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.

013024

Walang ibang saksi
Ng mga binhing kusang umuusbong.
At walang ibang tutugon
Sa walang katapusang paghikbi.

Daig pa ng liwanag
Ang kadilimang baluti sa’king mga mata.
Ngunit tila ba ako’y hindi pa rin handa
Sa mga balang tumatagos sa’king katauhan.

Nauuhaw pa rin ako
Sa mga salitang “Mahal kita”
Ngunit sa bawat pagtagisan ng mga salita’y
Puso ko rin ang kusang lumilisan.

Marahil ang paghilom ay isa lamang panimula
Ngunit sa ngayo’y ang mga pahina’y
Nasa dulo na ng aking katapusan
At paano nga ba muling makasasandal?
Paano nga ba muling magsisimula?

From origins of humble pie
From parentage so bland,
A simple soul with simple goals
He sprang from South Auckland.
The green, green grass of Tuakau
The onion fields of home,
Wherein he tended hives of bees
For golden honeycomb.
 
Tall and lanky, mighty man
He strode through life in tune
With little fanfare, little flair
No technicolor moon,
To choose the low key profile
Was an automatic thing,
Humility was in his blood
Elan, a spurned gold ring.
 
Self conscious, long and concave chest
A toothy lantern jaw,
With skinny ribs and pallid skin,
A boy could want for more?
Bright shiny eyes and earnest will
He gathered up his gear
And conquered Mt Olympian
Without a trace of fear.
 
A forte found, a passion sprung,
A love for mountain air.
The rocky crags and pristine snow
The cold wind in his hair.
***** after ***** his long legs climbed
His skill and ardor grew,
And all at once he found himself
In a Himalayan crew.
 
The stories told the legends made
Those mighty deeds alone,
Both he and Tenzing stood astride
The planet’s summit dome.
They went to where no other man
Had ever been before.
They conquered Everest’s soaring peak,
They witnessed heaven’s door.
 
And on and on through life he strode
He raised a happy brood,
But tragedy would strike and ****
That joy in Kathmandu.
To ressurect, to lift your game
From whence you were so low.
It takes a special breed of man
To wear that dreadful blow.
 
The Sherpa schools and hospitals
Were built by funds he raised,
He organized good teachers
And the building Trusts he paid.
In far Nepal and India too
His fame did spread afar
But this man kept his ego
Firmly locked up in a jar.
 
He shot the mighty Ganges
In a jet boat through and through
He drove a Fergi to the Pole
And through McMurdoe too.
Across the world his fame did grow
To epic size and plan
But in his heart he stayed intact
An ordinary man.
 
Throughout this fair and lovely land
I think it’s true to say
That every man & boy & girl
And farmer baling hay,
Respects this Kiwi Icon true
And salutes, to a man,
This epitome of greatness
From the Himalayan land.
 
Today we said a sad farewell,
The rich and famous too.
All gathered here in squally air
In thousands, me and you.
We celebrated greatness
And a noble life supreme.
We tasted humble graciousness
In a grateful Sherpa’s dream.
The words were said, so well I thought
Reflecting, probably,
This lifetime will not see again
The like of Hillary.
 
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
22 January 2008

Ach, a delicah constitution, have I

me auld bones are getting wearier

if somebody sneezes I have a cowld

its getting worser the more I get older

I can’t get a dacent man

but I’m looking as hard as I can

I’ve got a little piece of land

so for a dowry he’d be grand

See, since I buried my first two

it’s not easy to get a beau

and these day’s I’m not such a pretty view

I can be a bit contrary

and my moods oft vary

but unlike my sister Mary

I haven’t got a tash long and hairy

I don’t need any of that *** stuff

I can tell ya that for nuttin

Its help around the farm I’m huntin

I can make a dacent cup-o-tay

and I’m handy at baling the hay

so if your up for a bit of honest toil

and your humour don’t make me blood boil

Come marry Teresa Rafter

when I’m gone you’ll live happily ever after

All day making hay, we watched the empty sky.
Summer heat, clinging shirts soaked, powder caked in dust.
Though we worked a Montana field,
I knew when my father said,
"Hurricane weather."

By two or so, a few small clouds, high and innocent,
Were forming to the west; we did not stop to rest;
A field of second cutting hay down,
Windrows of perfect hay
Fed the tireless machines we rode.

By supper time, a line of gray progressed,
Menacing from north to south and moving east.
"Supper'll have to wait, boys," and Dad was right.
We raced the sky and quickly coming night.

