The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!

The wilderness is the blank space
Where the minds can roam free
A canvas for us to paint our imagination
Happy minds devoid of any anxiety
Fresh breath of life in the empty space
Where do we take refuge if destroyed?
Wilderness is the bank space to treasure
Explore and find all the answers
For the unimaginative they have no relevance
Among the wilderness we embrace life

I was at a party the other day
I don't usually go to parties
I don't like crowds
I don't like gatherings
I don't like, new people.
But I'm here as a favour to a friend,
And so I stand in this hovel
That looks like the dodgy part of *****
Or the ganglands of Gomorrah,
Pathetically clutching my long empty beer bottle
And breathing in air that's more smoke than oxygen.
Desperately hoping
That if I pretend to be drunk enough
I wont have to meet anybody new.

But as luck would often have it
As luck and I do not get on
My friend beckons me from a darkened corner
Surrounded by people I don't know.
She's confident, enigmatic and wants me to come over.
And because I owe her a favour I cant say no
And so I trudge towards her with all the enthusiasm
Of an arthritic Labrador, dragging my hind legs
Across the sweat stained carpet
Bracing myself for someone new.

And as I place one foot in front of the other
I can practically see the outline of the gallows.
And I notice that the walls really are an especially ugly colour
And that boy surely isn't old enough to be drinking without permission from his mother.
And someone please tell those guys not to put the owners dog in the oven.
And I wonder if I should break up those limb tangled lovers
Because I hear that that one, who's dating that one, gave that one chlamydia
and suddenly the air is too thick
And too hot
But my feet will not stop.
Because I owe my friend a favour.
But this hideous carpet might as well be an ocean
Because believe me, I'm drowning, adrift.
This feels like I've left my stomach
Somewhere four feet behind me
And I've always been so used to listening to my gut.

This is not fear, this is anxiety
The two are so easily confused, but
Unfortunately by now I know the difference
More intimately than many people do.
Fear is a cold steel
Sharp knife, with smooth un-serrated edges
That drives into your chest or your head or your belly
And it takes what it wants from you, and then is wrenched back out
And its painful, but its usually there for a reason.
Fear can be conquered
Don't laugh I've seen it
Fear grapples with the human spirit in the eyes of every
Soldier still fighting
No matter what the battlefield.
Be it desert or office or kitchen or playground.

But anxiety is fears younger cousin
and it is a wire sponge against your chest
Like the ones they use on cleaning dishes.
And it grates at you until you're raw
And scrubs at every inch of skin
There's hardly a moment when you're not itchingly pink
Until it feels as though your ribs are utterly exposed
And every eye is fixed on what you hide within.
But that's not the worst thing about it.
That's not what drives you every second, mad.
I can handle the razor winged moths that make a home in my stomach
The worst, is the irrational nature of this relative of fear.

I should not be afraid to open my mouth
To be seen, and immediately judged
Even though I know in reality
The most important people won't reckon me
On the first impression, first look, first word.
But I still am
I am scared, and that is terrifying.
And I know that this might just pass
It could be teenage angst
My lack of self confidence holding me back.
But whatever it is.
Right now, it is Everest.
So don't you dare tell me just to get over it.

But as I sidle up beside my best friend, I know she doesn't understand
And I hope she never does.
One, Two, Three.
Three people who are new,
Three epinephrine shots of irrational anxiety pumping through my blood.
And she smiles so encouragingly,
All yellow and marmoset eager.
And I take one, two, three deep breaths of smoky air,
And let my mind play marionette to the corners of my mouth,
Tugging them into a smile that's somewhat believable.
And the first word that tumbles out of my mouth is a hideously unimaginative,
“Hey.”
But they don't seem to mind.

This small talk we're making, that for me is colossal
Gradually settles the pinpricks of venom beneath my skin
Into something entirely more manageable.
And by the end of the night
Two of those three people are no longer somebody new.
And I feel as though I've made the progress of a few meters
In climbing my Everest.
But there's still miles and miles to go.  
But the thing to remember...
What I must remember,
No matter what mountain anxiety builds for you,
Be it Atlas or Snowdon,
Be it at a school, or an office or at home,
Every step that we make, on our own or pushed forward by friends
Is another meter or mile, on this arduous road
That will eventually lead to a summit, ten times more beautiful
Than the valley we just left below.

