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.

The ground beneath the stiff leaves is frozen. The cold, brisk air invades my lungs, I exhale, my breath visible. I step over fallen branches and tugged by thorny vines. A red tail hawk screeches overhead, this is a sign of good luck. There is no path, no trail to mark our way, just an old, flat railroad bed surrounded by walls of shale, blown up for the path of the train so long ago. The only ties to remind of the rail are the rotting, moss covered ties that once were a part of a bridge that would have carried the train over a small creek between two steep hills. I see a fox burrow, and it's escape hatch is one of the hollowed railroad ties. I want to be a fox... The trek down this hill is not easy, thorny blackberry bushes and fallen trees impede progress. At the bottom, the small, bubbly creek is frozen at the edges, traveling under rocks and continuing its ancient path. I look up the hill that I just descended, and wonder how the return will go. Keep moving. The next hill will be easier, there are no thorny tangles, just treacherous leaf litter that will give under my feet if I don't find the right footing. The trick is to dig my boots into the ground as if I'm on steps. These hills are steep. Finally at the top, I look back at this little spring valley, I'm not that high up, but what view. Here, there is a dilapidated tree stand, falling apart from years of neglect and weather. Surrounded by deep leaf litter, there is a patch of rich dark earth, a buck has marked his spot, his round pellets are nearby. The saplings catch my hair as I walk by, and at these moments I am thankful for this cold snap that took care of the ticks. A creepy feeling takes over me, so thankful for this snap. A few feet further, as I watch where I am walking, another tussled bit of earth and I notice some interesting ****. It's furry and light grey; I poke it with my stick and find a small skull when I turn a piece over. Owl. I continue my walk, I didn't come here to play with poo. The last time I took this hike was three years ago, on a similar frigid day. It was a lot easier to make it through the shale valleys. Last summer, a wind storm felled trees and took out power for two weeks. The evidence of that derecho is clear here in this untouched forest. I remembered a tree, which now is a fallen giant, that had lost it's bark. The bark had separated and laid around this tree like a woman's skirt around her ankles. Now the tree lies with it's bark. I pass another tree I recognize whose branch extends out but zig zags up and down, as if it had three elbows. The tree signifies my next move, to descend from the flat railroad bed, down to a creek that flows through the tunnel that would have carried the train. The creek is considerably larger than the last creek I could step across. Descending towards the creek leads me over moss covered rocks and limbs, still bearing snow. Outside the tunnel, the hill walls are large stones, covered in a thick layer of moss, some of which has started to fall off due to heaviness. There's a sort of ice shelf in the creek, it's three layers thick and can support my one hundred and twenty pounds. Laying across the creek is another derecho-felled tree. Some sort of critter has crawled on this, using it to avoid the water below and as a short cut up the hill. His claw marks are covering the the limb, a few are more clear, it looks as if the creature almost slipped off. His claw marks show a desperate cling. I walk through the tunnel, in the mud and water; the creek echoes inside. I look above. There are drainage holes lining the ceiling, one is clogged by a giant icicle. I imagine the train that used to ride over this tunnel, I pretend to hear it and feel the rumbling. The last time we were here, we found cow skeletons. We placed a few heads on branches and one over the tunnel. We stuck a jaw, complete with herbivore teeth, into the mossy wall and a hip bone on a sapling. The hip bone reminded us of Predator's mask in the movie. All these bones are turning green. When I was here before, there was a bone half submerged in the creek; I had taken a picture of it but today, it isn't here. I'm sure it was washed away. After our exploration of the previous visit, we turned back. We are cold again, can't stay in one place too long. I climb through the deep leaf litter and over the rocks back to the railroad bed. Passing all the things I've already seen and spotting things I missed. I find two more fox burrows. They utilized the shale rock and burrowed underneath the jutting formations. Hidden coming from the south, the gaping openings seem welcoming from the north. My friends, the spelunkers and climber, want to descend into the darkness but I remind them, it is an hour to sundown, our trek is hard enough with overcast daylight. Wisdom prevails. We pass a tree, we didn't notice before, that was struck by lightening. The cedar tree was split in two and fell down the shale wall. I see the evidence of the burn and a smoldered residue at the base. Nature has a cruel way of recycling. The downed tree still has snow on it and the path of a raccoon is visible, I like the paws of *****. Though the way is flat, the walls of shale tower above us, limiting routes. At one point I can't see through the fallen trees I have to pass through. I have to crab walk under, crawl over, duck again and find my way around the thorny collections of bare black berry bushes. Finally into a clearing, still surrounded by sharp shale, there is another wall covered in inches of thick, healthy moss. I place my hand, taking time to stroke the furry wall. My hand leaves an imprint. I wonder how long that will last.. Back down the steep hill up and up the thorny tangle. I know I'm on the right path up, I see the fox's hole through the railroad tie, and his entrance burrow up the hill. Going down was definitely easier. The summit is literally overgrown with thorns, there is no clear path through. It is, again, impossible to see through the tangle of limbs and saplings and more thorns. Somehow we make it through. We are close to breaking off this path. We know this by the remains of a cow skeleton that more than likely fell from the top of the shale cliff. Femurs and ribs and jaws abound. On the last trip, we placed a hip bone in the "Y" of a sapling. The young tree has claimed it, growing around it. We add a piece of jaw to the tree's ornamentation and move on. We climb down from the railroad bed to our car - parked on the side of the road with a white towel in the window so that no one suspects a group of people walking through private property, past faded NO TRESPASSING signs.

When I undress for bed later, there are many small scratches up and down my legs from those ****** thorny vines. I'm okay with that, it's better than searching for ticks in my head.

