I wear beads and  African bracelets for beauty. I forget why the people before me wore them. I wear them with pride not because I earned them but because I simply look beautiful. Beautiful!? What does that even mean? My Nana has scars on her body. She shows them to me with pride. Narrates stories of the war in the past like an action movie only she didn't have a gun only bows and poisonous arrows. The missing teeth in her mouth causes her to spit almost every second she talks. But this embarrassment is only felt by me. She is proud of the hole in her mouth. Suddenly I feel the urge to remove my African beads. They have no meaning only that they are African and I am and so am entitled. But I have done nothing for my heritage. Not even fight for it. Slowly it's being forgotten and people are crossing over without a care in the world. 'To civilisation' we say.  'For the good of the people' we say. But is it? We were a community wrong as we were to circumcise women, marry them off at an early age, burn the wrong... We were a community. We loved each other. We cared. We taught our children how to feel and be the earth. We taught our children to respect the earth and in return the earth blesses us with herbs to cure. What did they call it? Aaah yes 'witchcraft'. We were not animals who forget their children in  pit latrines or by the river side just because we cannot afford them or don't want them. We cared not of individualism because together we grew in spirit, body and soul. It was not backward it was culture. And culture is flexible. It can change but can never be terminated. It is not a shoe that when you grow out of  you throw and buy another.
And so I am not telling you to go back to your roots because if am quite honest you were never in it. Rather embrace it. See how 'civilised' you will feel then.

yours
The Red_Head

I once almost cursed
the final performance
of a wonderful play I
had the fortune of being
a part of it

The play was Romeo and Juliet on Verona Street
Set in the 1930’s
I didn’t do anything important
Carried two bodies
Got in a fight
Smuggled some beer
Called a mob boss
Delivered a package
and
Investigated two dead bodies in
mime

but waiting on my final role
during the final performance
of this oh so wonderful
production I reached out to
a friend of mine (his name was
Paul but he played the Prince)
and told him

“I’d love to direct
MacBeth”

He did a double-take
Asked me what I said

I said again

“I’d love to direct
MacBeth”

“You mean the Scottish
Tragedy?”

I held my mouth in shock
I knew better
That name was cursed

Paul told me all was not lost
there was a way to reverse the curse
just listen close he said

Take your fingers in a peace sign
Spit between them
Swear (I said “*******”)
Turn around one,
two,
three times
Then leave the dressing room
And come back

I did all
and Paul was relieved
but Romeo chimed in
“well you know we have to circumcise you right?”

Paul added
“Yeah, with a Claymore!”

Don’t ever wish me luck,
I might break my leg!

I still want to direct MacBeth
and to show I’m serious I even
bought the script!

All that’s left is to get a stage,
and some money, and some
actors and maybe some talent
to go with my almost obnoxious
amount of luck

The Talmud Teaches...
With respect to his son, a father is obligated to circumcise him, to redeem him [if he is a firstborn], to teach him Torah, to marry him off, and to teach him a craft...he is also

obligated to teach him to swim...(Kiddushin 29a)


lay awake when the house is silent,
doing maths furiously in the head,
sleeping can be keeping while doing my calculus,
knowing in advance a conclusion comes coined
in only two colors, black or red

the question simple, did I meet my obligations?

and your read the passage for the umpteenth time,
and the same thought interferes as always,
should the order not be reversed,
the first thing to be fulfilled,

teach them to swim

based on experience life arrives in sequential, repeating waves,
purposed to drown the weak with no pretending that waters,
salt or sweet matters, so first order is business ought be survival preparation and

teach them to swim

if they can swim, stay afloat, then they can then comprehend
the glory of distinguishing right over wrong,
get their priorities straight, that saving others,
especially those you placed on the starting line of life,
is the first principle and overplants anything else when you

teach them to swim

my eyes see the tally, why, they are red! could it be lack of sleep?

