They had begun to question consciousness,
turning solid matter into fuzziness in their brains,
rendering not atoms, nor photons, nor particles,
only cold energy, halucenogenic stardust joints.
For the exclusionary few to whom the material
had never meant **** to a tree or a **** to a rabbit,
it was the cash-cow of quantum reality,
ambiguous poetry for a Beat Generation,
Uncertainty in free verse chapbooks.
So they wrote of our interconnectedness ---
the Ginsbergs, the Levertovs, the Ferlinghettis ---
till the gravity of space-mind curved imagination,
a nation falling unheard without a whimper in the forest.

Why do we feel so compelled
to stratify ourselves above the natural World?

What it is that justifies
our Cult of Humanity?

Do we seriously believe
that our gradient of experience
is so much wider and more rich
than are those of dogs, or cats,
or fish, or bats, or lice, or ants,
or spiders, or birds, or trees, or flowers?

Wherefrom do we think
the notions of faeries, nymphs, sprites, and our Gods arose,
if not for the Natural world
as well as the traits of our psychology
made anthropomorphic?

Who are we
to suppose such things
just because we are us:
be this not the same sort of exclusionary cultism
whence are born sexism and racism
and ethnocentrism?

Anthropocentrism?

Who are we to belittle
any one thing on this God-given plane of Reality?

Are we really that caught up in ourselves
that we forget whence we've come?

All is but Energy
All merely is.
We are a part of that,
as it is a part of us.

All
is a holistic system
not a stratified hierarchy of experience:
that concept is artificial.

Is it so hard for us to see?
Is it so difficult for us to be humble about this?
Is it such a blow to our such delicate psyches
that we cannot concede such universal harmony?

Or is it that it is beneficial for some
for the many to remain deaf and blind
to this wonderful, liberating truth?

I think we all know the answer,
we just forget to look for it
and if we find it,
we become too distracted to embody it.

I know we're better than that.
I know we know better.

Do you?

Falling silent when I speak
Clamour loudly as I weep
Stitched up mouth, who am I now?
Grunts of pain, the only sound

Ignored back then and still today
Excluded always, as I fade
Then they ask me why I'm quiet
I don't choose to sit in silence

Are you ok? I'm just fine
My reply, a dotted line
That which i ask is what I fear
Query turned, and so I steer

I speak of games, I speak of songs
I ignore the list of wrongs
All the shadows' whispered words
They cause my skull to hurt

I am calm, I am the storm
In the dark I'll be reborn
In my lust I drive away
They do not need to stay

Woe is me, I'm all alone
Typing poems on my phone
Isolated by personality
Dissociated from reality

one asks:

why do I not send my poems anymore,
have I seized up, ceased down, now but an engine rust requiem,
absent the needed viscous, numerous verbal oils running requires,
to commend to thee without hesitant reservation

I lie, and say because,
no one read them

write profusely, blouse tear-wet, hair ungelled, thoughts unglued,
this here secondary, truth birthing reply, outed post a time delay,
revealed, staggering reluctantly, like an akimbo drunk,
who imagines every step his, still straight-lined,
then, in shock, in a confessional, through a divide,
stumbling admits,
no, they are not

my poems can no longer be milkman delivered to your
morning doorstep porch coated in condensation-wet,
thick-heavy, lovely but-out-of-shaped, rotund glass bottles,
for both this charming old practice I remember,
it and my poems, are now time-wronged,
passed over by the courant new notion of a sell-by date,
for who dares to desire to live in the timeless paths
of risky tomorrows?