There is an energy flowing through me
A fire to consume all things

An electricity from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers

The need to create
The need for words to pour out like water from a dam

Words to change the meaning of creation
Words to end time itself

But pen goes to paper
and it drops dead.

Conjunction:
a small class of words distinguished in many languages by their function as connectors between words, phrases, clauses, sentences

- the act of conjoining; combination; the state of being conjoined; union; association:

- a compound proposition that is true if and only if all of its component propositions are true.

- the coincidence of two or more heavenly bodies at the same celestial longitude.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am in a relationship.

a colorless word
a word of no clarity
a good one? a bad one?
a professional deal,
or one that makes you squeal
with pleasure or despair

without context or content,
a description of a status,
not a state,
but a quid pro quo

I prefer
I am in a conjunction

well recall the day
our orbits
more than crossed,
but synchronized,
when two bodies
began to travel
upon the same longitude
one direction
in conjunction

t'was the day we coordinated
on our mobile phone,
co-configured our future,
our calendars

nowadays,
I answer her questions
while she is commencing to think,
when her foolishness prevails,
she questions, "did you remember to..."
my answer, a question returned,
connected, constant and conjunctive,
"and what's my name?"
an answer conveying constancy

relationship
oft the farthest place from logical,
but you know that,
say I am in a conjunction
and the logicians will celebrate
the end of your lonely celibacy,
well they understand the truth
inherent in and of and about
your compounded proposition

what unimaginative creatures we be,
dispensing with beauty for factuality,
but facts are easily misread,
your fact and my fact, relationship,
the exact same fact, conveys neither
an agreement as to what that means

are we unionized, associated, or conjoined
what is the quality of
our related ships?

so
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
amend my status please,
post me
as being in a state of:
a) conductivity b) connectivity c) concoctive

no, none of those
capture
what we have
captured,
so let create a new state,
a new world,
using a very old world word
post us as follows,
"Nat is in a conjunction"

A lot of people think they can write or paint or draw or sing or make movies or what-have-you, but having an artistic temperament doth not make one an artist.


Even the great writers of our time have tried and failed and failed some more. Vladimir Nabokov received a harsh rejection letter from Knopf upon submitting ******, which would later go on to sell fifty million copies. Sylvia Plath’s first rejection letter for The Bell Jar read, “There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.” Gertrude Stein received a cruel rejection letter that mocked her style. Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way earned him a sprawling rejection letter regarding the reasons he should simply give up writing all together. Tim Burton’s first illustrated book, The Giant Zlig, got the thumbs down from Walt Disney Productions, and even Jack Kerouac’s perennial On the Road received a particularly blunt rejection letter that simply read, “I don’t dig this one at all.”

So even if you’re an utterly fantastic writer who will be remembered for decades forthcoming, you’ll still most likely receive a large dollop of criticism, rejection, and perhaps even mockery before you get there. Having been through it all these great writers offer some writing tips without pulling punches. After all, if a publishing house is going to tear into your manuscript you might as well be prepared.

1. The first draft of everything is ****. -Ernest Hemingway
2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ***. -David Ogilvy
3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker
4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home. -Paul Theroux
5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee
6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ― Jack London
7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. — George Orwell
8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham
9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools — to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman
11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright
12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. – William Zinsser
13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut
14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway
15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway
16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, ****, now I get the shape of this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk
17. Substitute ‘****’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark Twain
18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you. ― Neil Gaiman
19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar Wilde
20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ― Ray Bradbury
21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously. – Lev Grossman
image – christine zenino

"Where's the *** gone?"

"I've got a jar of dirt!"

"So you are all going to fight them, and you are all going to fight them all on the account of him wanting to **** him?"

"Jack. Where's Elizabeth."
"She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for it just like you promised. So we're all men of our word, really... except for Elizabeth, who is, in fact, a woman."

"The lies I told you were not lies"
"You lied to me by telling me the truth?"
"Yes"
"That's good, can I use that?"

"You know when you are standing in a high place and suddenly have the urge to jump?
…I don't have it"

"And that was without even a single drop of ***."

"You have a cruel mind, Jack Sparrow."
"Cruel is a matter of perspective"

"You know, for all that pirates are clever clogs, we are an unimaginative lot when it comes to naming things."

"Aye, the original plan was to use nine pieces of eight to bind Calypso, but when the first court met the Brethren were, to a one, skint broke."
"So change the name!"
"To what? "Nine pieces of whatever we happened to have in our pockets at the time?" Oh yes, that's very piratey!"