As the sun rose higher into the sky from morning to evening the Snow Leopard and the Little Fox kept to their travels. The Fox started to get bored and this started to annoy her, not learning anything and just walking, "Isn't there anything we will learn today?" The Leopard laughed softly looking to the young little fox as he softly said, "Patience young one. Not every day has a lesson. Just like not every day has meaning. You have to make the meaning, Just like you have to watch and learn." The little fox got more annoyed at his slightly confusing answer "But I want to learn something soon. This is boring." she said with groan and a grunt. "I thought you were going to teach me more" She started to whine. The leopard continued to laugh softly, "Again, Patience my dear. Good things come to those who wait. You cant rush. You will get your lesson when we find something to teach you," he said with a smile. The little fox got mad this time, getting impatient, she started to run off and shout back to him "well if you wont teach me I will find something myself!" The leopard shook his head and smirked slightly saying to himself "I wonder what trouble she will get herself into this time" as he took his time walking in the same direction she ran. The little fox ran as fast and as far as she could before getting tired. The Snow Leopard was completely out of sight though he did keep following her direction and scent. "good riddance" she said to her self, "I dont need him to teach me anyways. I can learn on my own." As she turned back around and it was getting dark she started to become fearful. A little fox, all by her lonesome, as the sky started to darken. The little fox began whimpering softly, not knowing what to do and still no Snow Leopard in sight. "Maybe I shouldn't have ran off..." she said to herself as she hid at the bottom of a large tree, curling herself into a ball, shaking and whimpering. In the distance there was a little noise, a coyote appeared, hearing the whimpers and noticed the little fox. As the coyote rushed up to the little fox, a big grin flashed across his face, "Whats a cute little critter doing this far in the woods all alone?" The little fox screeched as he rushed over and abruptly spoke to her. "I-I got a little lost?.." she said with a terrified shake in her voice. The snow leopard heard this shriek and started rushing in her direction not knowing what to expect.
The coyote started pacing side to side in front of her "Ohh no no no. That's not good now is it? Being all alone, so young, no one to protect you." The coyote stopped in front of her abruptly with a sinister smile, "Tell you what, Come on with me and we will go find your family, What do you say?" Said the Coyote slyly and smugly as the little fox tried to back up against the tree more whimpering louder but not saying a word. But just as the coyote tried to step in closer the Snow Leopard leaped out of the brushes and between the the little fox and the coyote, and with a snarl and a growl he sternly ordered to coyote "Leave now. She isn't yours." The coyote backed up slightly with a laugh "A little far from home now aren't pretty little kitty. By the looks of it, you found your caretaker. I guess I will be off." The coyote then rushed of with a sneer and a grimace, as the little fox started to cling to the snow leopards hind leg. He pat her head softly and smiled slightly while saying "you aren't hurt are you?" and the little fox whispered back with a shaky voice "Y-Yea... I'm okay... Just... Scared." The leopard dragged her to his side and the layed down beside her, curling himself around her, and whispered to her in a soft soothing voice "There is no need to be afraid. I would never let anything happen to you. I will protect you and fight for you. I promise." He then softly licked her cheek as she curled up with him to rest a little.

Frisky, little, swimmer
danceful wiggle dips

Yellowy, orange, shimmer
puckering fishy lips

Thoughtful, quiet, feller
never any yips  

Lonely, curious, critter  
Got any life tips?

I was raised in the wild
With all the defiled
So my mood was mild
While bodies were piled

I was a lonely coyote
The other creatures didn't know me
Because I slinked in the shade
To avoid their detection
Loneliness is what I had to trade
To pass their inspection

Other animals couldn't brave the weather
Or their fragile arteries were severed
They laid there dead
I wondered if they ever lived
It went to my head
What this world can give
I saw the buzzards
Ring their buzzers
Then the maggots fed on their brain
While not understanding their pain
These images did me no good
While I was stuck in the woods
And I couldn't see the forest through the trees
I was lost
If I didn't find a home by winter I would freeze
In the frost

I tried to find a home in hollowed trees
But I was chased out by a bunch of bees
And the darkened caves
Seemed like shallow graves
When that's where bats play
But peaceful open meadows
Left me susceptible to attack
Everything seemed mellow
So I had to watch my back

Winter was approaching
And I saw no solutions
The cold air encroaching
Like frigid pollution
But my shady luck shifted
Once I was graciously gifted
A powerful and majestic horse
That put me on a better course
I ride the steed with a leather saddle
Made of skin stripped off simple cattle

It took the strength of an ox
To hold down this fox
Yet my domestication
Calls for celebration
Because now I live in a house
Without having to hide like a mouse
I can strut like a peacock
With a bird of my flock

It's a form of animal husbandry
Because you're in love with me
I'm the insistent critter
From a different litter
That saw life wither
From damage inner
I was a raccoon digging through the trash
Now I'm a phoenix rising from the ash

You're an agricultural guy
So vultures circle the sky
Looking to harvest your bountiful crop
They must smell death underneath it
Their presence makes my heart drop
And all I want to do is defeat it
But even as they get near
You remain here
We stand together as scarecrows
In a defensively unified paired row

This is the delightful day
You end all my wild ways
And eliminate my suffering
With your animal husbandry

Who decided that the top of the mountain was the goal in climbing? I mean, I guess I understand the concept of why but thinking more abstractly, who decided what the rules were?

People.

Just people.

We are people, right? Does that mean we decide the rules? Not always. Most of the time the rules and goals are set by the mindset of the masses. Whoever is loudest or has the most connections sets the trends, makes those rules, and decides the goal.

Why?

Why are people so looked down on for going against the grain of the popular mindset?

You go to high school.
Okay - that's the law.

You go to college.
I mean, I guess.

You borrow tens of thousands of dollars from the government and even private banks to go to college.
Well, I don't really want to do that.
Well, you have to or you won't get a good job.
Well, why?
Because education shows you how things are done and how to do them right.
Okay, I mean, I get that. But what if that isn't for me? What if I don't thrive from that and instead of learning and growing, you are just creating bad habits, watching your confidence tank, and thousands of dollars go in the toilet.
Well then go work a minimum wage job.
Okay.

You get a job. Or not.
Okay, I guess.

You work to save up money to buy a house but you still have to pay rent which is very expensive.
Well, I guess that's okay but won't it take me forever to save?
Yes, with the job you have from a lack of university education, yes.

You spend years saving.
Cool.