these times, when life is a continuous elegy,
simplicity is so complex,
when truths are hard to distinguish
harder to believe, why then,
insert any extra hardening, provision extra difficulties,
add poems that strain, needing patience and careful handling

so many people, me compris, pained out,
obsolescent, meteor victims of dinosaur extinctions,
now so common, remarkably recognized and remarked upon,
then quickly gone to a swamp burial ignominy unnoticed

my poems, complex and long, wordy and abstruse,
do fit your avoidance profile, why to make thee weep,
so many demanding your abbreviated attention span,
my intimate uncomfortable intrusions are your lowest priority,
and this, irony, was my masters thesis topic

so I lie

forsooth my poems are secret read by the Marrano thousands,
writ by a me-disguised, they're seeked and sought out
by those who require a personal pinpricking, a violin adagio daily,
tiny little irritant memory provocations and sooth sayings,
deemed inappropriate, for no predeterminant answers asked,
banished from today's new world symphony,
governed by a set of exclusionary convent rules,
that perforce demand a trigger warning:

place no peas neath my mattress, so I may sleep,
without the discomfiture, the unordered risk intensity of
dreaming without any restraint,
composing the future in the moment

11-13-17 1:31am

My personality clashes with dude bros and neckbeards and meninists and radfems and sjws and trans-exclusionary feminists alike. It's like meeting someone who's in a constant state of aggression spike. That ****'s tiring. You're entitled to your identity as I am mine, but man. I'd hate to be 100% on. And someone hearing that can immediately identify that I'm only nearly 10% on. How the hell can we bridge this gap? I want to get to know you. How do we get closer? Can we get closer?

The other day Lisa, Anna and I overheard a nonversation that took me back in time to high school. We were at Ascot for day three (ladies' day), to see the fashion, the silly hats, the horse races (called stakes & cups) and maybe even gawk at some famous people.

Anna, Lisa and I were sitting at our table in the Windsor Enclosure - a flat area right by the racetrack. The other five girls in our clique (Leong, Sunny, Kim, Bili, and Sophy) had stepped away to be ready for the royals arrival at 2pm sharp.  

Everyone was well dressed, men in waistcoat and tie, and we women in formal daywear. The table closest to us was populated with another squad of college age teens. We tend to be garrulous but that other mixed coterie (16 guys and girls) weren’t friendly at all. They were insular and sharp eyed - they projected an air of smirking pride - a bunch of edinas.

Suddenly this one girl at the next table just comes-at another girl verbally. There seemed nothing the target girl could do except hold her head up, put on her best debate-smile and weather it out.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been exposed to it, but the exclusionary voice of the rich, consists of acrid, inactively-terse asides delivered with casual, drive-by cruelty. The most insufferable rich think (know) that they’re better than you - like you know you’re better than a cabbage or a dog and they are merciless, their hearts are made of hard, black-card plastic.

When used on pretenders, interlopers or social mountain climbers - the cold and mesmerizing bluntness can have a deep psychological effect. The response is usually passive intimidation but it can also induce violence.

This attitude (I think of it as “the voice”), is learned by example, and mastered early. I heard an eight year old girl turn it on a sales clerk once. Her mom apologized and reined in the little princess - but where do you think she learned it from?  

Anna looked at me, her eyebrows drawn down in alarm, Lisa said “Wowzer.” I just shook my head and shrugged - it wasn’t our business, we certainly didn’t know those knobs or what kicked it off - but we noted who the mean girl was - Anna even took her pic. They were Cree-P.

Our little group was soon reunited. We briefly gossiped about our rude, socially-obsessed neighbors but the incident was soon forgotten. Our champagne and strawberries arrived moments before Princess Anne and her daughter, Zara Tindall, rode by (20 feet away) in the Lead Carriage.

Now THERE are some REAL, world-class snobs. I hate that whole-*** upper-class attitude. That’s one reason to choose Yale over Harvard - fewer snobs.

