Tough Poem

This is a tough poem; tougher than bone
but twice as brittle. Imagine me at the
edge of the tome, but more little. Imagine
bone cemeteries; imagine stories about
poems about stony
nights, water falling from sky.

Yes, I've been here before. The ground
(scat) devoid of sandals is a mongrel
we aren't diaspora anymore, but we are.
This is tough poem; it isn't easy
---it never will be---easy to explain. I'm
not trying to be obscure.

That's it, the Yonsei. Even 4th generation
Japanese have a word for it: belonging.
What am I? I man wearing a sweater w/
an old sweat-stained Cardinals hat & an
inkling I could do better, much better.

A reflex then, toward calming. Saying
"...but it's okay, everything will be
alright." And it will, of course---as much as
it wasn't. As much as it won't be: sadness,
you know, sadness already gathering like
a frown at the edge of your mouth: I should

have told you my grandmother is probably
dying. A sad thing, a sad thing. Nothing
absurd about it. As ordinary (and deeply
felt, meaning extraordinary, to me) as life:
"The wise man is ready to leave any time."

What about the wise woman? My grandmother,
wise, tough, deeply-feeling, real. More stolid
and solid and earthly / spiritual than I will ever
be. Roots in the deep soil, that one. A willow
tree with owl nests. A hurricane couldn't uproot
that old gal. But age will, I'll know. Ninety-seven.
97, ma. I'm going to miss you. I miss you already.

Circular & demineralized

[title here] [art work] [unnoticed fenestrations]
[molecular artwork] [artwork]
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Citizens become scientists:     Captured 
 ants snack on cookie crumb-
bait in a plastic 
bag at Saint 
     Stephens.
     (You know, the Elementary).
Saint Stephens in all his 
glim glitter; his modern decorative
manwear; his bonnet of undue 
appreciation for the arts. A fork
in his uvula, but not a snake-
man. (He's not a snake, man! 
HE'S NOT A SNAKE! DAMN! 
     fun w/ words w/ friends 
    pepper peppermint 
    Doctor P. )
Again at the seminary. Our tribe
returns. The scene changes. I'm
caught speeding on my way to meet
& greet Stephens. A big fan of the
man. His bonnet, etc. He was gone,
at the tanning salon. 

Newly, for the, aspartame, girl

We'll get it back,
said the redhead. Her bright
nubes were brightly ripping
off the cameras
and arranging them into
a morbid galley of winking,
stinking starfish, just newly home
for the killing.
     ]murder

The Club (Cowards, Racists)

The Club is a club you can't club in. It
only allows Hispanics who are white
(but exclusive Spaniards) and Whites who
aren't Hispanic (that's a joke, of course). Mex
     -     i     -     cans     -
are strictly disallowed, but invited--nay,
encouraged, to apply; dishwashers are
 needed, and respected. Except when

it comes to their
spectacles; they can't afford them. De-
cent ones, of coures. Ha ha. Milton. M-
an, what a laugh. Camaraderie and its
more black moments, Paradise Where? 
The only question that's ever mattered.
Remember when? Even a league called
racist. It wasn't. Maybe? (Negro.) Be-leagured,
is my life. White hair slicked back and old,
old shallow talk. That. Service me a
lemon G & T & I'll tip you. [      ]  

(I'll remark ironically later about how
Mark Twain's old mansion
is right next to the projects
in Hartford.) (And omit a racial slur
because I'm afraid as a coward.)

Desiree Yawton

Was blonde apple pie.
Pie in the sky. Desiree, with the Williams's.
Yawton, like the Clifton's. Rich-y, edged and dreamed out.
Desiree Yawton, Bridge over the River Kwai. Desiree.
Yessir.

Dirt is Art

I ran like soles over soil
I rock like war over oil

Afternoon rap couplet

I rock rolls like Mr. Royce or Chinese take-out
I'm rock: I beat scissors, roll papers and bake out

2 PM

1. Tanner was a lover; a heart-throb

Tanner's in the mob--but his heart isn't. 

2. Dom likes drugs... to write about. Of course he would only consume legal ones, like massive quantities of alcohol, pipe tobacco, chew, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, Lithium, Prozac, & palms full of muscle-relaxants. Of course he'd only take prescription drugs if he had a prescription. He's quite the Boy Scout, at least in terms of his drug habits. But you'll never catch him smoking on even a honest day's wrangle of humble pipe-grass, nor could even livid dragoons compel him to gnaw a psilocybin mushroom. 

Once he steamed some veggies and felt guilty about it. He's not sure how this relates but told me to pass it on anyway.    

The Coolest Mother-F'ing Thing I Thought Up in the Last Few Hours

"I don't want to drag; I want to breathe," says Harry says to Morgen.
"But I want to drag," says Morgen to Harry.

Many years later, after the pair separated when Morgen took interest in a Filippino courtier during Harry's service, the man -- Harry Lassiter! They shall know me!!! -- would say this exactly line again, forgetting momentarily he's uttered such words before, to a confused co-ed he'd gotten wet. "I don't want to drag; I want to breathe!" He yelled one crisp autumn night in his 43rd year. It was like wine binding & transmuting to dark wood. It was like wind blowing and straining a sapling without breaking. Water splashing with light, flecks of astor sparkles. WAKE UP. YOU want to BREATHE --- ! ...

It was like many things, but mainly it was

vegetate

your road is my horse
there is no bucket without a bottom
there aren't pails without pals -- at least in kindergarten
when the kind children vegetate the landings of
strange men with houses.

7 ways to look at a drug rep (be my winding wheel)

1.
The privations of a mutagen clerk
are driving up the cost of living
in this fair berg. Nobody has seen the icing
at the bottom of the cake ::: of the bold
lice, humping their way about the blood
of the boy octopus; a body ::: a bold ploy.