You buy a house.
Awesome! My first house! But I spent all this money that I spent years saving and now I am locked into this and if anything ever goes wrong, I'm *******.
This looks like it will happen sooner rather than later with how cheap this house was.
Well, that's all I could afford.
Well, maybe you should get a better job.
Well, I can't because I don't have a degree.

You work until you are 70.
Oh yeah, I've had to give 10% of my salary to my 401k in order to pay for my future without working. But, inflation is a thing and now all that planning puts me back at the amount I needed 40 years ago, not what things cost now.

You move out of your house and into a cheaper apartment.
Well, I guess this is all I can afford at this point.

You live out the rest of your days there and pass away.




What a life right? Sounds like a book I would read - NOT.

Give or take a few privileges and/or road blocks some people may have, this is pretty much it. Even if you pay for the college education, you still don't have much of an advantage. You pay off years and years of college debt - so unless you make 6 figures, that will take you until you're 70. This means you will likely get your house much later and also just be stuck in the same ending.

Why?

Why is this the path we are 'supposed' to take? Who decided this?

We do.

Every day that we get up, WE decide our actions that day. WE determine our own future - not the societal mindset.

Sure there is more friction going against the grain. It's hard. But is it harder than living a life that doesn't bring you fulfillment?

Think of mountain climbing. The goal is to get to the top right? Wrong. The goal is decided by each climber. If you want to go to the top, great. If you don't, also great. Each climber has a different way of getting where you want to go - some take an incline (upper class, money, prestige), some people pay a guide (university education), some people drive (start your own business), some depend on others to carry them (disabled, poor), some are the ones who carry others (volunteers, charity, servants). No specific way is wrong and no specific goal is wrong. If your goal is the top, then to the top you shall go. Your path may have different pitfalls, you might go a different speed, you might die before you make it to the top; but some people don't even go to the top. Some people take their time.

My goal isn't the top. I want to live for the views as I climb, whether clouded by blankets of green or the most crystal clear blue sky meets the horizon. I want to find beauty in the little things around me, not just rush to the top because its the option chosen by many. I want every hammock tree spot, every waterfall creek pool, every season change from a soft layer of snow to the sloshy mud underfoot, every critter discovery, every art-inspired shot. I want to settle in a place that other might just rush by but only settle for a little while - until I want a new view.

People say that the best view is the one from the top where you can see it all - but I disagree. The best view is the many you will see along the way - the little details on each tree, each rock, or on the ground. From the very top, you don't see the detail - you see the bigger picture. I'm sure the picture is great, but rather than buy the print, I would prefer to do the puzzle - that would be far more fulfilling for me.

Friend Rockstar,
            Listen, yield to a robust think-tank,
            earlobes skidding against wheat and grain.
Terrible story, yes, what happened to that little girl.
Sterile teddy nightgowns weeping in the squad car windows.
Teacher – Teacher, do you harken my yodels for grace?
            I’ve never been maternal.
            Put the game on. Abortion.
            That’s what I’m about.
            Grab a bra. Sling some weight.
            That’s what I’m about.
Some housefly wings on a weathered corn cob.
Some downhome, homegrown twang for those fancy, fussy britches.
            Muddy workboots. Sweat-soaked collars.
            That’s what I’m about.
Him done made me read, sir.
What sacraments did we write today?
            I can still remember my first broken bone.
            I can still remember my first broken *****.
                        That could be what this is all about.
Mary, Mary, you can be contrite,
            so knife – so critter – so laze – so stalked.
    Who fertilized your seeds? Who reared your sprouts?
            Cockle shells and silver bells, honey,
            can’t grow up
            to be pretty little maids all in a row.
Sterile teddy nightgowns – green bells in gaseous gardens.
Friend Rockstar, you may have to sleep.
This restless harbor is a shivering anecdote spilled from a belly,
            a vast, deep cavern with love notes written in milk.
Your fried, stern smile was a flaking fingernail adjacent to the crack in the flowerpot.
Some garden, I say.

When was the last time
I felt a raving hunger for life?
When had I but an eternity in moments,
on the edge of something vastly different?

How was it me and not you
who staked her soul high
on rolling hills of green,
took long draughts to savour, to condense
the weight of the world into one precious drink,

cup the shortest days in her palm and release them,
for her thoughts to balloon into the wild?

The delectable now—
ripe as berries for plucking in winter,
and all things, like music
must peter
into silence.

So I suppose my question to you
is not concerned with
the stack of newly-minted green in your pocket,
nor the fleet of shiny cars, but
your pure self, simply being.
It’s prodding the heart,
a tiny critter fluttering with wings, wondering:

when will you ever get a second chance at this—
all this storm
and inexplicable happiness—

or will you
go hunting for things,
whirling at mere traces
of power in your name—

or will you turn around
only to find a life
or a lie,
staring back wide-eyed
in endless shame?

© BT

Dear Deer,

I eye you

See secret critter, you
Grass assassin, you
Do dewdrops nourish you?
Brown round, you

