bravado... but i still think ¶ is a bit like using a clef.*

or how to keep one's intellectual integrity: have a drink or two,
and muster enough creative energy to use this encoding -
or... how to make poetry akin to computer
programming - a subtler way to encode
the now slothfully rising moon:
half of it, not full, nor scimitar crescent,
a half bitten honey biscuit, just above the forest
horizon, and the semi-detached houses
of English outer-suburbia - in a sense
transcendentalism, a box with many words
in it attributed to the cause,
as is the reason why Christianity became
the most schismatic religion that has ever
graced man's "good will" (ambiguity,
not an approximation) - in line with philosophical
whims of vogue: idealism, realism, transcendentalism,
existentialism, ism after ism after the Methodists
and the Baptists and other mongrels of current
affairs... already stated: populist Platonism
and the ransacked and burnt library of Alexandria...
yes, decidedly, poetry as a variation of
computer programming - although more akin
to: the tetragrammaton and the Noah's
checklist of paired onomatopoeia(s) (plural
form is underlined, Oxford hasn't picked up
the circumstance: there are neurotics out there
who'd send you to the guillotine for not
updating "spelling mistakes" that aren't
"spelling mistakes" quickly enough!) -
to the cause or as signatures of being easily
recognisable as: yes, that's that... a moustache
and a bowler hat...            alternatively
watch a stand-up show by Miranda -
the very typical English-ness inside out:
hysterical from the word go... the ministry of
funny walk from Monty Python ***
                      the two walks at the airport -
or the trip-up on skewed pavement slabs
checking the impromptu socially acceptable
version of the other seeing us -
comedians do it oh so well: the inside-out,
stern exterior, boy ******* a thumb and relating
to a blanket as if it were an umbilical chord...
what a tightly knit individual...
                          made complete with about a dozen
patches...
                       but it is! it is! it really is already
ready to be likened to computer programming,
perhaps there's no <xerox> or other commands,
but poetry deals with encoding sounds,
no man can encode a proper roar of a lion
or a squirt of a skunk, that's sheer travesty that
so many people can actually muster enough
encouragement to encode these sounds...
i imagine a world where we don't even care
to write knock, and knock on a piece of wood
and a noumenon is born, the sound isn't noted
down, it remains a thing in itself (synonyms,
in italics) - it's probably akin to getting a tattoo,
great if you have a short-term memory loss
like that guy in Memento... but it's going to
be hard to displace knock-knock -
again this is already an approximation -
onomatopoeia upon onomatopoeia -
it doesn't even sound akin or properly dressed
to mention Plato's theory of forms -
sounds can be forms: apparently they're waves...
no waves are forms (shapes) -
or that demigod who fell in love with his shadow,
rather than his image reflected in a lake,
he fell in love: because it gave him enhanced reflexes...
every single time... boom... shadow... boom...
shadow... and so much of language goes into
these nonsensical types of encoding -
blah for: talking a lot -
                                           hmm - when negatively
pondering something -
                                            i believe that
there should be a grammatical elevation of the onomatopoeia
to the status of nouns, verbs etc. -
                           but it is, it is, it really is
like computer programming,
               above and beyond the sheltering vacuum -
how would we ever write a word to encode the
sound of lightning, or a volcano erupting,
or the earth spinning - in these areas i find god -
       i will find man in these areas:
but i'll be hinged on mathematical explanation:
and mathematics is pure optics -
                       so what that we can write one and write
1, write two and write 2, three and 3, four and 4 -
    by now we can write to, too, free and for...
and this is just the start -
                             by acknowledging onomatopoeia
for something, we acknowledge our limitation
of encoding something in that realm -
this inability gave us the emergence of nouns -
   sooner or later when someone started
talking about an earthquake... a litmus test of:
brr grrm boom bah dobble aah! etc.
we got the picture - and why would a monkey
evolve from its conscious-sleep reservoir
to say just as much as with a simple grunt and ooh -
actually, some onomatopoeia(s) became sophisticated -
a grunt is a sophisticated onomatopoeia -
       as is weeping and crying and shouting -
as is shooing (or to shoo) -
well, that's how i see it... poetry as reality programming -
since there's more than just a computer -
at the moment it just resembles a game of
whack-a-mole -                 although there's more than
the mere 26 primary moles -
      and all this talk does relate to something,
something very important at the beginning of the
20th century... well, a century later, and something
similar is being discussed... Ivan Bunin?
noble prize winner from 1933, the first russian to do so...
  anyway... this goes beyond his concerns...
his concerns were akin to that dud i made
with the word mruwka -
                               personally? i feel that the "correct"
version of the word is aesthetically displeasing -
and anyone who says otherwise treats orthography
not as an aesthetic question, but a question
of rubrics and regime - so there we have the "correct"
version mrówka                               (ant)       -
anyone agree with me? well, the English language
doesn't have any concerns for orthographic
regulation - it has excessive spelling and that's that -
what bothered Ivan was the Bolsheviks rewriting
orthographic rules... the word in question?
izvestia - that really peeved him off...
                      everyone in intellectual circles was
disturbed by the changes (can't recall the original) -
but the changes were approved by the Russian Academy of
Sciences (immediately before the revolution) -
there would have been any dispute about the "evolution"
in orthographic terms if done prior to Feb. 1917 -
the war postponed the changes, and with the Bolsheviks
in power... then obviously the suspicion...
   now... such changes are but farts in hurricanes
in comparison with what happened in the realm of English...
i mean, ****'s sake, we're talking minor aesthetic tweaks
here and there - the changes still encompass the form
that's understood by the ear, and it's only a matter of
taste where you write the word ant as either mruwka
or mrówka - well, mind you, i'm already asking
for the incorporation of the Czech š (sz) and č (cz) -
but what's happening in English... my god: it's terrifying!
all these acronyms? all these emoticons?
        i know that English journalists are in favour of
:) and :( and ;) ;) [wink wink] - and next thing you know:
you're talking to a monkey... you soon realise:
the deaf have nurtured a superior system of communication,
as have the blind than these poor, healthy, ably nimble
*******...                   how they're superior, i don't know,
and in all honest? don't care...
         for goodness' sake: a heard a story that a girl
wrote her g.c.s.e. English language paper in text format:
   e.g. c (see) u (you) l8r (later)          -
now you see why i think that poetry is like computer
programming?
these people are scripts from a classical software program
that looks something like: 3;r/d]]aq"pk.0    etc.    
it's a complete and utter mess!
                         fair enough saying: O Shakespeare O
Milton... those guys are turning in their graves...
and they ain't showering the English language with
graces mind you: they're calling it the new
***** & Gomorrah - and it's not England was the sole
inheritor of the computer -
                                       that's what not having
diacritical accessories does to you...
                             you get hacked...
and this... pretty much... is a form of a hack:
you'll wake up tomorrow with a pair of sunglasses
or think you're looking down a microscope;
i swear to god...       me and Ivan are just laughing...
he's not drinking, i'm drinking, but we share
the same intuitive devices - the same puppet strings
pulled him in 1919 as they are pulling me in 2016...
the same ****** trials of a variation of zoology -
some look at monkey behaviour,
            others look at how language is cradled in people:
and i'm not even going to bother
elaborating on anything by Chomsky -
which brings me to the following conclusion
(back to Miranda) - i don't believe in fame apparent,
fame apparent, as in: tabloid crap and c.c.t.v.
and 20 nannies and 50 bathrooms, and not being
recognised wearing a virtual reality gear when walking
down a street when otherwise imprisoned on
a television screen rewind - that's not fame,
that's tyranny under the masses -
                         i don't believe in it... which answers
one famous English scientist's question:
why does posthumous fame exist?
                                    it's like that Camus question
about suicide - well... i guess it's a question of
endurance... a bit like a fail-safe mechanism about
why the pyramids are still standing even though
they experienced so much weathering by the elements -
well, as endurance has it: posthumous fame is
filled by introverts...
                                          i dare you to name that
famous Bolshoi ballet dancer, or that famous 1930s
actor or actress... they're part of the extrovert side of
what's called "fame" - but that's only a minor point
i wanted to make... the real zest i already explained -
ah crap, summary in maxim:
   the concept of modern fame is the result of a god
that has been attributed such qualities as omnipresence...
               well, aren't modern celebrities... a bit like that?