My feeling word is adjective.
My mood number is one to ten.
My goal was met, and now I get
To wonder when I'm free again.
I guess I'm unimaginative.

My suitemate Sunny is from Nebraska. She’s 5’9,” and has cinnamon brown hair that’s half messy-bob, just long enough that she can twist it up with a pearl-studded comb, and half mohawk. She has the long, slanky elegance of someone who’s spent most of her 18 years outdoors.

She’s a cowgirl. There’s a well-worn sage-nova cowgirl hat hanging on her dorm wall and she has her own horse - a red-roan quarter-horse named Valentine - at home, of course. Her best friend growing up was a Sioux girl named Wachiwi who shared her love of barrel racing and lived on a nearby reservation.

Wachiwi was the first person Sunny came out to, at 10. Sunny was 13 when she came out to her family. “I like girls,” Sunny declared defiantly, out of the blue, one night after dinner, “not boys.” Her younger brother had snickered, her older brother rolled his head and said, “Oh, lord.” Her two little sisters seemed unconcerned. Her dad, after a moment’s thought, responded by asking her if she had taken the kitchen scraps out to the chickens yet.

Sunny grew up on a ranch and there was a rigid structure to her days. She would get up early and do ranch chores (muck out horse stalls, feed the chickens, gather eggs and set out hay) then study - but her first love was World of Warcraft.

Sunny was homeschooled and her stories of how that was accomplished are epic. For instance, they had three satellite internet services which she would have to switch between, throughout the day, like a gambler hoping to get lucky and every other Saturday they drove three hours to exchange books at the library. Whatever they did though, it worked. She’s unholy smart - like someone made a deal with the devil smart.

Sunny describes Nebraska as “basic, cliche and poor.”
“Wow,” Leong says, “you really paint a picture.”
“We all inhabited different worlds,” Sunny says, shruggingly, “Lisa’s from skyscraper clouds, Anais a palace, Leong a dystopian communist hellscape..”
“I wouldn’t say a palace,” I demur. “WHAT,” Leong screeches, throwing popcorn at Sunny.
“Stop!” Sunny says, raising both hands to ward-off further snack assaults.
“I just mean, if you were to go live in Nebraska - you’d have to go in on those terms - expecting something basic, unimaginative and poor, periodt.
“I couldn’t wait to excape.” she says, definitively, “I was thirsty.”

Everything about Sunny is deliberate, she looks you in the eye. Like a madwoman let out of the attic, she takes perverse joy in being fiercely blunt, raw and outspoken. She has a drive that can’t be mollified - she’s making her life over and you better not get in her way. The girl cracks me up - I could stand to be more like her.

Sunny’s joining my world this June for most of summer vacation. “Maybe you could show me Nebraska one day.” I say. “Maybe.. someday..” she says trailing off with a far off look, “but I wouldn’t do that to you, you’d go CrAzY in three days.”

“I’ll own that,” I say, wiping away fake tears.
.

1
Recently prolific
Writing reactions…
Yeah, not prolific producing babies
or sowing wild oats
Just this unimaginative, pedestrian activity:
Writing reactions
Still prolific at my age….

2
explicit?
No, no, no - me no explicit…
don’t have the ***** to be that
but everything is implicit
like if I write about some aspect of life
it’s all there:
the routine, ***, violence, and so on
isn’t everything implicit?

3
POETS
New and popular
OK...
how about the
POETS
New and Unpopular?


4
OK, I like this guy or gal,
right?
and so I click on LIKE
and the next time I look at it
it says: LIKED
Hey, I still LIKE her!
Look, I still LIKE him!
And why can’t I click on LIKE on my own page?
What’s the matter, can’t I like myself?
Is that a strange notion –
Don’t you guys and gals like yourselves?

I’m a stamp -
no, I didn’t say “I’m just a stamp”,
or “I’m but a stamp” -
but I am a stamp
a postage stamp, that is;
unique and proud, in my own class,
for I’ve carried queens and kings and emperors
(I still do)
and I carry Presidents and Poets and Rock Kings
and Pop Kings
and Musicians and Legends and Heroes
and Gods and Nations;
and I carry **** blondes
and old dames who’ve dedicated their lives to others

