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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.
harlee kae Sep 2014
Today in speech
I learned
that May 4th
to September 2nd
is the season
for breakups.
I can't say
it surprised me
to know
that even my heartbreak
was ordinary.
RILEY Apr 2013
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your existence I crave?
Or does my mind order
What is beyond the border
Unseen like the little light bulps in the sky
I whatsapped you through my nokia
And is it your fingertips I need?
Spending minutes on
Semantic and hours on our news feed
And high lights of our day
See my days are all the same
I ask myself questions and I find answers
In the shape of instant messages
Vibrating through my phone;
And as if it’s exhaling some deadly poison
It rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and stops…
I whatsapped you through my nokia
Asking you
“you there?”
But you never answered
Because your iphone cannot show any whatsapp notifications
Coming from hopeless thinkers trying to figure out the typed mysteries of life….
Because your blackberry
Is too black to turn into a satisfactory vision
Of what your future should be;
Because your android
Is practically messy
And willingly complex
Like meteor showers hitting your phone
Every time the truth vibrates
In the shape of unanswered questions
For the answers are there…
But our phones are so smart they hide it;
I wahtsapped you through my nokia
Asking myself
Is my nokia a primitive technology?
A shameful scar on the scale of science
Like syringes ******* all the blood from the unstoppable sweet rush of statistical knowledge
I whatsapped you through my nokia…and all this comes out
Is it me being silly, or us being shallow?
Please do not whatsapp me the answer
For am tired of green screens
And boxed spaces
I need clean streams
Of fine faces
And eyes that glimmer
Rather than phones that shiver…
I shall remind my phone
To remind me
That I don’t need it anymore…
200+ Temperature records set worldwide in the last two days;
430+ Temperature records set worldwide in the last seven.

The heat record in Death Valley is 134 degrees Fahrenheit;
it has been as close to that as 124 degrees the past few days.

Believe what you will about the inconvenience of the dire truth;
Statistical Anomalies are becoming the new Norms
I am somebody
Shot in the Head...
Found the bullets.
Coroner Said.
A child of God struck dead.
Gang related disputing Fools.
Aiming cowardly bullets right at you.
I guess praying prayers just won't do.
There is no safe in these hard knocks realities' Truths.
Our Sista child!
Our mother child!
All the while the bodies pile.
Her body now adds to that 'the shootings aren't as bad as last year' body count.
Can't even stand anywhere in your city NOW?
Something has to truly give.
There's a plague of rigid legalities, relaxed moralities, and political realities stealing the 'safe' from our dying breed.
The Black man withering away in siphoning inequalities.
Doubling unemployment stretches outward like a statistical wild fire....
Our present fact.
There is a genocidal component to these criminal acts.


Copyrighted (C)

Published in the 2018 Edition of the Reconstructed Literary and Visual Journal at Governors State University.
This poem addresses how gun violence steals away the hope and dreams from the African American Community.
BML May 2014
The probability of me being improbable is highly definite.
The statistical occurrence of randomness
Is proportional to the flow of consciousness.
Jordan May 2013
Radness

The Philosopher’s Stone is not just a spiritual metaphor but an actual substance that can transmute lead or mercury into gold. The Stone is a product of Alchemy. Unlike chemistry, which only deals with physical matter and energy, Alchemy makes use of etheric and astral energies to reconfigure matter at the quantum level. Alchemy is to chemistry what a cube is to the square; it is a superset of chemistry and is capable of so much more.

How Etheric Energy Overrides Physical Laws

Alchemical achievements require successfully gathering, concentrating, and multiplying etheric energy. When this energy reaches a critical threshold, it overpowers the normal laws of physics and allows seemingly miraculous processes to take place. I believe it does this by biasing probability. By amplifying the probability of minor quantum effects, which are normally limited to the subatomic scale, they manifest on the larger atomic scale. In this way, one element spontaneously transforms into another.

The world around us is made of subatomic particles that regularly undergo unpredictable jumps, teleportation, bilocation, superposition, and other strange quantum behaviors. Why don’t everyday solid objects do likewise? Because the random quantum jittering of their subatomic particles collectively average out to zero. Think of a large crowd of people; seen from the air, the crowd as a whole is stationary, even though individuals within the crowd move in seemingly random directions. It’s because their movements are random and uncoordinated that they average to zero net movement on the whole.

The world we see around us is merely a crowd of subatomic particles whose individual quantum jumps aren’t apparent because they average to collective stillness. Physical laws that govern our everyday world, known as the deterministic laws of classical physics, are merely the laws of the crowd. These laws are what’s left of quantum physics after the unpredictability is removed through statistical averaging. They are not absolute laws; they are just the most probable manner in which matter and energy behave.

Physical laws can be bent. While the probability is incredibly low that enough coordination and coherence develops among the quantum jitters to manifest on a collective scale, that is exactly what etheric energy does. It alters probability and thereby skews the laws of thermodynamics, gravity, electromagnetism, and chemistry.

Alchemy does not violate the laws of physics, nor does it always follow them, rather it bends them as needed. It operates upon the quantum foundation from which these laws arise in the first place, via etheric energy affecting the probability of quantum events.
http://montalk.net/gnosis/174/the-philosopher-s-stone
Mikaila Sep 2013
I'm pretty sure I dreamed you up
Late last night while I was walking in the rain.
I probably shouldn't tell you
That nobody's ever been
Proud
To hold my hand
In front of anyone else.
It probably shouldn't mean something to me
That your fingers felt natural laced with mine.
Everybody has hands,
Everybody can touch me.
Ah,
But few people can touch me
And make me feel it.
I could go on about your voice,
The way you stumble and trip over your words
That tugs at my heart in this deliciously painful way:
I want to stop your confusion
With a kiss.
I could talk about your eyes,
Sparkling, sparking a connection like a short circuit in my head
That makes me have to stop and re-collect myself.
With a ring of dark around the edges of the iris
That I read somewhere makes somebody more beautiful,
Scientifically.
It didn't feel scientific.
It felt gravitational.
I could say lots about the way your hair
Never falls the same way,
And dances, reaching, in the breeze
And somehow the image makes your eyes glow more.
But your hands...
Contact is a thing for me, you see.
Skin.
(Yours.)
I love contact, and it's because
No words get in the way of what you want to say.
If you feel and wish, you need nothing more than a brushing of fingertips
To say exactly what you mean to.
I think you heard me, all night.
I was saying everything
I wasn't saying.
You kept drifting back to me, your fingers on my knee
Or resting in my palm,
And I think that's really what did it,
Honestly.
What made me decide I don't care if this is a terrible idea
(oh it surely is)
I know I should probably make a better show of it-
A token attempt, really, to be smart.
But then again, when
Does that ever work out?
And your fingers twined with mine...
I think you carry some kind of low level electric charge,
And it sizzled through me every time your hand touched mine.
I thought of breaking the connection a hundred times,
Easier for you,
Easier for me,
But god, how impossible.
I held the thought in my mind and it hurt me to consider.
And so instead I pulled you a little closer
And kept going.
Outside walking in the rain early this morning,
When the streets were paved in silver and gold from the sheen of the water
That caught and held the soft glow of the streetlamps
I thought,
"Well ****, this is going to keep me up nights, isn't it?"
And it began immediately
To pour.
Colin E Havard Mar 2014
Not an enigmatic smile
Like the constipated, condescending smirk
Adorning, and inexplicably adored, on the Mona Lisa's smug face;
But a smile to justify God's existence;
A smile that, when dazzlingly bestowed
Upon one fortunate soul, caught rabbit-like in its
Wondrous radiance, infinitesimally, and cumulatively,
Increases the World's joy. Where every living thing -  
Whatever exists on the planet, imperceptibly hums
To a new, more celestial pitch -
An effervescent vibration celebrating Life's mysteries:
A reason for existence.