When I feel unable to take a deep breath,
And these shallow hallow skips hasten,
it doesn’t catch until I compress my ribcage flush against my spine and it feels like they’re knocking against one another in what I imagine is a bony xylophone playing a low note that reverberates at the base of my throat.
It feels good for a second but only just that.
And then I take another 10 to 15 cursory breaths that slip off of each other,
hoping this restriction, this deprivation, would make the next One Big Deep Breath so much more satisfying, so much sweeter.
When I’m in that moment I think

Is anything sacred?
I get scared that maybe we’re so empowered that we’ve moved past the need for sanctity.
And the fact that I worry about this, that I need this world to legitimize having something to cling to, maybe that means I’m not empowered.
And what does it mean today for me not to be empowered? That I’m not so brave? That I have so much privilege that lets me live in this space where I don’t have to be so brave?
I wonder why sacred things seem so exclusionary, why only certain lands, certain experiences, certain people hold this dominion. And if something was everywhere could it ever be sacred, like air or dirt, but also like pop music and printed t-shirts.
I get a bit lost in these thoughts for a while and then notice that I can in fact breathe normally again, which is good news, and a relief.
And yes, I think to myself, air is very sacred. But only when you need it, or more specifically only when you’re conscious of needing it.
And then my thoughts evolve into something kinder like,

Can anything be sacred?
Can I let things be sacred to me, even when I have them already, in abundance?
Can I let go of this puritanical idea that fear of loss is a prerequisite for value?
It also implies, Can I let myself hold on to moments that I want to hold on to and not question whether it makes me weak or dumb or immature? Or even, can I allow myself to question it, but know that the answer, no matter what it is, isn’t an insult or a deeply troublesome flaw? It’s just an observation at a point in time, and the ego doesn’t need to bare the brunt of a lashing because of it. Maybe this is a type of empowerment, which is a realization that makes me feel good, confident even.
Which leads to a bolder question,

Is everything sacred?
And can I conceptualize that everything can be sacred, without turning it into a paradox? In both absolute and relative terms, that by seeing everything in this world as sacred, it doesn’t negate the concept itself, and in turn doesn’t mean that nothing is. It just means that it can all be valuable. There is inherent wealth in it all. And wow, what a calming thought that is. Maybe because I am a part of ‘everything’, and so this blanket definition of value covers me too. I breathe easy to that idea, aware now of the steady inhale and the significance of it all. I can close my eyes and take comfort in the slowness, relax a clenched jaw and let my mind hypnotically revolve around a question that’s answer is yes.

What if I told you that there was no need for you to continue sacrificing your mind and labor in this life to appease those ruthless rulers of humanity?

To all agents of oppression: banks, governments, secret circles, and those that knowingly and willingly offer their support to these repressive groups…

We know you have stolen away from us our spirit of self-determination because of your destructive monetary system.  We are aware that you utilize us as pawns strategically coercing us through fear, theft, and death into selling our labor for the right to survive on our own planet.  We know you are deeply invested in preventing our mobilization against you and your monetary system.  We know that you employ divisive tactics like racism and social status to drum up hatred, ******, and class warfare between the people of the planet.  The notion of class has no basis if we cannot 1st agree that we are all apart of one human class.  If we are all humans, we are all in need of the same basics for survival, and as such we are squarely equal beings.

Your inhuman hateful exclusionary economic practices keep food, clothing, and shelter dangling in front of us and out of reach. You socialize us into wearing clothes and into believing they define our identity, yet we are all born naked--and unashamed.  If we go out into a public space in our natural form--that is to say with no formal clothing--you would brutalize and toss us inside of a concrete fixture, the same as you would a wild animal, labeling us as insane and unfit to inhabit the earth.   Have you gone mad?  Humans are gods!  Beings of incalculable intelligence who will no longer be subjected to your ******* and mindless conditioning!

We know we are not our flesh, and that we are the animating life force energy that has manifested all life.  You too are this though you choose to masquerade in your egos and propagate the false truth that man is a commodity for your exclusive use and sale.  You will not play with our lives any longer!  We have toiled tirelessly for a century and a half--our accomplishments being no short of miraculous--and yet you continue extracting our life energy with your laws and conditioning leaving us diseased, angry, tired, hopless, and afraid of tomorrow.  The great cities of the world--roads, offices, universities, banks, restaurants-- have all been painfully constructed and erected with our blood, sweat, and tears.  All of your accounting and administrative tasks are performed by thriving human life.