I’ve borne with no complaints
the weight of genius
and soldiers and founders of nations
and martyrs; and I do not discriminate
and with like gusto and color
I’ve carried tyrants and murderers and charlatans
and once-were-legends now the shamed;
and look, I can encompass the universe
and within the shapes formed by my perforations
I’ve held together flowers and birds
and all wonders of nature
I am each a poem, a work of art
I’m a stamp -
no, I didn’t say “I’m just a stamp”,
or “I’m but a stamp”
(What? You heard me the first time, did you?
Well, I’ll say it again for emphasis!) -
but I am a stamp in my own right, unique and proud -
though, I acknowledge,
the image of Royalty or Heroism or Greatness has
not saved me from various knocks and hard presses
and the ******* bin!
But then, so have mighty royal heads rolled!
but look, hee…heee….heee…
I can be absolutely adorable,
and I just love, love it when you lick me;
and often too
I’m a collector’s item
increasing in value, and even with artistic merit -
though no doubt, there are countless with no idea
of how so darling precious I am
which is I why
I say proudly again:
I’m a stamp
no, I didn’t say “I’m just a stamp”,
or “I’m but a stamp”
(And what? Why do I repeat myself?
Well, there are thousands of copies
of one issue, aren’t there?) -
but I am a stamp in my own right, unique and proud
and I’ve created worlds all of my own
with pen pals and commerce
and industries and clubs round me;
and I’m not alone, you know,
well-supported by relatives
like prepaid postal envelopes, post cards,
letter cards, aerogrammes
all of us served loyally
by unquestioning Gurkha-style postmen and women;
and I’ve brought hearts and minds together
and I do it in a day or days and or weeks
and if I feel like it, I even arrive decades later! –
and there’s nothing you can do about it!
And oh yes, I can see, you’re prone to neglecting me -
you ungrateful scoundrels! -
first replacing me with cold
Franking Machines,
and cheap, unimpressive, unimaginative franking marks
and with postage meters
imprinting an indicia;
and all of you now
deriding my world as snail pace
in your world of instant e-mails -
but I persist, and I still am of much use
for - listen carefully -
and I say proudly again:
I’m a stamp
no, I didn’t say “I’m just a stamp”,
or “I’m but a stamp” -
but I am a stamp in my own right, unique and proud;
and if you, once in a while,
want to show me your loyalty –
come to a local post office and lick my royal ****!

since the first pop use of the phrase
window of opportunity
(was it Bush or Stargate SG-1?)
politicians big and small
corrupt and incorruptible
fallible and infallible
have all bombarded
the media – on radio, in their blogs
and personal sites
newspapers and journals and broadcasts
and through any speech
they get a chance to make
with that ready phrase:
window of opportunity

Oh, turn on the radio
as you drive maybe
and some glum Finance Minister whispers:
* …grab the window of opportunity…
read the papers and some plump Minister of Health says:
…we must grab this window of opportunity…

Oh, whole speeches in the English Language now
are bullet-ridden with that cliche
and of course the financial planners
and educators
and doctors and even unimaginative lovers
they have all jumped in
into this *window of opportunity
till I’m so irritated and angry now
that if I hear one more eminent personality say:
window of opportunity
Oh, the next time – just one more time –
if I hear anyone use that phrase
window of opportunity
I’m going to send in contract window cleaners
and they’ll grab the window-of-opportunity-user by the collar
and throw them out through the window
and clean the window after –
and I’ll assure you,
those contract window cleaners
will not miss that window of opportunity!

Laying in the lawn
On a boring day
Looking up at the plain blue
"How unimaginative"

I throw the little knife into the air
To see where it lands

In the "Warwick Arms".


There's a girl wearing fake fur

of yesteryear's youth, weighing

out sexiness in the number

of beers she can afford.

How much oblivion

an unimaginative mind can take

is equal to the power of

a beached whale

drawing it's last breath.

The Russian wipes his moustache

turns around & smirks

that she's somewhat

under-dressed for the long winter.



Going to Japan.



Pink rain:

I could walk through it,

sweet-wrapped.

And the rice-blank  past

would be ample weight in my hand.

Like that of roses, remembered.

In a Murakami bar,

octopi would reach out

& dangle questions.

As a thousand pair of eyes

ask me to give the lesson

no-one ever taught me.

That they alone know.

That only pink rain understands.