Unnatural calm and breathless air held dust above our rows;
We pressed on, knowing that the winds were on their way.
Bright bolts began to stab across the plain;
We guessed the storm was half an hour away.

The race was nearly finished, our baling nearly done,
When lightning struck around us, sure as any gun.
We looked for Dad, and he baled on, so what to do but follow?
But when the rain and hail fell, our work was done.

Laughing as we ran, we piled into a truck;
Let the tractors stand to face the storm alone
As rain and hail poured  anger at our bales,
And we, the merry balers, headed home.

Last sunday, we go videoke.
Kaming unom, grabe'g panganta.
Naay nice ug tingog, naay okay ra,
naay wala gyud sa tono, naay nag sabay-sabay ra,
ug naay feeler gyud kaayo nga singer siya.

Niabot ang time, naka feel na mig uhaw.
Ni offer ang isa, isa ka bucket ambot ug unsa.
TOK TOK TOK ayay naa na ang gihulat,
tambal sa uhaw gipatong sa lamesa.
PAK! SMIRNOFF ANG GIDALA!

Kami nagpadayon ug kanta,
kachada sa pamati, sa ilimnong ma'lami.
Niabot ang last nga kanta,
Obladi, Oblada, tala na mamauli na ta.
Nihapit's balutan, mao na po'y gitirada.

Nanglingkod kadjot sa seawall,
nagpahangin gamay usa musakay.
Nipara mig cab kay hapit na alas dose,
sa rural basin mabiyaan mi.
Wa na gibyaan gyud, maygani naay super 5, pero tag 50 gyud.

Kami naabot sa tagsa-tagsang panimalay,
wow kalami sa akuang katulog bai.
Pagmata nako, nganong init kaayo ko?
Wa ko kasabot sa akuang gibati, gitugnaw ko pag ayo.
Yati, ngano man ni? Nag inom man unta kog vitamin C.

Pagka uran2 naa koy gi share sa fb,
nag react akuang miga kay sgalain pud daw iya ginhawa.
Taod-taod nag my day ang isa, gi dextrose kay gihilantan sab siya.
Nag text kos isa pa, kung ga daot pud siya.
"OO" mao na iyang reply,
***! why kami gyud upat dai?

Ang isa silingan ra namo, wala may gibati.
So, isa nalang kulang, akua gitawagan.
Wala mitubag, akuang manghod iyang gi chatan.
"Yes dai gihilantan pud siya", mao nay reply.
Wala nay lain, ang SMIRNOFF mao jud akuang pasanginlan!

Kaming lima baling yarok, sa smirnoff nga mabugnaw.
Ang isa wala nag mind kay nagsaad di gyud siya mo inom.
Mao toy amuang gidangatan, gipang ubo, sip'on ug gihilantan.
Grabe, unsay naa adtong smirnoff nila?
Ngano kaming lima ang naapektohan?

We hadn’t had TV news for days
And the nights were cold and still,
The radio sound was just a haze
Of hash, from over the hill,
There wasn’t a signal for the phone
And the Internet was dead,
‘Do you think it’s just the weather, Bill?’
‘Much more than that,’ I said.

The power went off on the seventh day
I began to feel alarm,
We’d never felt quite so isolated
On our outback farm.
I drove on out to the neighbour’s spread
But they seemed to have gone away,
I thought, ‘That’s funny, it’s not like Fred,
He’s usually baling hay.’

I came back via the Rogers place,
There was nobody around,
The doors to the house were open, but
They seemed to have gone to ground.
Their cars were there but the truck was gone
And the old Toyota Ute,
I called and listened, but not a sound,
I should have been more astute.

I should have packed, and driven away
If I’d known what I know now,
But the pigs and the chickens had to be fed,
And what to do with the cow?
I couldn’t think much outside the farm
The world could fend for itself,
We lived in a tiny world of our own
And thought about nothing else.

We lit the paraffin lamps at night,
‘It’s lucky we kept them, Bill.’
I said, ‘You’re right,’ and stood on the porch,
And watched the glow on the hill.
We’d had three days of never a breeze
Like the lull before a storm,
Though the clouds glowed red in the sky at night
In shapes that were ripped and torn.

A rumble began the thirteenth day
Like a thundering from afar,
And Jacqueline turned to me to say,
‘Stop leaving the door ajar!’
She then collapsed, and covered her ears
And bent down low in her chair,
I saw that her face was smeared with tears
And all I could do was stare.