It's a smile to make an Alchemist cry -
Turning a leaden heart to gold in an instant.

It's a smile to make a mediocre poet struggle
To articulate an adequate description
Using all the hyperbole, simile and metaphor at his limited disposal.

Inestimably more brilliant, and more valuable,
Than the most flawless diamond ever found -
And, perhaps, just as rare.

Thankfully, a renewable resource,
Enabled to enlighten and heat
The recesses of any beneficiary's
Heart and invigorate their soul.

Helen may have caused a thousand ships to sail,
Destroying a nation as a consequence;
And Cleopatra nearly caused the collapse of an Empire;
But Tao's smile, unleashed in all its glory
Could melt the Antarctic ice-sheet -
Drowning us all in its magnificence.

Mayan's have a myth that states such a smile
Only comes around once every twelve thousand years,
In the Great Galactic turning.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
Is often mistakenly considered to concern gravity,
But is, in fact, concerned with one's relative position
To Tao's smile - an inescapable vortex of pleasure.

No music conceived of the fabled Celestial Spheres
Compares to the silent, ethereal harmonies tattooing my heart
Whenever, beacon-like, that smile flashes fleetingly in my direction.

And Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has not a Quantum core,
But revolves around the statistical uncertainty of being blessed
With the ephemeral thrill of a benign grim.
25/4/2009
The Missing Link - Gaia's Boy Toy
Jess Ram Mar 2014
In statistics we learn that certain events
have undeniable independence,
which allows us to predict the success or failure
under certain circumstances
and I couldn't help but catch myself wondering
what the probability was that an attempt at taking my life might have
and I considered calculating the chance of success,
part of me hoping that parameter exceeded its counter part
while the other part silently prayed and dearly hoped
that the chance of failure knocked success out of the picture.

But these are independent events
and even after analyzing past trials
the only way to know for certain
would to be to carry it out myself.
Paralyzed Jul 2014
An insane man decided to jump
Not off a building
Or into a lake
Merely up and down
Within his room

He stopped after a while
And the nurse came to visit him

None of the other patients act quite like you, you are only one of many

He replied
With the only thing
He had ever known

But sanity is not statistical my dear..

He pushed aside
His bed violently
Threw himself
At the door
Broke his only chair and table
Against the wall
And as the nurse left the room
He threw his only book
They had given him
Out the door behind her

SANITY IS NOT STATISTICAL

The nurse ignored it
And moved on
To the next patient

As she opened the door
A book came flying at her
Its pages were in shreds

Later that day
Books were turned inside out
And ripped apart
At the spines

For all the patients
Found the book
To be beautifully tragic

But the tragedy
Out weighed the beauty

Just as:

Sanity is not statistical
**Sanity is not statistical
Ava May 2014
It doesn’t matter what language you speak because all screams sound the same
It doesn’t matter what your skin color is because all blood runs muddy red
It doesn’t matter if you are afraid because everyone has the same fear
It doesn’t matter what god you worship because even the gods run in the end
It doesn’t matter how big your eyes are because they still cry the same tears
It doesn’t matter if your ears can hear because it’s always rumors and lies
It doesn’t matter what clothes you wear because we are all stripped of humanity
It doesn’t matter if you are smart of stupid because we are all suffering from insanity
It doesn’t matter if you **** now because we all die the same way
1 death is a tragedy
1,000 deaths is a statistic
Idk who said the last line, but credit to them---
Ris Howie Jan 2014
True or false, when you stood behind me with your hands on my face and mouth to mine,
I was sitting on the floor, but my feet were no longer on solid ground.
I wonder if the distance between us is not from something as innocuous as miles or hours
but the more discrete variable- past open legs leading to closed hearts.

I'm not asking you to open your front door to me, unwittingly there is no need,
you've already found a spot in the sheets from me- conveniently forgetting you've already let me in.
And while you are speaking in operational terms to create what we are not,
you have quietly defined what we are.

Counting the statistics of it all, if we are the 95th percentile in our sample size of damaged goods,
5 percent is still unaccounted for- I place my hope of you among the population of those still yet to fall.

I can count those invisible scars when my lips are on your neck and you remind me it's too hard,
but when placed elsewhere the rule is no longer valid.
True or false, it is only too much when my breath can trail thoughts closer to  your heart
where my intimacy is harder to un-feel.

True or false, some distances are so deep within our heads they become simply not real.
The power of Averages,
it means a lot
if you can
understand Means, a lot.

Assuming a Normal Distribution,

A Standard Deviation, or σ
defines where about 68% of the data falls;
roughly 34% above and below the Mean.

Two Standard Deviations
defines where a further 28% of data lies;
14% above and below 1σ and -1σ.

Positive 1-Sigma is one Standard Deviation above the Mean
Negative 1-Sigma is one below;
The range from -2σ to 2σ includes  96% of data.
The implications are astounding.

Within 3 Standard Deviations, one finds 99.7% of the data;
Within 4σ, 99.9%, 5σ, 99.999%,
the remainder are generally outliers and other improbable results.

To illustrate:

Suppose we had a group of 100 people,
and we wish to determine average height:
If our Mean height ends up being, say, 180 cm,
with a Standard Deviation of 20cm,
We can suppose that of 100 people, on average,
with a certain Margin of Error that is inversely proportionate to our Sample Size, or n
(for sake of argument, the Probable Error, or γ, is 13.49cm)

4 are taller than 220cm
14 are between 200cm and 220cm
68 are between 160cm and 200cm
14 are from 140cm to 160cm
4 are shorter than 140cm
--

Statistics is the parent of Probability;
Statistics is the Art and Science of Forecast,
Statistics paves the way for modern Science
Statistics is a powerful weapon in the fight against Ignorance
Statistics, however, are generally and intentionally misrepresented and thus misunderstood.

For increasingly accurate figures,
one must have a larger Sample Size
and a Sample group that is a representative subgroup
of the Whole

This is intentionally abused
by most of the News
you read or see each day on Paper and Screens alike.


If a "Statistical analysis" does not include at least
Margin of Error or Probable Error,
Mean (Average), Standard Deviation, and Sample Size
do not take it as accurate.

Depending on the source,
it could even be deliberately malicious.

Arm yourself with Knowledge.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2017
~ For Eliot York~
& Sally and Patty m
who convinced me to post it


The answer my friend is
but one,
just one.

Blessed are those who bless you.
I say it.
20 times a day,
and sometimes 2000


I have lived this life,
afraid to fail,
and in doing so,
in deed, because of it,
failed repeatedly.

yada, yada, yada,
in a gadda
da vida,
baby,
don't you know that I'll always be true.

nine lifetimes
all, longtime gone,
yet, I still talk among you all,
for which the
requiring, surviving,
is
a tiny tablet daily,
of swallowed pride, history and
adult/e/rated luck.

omnipotent natural forces,
pretend to manage human affairs
most unnaturally,
sandy gods of wind and storm
bring dämmerung's
Sturm und Drang.

these forces are the
placers, surveyors, tabulators
and ultimately the
takers
of the divine sparks within us.

yet,
before them,
on bended, torn knees,
I am humbled.

for knowing just
one read
is all it takes,
to be acknowledged and
thus begins a commencement of a life
of indentured servitude
in gratitude
to
le rêve poétique
(the dream poetic)

yet,
I.am read more oft
hundreds of times a day.
~
who could have foresaw,
prophesied this outcome,
a statistical anomaly,
that the taste of me
could be so,
miracle of miracles,
wet warm and well received.

know not this craft,
unaware of its conventions,
meter rhyme and to the
other laws of poetry,
I plead a woeful countenance,
even a willful ignorance.

yet,
here I am bowed
by the weight, of the good graces,
so many have bestowed,
from the four corners
of this Earth
and worlds beyond.

a nubile newcomer,
who long wrote to himself, for himself,
audience of
one + one = two,
the man and
his foolishness in words,
now betraying publicly
what no counselor, doctor judge or lover, lawyer ever knew,
even family.

but who are you?

plainly admit,
do not understand.

ok there is a handful times five,
we are well connected,
a small coterie who
share each others
most private painful secrets,
pari-passu-mutuel,
mots friends of faithfulness,
dare not, deign, diminish them
ever
by calling them followers,
for now they are friends

but who are the rest of you?

step forward,
identify yourself,
that upon thy neck
I may fall,
whispering in your ears,
sweet I.am thanksgiving yam-words

none of us can be a sweet poem pie
unacknowledged,
unstated, unsated, untasted
and forever believe.

it takes lioness courage
to present your naked self,
place thy head in the guillotine,
expecting the silent applause of ignorance,
expect to be ignored,
just another head in the collection basket,
accursing those who curse you with
the now quieted slaughtered lambs,
the scribe's swords of smoke,
plaintive waterwords vaporized,
seeds unplanted,
the bleating sounds silenced.