We’d known him, back in the day
At dear old Millard Fillmore Elementary,
As Three-Desks Tommy, highly imaginative monicker
Deriving from his decidedly unimaginative first name
And the fact that he, indeed, had three desks,
Each of them stuffed chock-full
With uncounted numbers of pencils and erasers,
Any number of homework papers
(Usually A’s and A-pluses,
Though there were the odd B’s and B-minuses as well,
As he was a bright, in fact inordinately bright, child,
But sometimes given to sloppiness and stray pencil marks
And a predilection for not reading the directions completely)
Eerily accurate renditions of dinosaurs,
Wildly inventive stories featuring rainbow-hued dragons,
Noble and voluble talking bovines,
And knights and knaves of every size, shape, and suzerain,
Stories which resided cheek-to-jowl with some bit of uneaten sandwich
Until such time it made its existence
Abundantly clear to the custodial staff.
We’d never stopped to think much about his miniature Maginot Line;
It was what Tommy did and had always done
For as long as we could remember,
Though there were some teachers and an assistant principal or two
Who thought the whole thing was permissive bordering on coddling
(His teacher was a veteran of the wars, and well-insulated by tenure,
But she had grown weary of over-glasses glares and snide asides
When Tommy’s name came up in the staff room,
A death by a thousand cuts and all that),
And one day, while moving one of his desks
To clear space for Simon Says,
It had caught on a sticky spot,
Overturning onto a soon-to-be-fractured toe.
When he came back to school, accompanied by an ungainly cast
And an equally ungainly pair of crutches, his teacher took him aside.
Tommy, she purred, Maybe someone is trying to tell you something.
The other kids all make due with one desk,
And I’m sure you can find a way to as well, don’t you, Tommy?
So Tommy embarked on a great cleansing of his little fiefdom,
Filling several garbage cans with his collected works,
(Math papers and mastodons, bologna and Brobdingnagians)
And afterward he’d kept himself to one standard desk,
Duly filing, returning, and circular-filing his paperwork
As the occasion demanded
(Though one time Murph Dunkirk
Asked Three-Desks if he minded downsizing;
Tommy just shrugged, and said Well, it’s better than a broken foot)
And maybe in his dreams he had a thousand desks,
A thousand tops to fling open,
A thousand repositories for light and legend
Or perhaps he never gave it so much as a second thought,
No way to know now, one supposes,
Though if anything out of the ordinary had come his way,
We would’ve probably heard.

I want this life to read like an intricate novel. I don’t want to keep sitting at a computer all day while the romance of life slips through my arthritic fingers. They are meant to write beautiful prose that flow over our souls and cover them with golden warmth.

Yet they are tippy-tappy typing away at exhausting, unimaginative emails with signatures like “warmest regards” to cover how calloused my heart has become.

Sitting in this comfortable space behind a giant screen where nothing can hurt me is crippling.  We were meant to embrace the love this earth holds us in. We are supposed to bathe in rivers, meet strangers in different cities, and learn to fall. My knees should have scrapes, my elbows bruised from stumbles I take on dirt roads and motorbikes.

While my bones are intact, my life is what is breaking.

They called me a temptress
Rolling the dessert cart out always makes people say the oddest thing
You’re a temptress
I always assumed they were talking about the desserts
The ones I’ve repeated so many times I can rattle them off from memory without the cart in front of me
I never thought they’d be talking about me
I am dessert

I am cake
Not chocolate, I’m not dark enough to be called by such an unimaginative and racist name
Cheesecake
White and pale because I’d never dare to tan without bottoms on
Light brown just around the edges because I can’t help if those bottoms happen to be a little cheeky
Cake for the way my *** looks in the leggings I wear nearly everyday
Cake because I know you’re watching when I tip myself into the freezer to scoop ice cream
Cake for the way the girls tap it as they go by
I am cheesecake

I have creme brûlée skin
Light until I lay out in the sun, under the broiler
Browned to perfection
Covered in darker spots where the heat was too intense, freckles dancing across my cheeks
I am a creme brûlée

I have a cobbler mouth
Pink, nearly red lips
A perfect circle right before I kiss
Sweet and supple like a raspberry
Tangy like a cranberry if I bite
(I have yet to find a boy that doesn’t enjoy that)
Words, sticky sweet, spill out like melted ice cream
I am a cobbler

I have key lime eyes
The centers lined with pumpkin
Sometimes they turn blueberry
It changes with the seasons
(The pies are seasonal too)
I have pie eyes

Maybe when they said temptress they were talking about me
Cake that could be called chocolate when it’s wrapped in black dress pants
Creme brûlée skin that’s all covered up but my face and my hands
But see, see my freckles
See how they cover every inch of me
Cobbler mouth asking if there’s anything else you may want
If you want something to drink with that
My voice dripping out two pitches higher, sticky sweet
Blueberry eyes, almost always, the blue of my shirt brings it out
Even if I’ve only seen that flavor served once
Maybe I am dessert