‘You know that I love you, Jacqueline,
Whatever may come to pass,
I love you more than the day before,
I just want to tell you, lass.’
It started raining at just on dusk,
Came down, and started to pour,
It raised a mist, and started to hiss
In the barley stooks by the door.

The lightning started at four a.m.
We hadn’t been able to sleep,
The sky ablaze through a purple haze
I could hear my woman weep.
I wiped the dust off the .22
That I’d kept there, under the stairs,
Loaded a fresh new magazine
And silently said my prayers.

The cow was dead in the morning, lay
Quite burned, and covered in blood,
And all the chickens were strewn about
Quite dead, they lay in the mud,
‘What does it mean,’ said Jacqueline
As she stared through the window pane,
‘I don’t want to be too hasty, love,
But I think it was acid rain.’

‘There’s nobody left but us,’ she said,
Be honest and tell me true!’
‘I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but
There’s something we need to do.
Pack up our clothes, and all the food,
We’d better be heading West,
If Sydney’s gone, a hydrogen bomb,
Then Melbourne would have been next.’

We’re headed on out to who knows where
And leaving the rain behind,
I hope that the cloud won’t follow us there
Though we’ll be travelling blind.
The .22 is behind the seat
In case we have need of it,
I pray to God that we’ll have it beat,
But Jacqueline’s just been sick!

David Lewis Paget

you were a white male and I was a white male and we were young and even if one put us together we were young.  our idea was to give winter gloves to those whose teeth chattered and we knew the sound had come to us both.  we mowed lawns all summer and mugged when we could drunk jocks who sat beside train tracks reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter because our logic had us waiting.  by then we were not friends and hell was the handbasket.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene we couldn’t countrify.  today I photocopied my privates and printed two-hundred sheets by accident in a hellish place made special by hell.

(someone won this collection via a Goodreads giveaway and posted how much they hated it on Tumblr because Tumblr is not attached to their name.  also, I assume, because they hated it.  my name is Barton Smock.  I, too, am a coward.)

~

[earshot]

you were a white male and I was a white male and we were young and even if one put us together we were young.  our idea was to give winter gloves to those whose teeth chattered and we knew the sound had come to us both.  we mowed lawns all summer and mugged a drunk **** who sat reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter but by then we were not friends and song was the retroactive vocal of a father’s forgetting.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene no mother would countrify.  

~

[eulogy]

when stalking
the unmanned
spotlight
of your own
death, drink

heavily

with
your takers / you

are nowhere’s
only
sponsor

~

[not monstrous]

a group of boys beats my son for beating my daughter.  when I carry my kids, my kids relax.  the group of boys are uneducated and think god has promoted a number of them to shave me.  my ***** looks as if left by an angel to grow alone after not being placed on an infant.  there is nothing to be said but one of the boys mutters away that he is set to star in the film version of your father’s suicide and that if all goes well he’ll **** himself for real.

~

[tract]

the television in front of my murderous father is the city his house misses.  further coverage is dedicated to a new unharmed person from a race of desert people whose mother materialized without feeling.  as my brothers cross shadows in the brightness of kitchen, I join in spirit the manhunt for the victim who’s made off with the right to disappear.  

~

[incubation period]

I flatten my father’s tin foil hat to hear farmland again.  I am the astronaut god commands me to pinch.  my babies are tossed in the general direction of trampolines.  

~

[non-event]

I was reading beyond my years to childlike fathers in a house named for the woman whose hair was brought to her by boys her sons had wronged.  I was eating what I could of the horse said to have eaten hospital flowers.          
~

[locals]

the mother wonders how it is common she lose the baby when she is not the last to have it.  my name is silent but no letter in my name is or the letters in my name are not silent but the word they make is.  her pain is god’s.  

~

[monster]

I want to sit around and do nothing and I want to have a handful of kids that sit around and do nothing.  I will call myself the end of god and ask women inappropriate questions by way of populating obituaries with written code.  you will want to argue and I will have to get up and we will try together to save the child I crushed parts of.  the face of the child will be our slideshow.

~

[light touch]

she imagined herself pregnant.  she fell behind her best years which became predictions.  she asked me about the men in my friendships.  candle-makers, a few with toddlers

a football
knocks over.    