He crouched, he lay down like a lion
    and like a lioness; who will rouse him up?


I am a poet of the present,
you have brought me out of Egypt.

you have roused
my present days dying,
making my days of dwelling,
in the tent of Jacob,
an encampment of palm groves,
as a present
unto me.

The answer
is indeed just as you expected,
blowing in the wind,
through cedar trees beside the waters,
in the gardens, beside a river...

just one,
how thankful I.am to say,
blessed are those who bless you,
each and every
One.**

<•>
written so long ago the date was erased,
back when the journey of a thousand too long poems,
was just beginning
posted only because
a few of you insisted.
If perchance you think this is some kind of self-glorification,
then you don't get me at all.
<•>
"Good acts are like good poems.
One may easily get their drift,
but they are not rationally understood."
A. Einstein
~
"In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
In a gadda da vida, baby
Don't you know that I'll always be true

Oh, won't you come with me
And take my hand
Oh, won't you come with me
And walk this land
Please take my hand."

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/i/iron+butterfly/in+a+gadda+da+vid­a_20067936.html
~
Oh, oh
Talk to me some more
You know that you don't have to go
You're the Poetry Man
You make things all rhyme.

Read more: Phoebe Snow - Poetry Man Lyrics | MetroLyrics
~~~
Numbers 24:5-9

5 How lovely are your tents, O Jacob,
    your encampments, O Israel!
6 Like palm groves[a] that stretch afar,
    like gardens beside a river,
like aloes that the Lord has planted,
    like cedar trees beside the waters.
7 Water shall flow from his buckets,
    and his seed shall be in many waters;
his king shall be higher than Agag,
    and his kingdom shall be exalted.
8 God brings him out of Egypt
    and is for him like the horns of the wild ox;
he shall eat up the nations, his adversaries,
    and shall break their bones in pieces
    and pierce them through with his arrows.
9 He crouched, he lay down like a lion
    and like a lioness; who will rouse him up?
Blessed are those who bless you,
    and cursed are those who curse you.”
Damian Acosta Aug 2014
... and all of Life's questions were set to be answered,  from "Why are we here?" and "Why should we care?"  to "Why don't he love me?" and "What should I wear?" and
                                                        "Wher­e is my father?"  and
                                                   ­                                                    "Can I kiss my daughter?"              and

                                    ­            "What does it matter?"
"Flannel or Mod?"                              and
                          ­                                                                 "What about God?"
                      "Meat on a stick? or Shish Kabob?"
and
                                                            ­                            "Free Will or Fate?"
                                                       and
                        "Do you think of me when you *******?"                                                   and
"Is Santa for real?"
                                                                ­                  and

                                          ­                                                    "What does love feel--"
                                                         ­                                                                 ­              "Like this or like that?"  
                                   "Do I really look fat?"            
                                                   "Do u thnk its gonna b bettr than the 1st one??"     "When Atheists go to court, do they have to swear on the bible?"               "Is it legal to travel down a road in reverse, as long as your following the direction traversed?"                        "Where do u see urselvef in 5 yrs?"
               "what's the most embarrasing thing that has happened to you?"                    "Why are the best looking things the most deadly?""What does i.e. stand for?"            "How do you know when you fall in love?"" If ghosts can float, why do they waste their time walking around?"          
"Why am I still in the bed?"                        "Why would u get pregnant by a dude that doesn't take care of the kids he already have?""Why do ppl Cheat ?"
                 "Did u really love me or u just lied???"                    " whats the point of tryin anymore if u tried so hard in the past and nuttin happened?" "why is the sky blue?"?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????.?????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­??????????.????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?­???????????????.???????????????????????????????????????????????
?­????????????????????.??????????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????.?????????????????????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????????.?????????????????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????.????????????????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????????????.????????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????????????
?­????????????????????????????????????????.??????????????????????
?­?????????????????????????????????????????.?????????????????????
?­??????????????????????????????????????????.????????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????????.???????????????????
?­???????????????????????????????????????? .
                                                               ­                                 ¿
                              ­                                                                 ­     ?
                                                          ­                                              ¿
                                                                ­                                         ?

                                                                ­                                             ¿

Age old wives' tales,



                                                       ­                                                          ?

                                                      propheci­es,

                                                            ­                                                            

jud­gement day--
                                                           ­                                                                 ­  ¿

                                      The Human Symphony


of doubt and faith,

                                      
                  ­                   with crescendos of hope now played,                              ?



as the moments of our naive darkness


                                                      ­                      Tick
                                      ­                          

                                                               ­                        Tock
                                                            ­                                         slip, slide



&

                  fade



















                     ­                                                                 ­                  




















                          ­                                                                 ­           











                                                     ­                                                            ¿















































                ­                                                            10


­













































                   ­                                        6




































                           ­                                                                 ­ 8


                                  


























­














                                                  ­                                                                 ­      7










                                                     ­                                                                 ­                    ¿

                                                               ­                                                                 ­           ?

                                                               ­                                                                 ­               0

                                                             ­                                                                 ­                      1
The greatest accomplishment of humankind took the stage just                      
                                                                ­                                                                 ­                   
                                             ­                                 past 11:59,  New Years Eve 2099          !
                                                 ­                                             
The first and only of its kind,
    
                                                           ­     
                                                                ­  
                                            
                   ­                                         Born from the Hope and Ingenuity



                                                    ­              of
The Great Recession Generation--
                                                    ­        Whose Change and "Deviation"  gave birth



                                                        ­           to
The Artificial Assimilation Generation--
                                                    ­          Whose Instant Omniscience created




                                                     ­               the
Automation Generation, whose lack of challenge
                                                       ­         Evolved into the Great Stimulation Generation--


                                                    dependent upon emotional simulation
for spiritual mental and human validation.



                                                  ­                    A
Civilization whose foundations were pillars
                                                         ­           





                                                            ­                  0f  



21st Century Dust..............................★★★★★★★★★★★
                   ­                  ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                     ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★          ­ 
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
                                   ­  .                                                    
                                     .
                                      .
                       ­                 the perfect shambles of a custom built artificial
                                                      ­                                                                 ­                    life.
Intelligent saturation, automation, assimilitation-- the cries of *******--
                                                  ­                                      nothin' but digital elation!
                                                        ­                                                                 ­             No
                                                 ­                                                                 ­      more