I am smiling when I am lying,
teach them to swim always first,
but not enough, one must do it well, well,
and even then, better, 
as all else will, from the well, follow, when you

teach them to swim

3:10am

~~~

Your flag
Your pride
Your accent and voice
The way you dress
The way you greet others
Your money

Your hair
Your face
Your tongue and the language it speaks
How you trip over words
Of a language which isn’t yours

Assimilate.
But not too much
We already know your name
And your story
All by one look
All before you’re granted a chance to speak

Our children will stare at the gringa who passes
Whose tongue flicks with an anglicized mark
And crowds will glare with eyes of disgust
And shield our children from the alien before us

But we will also stop you in our streets to speak with you
But not because we care what you have to say
Rather because we want to practice your language
And make it ours
So we may criticize you in a way you’ll understand

But you’re here to study
And here to learn
And we want your money but not you in our schools
You take classes with your own kind
And speak with your own kind
And suffer with your own kind

We try to keep you all contained.

You can try to speak Castellano
Or learn how we think
But it doesn’t matter what you do
Every action is already explained
By the fact you’re a foreigner.

Where do you come from?
You couldn’t tell she’s American
By her flag, her pride, her accent and voice?
Your country seems like a different planet
Are you sure you came by plane?

Alien.
Are you an alien person?
But it isn’t a question of your place of origin
It is of your humanity.
Are you an alien person?

Foreign,
Foreign,
Foreigner.

Your name is too American
Write it like this.
Never mind that, it is too hard to say.
Here is a new one.
You only have one surname.
What did you do to disgrace your mother?

Come observe a new culture, never participating.
But we will observe you from across the Atlantic.
And your semi-barbaric ways
Because we know if the choice was ours
We’d house the lady
And you the tiger.

Come to our country where we may serve you poisoned fruit
And send you to our prison-hospitals
Where you will stay in your cell until yellow swims around your ankles
And you cry loud enough to be an annoyance
And when your bill arrives, te haremos confundido por Castellano
Never offering you el lujo a entender
Never offering ni paz ni amistad.

But you chose to come here
You cannot be surprised to you pay thousands to clean your blood off our floors
When you chose to spread your enslavement and war.
You are all so violent to spill so much blood
So barbaric.

Who will believe you if you say you don’t fight?
We see the news of you failing to protect your children
And how Oedipus permeates your state of mind
And the permanence of a confederacy keen on killing Kenyans
You walk your streets ready to spill your brother’s blood
And the blood of a million foreigners as you have done before

You circumcise your sons the moment they cry
And just stop there?
Why not cut off the rest
So your kind may never reproduce?
And your brother may live in awe of you

But we never enslaved nor conquered
Nor cut the hands or feet of any right-doer
Nor colonized, evangelized, or spoke a wrong word
We stayed neutral in war, fighting civil for the civil
Our history is filled with the taste of sweet sugar
Curated by the hands of people who adored us
Violence is all too western
And by that we mean American.

You chose to abandon your land
To study here
And to learn here
To hunt for our money and spend it on alcohol
So you may drunkenly stumble with your own kind
And speak with your own kind
And suffer with your own kind
And play the most dangerous game

A gamble with your money
A gamble with the law
A gamble with your freedom
All contained in a troublesome roulette

Because here the game is always rigged against you.

You are giants
Coarse, crude, and caustic
Who infect every perfect thing you touch
Turning our fine shores to gravel lots
Spitting oil in our seas
And turning our precious wine to water
All for the sake of bettering your newborn nation
Which ***** on the *** of its European predecessors

Wipe your streets with the blood of your children
And the blood of your women
And the blood of every barbarian who dares to hold a gun in the name of freedom
And there will be no one left to sing your anthem

We will eat you and your country alive
And burn your body among our forgotten tyranny
With the victims of our cultural dictatorship
And your country will pay no mind
And your death will be not so much as tragedy as a mere statistic.

Because to you it is life and death.
But to us it is a bet
How long will the gringa last?
Before xenophobia eats her alive
And her last words fall victim to a false deafness
Because this language should not be hers?

Yes, this is a ballad to your loss
The coming of a new era
When the gringa hangs on her cross
With the ashes of white and blue behind her
As her blood spills red
And she looks up to the stars
As her guts spill out
Striped with the acid of her nation

And we will watch as she sells her guts to afford her surgeon
In that country which pays her no mind
In that country which sees her as meat to be hunted
In that country which plays the most dangerous game
In her country who wins the most dangerous game
In her country who saved her life
In her country who she calls home
In her country who wants her home.

And she will cry waving her bloodied flag
Screaming “I’m American!”
Because her heart lies in her imperfect land
