Write everyday, too much
That's a commandment for a to do list
in hopes it will manifest into routine
I can store the text in the internet
It's safer that way, these days
Store it in a place that actually doesn't exist
How can it be lost?

There's too many spies making logs
and in the rare artful moment of an agent
maybe I'll get discovered

Not banking on it
I'm throwing all my eggs at random houses
and wearing the wicker basket as a helmet to protect from backlash
in hopes that, by then, my poet spirit could leap from treetop to treetop
to avoid hollow bullets

Today, I sent out at least another 10 advertisements of myself. It’s not fair. These potential employee seeking companies show me at least a thousand ads boasting about themselves, but I only got the time to send out a fraction of their words, and it’s somehow bad taste to show off my handsomeness. No pictures at all, just boring words, competing against the tacky hordes of plastic signs, overt lies, and labeled every things. I don’t even get any screen time, and if I could even afford it, they’d think I over did it. So I can’t use any ****** tricks to show my fluency in PR devilry? Y’all hypocrites.

70

“Arcturus” is his other name—
I’d rather call him “Star.”
It’s very mean of Science
To go and interfere!

I slew a worm the other day—
A “Savant” passing by
Murmured “Resurgam”—”Centipede”!
“Oh Lord—how frail are we”!

I pull a flower from the woods—
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath—
And has her in a “class”!

Whereas I took the Butterfly
Aforetime in my hat—
He sits ***** in “Cabinets”—
The Clover bells forgot.

What once was “Heaven”
Is “Zenith” now—
Where I proposed to go
When Time’s brief masquerade was done
Is mapped and charted too.

What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I’m ready for “the worst”—
Whatever prank betides!

Perhaps the “Kingdom of Heaven’s” changed—
I hope the “Children” there Won’t be “new fashioned” when I come—
And laugh at me—and stare—

I hope the Father in the skies
Will lift his little girl—
Old fashioned—naught—everything—
Over the stile of “Pearl.”

In person body language for the quickest returns
and obvious signs of disinterest and distress
Telephones for voices; plain, animated, or faking it
Letters for gesture, or a classic long slow catch up
And texting...
I know you got it
I may even know you read it
What's your excuse for delay?



Perhaps a brain lapse, perhaps some monotonous busyness
Perhaps I'm now an ignored fad, maybe you got better plans
Yet, could it be, our collective muscle memory pines for saying things by other means?

I was gonna write about how I was writing standing up like Hemingway at some bar in Key West, but instead I ended up nearly lying down, like some Roman eating grapes, and I’m not scrawling with a pen. I’m typing.

Why the standing up, Ernest? Was it to gauge how difficult it was to keep good posture? Was it to better measure how drunk you were getting?

He would have boxed me for those asking those questions, or maybe he’d just slam a few shots.

All of us Northeasterners enjoy getting drunk somewhere tropical. I never have a choice in the matter. Whether it’s Florida, South Carolina, or the South Caribbean (I've never left the Western Hemisphere), all I really like down there is beaches and seawater. Everything else gives deep cringes. Those other tourists, so annoying just to look at. Flip flops, whole families, and the god awful shops they keep open. You go to a place good for a beach, green hills, seawater, and fruit, and you want to buy diamonds? C’mon. I wish you’d want these islands to be like national parks; nature over here and cities over there. But the tourists enjoy fake grass huts that try really hard to sell them junk.

So who’s to blame for the sellers perpetuating petty sales and mediocre values? Is it the islanders that make a profit, or the buyers that want the wares? Or is there a third party guaranteeing that the buyers and sellers alike are propagandized to expect the less than fine things in life? Are the salespeople actually working the shops, the ones really getting rich from the sale?

I don’t want to perpetuate the produce – consume loop
but when I don’t, I feel like such a lazy moocher
Could I play guitar near after dark bars for $23 an hour?
Victor and I did that once, for $11.50 each
Untaxed, that’s better than my dour real job
So, if I really made my place at a street corner, I’d be a smart earner

But then I’d be a fixture, like the accordion man and the bums with PVC buckets
The bar goers would soon hate me for chumping them out of their cash
with three gritty “Heart of Gold” covers
Then soon the mediocre bums would jump me and Riot, my guitar
She’ll smash into the walk under a Irish flag in front of Murphy’s Law,
while drinkers whoop and punch the air
The bucket goes over my head
and the accordion bellows squeeze round my neck

I told the professor I loved beat literature and all the hippy consequences. He said they were such a small part of the population (along with Native Americans too apparently,  he noted a different time. Because of what, you *******? I thought).

A pompous misguided thing, which either understandably or surprisingly, been teaching there since the 1960s. Five minutes of a winded attempt at putting anglophile humor into the lecture and you know the choice is "understandably" rather than "surprisingly." Been professing for the establishment, closed to other ways of thinking trickery.  

A real square through and through. As if all change should come from appeasing the tyrannical bleachy supposed majority. Those in poverty, darker skins, gays, drug users, and all around flashy dressers ought to don suits for their one night Ed Sullivan performance. Get the folks on Bass Run Lane to be okay with seeing you in a glass cage in their living room scene. For just a couple decades. Then maybe they'll be used to seeing you in a grocery store. You'll always be laughable though, as they designed it to be so.

The hippies were a very small majority says the anointed professor.
"So were the suffragettes" snaps back a fiery thing sitting next to me. I should have talked to her more.