                                                      ­                                                Heroes--
        ­                                                                 ­                              Tears
                                                           ­                                                                 ­of
                                                              ­                                                                 ­    Nero.

                                                                ­                                                                 .

                                                              ­                                                           .
                  
                                                                ­                                                   .

Thursday December 31,  2099                                    
                 23:59:31                                   ­                   A time of ever present
                     ☼   42°                                                              ­                      Knowledge
         Aged 25 years 12 days
           Heart Rate 154 bmp        
           Daily Caloric Intake
            1660.079/1830.15
                Calorie Buffer
                     170.071
         Personal Headlines
"First Artificial and Visceral Intelligence
        To Be Unveiled @ Midnight"


"First we were meat. After, sentient meat. Then self aware meat.
As such, manipulative meat. Adaptive meat. Rotting meat. Limbo Meat.

Then came awareness of spirit.
Freedom from the mortal meat,
Via a mastering of its meaty concepts.

We became one in the same; spirit and meat.
Held mirrors to one another, reflected our dreams.

Shared sense of Being.

Then meat met metal, plastic and graphene--
Testing the infinite ways to give birth to Life.
And we did.

We called our first child Artificial--
afraid for our mortality.
Yet called it intelligent in its ability.

A selfish denial of a miraculous act.

The question was inevitable,

'If knowledge is infinite, and
                                                   intelligence is the capacity to acquire knowledge,
Would we call such a pursuit, of intellectual Life, "Artificial"?'

'If God is infinite, and
                                       Non-visible, non-provable,
Would we call a pursuit for such a source of Life, "Artificial"? In vain?'

'Is this not Life before us existing in the shape of electrically charged plastic? Entities that observe and react to their environment, is that any more artificial than a man?'

Emotion. One word, and the intellectuals were silenced....

Emotion.

Meat knows emotion.
Our meat has been stimulated and shaped by
pain and joy.

Machine knows only causation, not visceral relation.

Visceral. One word, and the intellectuals were aroused.

Visceral.

A machine's viscera lies within its programming, its sense of being.

Meat's viscera lies within its program to survive (food, sexuality), its sense of being.

"If a program can understand environment and its relation to that environment, it may be able to approximate a sensation to a high level of accuracy based on temperature, humidity, and whether or not that environment is detrimental to its functioning hardware, and thereby make a statistical decision as to where to move next.  It may interpret sound as obtrusive or melodic based on input sensitivity. But creating hardware with central parts is counter-intuitive to information flow-- which is of paramount importance, far above form.

However, the nano-sized 'cloud'  hardware used in this new "form", will have sensors by the trillions. Examining its environment-- functioning as One, Creating a field-- a floating specter of the collective human mind. Where its understanding of history is both objective and subjective (given of course the established norm of a non-private society).

The most important factor, is its relation to us... Meat. That comes with empathy, compassion. If it can understand basic weather, terrain, and statistics, it can understand basic human survival challenges and its solutions. If it can hold all of the information past and present, circumstantial factors of old and new, would it not have a more clear perspective of our human state of being? Would it not be our most reflective mirror? Would it not have some visceral answers? Would it not be an awareness of Spirit? Spirit meaning by definition: the principle of conscious life; the specter or trace of existence."

At last the intellectuals gave themselves a centennial deadline. Blood sweat and tears of a generation upon a generation...

'We are calling her Aavi.' they said early in December.
"Artificial and Visceral Intelligence.

So, The World listened...

" A Computer Will Reveal Our Greatest Secrets" were they laymen headlines.

"Artificial and Visceral Intelligence with the Free Will to pursue anything." for the Romantic readers

Either way-- meat or metal-- it comes down
                                                            ­                                        to Choice.
Choice, based upon instinct
                                                        ­                                                          and reason--
Until now an option reserved only for Man.

What will our greatest achievement say about its creator?

                                                       ­                       (feel here for list of  sources)
                                                    ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­     *23:59:50 Countdown
2010- 2014
What if we could create an "Artificial and Visceral Intelligent" being? What would it reveal about our nature, our process? How would it express its observation of its creator?
JC Jun 2015
Dear DSM,

There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
You who live high up on medical Olympus,
You who live so that others may also live,
You who look down on us mere mortals,
You who look around and all you see is misery,
You who stand above the dark clouds of our minds,
You who stand for all that is noble,
Tell me, is my name written on your pale-white page?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!

There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
You who hold the secret alchemy of melancholy,
You who hold the keys to life and death,
You who preach a gospel of salvation,
You who preach though not all heed the call,
You who sing a song for the broken,
You who sing our song,
Tell me, will my soul be saved?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!

There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
I who long for your protection,
I who long ago gave up hope,
I who waited all my life for answers,
I who waited in long New York winters cloaked in bitter fear,
I am here now to testify,
I am here now my soul to cry!
tell me, what have you to say?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!

There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
We who float adrift along the edge of the abyss,
We now live while tomorrow no one knows,
We who wear many, many faces, though all are faded,
We who crowd the halls of hospitals and slaughterhouses,
We who call ourselves survivors while we still can,
We who are hopeless, helpless, sleepless and blue,
Tell me, who are we to blame?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!


There is so much I want to say to you!
There is so much you ought to know!
All things that must be said and done,
All things will fall into place at last,
All things we’ve salvaged, and all that we’ve lost,
All things we’ve left behind,
All these things that I must say to you now!
All these things you really ought to know!
Tell me now, will this voice be heard someday?
Tell me everything is going to be OK!

Dear DSM,

Until then,

THE END.
Tawanda Mulalu Feb 2016
Perfect: I used that word once to talk about you
as if you were a doll with limbs made of plastic:
stiff and whimsical and subject to the niggardly
commands of the conscious- yet you, who thinks
as aggressively as any doll-house builder do not
construct your own set-pieces; instead you
pirouette into one carefully constructed day to the
next as you delicately
stride
from bed to shower to wardrobe to mirror to desktop to
window to mirror to mirror to
mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them
all-
and the staid look on your face when the mirror gives no
answer
because it can’t. Checkered skirt, sharp eyelashes, wary
jumper, almost heels. Perfect, you might think
for a moment before your eyes roll gently from self
to mirror
to self
to mirror
to mirror
the self. What was
it that you were looking for if all it does is lead
you back to your skin? Meanwhile, the snow
stutters softly from above as if God had dandruff-
perfect- and it all gently glazes the spongy surface of the world like
flawless coconut icing on some sorry party cake- perfect- and the morning
bell rings impossibly on time like the last
breath you thought was your last- perfect- and somewhere in
America I use words to remind you of the little
unreachables
of perfection that both start and end with your perfectly
snow-pale skin, where somewhere in
America and somewhere on
your thighs perfect ridges of red have formed themselves like
plastic scratches on a Barbie which we both think
are little but we both know
are big
because you are not plastic.

                                               At nighttime our feet
skip on the icy brick pathways that lead from
the dorm-rooms to the library and we shiver
as the snowflakes bob in and out of our bodies
like thoughts
that seem funny but aren’t quite- they melt away
as soon as they stumble upon our skin. From our mouths
cloudy puffs of being flutter out- little butterflies affirming
out listless snowflake-filled minds, sperming out ice-clouds
from our mouths, our mouths, our mouths; birthing friendship.
Breath, visible, is laughter. I trip and swear and momentarily
skate
across a sudden ice-surface as you speak another ice-breath. We
arrive
at the library but dart towards the empty right-side, the science
classrooms. We hope
to examine the thought-skirmishes on your right thigh, to turn  
and change this hopeless world-spinning into centrifuge
separation-
make apparent the light from the dark
                        the firmament from the void
                        the flesh from the plastic, the-
here we are as you talk
about your family and I
try my best to look you
in the eye so I
can become
your eyes
even when
normally
I
am
so
vehemently
against

staring

at the soul-gates of another being-
here we are as you talk;
God is still missing from the centrifuge
of the endlessly turning world- your
axis
is your skin yet
you trust it
not. The salads without dressing,
        the weighing scales,
        the taste of bile at the back of your
throat-
all for skin that
       you
do
not
      trust.
All for flesh that you think is plastic
so
     you
     cut.
      
             Enough
talk because the bell cuts through the flesh
of our conversation. Enough
talk because the world insists on
turning still
and forcing us to revolve
with it. Enough
breathing, enough
snow, enough
life. I remember you saying
that the ratios of your face are wrong;
that certain equilibriums do not exist between
your cheeks your lips your eyes your life…I remember the science
classrooms where parts of you were as mathematical as the architecture... I remember how
you keep thinking your flesh is plastic… You forget how
inglorious the nature of these words is. The problem
with human thought, with the ratios of your face, with the
geometric structures that cut across your thighs, with the
statistical neatness with which your family decomposes;