Sincerely, Lee

Story Book Land
The awful truth in this world at one point evil put upThis post open season on women and children nowCasey’s trail has provided a predators hand book onHow to avoid jail and punishmentStory Book Land
I would like to speak to the other side of the story in a hovel somewhere in southern Appalachia a young
Mother has left this falling down shack because of fever and delirium she left behind a toddler in this
Cold helpless situation but tonight when she drifts into trembling frigid sleep she feels herself being lifted
By powerful arms the body is huge but immediately she feels a great wave of warmth peace and love
Then she hears the laughter of children many of them as this divine personage sets her feet down she
Alights on this golden concourse then she sees what all the excitement is about this great figure glowing
In white linen is leading the children he walks or glides to her side just as she starts to take his hand she
Sees the nail print she knows who he is her mother sang of him and told her wonderful stories of how
One day they would go to be with him he held her hand firmly with a tenderness that was almost
Overwhelming they had gone a distance he released her hand and said now children go and play among
The wonders created for you and after awhile I will call you follow my vioce it will lead you to a hillside there spread out on the
Rich grasses my little lambs and I will tell you extraordinary wonderful stories so the children turned to
Look what was before them flowers so lush they bathed you in their fragrance their beauty filled you
With awe this was the only the beginning of splendor that knew no end they dashed through the flowers
It was hard to tell who laughed the hardest the flowers or the children then they came to the trees one
Of the older children asked Mr. Pine is it true that on ridges you can make the most beautiful tunes yes
Little one but here it is a little different what songs do you like wheels on the bus this little light of mine
She picked something all together different but he just rolled with it he did it with the finesse of a circus
Clown they all laughed he did many others to their delight then he said children you might like my
Neighbor Mr. Oak he has some delights you might delight in so they rushed to see what they would find
He seemed gruff and stern at first but then when he bowed down sweetly they noticed something funny
About the Spanish moss it was not that at all but a rainbow of flavors all cotton candy every one grabed all
They could get then just a short distance down the rode a sign said critter holler was it by Roberta’s
House ? well off they dashed they loved it immediately because all the animals were just babies young like
Them the mothers and fathers grazed up on the higher lush pastures I will go where he leads I will
Pasture where he feeds me, some of the children were old enough to remember that song a little child
From Florida was just timidly staring and from behind a fawn put his wet cold nose in her hand as it
hung down she squealed with delight a darker child born on the African savanna was drawn like a
magnet to a baby Zebra he played with its mane it playfully shook its head back and forth his smile even
made heaven brighter if that’s possible In life the boy was Maasai a great people his problem he dreamed of being a Maassai warrior
At to tender of an age the lion only knows one law that is **** to live the boys claw marks and bite marks
Vanished from his body as he left the fallen state of earth and traveled to the sacred holiness that is the
Total reality of heaven but as he looked on the baby Zebra he was all Maassai the wonders of his
Birthplace filled him to bursting the little Zebra was his touchstone all of heaven and a piece of earth
Coursed through his veins he will be forever defined on a grander scale so will Caylee for a brief time saw
Grass and palms now glory will endow her with privilege a crown immortal indestructible she wears it
Well it honors Gorge and Cindy her mother will be cleansed by terrible and secret fires best left to the
Purifier who never lets evil go unanswered.
someone saw a handsome man standing at a distance there
wasn’t a mouse with him but could it be Mr. Disney it was a great possibility all things are possible here
earths tears are gone forever and all you will ever know is the greatest peace and love the other side of
the story.

Chaucer. Cantebury Tales Thunk Another Time

might be
unimaginable to most

Urbanites of several recent generations
in
These untie-ted states

city folk have never told stories
by the mile,

with piles of rocks marking trail tailin's

so old
that trail, marked by that pile o'rocks been
so long since foot trod that path

only scratches on the rocks say which way we
all
got
here. Today, as we call it.

Hueta, esta dia, right now

here. Walk a while, we're off to find reason
to believe.
Someone I heard thinks we all do.

I believe we do.
---Wha'bou' un believe? D'jewthank we'all'kin?
kin we all un be lieve,
leaven well left alone, hill folk, some say...

...hidden things thought thank worth,
beauty, as an idea,

for instance.

Sunsets.
... ...Yes, and the early morning does
have gold
{}
In'er mouth,
privilege all ovahdat.
Got the rot
all dug

dig it, all dug out cavity, crowned in gold

turn that empty cavity inside out, the wise hermit's cave is paved.
Plenty room for all his eukaryotic friends

then flouride, po-luted our ****** fluids.

Play that song on that ***'ar wit thraystrangs, po'man lute
Jew or juice harp
poing poing poing y'ken?

and keep time wit' the walkin' drum. Do that
dentist drill dance, then sing us a
song o'six penitents
patient sufferers o'the way thangsbe,

left well enough alone.

Strange love was to my tale as, that Bannon guy
might be today. Trump's last quarter email player?
Y'know the guy. He's Youtube famous. Bannon,
(Steve,

or Bruce? )
No, Bruce Banner, was the hulk of burning credulity, the pile
symbol
driver. Digging down to bedrock
.... That's how the Macedonian kid did, at Tyrus. ( ify'wishy'knew)

Pier pressing past the farthest reach of tide.

Past where pearls take graunular expansion to

knackerin' gnosymagi  levels of possible hidden glory believeable by few.

Teller, the infamous Mr. Teller, he taught me duality.
Im balance, make fission, break, slam fuseconfuse, blow

don't burn the whole higgsian bubble to expel the very idea of anti matter, it may be useful,
rightusable or ible

Moby grandular totally tubular, what a clam can do.
According to that story, why not feed swine pearls? I'll tell you.

we may come back to right here, this here here,
if 'n' only

if we do not forget where we saw that

landmark a cient elder mustaset

Straggler mumbler, you okeh? Y'got a story.

I'll listen. It's yetawhile
t' can't we bury it.

---
is the granularity of perception adjustable or ible?

We are li'ble to learn, 'fwee

live so long. Said the old caned creature, in the way back.


-------
At the edge of credulity, eh

how far is how ever, far or ever, time space

same same, but

right. Re
al ity ness realreal reason able ibility

we, you and I, this state of least sharable ible ness
we, at this point,

dancing hermetical waxen winged shoes into flames. Teller level flames.

-------
what lies did I un believe? All of'em.

You seem real. (dear reader)

A pier past the last tugged tide, into the deep

-----

peace, in fly-over country on a sunny day.

Ah, where I live, there in
my peace valley overwitch the marines fly every day

and I talk, in my revery, basking in the sun with my lizard brain in heaven
I talk to the cadre controling machines named for
subjected peoples, Apaches of all sorts.

I knew Johnny. And I knew his brother, Jonah.

Johnny Appleseed and Jonah Whalepuke.

They could been twins, save
the smell and wind's role in the story, when it all

stirs. SSTop and ask, dear reader, is this safe, this place?

Adlebraned idyl word forms framing un imaginable worlds.