I checked my time
It was around nine in the night
I looked up at the sky
You should ask me why
Something seems strange
It is not a mirage
The Stars are shining full
The Moon is quarter full
The Sky looks beautiful
This does not happen everyday
It is on the eighth of May
Around nine in the night
And things are looking moderately bright


I stood up from my seat
Just to wonder around
Green grass beneath my feet
This shows good soil abound
I sighted the fireflies flaunting their light
I heard the toads croaking with their might
I saw some flies flying away with fright
I noticed the gentle breeze of the night
I felt alive
This sensation does not happen everyday
It was on the eighth of May
Around nine in the night
And things were looking moderately bright


Something again occur
Nature was showing her Jamboree
When I saw it I concur
I could't help but to agree
A meteorite stylishly slowly decidedly descend
Contemporaneously with an aeroplane cruising westward
Its sound as if it's a firework
Its flashlight merging with the satellites and the starlight
Sizzling the sky with spree of synchronized light
This illumination does not happen everyday
It is on the eighth of May
Around nine in the night
And things are looking moderately bright


Here I am still wondering about
Free I am real round about
This World is not always a beautiful place
Round the years? Round the months? Round the days?
Across all the continents through the Asia
What makes today so special?
I believe the Heavens are smiling on me
Even the Earth agrees to it
Cruel creatures couldn't conflict
Nurtured Nature nicely nods to it
All these are on the eighth of May
Around nine in the night
And my star is realistically ready to shine its light

At barely five feet with a heel
and being decidedly round
Lori didn’t turn many heads
But she turned my life around.