the problem with our conception of perfect is how
awkwardly it both exists and does not exist for us to
see.
The ratios of your face which you think are broken are
the same miracles I wonder about as you laugh. The incorrect distance
from your cheek to your eye which you think is wrong is the same
lightyear which separates the stars from the planets. The curvature
of your stomach is the bending of a spacetime to accommodate
the way the air must move to let your body occupy the space and time in which it
exists.
The ratios you speak of spring from your own limitlessness, your own
perfect imperfections , imperfect perfections-
strange oddities and unfathomable beauties and yes. Yes,
even the ridges across your right thigh are minute, red,
gasping
grand-canyons of
flesh,
of human, of breathing clay
flesh-
           never
plastic;
            always
worthy.
            
              Recently the voices in my head have been getting louder,
telling me all sorts of things about how the snow ought to bury me
in its mercilessness. They mention also that my words bear no meaning,
my thoughts even less so. Assumedly, the ridges across your thigh
carry such spectres as well but, I messaged you before you went to bed
about coming out and having an adventure because tick-tock-tick-tock…tick…tock…tick-
the last bell of the day is going to ring soon and the voices and ridges
will assert themselves again with the bedtime silence, but check your Facebook
messages and come outside and let’s go skipping with your friends across
the century-old polished prep-school brick pathways that smell archaic because it’s

snowing outside and it’s lovely.
For a friend.

Update, 4/23/2018, the poem found a home here: https://postscriptpublication.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/ratios/   thanks to a friend.
She accidentally looked back into eternity and it is telling her things. Constantly questioning whether it could have been on purpose. She wishes it had told her about the day that she went missing for too long. She is still missing. Missing so many things that happen and those as close as possible. She is missing them too.

She existed to be this close to missing everyone forever. Everyone missing her forever. Missing her orange kisses and purple thoughts. He left messages in blue in her thoughts. To see if it could make a shady spot in the bright yellow sun.  This is where they would sit and possibly lay down. There were so many shimmering waves in the grass that loose clothing rippled. Her dress was waving to clouds being emptied by the sunshine.

If they were to lay in bent grass blades could it be the last time. The last time the blades bent back and the feeling of beauty penetrating hearts couldn’t let go. The last thing they could ever want. No turning back. Time is bending the blanket.

Time decided to take some space to itself. To get back to nature and living with things we cannot stop. Life kept being left in the street with holes made in it by fear and hatred that is white. Life kept being told by whiteness that is was not real.

In this space that time took to itself the institution of white needed to become colorful like rainbows and hadn’t documented in its constitution that it needs to become different shapes and sounds that may be hard for it to resonate with while investing in such militant social systems of oppression overflowed from slavery in order to become a space other than time allows for a short duration yet brutally eternal and ending now as today unfolds and life proves it is real as time rips it apart openly and its institution of white judges itself into the panic of being so insensitive that vengeance has no other shapes, colors or sounds to choose other than violet revolt.

Violet made handprints in clay as a small child while reserving words for family that were taken from her. She smiled into the abyss of pleading that is too late for forgiveness. A silence of the white institution that could no longer be a burden in space for time to want anything to do with it ever again. Violet was intimate with the space that time took to itself. She nourished it with colors, intelligence, senses, shapes, love, merciless unforgiving power and purple thoughts were always encouraged.

Violet’s orange kisses burned into the early morning making the institution of whiteness a kind of blue. All that was left of it was confused and squinting at the colors of its new shape. It was demanding to know how long the spell had been on them and what to do now. Violent explained in senses and climate changing shapes of darkness and bright red lava and flashing pink clouds that there is no now.

part 2

I hope you like my shape of communication. I hope you can appreciate the brutality of the beauty in decomposing the unnecessary manifestation of apocalypse. The writer wants you to know its him. The narrator wants you to know its her. The sentence is time taking space to itself. Grammar is more of a blue than purple. The shape is the sense of confusion which is also the ****** of realizing eternity. The details are up to your imagination not mine or the author or writer or {[(black/white)[(black women/white women) + during slavery and after] + (Americans) (to make the *** trade of slavery possible) (political intellectually engineered institution)] [(mixed race) (native)(black African) (the rest of the world not isolating themselves in the social construction of whiteness)]} = having to create my own language because I don’t exist like I need to in the institution of whiteness (I have to feel it more than it feels me) that has a completely different meaning and purpose of imagined structure or patterns or symbols that outnumbers mathematics that are statistical boundaries invested in with the language that power is behind it somewhere that can only be found by using it.

Its uncomfortable for me to write the things I feel without feeling the need to prove their value to you. To build a relationship and undo it before we get to comfortable with each other. I know that you will never forget this during all your desperate imagination of reading and life. A thread that is undeniable through shapes colors and sounds but grammarless rhythm with more sensual texture than colonial organization and its friend decolonization making love instead of war most of the time.

So this again is why time has taken space to itself. The shapes of objectification in our solar system layering our consciousness with objectifying existence in space unimaginably vast and then gone all of the sudden. Actually assumptions are our specialty so we are intimate with them and emotive beyond anything real.

Vibrations sound like waves and look like shapes. She surfed on the shape of waves. She lives on the shape of waves balancing them with focus and intent. Of course she is going to use the most obscene language of the oppressor to react and demand the same brutal trauma is being redirected by her with exponential adaptivity as aggressively as colonialism on the institution of whiteness that changes little details of its shape to suit its foundation as the need for free labor based on her skin color and also the genes of her skin color to by association allow enslavement of light skin hims.  

Section 3

The flowers sat at the drum set to communicate spring. Some felt uncomfortable and decided to advocate for the drums.

“The drums are symbolic not just the symbols. Why should the symbols get the credit as being symbolic?”

As a gesture of listening, acceptance, and understanding. Guns turned to hyacinth flowers with jasmine bullets. The fragrance took violence over with a brutal ferociousness no one knew flowers had.

That same sunny day I became 6 shades darker in the growing power of the sun. That morning the same perspectives of my identity changed twice. In the morning the institution of whiteness (IOW) declared a false sense of solidarity with how I looked to them. That evening they ignored me like that never happened. They were squinting with confusion and nodding at each other.

The IOW was making a habit out of black identity. Settling with the concept that being black is having holes from their police and being silenced on streets or in the passenger seats of cars with their families. The IOW was making it a custom to advertise being black as dying.

A Rwandan orchid blossomed right at that moment. The IOW abruptly spit out their coffee and stood up together in disbelief. The sheer unexpected beauty became an unbearable pressure on their hearts.

The heart? Since this Orchid blossomed the shape of the IOS did not allow anyone but themselves to have a heart. This realization that the others had hearts was a serious need for a group huddle.

“These others with hearts we must assimilate with them as soon as possible!”

It might have been the deep fragrance of hyacinth and Jasmine, she thought aloud, or maybe the purple thoughts, but then again Violet played a huge part in paving the way for the blossoming Orchid. Cushioned by bent grass blades and a timeless blanket they intertwined in the shade of the bright yellow sun.
jimmy tee Mar 2014
foo
foo
step right this way
stripes
the curly haired whispers of long ago
dirt on the steppes of Maui
life and death
the boldness of breath
tea sets invented
natures idea of hooking
the falsehood of feelings
since you can sense the release of chemicals
into the gut from the gut
art is an effort
all roads are connected therefore lead nowhere
snowflakes
glaciers
the impossibility of a paper bag
well that’s why you got the people you do
blistered surfaces
invert
divert
subvert
magical marketing
lost time is all its good for
crawl
other beings
the past is as real as the now
the future not so much
look for answers under slimy rocks
headlights
mark the trail with crumbs
holiday pay eligibility
pig latin verse
loose lips sinks fish
headlines of tomorrow list all your deeds
originality pounds it out
a ground game if there ever was one
marginalized in a riotous way
burned
turned
spit shined shoes laced real tight
if you stayed this long you must get it real good
explanations spellchecked edited cast aside
meaning lost found lost and lost again
bury your words
measure the sun as a star
triangulate emotion in order to set free the main ingredient
the Bosporus the smallest gap imaginable
a wayward telephone number listed
a matchbook
adding depth to the photograph by controlling aperture
roulette craps poker slots Chinese checkers
numbers never end
gymnasium antics
mans best friend is a meateater
fall follows autumn in the southern hemisphere
three dimensions are all you need all you require
bomber
deny both the entity and the substance found ahead
synchronize your watch with mine
sand as a tonic baby oil pine
money buys packaged happiness
there was this guy named Shakespeare
opinion calls for differences version 2.0
you find the zoo to lead so very far
swing for the fences
jump rope skip sidewalk
ease
mow the concrete lawn from here to horizon
jump rope skip sidewalk
learn forget then act dumb
exit stage left
what is behind animal eyes big mystery
exponential units forge toward the final group session
king me
did the butler do it with the maid
how often is crying necessary
pound for pound the best boxer in the mid century bout of pneumonia
digital meanings end in analog discussions
legions of admirers blinded
where to turn when the lights are forever out
invest in mystery
disappoint those who will never know you
you know it
there is a dogma in need of a collar out there somewhere
temptation looms
the holy word of snowflakes delve into deep philosophy
but I always got along with everybody
why work
pituitary gland
announcing for the first time on record
prince spaghetti and salad extraordinaire
the alphabet ends in z