Goodness gracious sakes alive gnostic means

you know. Here's one we agree on:

Heretic tic, there a tic tic time you re

call the warning bout finding one's ownself in the book of life?

This is that. You can't get past it on your knees,

this is the bar, you don't pass it, you cross it.

Who inherits the wind if the meek inherit the earth?

inspire expire it is breathing, all the way down.

bubbles. ity bubbles ify bubbles some time bubbles

awefilled imagined bubbles in bubble forever,

mazed bubble pops

those aren't real. Gnostic heretic is one who thinks
he thinks and has all the knowledge

in the real world,

in his hand, and
it ain't even five gee. We can go faster or deeper. You choose.
We gotta understand what standing and under mean as a thing

we can miss. aitia indicates wisdom is not pre packed with
understanding.

She says, you should know by now.

Nothing missing, nothing broken, though ye walk

through the valley of
your own shadow death as I drip drip drip

hear me, gotcha once, gotcha twice

ripples in time can you hear me now?

Thanks.

Seed. Time. Harvest. Information re
garding the entire process

was intentional. You reap what you sow. That is kharma.

Life ain't fair eventually. The good guys always win. It's in the hermit's will.

You can read. It's said, the man
wombed or un, who can and don't's no better armed then than
the critter that can't

read the sign that said stop.

The town was quiet when the Poet rode in
Not a soul was to be seen
A dog barked somewhere and a door banged noisily in the wind,
He wore a long grey coat flecked with dirt and mud
Two buttons had been left undone and there through the opening could be seen, his gun!
His eyes they had a tired look as if looking out wearily on the world
As he moved up the street, curtains parted and nervous little eyes peeped out
Suddenly a door opened and a woman rushed out across the street
Behind a barrel outside the hardware store, a small boy... hiding!
She began to scold him. "Ah Ma! he protested, I just wanted to get a good look at him, see him up close"
"Quiet!" she commanded, then turning toward the Poet while shielding the boy
She said defiantly "Their bad! Their wicked evil men!
But the Poet just kept on going, riding on as if she wasn't there
His eyes fixed straight ahead,
Finally he stopped outside the saloon, dismounted, tied his horse to the hitching Post
Went inside, the spurs of his boots clanking on the floor as he walked
"What'll it be Stranger ?" offered the Bartender
"Gimme a whiskey", said the Poet,"an Irish whiskey"
At a table playing cards, some heads turned
Then there were some excited whispers
"Look! it's the Bardo Kid, the Bardo Kid!!!"
"What has you around these parts Stranger ?" asked the Barkeep inquisitively
"I'm looking for someone", answered the Poet, "goes by the name of... Zardo!"
Another man drinking at the bar suddenly began to splutter
As if his drink had gone down the wrong way
Bardo eyed him suspiciously
"Don't look at me Bardo, I'm not Zardo, Me! I'm Vargo"
"Well Vargo", said Bardo, "you seen Zardo around ?"
"I ain't seen Zardo Bardo" said Vargo
Then he quickly drained his glass and hurriedly left
Bardo watched him go.
"Whose looking for Zardo ?" came a voice suddenly from the stairs and the shadows
It was a woman's voice. It was Miss Lilly, the Saloon Madam, a mature lady, still pretty but who'd seen better days
She came down the stairs out of the shadows
Walked right up to the Poet
But then almost losing her breath in surprise
Almost as if she'd just seen a ghost
She said with a strange note of familiarity "Bardo!!!"
The Poet too, seemed taken aback
"Lilly!" he said a bit shyly and took off his hat,
They both stood there looking at each other for a moment
"You've gotten older Bardo... more worn, I'd hardly know you"
"Been a long time... I guess" replied the Poet awkwardly,
"Where... what...whatever happened to you... Bardo ?.... I often wondered".
It was a very disarming question, for a moment the Poet seemed lost for words
"I...I've been away... far faraway"
Then gathering himself he said with a tinge of bitterness
"What happened. Life happened I guess, dealt me a bad hand, I suppose I was never gonna measure up. It was inevitable wasn't it... me and this world
I could only have turned to a Life of...a Life of Rhyme"
Bardo looked at Lilly standing there in her tawdrily ostentatious red Saloon dress
Showing a bit of cleavage
Grown slightly plump now, with some grey strands through her hair
And crowsfeet starting to appear around her eyes, he asked sadly
"What happened to you... Lilly ?
For a moment she looked like she was going to cry.
"O! I do a bit of singin' ..dancin'... deal cards, serve drinks, and do a whole lot of listenin' to lonely men and their troubles, try to cheer them up and get them to buy some more drink, keep the party going.  That's the game anyway" she admitted almost ashamedly. Then she continued. "We seen some good times though, didn't we, you and I, once when we were younger, for awhile there we ran young and wild and free, didn't we ?"
"Yea, young and wild...and... and stupid" answered Bardo with regret.
"What's this... what's this about Zardo ? asked Lilly smiling, "remember you always used to like that name".
"He's been saying things about me, running me down... damaging my reputation
Says he's faster than I am, that he could take me anytime, says I'm nothing but trouble, that I'm a no good lowdown critter, said he's gonna bring me in one day soon.
I was curious about him, thought I'd maybe like to meet this person".
"But he's only young" replied Lilly defending him, " he was just shooting off at the mouth, you know young people, their full of arrogance and foolish pride. You know how Life twists people and makes them into something their not".
Bardo looked at her closely "Do you know him ?"
Lilly hesitated a moment, then said almost tearfully " He's my son Bardo".
"I never knew you had a kid" said Bardo very surprised.
Lilly looked Bardo right in the eyes and then confided "He's our kid Bardo... you remember that time, that Summer we had together, that brief moment in time when we found each other and we thought this world was ours" .
"Why didn't you tell me, why didn't you send word, you could have reached me, I would have come", said Bardo.
"O! You'd be so proud of him Bardo, he grew up to be strong and straight and true
He has a job here as a young Deputy now".
Suddenly they heard a commotion outside and then the batwing doors of the Saloon swung open
And in strode a lean figure wearing a Tin Star
It was...it was Zardo!!!
A big crowd had formed behind him, they were egging him on
"So!" he said looking straight at Bardo,"we meet at last, if it isn't the Great, The Bardo Kid
The Fastest Pen in the West
The Fastest Rhyming Couplets this side of the Pecos
I'm taking you in...Old-timer
Heh! You don't look so tough,
I bet I could take you easy".
Lilly tried to intervene "No son, you've got it all wrong !
"Stay out of this Mom !" he warned coldly, a bit embarrassed seeing her there
Then almost as if he'd just realized something very important he said angrily to Bardo
"What are you doing talking to my Mom ?
Why you ***** rotten varmint".
Lilly screamed "Nooo!!! "
Zardo drew first but Bardo was quicker
Before Zardo had got his gun out, Bardo's had already cleared his holster
Lilly cried "Please Bardo don't hurt my boy!!"
Bardo let off a whole barrage of shots
Zardo only got off one solitary shot
But strangely... strangely it was Bardo who dropped to the floor
Zardo stood there shaken and dazed
"How can I still be alive?" he said,"he was way faster than I was. And he fired so many shots, he couldn't have missed them all'.
Suddenly the Bartender let out a shout and pointed his finger
"Look!" he said in amazement, Look!  Look at the wall behind you"
They all turned and there on the wall behind Zardo, drawn in bullets... the outline of a little heart.