In her imperfect home
With her imperfect people
And she has an unfathomable love for her flag
Stained with the blood of a million foreigners.

DEDICATED TO THE FAT HIDEOUS BETTY, MY NEIGHBOUR

*Does anyone here know of a good mohel?
As I urgently need someone to circumcise
My neighbour's Yorkshire terrier, canine boil
Needing lancing, joybringing to my eyes.
A kindly mohel simply will not do;
He must lack scruple and human pity;
That hound’s not been bathed for a year or two
So th'event might turn out a bit ******.
Yorkshire terriers are of two classes:
The insistent yapping ones we all hate
And the ***** ones with hairy arses;
But both look good nailed to your garden gate.
And he needn't be a mohel either,
Merely someone with a willing cleaver.

Take all.
Leave me thin and bone,
Withdraw hope and home,
Shame me in every way,
Blind me, shun me
Punch me deaf and dumb,
Bleed out all of joy,
Fester *** and pleasure,
Blacken me a liar,
Circumcise my art,
Multiply a thousand times despair,
And present me death as a gift

Hobble my gait,
Drape me down in chains,
Rob me of all.
But leave me words.

Grant me poetry, one line, one spark
And the universe ignites again,
Let me roll syllables like dice
And I will chase passion to you,
Give me a sprinkle of syntax,
A magic dust,
Turns sound to shape and form.
Let me own letters,
And I will smuggle tears to you,
Crouch inside your dreams,
Spin the air into scent
Reflect in every mirror a lover,
Make clouds chant a monk’s choir,
Bend light and tie it like a shoestring,

Give me words, just words  
And I will stand forever.

A poetic
password feels
right today
as she
drew lines
parallel with
her cadence
that logic
shorten arc
of real
flatulent her
desire now
circumcise blind
interaction to
dissect lateness
but to
ensure righteous.

Circumcise my sinful heart completely,
cutting away the unnecessary leaven;
give me Christ’s aching heart for others,
that they may hear the message of Heaven.

Consume my existence with Your Presence;
permit my measure of faith to expand;
train my tongue the fervency of prayer;
demonstrate O Lord, the working of Your Hand.

As a Child of promise with sober reflection,
allow me to share Your anguish for the lost.
Wash over me with the wisdom to persevere,
since my Lord has paid sin’s ultimate cost.

Teach me more about eternal damnation;
genuinely imbue my spirit with fervent devotion;
allow this soul to experience true sorrow
with latter rains from… tears of contrition.



Author Notes:

Loosely based on:
Josh 5:2-10; Gen 17:10-14,23-27; Ecc 7:20;
Zech 12:10; Matt 26:36-25

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513/

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2012, All rights reserved.

You have to circumcise me with precision,
don't surprise me
don't close your eyes and tell lies to me,if you cut me I will bleed and I only need you because my religion says,
I must do
well ******* and **** the pope we have been born in a world with no hope and you can't conceive or believe that it's true
that this son born of man is saying, *******,
are we just peripheral to the spherical or can we see through to the satyrs who wax lyrical and do we care?
*******, I'm not there and never was,religion tells me it's because I was unclean,
well
dream on genie and call me Fred Astaire,I've told you before that I am not there and now it's you that doesn't care,
well stick the knife in and let's be fair and cut my ******* so you can wear it on a chain and
pull me towards you
oh what pain,
but you'll enjoy making the boy in me
cry for you.

My thoughts are hesitating and this is when I think best

Sometimes it scares me cause I might be possessed

Each sentence gets extracted from my collectiveness

Collecting condolences from everyone for my grandpa's eternal rest

Listening to my head to see what comes next

Be more specific with yours words cause what you want and say are different

Inn at the Hard Rock hotel and I'm on the rock n roll express

I found the stairway to heaven but I took a shortcut at the hermetic dimension

Reading stones about my quest to the questions

Are you a divergent?

Do you not feel like a human?

Don't listen to the author, he is a authorized bipolar civilian

Not again I always tend to exaggerate my imagination

Accidental psychic but I'm very useless

Can't read what your thinking but i sense what your feeling

Counting down to earth's revolution while the earth revolutions

Life is human nature and we surround ourselves with natural disasters

Calculating the physics of metaphysical living

Don't touch this I left it here for a special reason

I'm haunted by my past and it feels like forever

I was only 8 when I held by dads beer and got pulled over

This is the pain of my lifes painting and automatic writing

The ghost is speaking cause this is not logical thinking

A pathological mammal with more than one sorry

This poetry was just an experiment of my experiences

Constantly trying to circumcise the circumference of my bad circumstances

A divided individual on a journey to self transcendence

Take these psychedelics the outcomes are tremendous

Generate the regeneration of our generation

Voids of a paranoid and words to destroy civilized nation

From a time where civilization is more than a billion

You know nothing about the worlds weight on your shoulders

It's more like the world is holding our weight together

I love this new age

It feels like a new page

Humans walking around with a new rage

Lie to the masses and **** each other over specific grasses