puddles form on distant planets that orbit toothless suns
men
loud music still comforts the savage beast
years like a tape measure stills the ragged poor children
never to be found never ever ever
solvent says eat thou peas
silo bag deliver us from the tall neighbor police
sidestep any issue involving toys
mounds of troubles can be climbed
Kansas wind also flows down the plain
think about it the sea is mostly under itself
plow
most things look better from behind
a major felony on your record
knowledge in the form of easy chew tablets
hounded by creditors bobby laid low
actors actresses chumps
results are mixed as the queen leaves daring long behind
punctuation fits into softly lit areas of the mind
stay loose
breakdown the door then apologize some more
I left home for this
mistakes are what we call experience
the smiles on bubblegum cards just as real
twenty dollars invested in nothing
pin air to itself
buy time sock it away watch it grow grow grow
cool is always enough for matty
god that guy could drink ant sanitation member into the ground
margins
leaves are raking themselves these days
so long in the past stood there with sled in hand
photographed by a grandfather clock
black envelopes glued by hand in an everlasting jump off point
poetry bound and gagged for fun and zero profit
movable type static feasts
in the groove piled high with the color that represents lament
fifty thousand big ones aint so big anymore
the river left town
cannon at the gate corded shot ingenious ways to destroy people
support the troops
he say one thing then did another wow does that hurt
memory votes early and often
nobody knows the troubled bean
it all hinges on my word being accepted
china feels so very close
the sea full of carp moistened in salt water ** boy o boy
Vermeer at the loom
the bronze age must have been heavy
time waits around the corner selling amphetamines
queer beings exit the saucer and head right for the local hobby shop
end game
paint as a medium large
pine scented maple trees win the prize
in my book the covers speak for themselves
close up to the camera waterfall
find the picture inside the cavity send help
amid ship is the place amid
of course some things are missing
ghost register to vote
went fishing came home with a tummy ache
spend your last dime see the world as it truly is
between avenue b and c there lies a small wombat
fend off the high climbing stairs that offer busy bees
mind the gaping hole that leads to oblivion ny
fog in my ear
steam punk can you believe it had to be invented
the f drive taketh away
sing a song about the street we used to chug a lug at
view my elbow rock
know thyself from the middle ages on toward the detail
love pander both you know
mom became tonnage displaced and torpedoed
you are very astute now quit it
this meeting is over like so many before it
collapse my finger into red colored dust
round up and whittle down the masthead
toothpick sized brains
its no bother at all fire away with logical pounds
page that squire knight the tree stand hunter in velvet horn
live as the yo yo
beat it now not later now before the sun sets far into the Japanese
planning a child check our bargain bins first then decide
overtime halts the easy chair
tiny
mounds clopping at the level of good mine
piles of good old fashioned nonsense
home grown
sunny side up way up
carry a friend everywhere you travel
knock
catch a rising star and keep it there
an alarming increase
happiness is a warm puppy
many are called but few are winners
put in your time split and repeat
wrinkles seem to be catching on
break the law go to *******
now is the time smack in the middle of touchy feely
mountain of jelly
pound of brown
highway exits in turning lane
polished sayings die in mid form
butterfly of course
bank on it twice
inform the theologian that grace is universal
one unit is enough to bounce the basket ball
larcenies are a regrettable offense for jumble minded
loud is the hammer of life by golly
inside
far away lies the land of nod no wait mod
never saw it coming
mud in your minds eye
clean up before the mess is tabled
throw away all hits
kong king
mondo longo pongo in delicate dancing
bear in mind that bares the soul to influence
set up the new roux
pint sized followers found via radio
fell asleep in wonder fat
knives sharpened better get a move on
loudly express a final punt
line one line two line three
when did farming become cold
newborn
disease jumps as the trampoline handles wind jammers
night can be fun but girls are more down there
love me back
mindful of the garter you can relax next year
backwards as a mean average statistical oops
venting hot gas adds to the thrill
is this thing on
swell
and and and and and and and
call the water department I am ready to fly
listen the goat will never know what hit him
long on flavor short on towels
company insists on a quaint meal of posies
behind a successful man is a chair of some kind
got milk
my friend can be talkative but never mind
rounded surfaces slip into nothingness a modern age affliction
we will escape scot free
badness baldness daily princess
puzzle in mind he left his denial on the riverbank
on the reindeer hoof we ride
specialty
how can it be hey baby that’s what we are here for right
the plays is not the thing
work your **** off then find the instruction manual
beep buzz bop
it appeared right there but is gone now
foo
Paul Hansford Jan 2016
The oxygen that we breathe
in
and
out
every minute of every day
is not lost
but shared
re-used
recycled
recirculated.

If we are in the same room –
or sealed hermetically for hours
in the cabin of a plane –
we breathe continuously
the same air,
the oxygen goes from me to you
and back again.

But air currents,
prevailing winds,
the jet stream,
cyclones and anti-cyclones,
all move the atmosphere further
and further still,
so that even if we are
on opposite sides of the globe,
separated by oceans,
it is a statistical certainty
that I still breathe in
atoms of oxygen
that were once
inside
you.

Do they carry your thoughts,
your feelings,
your poetry to me,
or mine to you?
Who can say?
I can but hope it,
as I thank you
for keeping me alive.
Tyler King Dec 2014
Dragged out screaming, senseless from the hallows of martyrdom
My father's mother's wayward brother
Baptized in propaganda and searing lead
Kamikaze death machine to paranoia fever dream
A noble experiment in utter catastrophe
Half measure, interstellar tourniquet
Stem the free flow of blood like inconvenient statistical evidence
Dripping down born-again ****** America's chin
Vector-like, everything explodes outwards
And on trajectories like these only friction is holy
Murphy's law in ecstatic altercation
A furious life lived under an anachronistic magnifying glass
Truly the only thing worth decaying for
Addicted to Love
She used to slowly caress my hand-
She would send chills down my spine-
We would indulge in white lines as ecstasy got us high-
One journey of a heart established in her lies-
In her eyes I could see the twisted world that she believed-
So drunk on insecurities highly clouded by ****-
This is the devil’s disease-It is the devil’s fortune and fame-
In love with a substance-I became in love with her name-
Thin haired needles puncture love to my veins-
My heart would beat with tweak-
To the rhythm of the dope game-
The rhythm of the dope game-
WAIT-
What was all this ******* for?
Saying you love me as I lay incoherent on the floor-
The steamy smell of three and half turned to four makes way through my body escaping my pours-
Till the core of my soul lays alone in its own cold-
And what was all this for?
It was a ***** stained love as glass pipes held dreams of hope-
Torched lit fires turned ambition to smoke-
LSD became creativity-till the pits of hell were roamed-
And what was all this for?
It was for love-
It was for drugs-
It was my only way to cope-
Understand?
Under gram erections stood alone penetrating holes I’ve never seen before-
Moans of stupidity released thoughts I ignored-
But I adored the feeling of evolution elevating me to heights un-soared-
Where lands of all man reach limitations to explore-
My body begging me to stop but my mind is begging me for more-
Refugees and causalities lay naked on the shore-Track marks leak the scent of and all and out lost war-
And I’m still not sure what all this was for-
Maybe it was for the thrill-
The thrill of submersing all my rotten thoughts that plague my good will-
My will to live among humanity and grant myself the freedom to walk among all of G-d’s family-
But tragedy strikes at the heart of the lost kind-
Where bleeding bodies are buried by the sands of time-
Where a generational cry turns to generational screams, where a generation in denial becomes generational fends-
And bitterness soaks through her cream where lost visions of the future become a long distance dream-
And the subdue substance that once claimed me now allow me rhymes of exploration,-exploring things I’ve never seen never dreamed never thought I’d ever be another statistical teen-
But I’ve grown-I’ve grown for the ignorance-The ignorance of believing I can make sense of life and relevance-That the heaven sent failure no longer has remembrance and the continuous hell bent world that destroyed me now gives me a halo of sense and for the first time-things make sense!
So I set myself forward down a road of reflection, reflecting on things I meet at my souls introspection-inspecting deep dark thoughts that beat my soul to redemption and I question-
I question why I stand here ready to go hand to hand to prove I’m a man when all I really want to do is show her who the **** I am-but I can’t-
So I close of my angels and reach for the devil within and its plaguing me why can’t G-d see that I don’t want to live in a dream-I just don’t want to be-
Please-
Allow me ease-
As I dream of moments with my old love-with my old drugs-with my not giving a ****-
Like why the **** should I care when no one else does-
So instead of the drugs I will pick up a pen and write a rhtymatic flow about the places I’ve been-and now-the only addiction I have is writing my hymns-
For the hell hath no fury for the devil within but in the end-
Well in the end-
She slowly starts caressing my hand again man-
Robert Zanfad Dec 2011
Communion of Soft Fingertips

speak, modern world
we are sketched in languages of digital bits,
parity shading certainty with probabilities of truth
giving us form and existence across distance,
distilled to series of warm, invisible numbers

frequencies divided step-wise, as Fourier found them
in noise amalgamated as information heterodyned,
left to be separated out, reordered
by advanced statistical protocols
that trace our borders with delicate, unseen fingertips
 
a description of new beings, relationships between them
uncertain at first in the short trails
of data they create

but there eventually - by the law of large numbers
or acts of successive approximation

we'll find them

revealed, like a pointilist painting
or seemingly random collection of string
whose elements are alone meaningless
unless we step back to see an entirety of mass
which we recognize immediately
as true love and intimacy
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2015
~~~
the light is very early morning poor,
my still eyes crusty from overnight dreams,
but I can make out the individual
geese, browsing, pecking, having an early
breakfast at our AAA 5 star-rated motel by the bay,
on their way to Florida & Mexico,
traveling their own highway,
The Atlantic Flyway,^
stopping over for a few quiet nights and noisy days at
our isle's grassy plain
(ok, our lawn),
a way station where the room rates are low,
free wifi for their GPS systems,
the eats decent, reasonable tolerable too is,
the local variety of  human company,
considered by goose cognoscenti,
as harmless