Adrift on her very first voyage
With the sea coursing in through her bow
Lay the cruise ship, the S.S. Lumbago
There was scarcely a chance for her now
But Ahoy! On the western horizon
In a flurry of yellow and green
That ender of blight and a damsel’s delight
And he’s always on cue for his scene

It’s Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
It’s got seating for seventy people
And the service is well above par
There’s an adequate medical unit
And a modest but elegant bar
What more could a man ever dream of
In a Luxury Budgerigar?
Well…

The forests of England were burning
So the foxes escaped to the city
The badgers had taken to looting
And the squirrels had formed a committee
But who should arise from a manhole
With a confident gleam in his eye?
That destroyer of woes with a spring in his toes
And he’s quick with a witty reply…

Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
With adjustable hose pipe attachment
It’s got wheels like a feathery car
The forests were dowsed and the fauna re-housed
With a three day retreat at a spa
It’s a thing to admire and surely acquire
The Luxury Budgerigar!
But…

Susan was stricken with sorrow
Twas her darkest, most fearful hour
A spider had wrestled her out of her bath
And set up his home in the shower
But who should jump out of the wardrobe
With an innocent look on his face?
That singer of shanties, remover of *******
And first in an obstacle race

Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar
With a sucker for spiders and beetles
That deposits them into a jar
There’s a tiny wee restaurant to feed them
It was given a Michelin star
A remarkable thing with retractable wings
Is a Luxury Budgerigar

So if you should be in a pet shop
And you see just the critter for you
Please heed this advice: make a note of the price
Then proceed to the back of the queue
When you ask for your preference of creature
Should it whistle, slither or waddle
Do as Sir Patrick Stewart did
And opt for the Luxury model

Earth is our home. Your mind has just been blown.
People, animals, and stones are WAY more important than some stupid phones.
Moans and groans yell forth to continue our whining. Dining with a lover, means more than your *******. Pop the next cork on our bottle and celebrate life.
Happiness, passion, and love is way more powerful than hatred, greed, and strife.
Our plight to survive another day and night. The negative is Death, and the positive is life. Our sight., right, and fight to save the environment and endangered wildlife.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Shoulder your burdens as we all grow older.
Weather gets hotter, and sometimes colder. Some are scared pussycats, while others are lions that grow bolder. Close your folder of selfishness, while oil pipelines spread disaster. Do you care while you waste away, as the ecosystem wastes away faster?
Litter another critter of pollution. Cleaner air is the solution. Care to find YOUR resolution? Spilling out our guts all over an institution.
Garden the seeds of change to fruition. Us, the hoes, should fight the GMOs.
Planting organic crops on fertile soil, as vines of life flourish and grow.
Blow the wind that feeds flames of bitterness, while water sweeps over, you know?
So you don't give a **** about the Earth as your self-pity glows?
Shows how stupid YOU are while the passionate stays afloat.
Fear spreads chaos, while paying it forward spreads the most.
I can go on and on with this poem, but alas, I must slow the flow.
Every day is ******* Earth day. Let's do our part. Here's my toast!

The fire knows nothing but burning,
we know breathing that way, naturally done for
our own sake.
We old still know sake and grant mean true immaterial things.
Sake and granted we take to mean

my good, your good, good sake grant me take me con

mentis sans carne

by golly.

Dada-esque wire spoke far writing ease
e everything e-literate e-mail

---
the boinin' in d'boozum, dat be da ting, da ting con sum in all ya'lifes.
be knowin' dat, be knowin' a-dam lie.
Jah know y'know, don' be sayin' no y'don'

Be happy. Jah know haps be hap'nin' allatime. *** sum, take wha's granted,
take all fo' free.

You got nothin' t'boin, nothin' to oin, be a bird brain seein' stars fo'

no. birds be sleepin' when stars be seen so birds consider nothin', sidereally.

Hmmm. Quit?
Walk away, say, I got nought to say I ought t' say.
No way.

Temporary tempt-test-u-us sitchee-ations,
suffer it so. It don' hurt t'say no f'now so

How'd that that shiny critter know my game? How'd it know,

I think
thisaway and it is gone, forever. (which has begun, btw)

-----

The biosphere is regaining consciousness, Capitan.
Shall we continue burning?


What's the bullocks count?