I'm just a parasite from false human eugenics

Selective breeding we weren't born from a planned mystery

Because that man prays 5 times a day he's a terrorist

Because I eat five lambs I'm a ****** enthusiast

Because the plane hit the building a war begins with 50 states full of Americans

Reincarnated to a place of incarceration

Jeremiah 4 King James Version (KJV)

4 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the Lord, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove.

2 And thou shalt swear, The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory.

3 For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.

4 Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.

5 Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye the trumpet in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities.

6 Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction.

7 The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant.

8 For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce anger of the Lord is not turned back from us.

9 And it shall come to pass at that day, saith the Lord, that the heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; and the priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder.

10 Then said I, Ah, Lord God! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul.

11 At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem, A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse,

12 Even a full wind from those places shall come unto me: now also will I give sentence against them.

13 Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled.

14 O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?

15 For a voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim.

16 Make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.

17 As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the Lord.

18 Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart.

19 My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

20 Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.

21 How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?

22 For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.

23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.

25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger.

27 For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.

28 For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black; because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.

29 The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.

30 And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life.

31 For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.

a dark night schlep
and parasitic flies make zombie bees;
this joy of flight in honey delight

why his orbit tilts wide that
never bona fide her legs
till it catches them niggling there
and thrive behind a seance in plight

as their mutation is austere
yet circumcise this oblate mission
with a meadowlark's songs of vamp.

They'll tell you to listen to your heart like you have another option...
they'll insist on saying the answer dwells there
even when it's clear your heart is an empty place
with nothing but cracks bearing monstrous crevices
which leak away whatever little sense that finds its way there.
They'll implore you to stretch and strain the
stiff neck of your faith to the chest of the unfathomable,
and listen to the silent pulse of a fate far beyond the touch
of your feeble faith,something even a flexible python of hope can't do,
a thing even the Ostrich of optimism finds searing hurt doing.
They'll implore because they can't understand the depth
of the **** you've been through or smell its odourless pungent stink...
Because they lack the bravery to face your phantom,
to courageously plough through the pitch of the life you've endured,
because they lack the foresight to envision or
the mind's eye to see the invisible distance you have left to chew,
because they can't swallow even one spoonful of the bitter
mound of history you carry along on your journey to an uncertainty
you are not sure you'll reach... an illusive destination.
They'll tell you to listen to your heart because they lack
the ears of empathy to hear the deafening silence of the bangs of your doldrums...
neither do they have the wings to soar through the violent
winds of your despair or feet it takes to walk in your shoes...
they will speak with an orator's eloquence,stuttering
foolish words of wisdom because they are blank of how deep shards
of a broken heart can cut...they will implore you to be a man,
because they know a lot of nothing about being a man
one of which is men don't cry... they haven't been in presence
of the silent sobs of masculinity whose tears are buried
with dead hearts in the tombs of hypocrisy.
You'll hear very many voices for each splinter will speak for itself
but insistently and persistently they'll push you to the edge
of the cliff of your disarray ignorant of the star filled sky billion choices
twinkling on each glistening piece of the mirror like shards of your heart...
This they'll do because that's just what humans have been
channelled off course the river of true humanity to do...
tell you they've got your back so you can confidently
expose yourself to the deepest stub...boost your morales
so that you can stupidly climb to dizzying heights,
tell you they'll catch you only to film you jump to your hardest fall...
they'll promise to help you cleanse your dead just to see