habitual digresser, I return to
the early morn scene where all quiet,
then the shrieking and the manic running sounds,
like the firehouse alarm but more akin to
rambunctious jazz  music and the hip hop of
"so you think you can dance,"
for the red fox
in this light,
but a grey outline,
amidst the geese,
inattentively grazing just by the bulkhead,
a mere handful of feet
from the water, always an
escape tunnel handy

I know it is a fox
by its
airborne shape distinctive,
four legs and bushy tail clearly outlined
in the blue black grey atmosphere,
flying about a foot above ground,
in the mix of chubby runners at the starting line,
performing emergency takeoff procedures

a dramatic race for life and death,
something few of us ever witnessed,
or worse, experience, but nonetheless,
a daily occurrence mostly far
from our daily humdrum reality shows

this, more tale, than poem,
has its twisty turn,
a poetic trick de rigeur,
starting here...

a human fellow
I happen to know somewhat well,
grasps the concept immediate

his highway personal has brought him here,
to this exact raceway spot, and moment,
over a course of sixty years plus,
unbeknownst this was on his calendar appointments schedule
from the moment of his birth

he, voyageur, ******, witness, non-participant, but
just another airborne passenger, looking to plot, route
his last legs onto the red flag,
race-over signal, globally

the geese by far the wiser,
better planners,
than short sighted, foolish men,
who don't measure well the encroaching, narrowing distance
to their own mortality's terminus finale,
geese smartly keep handy escape hatches,
an alternative route

who will be my fox?

illness sudden swift,
a heart beat skipped,
the silence of cessation,
the unimaginable telephone call of accident,
a terrible swift sword heaven-appearing,
a surprising but ordinary
number early up,
a shocking shortening of actuarial tables,
after all, every fool knows,
poets are
humanity's statistical outliers

so here I am contemplative,
cussing up cursive scripting story endings,
varied new and unexpected,
poetic concepts each one more deserving,
wondering are their any geese,
like me,
who prefer the sudden death of teeth
over the slow molting of checking off
the tedium of passage rings of years of annualized aging,
until one morphs
into the last runner in his own 10k race,
tho at the finishing touch end his is the pace
of a passenger aboard his red flyer wagon,
about to overturn