~

[straw piece]

I was an entire baby and then a picture of me as a baby.  I had as part of the **** shaming process a mother wheeled in and out of the sun.  here is a boy with a red brick looking for an anthill.  here he was brushing from a woman’s bare back a piece of straw and here it is sticking to my leg.  in the barn the eater of stones is missing the privacy of an outhouse.  I lie to her face and then to nostalgia’s outlook.  I lose blood to the mosquito known for the collapse of my favorite cow.

~

[insult stage]

the very sadness.  the very sadness of the intruder who brings his own plate to drop.  the very ecstasy of telling a classmate he or she is ugly alongside a finger he or she must choose.  the unintended ecstasy of the sadness I use to *** cobwebs while waiting for something you’ll do nothing with.  the cutting of the fingers to scale.

~

[stirrings]

being operated on
helps me sleep.

I was your age
when nothing
had been done.

the turtle in my father’s backpack,
the turtle loose
on a moving
school bus.

gods
from a previous
marriage.

I crawled into my mother’s bed
and waited
for my nose to bleed.

you find the cut
like you find
where your daughter
is cut.

a sister ties
knot after knot
and opens
a window
only to *****
in a downstairs bathroom
from a fear
of heights.

down bilsdean creek where fresh and salt water meet
the bladderwrack rehydrating incoming tide chases
tiny trout upstream  to the overhanging hazel branch
sanctuary of dappled dancing sunlight where they flit
back and forth under the ever watchful kingfisher
shimmering blue glints of nervous anticipation

by whelk denuded tidal pools, Freddy the refugee
with his rusty bike, tin can kettle and bent safety pin
waits patiently for his stream water to boil
a hip flask of vinegar and folded envelope of pepper
are produced with theatrical flourish from a tattered
baling twine belted overcoat and placed on the rock

from Fife the haunting groans of the fog horns echo
around the mist cloaked cliffs where Glasgow boys
once set up their easels and squeezed red ochre
onto pallettes of roof slate to sing praises to nature
the water boils in the smoke blackened tin can
the mussels open in surrender among the whelks
the tide inches forward grinding empty shells to sand

it must be tiring
with all the heat
of summer

it was cool here yesterday
down the estuary

and rain came about 7.30

refreshing while walking

no use when your job is baling
when the baler is jammed

so we had a break in the back garden
six feet apart and talked about policemen

remembering earlier times

later a friend rang and said it was good
to hear a different perspective on things

i also was interested to hear a different

perspective on things

we come lately
we come with more
promise

with bird song
this morning

so why the darkness
some days

is that natural?

there is a clear pool up by the mountain
where recently visitors have left litter

dark clouds gathering

A bloke from way down in the city
As far away from the outback as one could get~
Decided to go try life in the outback
And took a job as a para vet~
It was away out on a distant remote cactus farm
In the middle of heaven knows only where~
And they only had a few hundred sheep n cattle
And they didn't need much care~
All the blokes that worked there
Had almost been there for always~
And had not been off this farm
For forever and thirty days~
One of the blokes said he felt ill
And they were just so far out back~
So when he keeled over on the job
They made a hospital in an empty shack~
The para vet then he decided that
He could do the job on him~
And got a few tools from the workshop
Not to operate would be a sin~
They thought he might have a gall stone
Well that's what the para vet he thought~
One thought he might have a fur ball
As he did like sheep but was never caught~
So they put him to sleep with home brew
And then went inside of him to see~
The para vet and a few farm workers
Who were as handy as could be~
They found a few bits and pieces in there
Of what they never had a clue~
So they did not look too useful
And they cut them out it's true~
They cut off a few small loose bits
That was hanging loose here and there~
And then stitched him up with baling twine
And a bag needle with care~
When he woke up they told him that
He really ought to rest~
So they decide he needed somewhere peaceful
They thought the hay shed would be best~
A few hours later in the afternoon
He came walking funny down the track~
Half dressed with a shovel handle under his arm
And looking rather slack ~
How ya feeling now old buddy they said
He said I am not really sure~
I feel rather empty inside
And I can't walk correctly any more~
So they had a look and there it was
They'd sown the top of his legs together~
So they convinced him he'd be fine but
He'd have to change his name to heather~
Next thing he heard the strangest tune
Deep from within side of him it's true~
And when the para vet found he'd lost his mobile phone
He did not know just what to do~
So they told him not to worry but
That the battery would run down soon~
and to in the meantime
Just get used to the tune~
So if ya see a bloke out there walking funny
Don't worry he's just fine~
But if he decides to kick the bucket
That blasted Mobile phone is mine~