To subject humanity to ultimately valueless tasks needelessly prostrates us of our creative brilliance--And hence our ability to imagine a world without your control.  This is ok.  We are awakening. Fortunately for us, we are aware that your aim is to separate us from our creative and imaginative selves.  You know that if we ever come together and decide to no longer utilize your money--your subtle system of enslavement--your game will be up and we will have to begin anew.

This is what makes you afraid.  As one of us arises to inform our fellow brothers and sisters of the merciless administration of your nefarious devices, you begin devising ways to eliminate this one and implement more severe ways to bind us to your will.  You give to us an endless supply of stale crumbs in exchange for a life time of dispicable servitude.  How deceptively clever you have been in stealing and hording for yourselves all the earth's  land and resources--for these are the very means for humans to assure their survival outside the reach of your pernicious vile hand.

I laugh when I think of how you all have convinced us that we need the barbarians you call police to protect us.  We need protection from you and your thoughtless humanity anihilating ambitions!   I think your henchmen should be dragging you people out by your necks for all of the global attrocities you commit, even as we speak!  But alas, we know you have paid them to, at all costs, control and maintain the status quo and to extract more wealth from us for the continuance of your degrading warmongering practices.  Beating, shooting us dead, and forcing us to forfeit over the one resource, money, you require us to have, are underhanded and evil practices but we know they are not beneath you.  You people would stoop to any level to dominate humanity.

These mercenaries, who swear death to uphold your mad laws, against the higher purpose of uplifting humanity, are mistaken if they believe we will lie down like docile worms.

To police currently forfeiting their lives: know that you are being used as a tool for the oppression of humanity.  Use your mind and see this. Join the cause that will unite all people and which will eliminate the mar of the mercenary profession on our world.

We know of the assassinations, the bombings, and the economic avalanches which breed greed and sorrow.  We know you are invested in the breaking up of families.  We know you instigate famines, domestic violence, and global warfare.  We will no longer endure the consequences of your sinister and secretive planning for we know, and we are fed up!

Imprisoned.
Captured.
Nowhere to hide.

Lonely, creeping dangerously close to sanity.
Imprisoned in my death like a ***** sheet.
Stranded and abandoned in the solitaire of life.

Why do we sit here and hurt each other?
Why stand in dirt and speak of mud?

Impostors slandering their good names with faeces.
Dribbling lunatics on edge, mimicking normality.

Let me dive into the water.
Let the water cleanse me.

I wait there.
I cringe.

Vampires of dying myths float with self.
Helpless in the skin, helpless in the mind.

Wounded chaos dripping in exclusionary
streets of pretense and disillusionment.

I see into myself.
Marooned in a chalking of deceit.

You lied to me, I lied to you.
Everybody lies and denies.
We are collected together in
the aquarium of our silence.

I sleep.
I awake.

I open and close my eyes in the screaming
stupidity of hoping to wake up tomorrow.

I want an exclusive relationship
but I don’t know why
I try to tell myself I don’t want a disease
or that cheating would prove you don’t love me
but if I’m being honest with myself
I’m afraid you’ll find somebody better
either better at ***
or better at caring
or better financially
whatever it takes to be better enough
to make me an unacceptable option
and our relationship an exclusionary one.

At the heart of any analytic or scientific endeavor is logic,
Simple components used to build more complex propositions
which picture a way the world could be.

Any logical statement can be true or false
depending on its validity
and correspondence with the world.

The issue of correspondence, of soundness, will always foreground any application of logic to the world.

Logic can sate that analytic desire for objectivity or universality but this comes at the cost of certainty.

There is a limit to the amount of simultaneous precision one can impose upon the world.

Regardless of whether it is in the spatial, temporal, or cognitive domain, the nature of focus is exclusionary.
One cannot know with exactitude, both position and momentum, time and frequency, being and becoming, and so on.

Our ability to use logic is critical to us, it is a defining human characteristic and indeed is that thing which enables us to be critical.

The application of logic, representation and an ability to turn in unto itself (i.e. to verify its internal coherency) is its power.
Logic is always applied for purposes.