whether you'll frown at their stench,and to curse
and mock in case you spit... they'll tell you that the path out of
your labyrinth is mapped across your heart simply to enjoy
seeing you wonder rudderless in the Sea of discombobulation...
Humans, they'll offer to circumcise you freely just to laugh at you
when you wince at the cruel touch of the blunt knife of their shameless daring...
they'll give you pills so they can mock at the difficulty
their bitterness brings at ingestion...
they'll tell you to listen to your heart like you didn't hear
your own jumbled heartbeat before you opted for their ugly opinions...
they'll say it, enjoying the moment and beautifully...
"your Heart knows it all" like you have another option besides your hurt.
and you will follow not because they said
but because you have no other boulevard to take

I have lately waged a war
With a target to achieve victory
I have no enemy to chase
Rather circumcise impossibilities
Duties; that have defiled my life.

Life hates me because am tough
It keeps trying me in vain
As I overcome with greater strength
It knows well that I can’t return
To the thrilling past of grinding
It stripped me naked and it surprised
Am wearing clothes
It only takes a stone-heart man.

I can't decide anymore. What's real and what's just lies...............................If I see something it does not exist because it cannot , because I do not give the space, the time of day for it to creep in my mind and grab anything!!. It is closed for business. The figments of a fig are that the tree from which it comes is greedy. It produces fruit and that is it. I wear a hat and smile as the whole world with sunglasses on, begins the march of the day each day every day. We all cry at the stages where tears are the necessary medium towards the complacent trivial trivia vacuum city inside out of a world left behind.
The happiness, it begins to grow out of a shadow from its force fed web. It is not like a choice or an easy way out. It is long and draws from experience of past, present and future. The decision becomes clear when the storm ceases. The ever begging hand that grows from which we do not understand appears to direct itself forward towards the glowing circumstance of wealth, fame and an UN told decency that is not because it is not. No longer, no longer, and again a statement of clearly no longer. No longer the any longingness that is inside, what we see is what we see and what we do not see is truly what we are. It disturbs us behind closed doors and shut eyes.
Why can something be seen but never said. You think what? What do you think? Can we continue to deny any truth that might UN circumcise our ritualistic world like a moth to the flame as some say. It can be said as far as the horizon is near to the moon that there is a lot of sand not that there are lots of sands. This is because it is not how it is done, how we perceive the world and everything in between. We are without ears that we do not hear, we are without
eyes that we do not see, we are without mouths that we do not speak, we are without hands that we do not act, we are without feet that we do not move, we are without minds that we do not think and we are without hearts that we do not nor cannot care. We choose, we chose this world, this life. Now we find ourselves high, with so very hard to fall and everyone will hurt. It is the world that is with child and each one as spoilt as the next. When it all comes crashing down where will you be? Who will you be? What will you do? When all of this that is going and flying, all of this that is. What is it? It can be so simple and so easy. Helping someone helps them but releases such a happiness within a person it is indescribable. We cannot count the time because even though it was created, like the waves it cannot be controlled. You are not coming home, you are moving within what we convince ourselves to be reality based on our own concept of the word truth. It has been stretched and tested so the word truth, it is extinguished. No one remembers its original purpose as it is lost among ridiculous notions and mixed promises. When you are faced with what you think you want do you shoot it, take it. We need the wisdom to be able to love. If someone is out of milk then you can have some of mine. If your hands are ***** then wipe them on my shirt. No one is better than anyone. To want something what do you need. To really need something you have to want to love. Something needs to be triggered and moved inside for all of anything to make sense. Would we be better off deciding some fate beyond the recklessness we have ensued ourselves in? Than to continue this terminal bow of crying clowns on a stage built on a foundation of misused power and faulty judgement. Does the past not in some points of form clearly show the state of human existence? That the hunger or lust, as it has evolved within us all, fuels the end game, end zone. We are travelling at great speeds with no breaks and no certain direction. For someone to point a finger but we are all to blame. Some for
doing many things, and the rest for doing nothing and staying silent. We must act in a manner that is elusive to the fact that we cannot predict the future. The outcome is in all our hands. It is not only to address the current economic, environmental and social unrest we find ourselves in, but it is to firmly direct all decent, UN remorseful and civilized thought towards a question, the question. What is the current state of the human condition.