Terrence Michael Sutton
copyright 2018

We were admiring the summer muscadines
I mentioned that my one experiment
In making wine resulted in only
A series of dramatic explosions

And he spake unto me:

Better that, far better, than to be Condemned
Grapes are for jelly, or you’ll be Condemned
Not for Strong Drink, no, or you’ll be Condemned
If you use grapes for wine you’ll be Condemned

He said on a hellishly hot summer day
Then he returned to baling my Catholic hay

Mystic musterion
intricacy, weaver's lessons,
ever more tedious and finer

wearing away old layers of lies,
a little here,
a little there,
all the room
     in the world
            to spread

the whole cloth  
of single strands,
the whole duty
of the master weaver,
the whole work
of one's seasons tediums
time's
turns
into next seasons phases preparing,
toilsome and wearisome as it must be,

but
by the very nature
of naked man, made

long common quotidean
threading of things in patterns,
most time consuming practical use
of time,

spinning and spinning and spinning,
already cut and rhetted and carded
and combed
to full fluffy flaxen strands,
twisting and twisting and twisting
in time,

to the first story grandfathers remember,

the memory
of parcel twine, how handy
that stuff was, and baling wire, howdy
do, that was useful material,
always have some,
on a journey…

You maybe,
never baled hay,
as an old whole ghost's muser,
in the spirits gossamerisms
of truth's coverings
in fine twined linen, delicately

tugged flaxen thread divinely

hooked and looped fibers
practically perfect
for making strings

--- but making things, and watching things
being made, art performance,
at 4x quick
post 2025 worth of ra' attention
prepaid experience imaginable once
entertaining demonstrations costing days,
days, and days, of focused aimed know how,

and -- awareness,
wearing consciously, how
which tools uses must have once been practiced,
grooved habitual routes to the effectual prayer,
points and edges honed to tedious-most tasks,
using utmost point
to point
at prepositioning

synchronized realization,
at just right, feel,
agree,
time immemorial, feel, it snaps
in place,

-- when after ever before,
or just whenever, once

the peace maker faces the hero,
the bullslayer up against
the ox maker all ready
wearing gnoshit grins

winners woof, crosses
losers tight tuned warp…

and we are back
at that rocking chair,
pushing the piston, pulling a vacuum,

consequently lifting exhaust valves,
in right order, letting loose lost time…

free
for wondering what ifery in,
while redeeming the worth
of the rocker./ already
gone silent, mere mind
reading fragments
from weavers
aloud
to the spinners
great notion
in season,
fashion has all
in denim now, eh

weary mind needs a peasant's
experience, bone deep,
to imagine weary

we have lost many peasantries,
few weavers remain, willing
to sit and rock, singing
some old radio tunes

where once were word weavers,
earnestly adapted
to the art
of making effort effects
do be lieve just so is so sometimes, perfect
and close enough,
both
become mechanized
in order
to relate,
the musterionic constancy
of posed
to be ability,

see, selfie, ah, we,
we see us all
from Saturn, daily noticed
in my house, we look
from as far away as possible

and figure the odds
of your taking ownership,
wordlessly, infancy, illiterate
in times readiness,

I know this idea, yes, whole

alike and not alike, heads tails edges,

terms, borders between all and nothing at all

in other words,
same inside, same outside,
as above, so below, is what trees show known,
however, whenever fructification buds show
now
spring time
of year living duties did and do depend,
on when which branches bloom, somebody alive
does know how food gets
to the grocery store…
somebody alive
now, does all the planting and reaping and peeling
and cooking and putting

before us
to chew and swallow and know,
if you choke, you die, so
chew slow, you live

this way… not right away, so
zehr slooow
mindwerks inner wille zur machen
instant in season out of season,
so global are we now,
as those

with plenty idle time redeemed reading

most abstract ideas dementia imagined makes

we have machinists now, threaders and tighteners,

toters and totalers accounting
for cost
in misery,
due
to you doing nothing but
read my minds wonderings
this whole while,
lazy rocking while reading

as we all spin,
at a rate a little faster
than a thousand miles in an hour,

and, if we were
to believe, deep kid oath level,
sworn, aliegiance
to something publicly relational
by witnesses confirmed, verb act done
--
believed
Christmas
celebrated the peace,
the message makes when taken
in peace,
and given to us as users of air,
as planet sharing neighbors
with inalienable rights
to reason
with holy business,
to earnestly contend

for the faith
of a mustard seed, ready
to be messed
with genetically so far past Darwin's

bulldog's levered pivoting power slamming
letters
in inks sublimated
into silken ribbons,

keyed at upto a hundred wpm,
read now at five words per minute,

-- a hundred monkeys, and never a stuck jam
of keys struck all
at once, as any non patiently trained typist
most assuredly
did know,
so common,
while imagining companions,
such minds do sort
on ****** nationalized ontologies.