There lived, beneath a hanging leaf
A Ladybird called Annie
Who hated being female
And daily, cursed her *****
Her voice was deep and baleful
Her shoulders, broad and strong
By right, she was a Boybird
Just her genitals were wrong

Her family rejected her
She alive alone, ashamed
Until she met a Dragonfly
‘Salvation’ she proclaimed
For every bug and critter
When feeling below par
Would visit Doctor Dragonfly
In his empty pickle jar

Just maybe he could help her
With snip, a tuck and stitch
She’d not be Annie any more
Tomorrow, she’d be Mitch
She lay down on the table
And a beetle knocked her out
The doctor took his knife in hand
And bustled all about

With suture made of thistledown
And sap of pine for glue
He reassigned her gender
But the best that he could do
Was not a lady, not a man
But somewhere in between
And, as he used some aphid parts
The ***** were small and green

Annie never changed her name
It didn’t seem quite right
Her family still shunned her
She slept alone at night
The only insect in the field
With *****, ***** and *****
Even hungry birds avoided
Ladyboybird Annie

Falling to earth with such a crash,
antenna waves and legs do thrash
as panic fills this quiet place,
invading visitor is fast to race.

It chirps so loud, out into the night
perhaps to explain its weary plight.
In hope that someone may attend
and come to rescue a dear friend.

Alas the latter does not show
but I think that it doesn't know,
as off it stalks with knowledge none,
his fate is not an healthy one.

I sit in such a peaceful state.
Contented just to sit and wait
until this morsel feels secure.
As legs thrash through silky lure.

Until that time with such a gasp,
the critter steps into my grasp.
To struggle now is not of worth
as my fangs intrude throughout its girth.

With a body now so soft and limp,
interior now a lovely drink.
Its frenzied kicks to get away
for this cricket will never pay.

Venoms course, its presense felt,
a life that dwindles with the melt.
All that's left are bones to crunch
As this Tarantula enjoys her lunch

I took a nice long walk,
and had a very nice talk
went down my  driveway
past old man pickles...
wearing old flannels and boots,
tipping his John Deere cap
relying on his cane in vain
down to the edge of everything
to my  favorite secluded path
just past familiar borders,
where a mossy stone fox
and 2 giant maple trees
guard her entrance
down laden paths of brick red
and burning orange
...I press on,
woodland creatures
scurrying & hurrying about
no doubt getting ready
for Old Man Winter visiting

As a chubby squirrel
sits happy and thankful
for the crumbs I laid down
I give the eager fox a pat
on the head,
thanking him and asking my charge

Agreeing to the terms,
signing a waiver
traveling deep in the woods
to a glen  
with a canopied
ceiling of golden mustard,
greeted by an eager ******
cutting wood
Past the foggy bog
and past his favored log
at last I hear the croaking frog

Where I suddenly
saw some very interesting
....looking people
they are obviously not from here,
  I'd say,
I know these woods well
they brought a pet,
we've never met
but a wonderful way
to meet and greet
thank you guardians of the forest

"Adorable dog"  
my hand reaching from my side...
smiling at the newcomers
and to my critter friends

"Oh, my ...he looks just like a giant
toasted marshmallow,
so perfectly groomed,
a very beautiful animal,
so curious he is"
I compliment the hound

The gentleman was just that
Said how friendly he is
Brought him right over, for a pat

Of course, me...
I get down on one knee
talking to the furry fellow
'bout the crooning drops of yellow
communicating
he looks in my eyes,
& past my disguise
and sits,
patiently,
gracious and thankful
for the new friend
and bidding adieu
to some old,
but not forgotten acquaintances
"We understand one another"
I chuckle warmly...

The two ladies looking on
in seeming horror
& utter disbelief
so I think, anyway...
that I'm gonna get *****
doing such a thing?

That is until she blurts out
unable to restrain herself
seeing her lips fumble with thoughts
"Interesting get-up you have on"

I ponder the comment,
not wanting to say anything just yet,
I squint my eyes to see her face
then I look at her & quietly say

"Likewise my lady, interesting indeed"
the gentleman smirking at me
giving a wink, perhaps
hoping she doesn't  notice
then she goes on to say...

"That shirt, is...
perfect, I love the natural look
such quaint embroidery"

I again ponder,
speaking,
with a thoughtful reply & a sigh
"Quaint, by definition,
meaning...
old-fashioned, charming, sweet, picturesque?
Or more like bizzare
unique, offbeat & unconventional?
Then I agree, all of those are fine compliments, my Grandmother,
a Native American...
hand stitched this beautiful piece,
colors of Fall
I am just like Vermont & this place"
I laugh low for a second...
admirin' the trees clapping happily

She stared at me
with a puzzled face
one, I'm sure I won't soon replace...

The gentleman now smiling
into his discomfort,
when the other, lady pipes in...

"Your Grandmother, you don't say?
well... I suppose if you take it away
that tattered old sweatshirt over it,
those faded blue corduroy pants...
& those shoes....I just can't..."

Now I'm getting,
a tad bit irritated
though amusing still
remembering the goal
to help those weary souls
I look off to the side,
staring in one direction...
gaining insight
still thinking,
... the second lady chiming in

"Yes, so true..has potential,
how much for the shirt dearie?
It might be worth something"
... urging the other gal on

As the gentleman
steps back in disbelief
I'd imagine anyway,
not uttering a sound now

Now my one eye,
the left one is twitching
I look at her, I stare on,
as her mind I'm bewitching
keep on looking at the stitching
as I call out my Grandma,
to tell me exactly
...what to say,

"Anyway, thank you, I think.
I happen to love everything I'm wearing, especially these shoes.
You know what they say about walking a mile in someone else's?
I might consider loaning them to you if I knew you better, except the thing is,
like this place, like this land ...
and people are never supposed
to be for sale, this piece of history,
the weaving of my family ...
is not for sale either,
for any price each stitch in time
is priceless, so I am sorry,
but no deal ma'am.
Hope you enjoy this beautiful place, thinking yes,
by the look on your face?"

Befuddled and speechless...
the gentleman finally speaking,

"Oh, I think she means that this place is so interesting and amazing.
We probably should get going, get some lunch.
Very nice to meet you though."
The brushoff?
a nervous calm falling over

Humphhhh..

A good idea and distraction
as they hem and haw  
about being "famished"
I offer...

"Famished?
Can't have that.
You mean to say,
you went all this way,
and you didn't squirrel something
to eat
in that ***** pack?