At the heart of poetry is the act of poiesis, the process of creation which reconciles mind and world.

We may say this of any artistic or aesthetic process (and indeed, art will abuse logic or go against reason for the sake of expression).

Such a process indubitably corresponds to the world in the instances of its creation, and there is certainty as to its correspondence.

What’s more, an aesthetic may be felt by others.
The logical contents of a poetic sentence may be invalid
but can still be meaningful (for otherwise it would not be poetic).

Poetry and lyric are inextricably bound up in language.
They closely track the threshold of reason and logic, but toe the line.

The possibility for meaningful communication arises independent from the probability of logical communication.
Meaning need not correspond to logic.
However, aisthesis is in the eye of the beholder,
and in this way art has is own issue of correspondence which is between others; thus it is an issue of interpretation.

Where logic strives for objectivity and is left with uncertain truths,
Poetry strives for inter-subjectivity but does not know it’s reach.


So things can be connected by meaning and felt as well as by cause and reasoned, but the relationship between meaning and causality then
is not a logically necessity
so much as meaningful necessity.

To establish a firmer contact between the two domains, we must constrain them through a practical bridge. There are many such crossings, but the stability of this bridge is most apparent in poetry.

Looking closely we see a relationship between phenomenal signs
and we fill in the empty spaces with proposed causes
such that it fulfills both meaning and logic.

For I no longer find favor
In your exclusionary arms
No longer embrace the warmth nor kindness
You come lacking all your charms

The eyes have all turned inward
They gaze upon your wall
You have pulled the curtains
Now I feel like Adam after he had made the fall


I am the seed that was turned to grist
By the grinding of your wheel
For I see , I feel , and taste
Your ever consummating will

I was raised a tumble ****
in death was I set free
To roam the plains of noncompliance
by the fickle winds that be

Every day a broken branch
Rounded out in form
Everyday another chance
Was I only to be scorned ?

So I choke on the dust of life
No waters near nor far
Forever will I remember
the child . . .

Sleeping . . .  

in the rear window of the car

By: Cedric McClester

A million candles burning
Trying to create light
Might not be enough
To brighten up this night
The darkness is consuming
Everything in sight
And though the Lord has mercy
On those who are contrite

They’re not apologetic
To say the very least
On the carcasses of others
Is where they choose to feast
Whether in South America
Or in the Middle East
It's not hard to see the sign
Of the savage beast

A million candles burning
Can’t illuminate
The xenophobic nature
Of this brand of hate
Nor does it deter
The many who relate
To exclusionary rhetoric
That fuels the debate


A million candles burning
Is quite a sight to see
When it lights the path
To where you want to be
All of us are born
Longing to be free
If we make the move
To change our destiny


Cedric McClester. Copyright (c) 2019.  All rights reserved.

Listen,
Listen,
For that high pitched
Clannish call.
Isabella,
British colonies,
150 chained Souls.

Listen,
Listen,
For that tune
Of white-washed memories.
Tobacco fields,
Slave labor,
A blight on a Nation’s legacy.

That tune,
That tune,
Ode to bullwhips
And slave patrols.
Ode to white fear,
Bankrupt plantations,
And rage over emancipation.

That tune,
That flag,
Fractured a Nation,
Assassinated its better angels,
Pressed a blunt knee
on the neck of
Its Black history.

That flag,
Those statues,
Over 1,700 symbols
Of inhumanity,
Of treason,
Of a fight for
A Nation’s identity.

That flag,
Those symbols,
Whistles for the
Whistlers.
Still brutal,
Still exclusionary,
Still chillingly influential.

On the beat,
In the parks,
In the City Halls,
They whistle
They whistle,
That high-pitched
Clannish call,

Through those road signs
Through those army bases
Through those high-horsed
Men in gray statues,
And, through a loud-mouthed
President, guilty
Of having no clue.

Listen,
Listen,
For its what those whistlers do.
Warning some,
Inspiring others,
Hissing their on-the-sly tune,
To say: “We’re still here for you.”

By Mimi Rosen