Dessert
The first thing that gets dropped
Always last choice
Those who say they’ll save room still start with a main course
Dessert
Only eaten if your main course didn’t fill you up, wasn’t satisfying enough for you
Only touched if your girlfriend or your last **** or your lonely aren’t satisfying enough for you
Dessert
If you’re full would you like one to go
Keep me in your pocket, save me for another day
I’ll wait, I don’t know how not to
Dessert

They always called me a temptress
I always assumed they were taking about the desserts
I am dessert
Maybe they were talking about me

Grandmère = Grandmother

Peter and I are in Paris, we arrived this morning. We’re staying at my Grandmère’s Champs de Mars residence - near the Eiffel Tower.

One of my Grandmère’s oldest and dearest friends is a Catholic Bishop. When I was little, he was ‘Monsignor Jean-Marc’ but now he’s ‘Bishop Jean-Marc.’ He’s been around so much of my life, he’s almost part of the family. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that he has his own apartment somewhere in each of her houses.

Jean-Marc is old. I think that’s fair to say. He’s white haired and the kind of short that comes on slowly, with age. He’s a disciplined kind of thin and his deep wrinkles are tanned from years of gardening. His teeth, always visible in his salesmen’s smile, are as white as altar candles.

When I first glimpsed Jean-Marc from the hallway, he was sitting on a cream satin settee, in conversation with my Grandmère. I knew something was up because he was wearing his red trimmed cassock and red sash, instead of his usual black suit.

What I couldn’t see from the hall, was that the room was packed with matronly ladies, dressed in matronly dresses of glittering white, glittering beige, glittering yellow and glittering gold. Argh! I was wearing a white Polo tennis dress, Keds mini canvas sneakers and my hair was ponytailed. I wasn’t dressed for a social. I swiveled to give my Grandmère a sharp look, but she took that moment to be interested in the drapes.

As I’d come into the room, Jean-Marc stood and greeted me cordially saying, “AnnAAAas!” raising both hands up over his head as if he were channeling the pope. Ok, I thought to myself, this is happening. I offered my most innocent smile. “Bishop Jean-Marc,” I said, while performing an involuntary curtsy, conjured from somewhere deep in childhood reflex-memory.

I don’t like priests. Slam me, sue me, **** me. When I’m around a priest, I’m reminded that I’m a sinner and I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. It’s the worst kind of guilt for a Catholic, because we don’t earn any credit for it.

Opp! I just thought of Peter, so there’s lust, right on queue - that’s a sin. Unfortunately, Peter’s not here. He and Charles went on a chauffeured driving tour of Paris. Envy - there, another sin, I’m on the road to hell but I can’t seem to stop, one thought just follows the next. Where’s a priest when I need one? (to confess) Just kidding, there’s one right in front of me.

The bishop began asking me a string of unimaginative questions, like an old friend catching up. “How’ve you been? How's university? As he grilled me, slowly, like a steak in a smoker, the herd of matrons ambled slowly our way, closing in to listen in. It was a scene straight out of the walking dead. I wanted to escape but my Grandmère held me in place, with the full wattage of her proud smile.

Ordinary boredom is an un-experience and all you need to free yourself is a phone. High society boredom is one of Dante’s circles of hell, because you have to interact with strangers when you could be doing something fun instead. The gathering finally broke up about 7pm and I was free to go. I was starving, my throat hurt from talking (about myself) and I hadn’t heard from Peter. When I checked “find my,” it showed him there, somewhere. So I went in search.

Peter was in his (our) room, on his back near the edge of the bed, one shoe off and one shoe on. He was as still as a corpse but a soft snoring suggested he wasn’t dead. I leaned over him, his black hair was somehow more disheveled than usual and his lips, moist and slightly parted, looked invitingly ready to kiss. I didn’t do it though, that would have been asking for trouble. Instead, I smelled his breath, slowly and deeply. Cognac. Charles had gotten him drunk. How helpful.

Once I tucked Peter in, I went looking for Charles, only to find him shooting billiards with Jean-Marc. He looked none the worse for wear and the gleam in his eyes told me he knew what he was doing - avoiding me with the bishop.