Forty years, has it been
since we were both seventeen?
I remember it a difficult year
Like all the ones in between.

Cherry cokes at the Blue Bay diner
she worked on the school paper with me
She rolled up her skirt like the others
to show off her Catholic girl knees.

With Greg as her steady companion
she was the heart of our group.
They provided a fair bit of drama
and the happiest days of my youth.

For I was an ungainly kid,
nonathletic, inclined to be round.
It was Lori who drew our social circle
big enough to include me in bounds.

We always were friends, never lovers,
never shared one passionate kiss.
She taught me that mercy trumps justice
She made Circles just like God makes his.

At barely five feet with a heel
and being decidedly round
Her face had the smile of an angel
such beauty is rare to be found.

Reconstruction

To be free of this insufferable pain I tolerate,
Such aches and pains I can't even rate.
I grind my teeth as I **** it up and tolerate,
Is this to always be my sad lonely fate?
The world has dealt me a sad hand,
My Psyche lost  in the wind as grains of sand.
Wounded inside I bleed unseen by eyes,
I cry out to those foreboding dark skies.
This aesthetic world sees not my sorrow,
Must I always smile even as I fear tomorrow.
Should I not face my calamities boldly?
Stand for what I firmly believe steadfastly.
Let my convictions be my salve,
Allow pent up emotions a release valve.
Fill my being with new love so beautiful,
Rebuild a connection that is decidedly wonderful.
©Perveiz Ali

A woman's just a padded cell, in situ:
With mirrored tile reflections, of former occupants
Reveals their once desires, like long past feast
That's been viewed only partially, through a narrow hall,
And though her cushions can't stop your fall
They soak up life's effluvium; for she's an island
In the lull; most co-morbidly, antediluvian:
And as it cradles the body's living estate,
Her rocking-horse frame can't navigate
The ground swell of presumptive grace.

Let's pretend, that the dizzy motion ride
Has provided real progress forward, in spite
Of strong waves, that coupled oceans bring;
Jump saddle, on her coiled and double-jointed springs.
Bright enameled eyes might rein you inside
For your brief spate, of the near total ingress:
Waving haloed hips of plastic'd flesh; her glide
Could stay stationary, until you confess.

Only she knows well, the secret of assuring you
You'll not drown, of her swirling vicissitudes;
And if once you abhorred your childhood name;
Now can use same call sign, for your idling engines
Of a certain procreatively inspired invasion
As she whispers it; says it loud, clenching need
Of the second's singlemost long duration.

When she finally unlocks your prow from docks
Post haste, of body's self-deceptive clocks
Inside her temples, rising incense of sweat
Mingled with undertows, of past vibrations; and her smell
Itself: a briny distillate, of a pheromone tonic; forensic clue
Of a decidedly amber hue; the body's cyclonic age of man
Keeps travelling it's way, down her plundered mnemonic.

You can feel the straight jacket's razored sleeves,
Beginning to loose your constricted lungs;
And your ***** overflowing; becoming a sieve:
If you could keep on riding, you'd be quite sure
That eventually, just a small band-aid could cure
The slight, though badly malformed scar;
From the still flowing toxins; to soon immure-
Hard to believe, how far gone you were.

Forget old self; a newfound confidence;
Makes you forestall the inevitable trip
Down to the corner, second-hand store,
As now is revealed, that her paint's become chipped;
And the horse's eyes are now rolling inward,
As if looking there, for some positive proof,
From the prying, irreverent eyes of the world-
But you know it too well: she's just a padded cell.

Love struck right through my chest.
And there it planted a seed.
No matter how much I protest,
It crept up and grew like a ****.

It walked up when my back was turned.
How very unkind how very impolite,
It leads me only to get spurned.
And brings with it lonely a night.

Oh why did love do such a thing?
It likes to pick on me, love does.
Did it have to pluck each heart string?
But for the best it truly was.

For if love had decided not to creep at all,
I might have decidedly turned away,
I might never’ve taken down my wall.
Sneaky love has given me a chance today.