Pulling out a yummy sandwich
slinging a worn backpack,

"I have drinks in there too,
lovely lemonade & some nuts,
dark chocolates even.
Perhaps some things in there
I forgot about, best not to venture out
into these woods with nothing.

"Here you go, take this,
I won't take no for an answer"

Stunned and stupefied she just reaches out and humbly replies
"Thank you, I think?"

I smile and say
"You are most welcome,
thank my Grandmother
and thank you for coming,
enjoy your stay"
I wave them on

"How do I thank her dear girl?
  Is she still with us?"

Now I am quiet
I look to the heavily
opening in the trees
"look and you will see"
I point upward reaching
my hands are teaching
drawings in slow motion
as the trees open to the sky
colors gradate and radiate
a red tailed hawk comes by
the largest one I know
completely in awe they are,
as I slip off...

Something whispered under breath,
"Can you believe that?
Where'd she come from anyway"

Then,
looking in the bag,
he reaches in opening
the sandwich
and bites...
chewing on goodness

"Oh, wow, this is amazing,
this is just delicious,
everything you could want, try it"

the man offering to the ladies

Unable to resist a satisfying nibble, tempted by fate, they take a bite,
"your absolutely right"
she declares...
"and such a lovely lady she is"

"Hey where'd she go?"

"Why, I don't know..."

"Gone like a wisp,
you can tell she is deeply rooted
in this place and such a
beautiful place it is"

they see eye to eye

"With so many valuable lessons
to learn along this yellow wooded path"
as they all agree,
satisfied with their journey
eager to push on...

"Did she mean that bird is a spirit?
Her Grandmother?
Maybe she is a ghost too?"
They are definately wondering...

"So true and I'm kinda of full,
  how about you?"
He states, poignantly adding
"Let's try some of that chocolate"
sampling the lemonade
and roasted nuts
topped off with that sweetness
tasting the menu of sharing

From  behind the tree
where I'm sitting
I have a VERY big smile covering
  that clever, wily face

Knowing I'm not seen
letting out a giggle  
as they turn in wonder
I know the secrets of this place
all its words
and where
it echoes

the loudest.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

"Hey Critter,"
is how Jake greets me.
About that  dude-
he said-
he's a child.
You deserve a world better.

I was telling my
Mate Jake
that you're coming over
and he said
"good."


You don't even know him yet
I said.
Yes but from what I've heard
he said,
he's "good."

So today I was drinking whiskey and juice
and playing pool.
Then we went to a friends house and
watched the boxing.

I don't think
watching people hit each other
is exciting so I
smoked a lot
of cigarettes.

Hey Critter
Jake said,
and I know he's got my back.

do you see how you destroyed
the ruins of an eccentric critter
making use of what's left

she was trying to rebuild a city
during the weekday hurricane
that never stopped
it just gets stronger and stronger

do you know what kind
of critter i am? do you have an idea
of how i adore the horizon
and how i loathe its existence
for i lost during its time

of how i loved staying up at 3am
but it haunted me after september?
you wouldn't know what's hidden
beneath the cracks of my white walls
or under my soiled sheets

i am a detonated bomb
an overflowing dam of heartache
or an active volcano
that could no longer be contained
but i have creative ways
to make room for more

you don't know what's under my bed
and how it scares me every night
you don't know how i tried to love
everything that's left
you don't know how i fought
the whirlpool in the green lake
and you would never know
how i swam against the current

i thought you were my other half
an extension of my left limb
and both legs
but it was on my list
of infinite regret

the city was fine
until you decided to stay
causing havoc
and midnight witchcraft
that makes the night wolves
howl in the full moonlight

but, do you see it?
we just lost a paramount element
in the parallel connection that we have
and dear, im afraid we might lose that, too

long hair long johns of sad happy
clear fog is the dog god doggone dog

kind of you to kind of listen
kindling burns like Hong Kong midnight brightlights
whose birthright, or birthwrong

down-under daggers for flags
flagged
flagulation
creative sensory compensated penitentiary
forward lad landing laughter for the last log on the fire
the last day for earth to say
please plead for plaid shirts to pay for themselves
otherwise there will be ****** for you to see

summer in the winter if I sprinkle a little bit more wood on my splinter
sink or swim, sink and swim, sink to swim
swim to sink
ah
um
oh
ehhem
undo your dress and undo your last mistake

please retake the photo so I can stay awake.

don't, I mean, yes
yes

hands could be cold
but
then
a
g
a
i
n

I just call it what I must
plustwo double yous in a zoo for the future flu's to cruise like truce
11/11/11 armistice
missed the list when you kissed my wrist
I extracted bliss from the Buddha's jist
just
cause?

just call for the muse music

don't mind me
I mean
yes,
yes

motorcade king of spades I got laid to the silence
of a forest in the poorest richness I've never ditched this
**** zip
zap
my zipper is a little critter crawling through the litter on the city's twitter account
doesn't amount to much but I sound like I'm salted in breath
dead like MacBeth, the challenge was the shaken speare
sprained everclear of the diamond tear or the shattered cheer of ancient seers

truth
is greater than fiction.

Driving along
What's that I smell
The daily delight
Of the latest roadkill

From raccoons to possums
In this flattened cuisine
As vultures take lunches
On this finest of dining

Call us the critter getters
Crossing over our paths
Taking them out
As they scurry this way and that

From Bambi to Thumper
And all their forest friends
It does make you wonder
Who you'll run into next

We'll even take out the curious
Who wander on
To that portion of blacktop
To see what's going on

From teetotaling turtles
To slithering snakes
There's not a creature out there
That we won't pancake

So check out the roadkill
If there's still twitch after the thump
Hurry in back
And toss it into the trunk

Because down in the South
There ain't no one can say
That any of us country folk
Let a thing go to waste

Below the Mason Dixon line
If it's fresh enough
We'll take it home ya'll
And have it for lunch

As long as it's fried
There ain't a thing
With cheese grits on the side
That we won't eat