As I prowled the room, trying to decide what to do, while picking up objects and weighing them as objects to be thrown, a server brought in a tray with three bowls of cassoulet,* which smelled incredible, my stomach growled, and I remembered I was starving.

Charles, sensing a shift in the mood, said, “He (Peter) needed to reset his body clock. He’s young, he’ll be as good as new in the morning.” I just laughed. Charles knew I’d come looking for him and he’d ordered me dinner. I can’t stay mad at Charles; he knows me too well.

The cassoulet was to die for.
We’ll start our vacation, for reals, in the morning.

The voice once so full of promise has found a new favourite word:
generic.

Generic i love you,
generic i care.

Thoughtless and unimaginative.
Lacking soul,
lacking vision.
As exciting as watching paint dry.

I squeeze for a spark where once was a blaze,
and at close inspection i find:
generic, generic, generic.

Warm molten ice cream drips from her mouth as she drools on here generic branded t-shirt.

Id rather have her curse me than belittle me with thoughtless hollow words picked up in her cliche dictionary.

and now, most dignified Gentlemen
and most cultured Ladies -
it is time to turn our attention
to loftier matters, to speak of the spirit
rather than of mundane concerns and
to be stuck in unimaginative and non-inspiring
habits;
and so we turn our attention to the spirits
to the spiritual
to such high matters
to things that lift us above time and our bodies
and such points in reality and frail flesh
that binds us and make little of us;
but the spirit, most sane Sirs,
elevates us;
the spirit, most elegant Ladies,
liberates us;
and so we begin
with bottle in hand, in deed
(look, every religion has its symbols);
and  through several drops of this holy water
(several gulps will hasten the magic and miracle)
we are  indeed hand in hand with
the Spirit of all spirits
for what matters it if you hold or invoke
gin, ***, tequila, ***** or whisky
whatever it is that one lifts
one is lifted by
and that One one lifts is the Grand Spirit…
and you see transformations occur,
the mind is released from the mundane and the pedestrian
and the ordinary;
and one may see light, there is a sense of lightness
and those who may be touched by the Grand Spirit
may actually levitate
and one has visions and ecstasies
all through the spirit,
most Spiritual Sirs
most Lofty Ladies…
and mock not this religion of spirits
for have not masses of humanity all through History
done the same in the name of religion?
Does not humanity do all of the same with
the Great Spirit they call God and
do not they too have visions and ecstasies
and feel the spirit move them and
are always aiming High?
Their senses and wits dulled
but their spirits going on high?
Drunk on high
with words, words, words...
And are they not in their true religion
moved by God and have such grand visions?
and will you then -
O ye vipers!
Ye hypocrites! -
mock the spirit
when you will  
sanction and approve and dance
in the midst of those who drink religion?
will you denigrate your brothers  
and sisters
in the spirit?
Oh, you who are drunk and revel in the name of God
and holy books and repeated words
will you judge those drunk in the name of the spirit
and radiant revelations  that come to them
when they are moved by the spirit?
Judge not, ye hypocrites!
Judge not, lest ye be judged!
And so we end this sermon in amicable spirit,
in unity, in spiritual oneness
between
those who drink of the high of religion
and those who drink of the spirit we have spoken of
Go ye forth hand in hand then
as siblings
for ye that worship in the name of religion
and ye that have ecstasy in your own holy bottled spirit
ye are but brothers and sisters
moved by the One Spirit…
Go ye forth together, go in ecstasy, go high…

You are absolutely undeniably
my favorite.

I love every bit of you,
the way you feel when I
run my hands down your back, and
the unique and subtle scent you carry.

I can't get enough of the way
you make me feel and the way
you make me think even after so
long and I can always predict what
you will say.

I treasure the comfort you give me
after a long day of dealing with
people so trite and unimaginative as you.

There are many like you
but there are none that are you.
You are without a doubt
my favorite book.

what hurts the most
is the unbearable duplicity of it all.
i wonder how long you were going to pretend
once you'd changed your mind,
once i'd become too difficult for you to adore;
i guess developing a personality
outside of your own thoughts
was a huge turn-off.
you must've hoped that love had done a better job
at clouding my judgement right before that last fight.
well, self-awareness truly is a double-edged sword;
i found myself but i lost
the last ounce of compassion
towards your ever so unimaginative lies.
now that it's time to reap the fruits of our labour
every bite gets stuck like a lump inside my throat.
but darling, just so you know,
what hurt me the most
was the unbearable duplicity of it all.