Just my type, scary as Virginia Wolf,
but after Xanax, mellow momma.

How comes and knocks why
through a loop
where there is a hook
just when needed a stitch
in time, hero action micro deed,
taken, made redone
done, sew on…

with miserly smiles,
promising God is watching,

be good, easy, believe,
God hates lazy *******,
but, Truth, as preserved
to be conserved, duty wise, mine, chosen,

I took the long way
around the mountain,
meandering in flux
as feels right
downhill,

I followed a stream I

think I imagined drinking from once,

in Holbrook, Arizona.
No, Wickenburg, right.
Famous as the river Lethos, but
Hasayampa water make you
only tell lies,
therefore
effectually eventual splitting spirit's true
from spirit's false, mere made up test ifs,

when you eat fish,
spit the bones, with watermelon, spit seeds…

during late stage maturity among mortals…

ways have been made knowable,
how sacred arts
present worth
with lavishes so thin,
takes flies eyes to see lines
divine intuited beauty knowable, except,

the fundamental
what we are
has
being as
a story told us, all,

during our subjection
to information compression,
allowing multifunction parallel processing
in no time.

----------- 2025 from go, new time, new reason, peace
made and fixed held
through hell
and back
in time
where no peace was, my
mind sees that peasant's horse,
too noble a steed, stranded
for any but the best
of hearts, lost

Bucephalus, old spirit,
pull the plow, pull the cannon,
come pull all us attention payers
to vivid big screen attention paying all
our wages,

in the current republic cave of
Socratic Platonic bemusement

- those initiates listening knew,
- those agents serving muses telling
- these listening invitees, now, turn and burn
- threaten those given God's vengeance,

as life long spirit

thirsty for knowing why after all.

After living while better folks didn't.

After inspecting each stone
in my tower,
as I breathe
and live behaving
alchemically as if imagined just so
happy with life and liberty and tools
being actively haps pursuers as we may,

we logical anomalies allowed reasoning,
teleological whying trials all some how

passed and representative as normal,
squared away, compassing gamma,

wise, back
to Enheduanna, grand whole

so told, perfect,
to the letter, each time,
so told, perfect, without fail,
to the letting

go, get on,

tell it
like it is

true, if money can fix it, it's not God's job.


may recall, the horse struggling in concertina barbs
between trenches somewhere in Alsace or Lorraine,

the war to end all wars… was over before
the author's father died… this idea, the authority

allowing living words… viral letters letting sense
trickle down, down
to the bottom,

first undeniable truth any willing warrior believes,

will we define our terms,
assuming usage our right, our ritual considerations,

we work day to day, quotidian tedium to some,
social fashioning consciousnesses to others.

Information, once published instantly,
as when all are made knowers, once,

truly tested, bested and bettered, after
ever
being cognizant of the tech teachers use,

naturally, misuse and abuse are exactly evil,

be therefore as ware, made
to handle problems
in chthonic holes

according to the relative coexistance
of us as users of these exact same words
to form these exact same

cogitations, at one and the same
instance, as we words once writ remain

the same idea we were once you knew

the class of magi, those advisors of bullish

summer gangs of boys, sent off seeking wives,

seek a prudent wife,
seek an Enheduanna, or a Jael, be humbled

as she possesses your very soul, and leaves
your spirit cheering, you know

we can spin all day long, we can even, look,
imagine,
a rocking chair, see, keep on, hush,

little baby, don't you cry,
listen to the grandmas laughing,

way up yonder after history you'll never
pay up then and there, after all's said

all's just said,
so, that's all.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        My Grandfather’s Hayfield

From my own fields I can hear the band
The high school marching band, oom-pah, oom-pah
From several miles away, with merry songs
and merry cheers around the homecoming bonfire

That was my grandfather’s hayfield in my youth
Before the town and school replaced the past
The shaking baling machine compressing grass
Where the team captain now gives his whup ‘em speech

I found a terrapin where the cheerleaders dance
From my own fields I can see my youth