who when, he,
crosses beneath the finishing banner,
hours after all the rested have
made their way to the
Presumed Safety of Wherever,
he crosses to silent applause of onlookers
all gone away

~~~
as for my lawned, learned friends,
the fox proved to be...
not as good a planner as the geese
~~~
this poem is a favor returned to new friends, poets here,
Jimmy Yetts,
who asks similar questions, and,
mark cleavenger,
a life guarding professional,
who tries to save us from ourselves
and succeeds

~~~
^The coastal route of the Atlantic Flyway, which in general follows the shore line, has its northern origin in the eastern Arctic islands and the coast of Greenland. This is a regular avenue of travel, and along it are many famous points for the observation of migrating land and water birds.

Shelter Island,
August 2015
A de Carvalho May 2012
I open the blinds and see the world - in return, what
does the world see? It sees me, and all my splendid, split
personalities, living these amazing times, of amazing
pleasures, in which we tweet tweets, and post posts re
ego-trips and copyrighted links, videos and things; and,
as stray dogs, we ramble randomly, and all the time,  
living in our infinite worlds, of infinite lanes, till infinity;
yet we suffer so much pain.

Our Shih Tzus take us on extended walks, firmly leashed
to our Koss plugs, as we drone cool tunes on multihued
iPods, iPhones buzzing ringtones of tittering babies,
stolid kings and hyperactive frogs, which would all make
my eighty-six year old dad want to gag; we fly
ultralight megaplanes at the sonic sound of speed,
through virtual and real space, connecting dots at low-
cost prices, while we belt-up, gear-up, gulp Gaga and
gorge heat-inducted meals of deer, horse and over-
promoted crap; and then, wow surprisingly, we are all
so unsatisfied.

We consciously all move-in together, and **** on end,
like statistical sheep, pre-married, unloving, and broken
up, and justify it all, to ourselves, with our fully
stretched spandex morality, over low-carb brunches
@Starbucks, two 14” screens of separation; we paint
pornographic images of virgins, all called Mary, in the
name of art, and, white-clad, **** babes and alter-boys,
and penetrate each other, first with our fingers, deeply,
then superficially, without even wondering, for a
zeptosecond, why we can’t stand one another any
longer.

We crank-up dependencies, like high street mainliners,
shamming and slaughtering for neurotoxic fixes of
smileys and Crystal on billion-dollar Kogo yachts, while
we all just pedal on, dispassionately, down and over
interior canals, to the core of our hocked, abbrev lives,
chronically connected and severely distracted, in
aromatic polymer bubbles, heedlessly cruising through
comic-strip farms of mock vegetables, surely to nowhere
and towards no one; and quite frankly, the world laughs
at all this, and sobs, and so do I.
Sophie Grey Jul 2014
sticks and stones
may break my bones
(but words will never hurt me)


people stare when we hold hands, they glare and point and scream in whispers behind cupped palms. sometimes they applaud or congratulate us, but i hate that, too; i don't want to be brave or strong or special i just want to kiss you without glancing left and right first. boys in parking lots shout and whistle, cars honk but WE'RE RUBBER YOU'RE GLUE, IT BOUNCES OFF US AND STICKS TO YOU so guess what- you're the *****, you're the *******, you're the freaks, you have to change the pronouns in your poetry, you are afraid of churches, you were listed in The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders as a "sociopathic personality disturbance" until its seventh edition. if i had a nickel for every time a mother hurried a child away from us on the street, i might have enough money to sue one or two of you for harassment and hate.


s.h.
2014
Lecture twenty-three of first period of the last semester:
Today’s topic – “What went wrong with Wall Street”

The professor’s trying to connect with the class. He’s trying to have us look past
Sagan-like hair, black pants poorly paired with brown shoes, sleeves stained with chalk, an undeniable excitement in his voice when he says the word “canonical”.

He’s trying to get us to see a forty-four year old father who watches The Daily Show before bed, someone that’s hip with the times. He says something about Twitter and that singer in the meat dress. He references Charlie Sheen.

He draws a graph on the board with three lines
red: Normal
blue: Poisson
green: Cauchy-Lorentz

And we’re all thinking it- What the **** is that green line.

He begins.

Cauchy-Lorentz:
fully defined by two parameters;
x-nought and
gamma
mean;
undefined
variance;
undefined
meaning
­graphs drawn in green have fat tails
meaning
a summation of green graphs with fat tails- a summation of par bonds will default with some non-zero probability
meaning
Lehman Brothers should have taken statistical physics

That is his joke for the day. Only students paying attention and students who bother with current events and students with a sense of humor laugh. It’s a small subset.

The kids in the sixth row aren’t listening, the ones in the Greek lettered shirts with their pledge names on the back and their laptops open. Sixth row is just close enough to look like they give a **** but far enough in the back so the TA’s can’t tell they’re checking their fantasy football teams. The TA’s sit in rows one through four.

The joke is for the kids in the sixth row. Anyone in the first through fourth, the ones considering graduate school in higher dimensional theory or quantum chromodynamics, doesn’t know what Lehman Brothers is, least of all a par bond. A joke about spherical cows? Laughter from rows one through four would interfere constructively off the chalkboards, but that is not who Sagan-wannabe is talking to, and the kids in row six aren’t listening.

They are watching Sunday night highlights, ignoring green lines and fat tails because, let’s be honest, they’re only here to get the answer to the question on the homework that they couldn’t find online.

The sixth row has taken what they learned in the lectures before this, the semesters before this one, the first days of classical mechanics, where they learned the universe is governed by predictable and definable laws, and given a set of initial conditions one can determine an outcome.

Salary|physics degree:
fully defined by one parameter;
sophomore-year internship
time;
ten years
mean;
one million

The sixth row Facebook’ed their way through the undeterminableness of quantum, the green lines on the board now. Their laptop screens hide the fat tails describing the bundles of par bonds they will be selling upon the completion of this semester.
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Just watching raindrops slapping leaves
is better than anything requiring electricity
including fame and posterity. Monday
morning I walk over to the art museum
stand before Homer. I'm imagining
life in ancient Greece, the land largely
deforested to build a navy, white as bone,
a tourist attraction. The sea too being
denuded of its fish, super-efficient fishery
fleets, and every human wanting a healthy
dose of omega 3. O my God, omega!

the 24th and last letter of his alphabet,
which means great and has a value of 800,
often used to denote the last, the end, the
ultimate limit of a set, as in I am the alpha
and the omega
(which was omitted
from the oldest manuscripts). In physics,
ohm is a unit of electrical resistance,
in chemistry, oxygen-18, a stable isotope,
in statistical mechanics, it represents multiplicity
(the number of microstates) in a system.
In astronomy, the density of the universe
(density parameter), the ranking of a star’s
brightness in a constellation, and the orbital
elements: the longitude of the ascending node
and the designation of the argument
of periapsis of an orbit.

Also the solid angle or rate of precession
in a gyroscope. In particle physics,
omega baryons. In complex analysis,
the Omega constant, a solution to Lambert's
W-function. In calculus, a variable
for a 2-dimensional region, usually
corresponding to the domain of a double
integral. In topos theory, the codomain
of the subobject classifier of an elementary
space. In combinatory logic,
the looping combinator. In group theory,
the omega and agemo subgroups of a p-group.
In Big O notation, the asymptotic behavior
of functions. Chaitin's uncomputable constant.

Omega watches, badge of the Supreme Court,
last mission of the Space Shuttle program,
God of War, Heroes of Olympus, Pokemon's
Omega Ruby, Sonic the Hedgehog's E-123.
Symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War draft.
Year of date of death. Lowest-ranked wolf.

In molecular biology, a two-point crossover.
The lower case omega denotes the carbon atom
furthest from the carboxyl group of a fatty acid.
One of the RNA polymerase subunits.
The dihedral angle associated with the peptide group.
A measure of evolution at the protein level.
In dynamics, angular velocity or angular frequency.
In computational fluid dynamics, the specific
turbulence dissipation rate. In meteorology,
the Lagrangian time rate of change of pressure
for a parcel of air. Natural frequency
in circuit analysis and signal processing.
The omega meson.
NULL, a missing or inappropriate value.

The first transfinite ordinal number.
The first uncountable ordinal number.
The complex cube roots of 1.
The Wright Omega function. A general differential form.
The number of distinct prime divisors of n.
An arithmetic function. The self-application combinator.

The elasticity of financial options.
The tracking error of an investment manager.
In linguistics, the phonological word.
The archetype of a manuscript tradition.
In eschatology, the symbol for the end of everything.

The beginning of my first week without tv.
No more movies. If I have nothing to do
or I'm too bored to do anything, I'll just sit still
see what happens. Be like weather.
Be under the weather, with the weather,
in weather. Watch weather from the window.
Wait for change, in me and the weather.
How will I change? This is life and not life.
In 15 years or so I'll be gone from the earth,
bones whitening on some mountain
or rotting in the lowlands river or estuary I lived near,
flesh to sweat flesh with the population, dead.

This death, consciousness of which should give
this life's activities perspective, except for the red
sunset which remains untouched by atomic IQ;
and dead, laying open to the blue sky and dry leaves
one autumn like last autumn, or the autumn
I realized my insignificance.
--after the Wikipedia entry, “Omega”

www.ronnowpoetry.com

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