2.
The platitudes of the elements is eleven
exactly. I calculated it with magic math
that you shall never comprehend.

3.
The elements are their own elements
or so I've been told. They've been to
Switzerland, they've been to France.
They have no idea how their throat
becomes connected to their eyes.

4.
Nietzsche was more than a curmudgeon,
he was a thief -- who stole with his
drug-dialed dimensions the space where
tenderness inhabits the arm of power
and does not only favor those of flaxen lock.

5.
Bold ploys suffer most when the hand
is at hand; when the boy is the bluest
shape you've ever seen and by God if
you're gonna die you're gonna birth:
Gonna verb this life all right. Gonna
swerve like a bike my Life on it
--the arrangement hard to explain
like an oil spill is hard to contain--
     [Damn, you! --]

6.
an utmost spot of brilliant brilliance.
A slow-motion stop cone of the moon;
a beamed out, brimmed out choker show,
coke luncheon powder sniffed by mechanical
crunchers-burners-injectors-smokejacks
like an ammonia meteor showers of snow-proof delivery
::: Like a lottery kitchen un-shearing her knives,
and becoming pregnant, just for a second.

6b.
This is the real life cinema of a movie never
written, except by living.

7.
The best souls are given.
Thank you. And more: forgive me. I don't
deserve.

ABYSSinia; quoth

SO  proud  to be A B Y S S i n i a n
in the abyss again [like who?-him]

so proud, abyssinia
your darklust child's heart, black zinnia

this age is dark/light, ::: contagion; chlamydia
explode the locomotive dopeshow hymnal

it's not a symbol
not a thimbleful
protective fingerwear, futbol, Oldsmobile

no hope guys, just no hope, peeps--
try to express myself, just another creep.

 [...BLOG/blogblog:]
like evolution jerks ::: timely-equal-trees
punctuated equilibrium : fungibility
express yourself or else
express yourself or cry
i got an icetray full but not hope, hi.

Proud to be Abyssinian

Abyssinian anthem: "I'm so proud to be Abyssinian, where at least I know I'm--
a-de-facto-resident-of-modern-day-Ethiopia-Somalia-Djibouti-Egypt-Sudan-South-
Sudan-Eritrea-and/or-Saudi-Arabia!!!"

[The worst and/or best fictional national anthem.]

Earth-Tone Grove

Somebody noticed an unusual preponderance of red in the office today, which is especially quizzical since said members of the diaspora don't usually wear red (said a woman co-worker). "I don't usually wear red either," I said, in so many words, cloaked in a brick button down (a monumental effort just to don ::: a rotting albatross ::: this unreal pain). "I'm usually Earth-Tone City," I actually said.

They got the gist. "That doesn't fit," though, my boss said (a solid dude, in a former-life likely a flint-knapper). "It should be Earth-Tone Grove or something." I agreed.

As I sit here

on Yom Kippur
I feel a sharp hunger for more than food.
I'm wondering what it's like to be full of purpose,
and wondering what exactly I should be atoning for.

Racist jokes. General insensitivity to the plight of others.
I'm sure I have neglected some of my more distant family.
I have probably made my mom sad at times,
just by not doing as much as I could.
I could go on. But I won't. At least not on paper.

Laziness is not a virtue - it's not ladylike.
But it's not like me to create fire, or fuel it.
Just trying to emanate warmth through compassion,
love and positive energy whenever possible.
I strive for happiness and a peaceful, humble existence. Seriously.
I just want my friends to be safe. And I don't want to get cancer. Is that too much to ask?
Probably.

I really like talking to older people, they have seen more of this life and this world than me.
But young people are more exciting, more impressionable.
And at this point I am old enough to impart at least some wisdom.

Truly, family and friends really are what's important.
It's too real to be a cliche.

We don't live alone. Life is symbiotic, symbolic.
Too short to be robotic. Too awesome and exotic.
I don't want the internet on my phone, for example.
I crave only what is natural. Here's a sample:
What I crave is caveman life
back to the roots and berries
tubers and twigs, figs.
And I admit, cities are exhausting.
Tired of treading through cars emitting exhaust
amidst people who are lost
and looking just for something to look for.

One day I have a cold.
The next day my right calf is sore.
So I can't play sports for a while.
This is a disaster in my book - cuts me to the core -
though it doesn't warrant a whole chapter.
My book's called "Life is Often Good"
I haven't written it yet, it's just part of the book I'm writing now
"The Great Book of Great Book Ideas"

I teach a graduate course
called Introduction to Introspection
It encourages reflection. Usually rhyming and silliness in the last couple stanzas distills what I'm trying to get across.
Not this time.

In sum: Life is great. God is good.
I accidentally gave money to a very Jesus-y group the other day.
A black woman came up to my car while I was at a red light.
And I gave her a dollar coin before reading the brochure she gave me.
But she told me God bless you, and Amen. And it made me feel good.

No moral here, or message.
I think Yom Kippur is a great holiday, and it really represents what I appreciate about being Jewish. If you don't allow religion to take over your life and dictate your actions entirely, it can be incredibly illuminating. Maybe psilocybin helps, but openness goes a long way on its own.

Don't take anything for granted.

I could write a blug

See? As long as it's not for a grade
I'm a believer in Shiva.
And I trust you'll keep reading
since we're friends.

Everything's a curtain
imagined dairy - nothing is certain.
making yogurt pertinent again

My shirt is too big
Picture of an aphid
and the Star of David
Biggest religious expression since the Sistine Chapel

Favorite ninja turtle, since D'Angelo
who painted the ceiling purple
you're either an impressionist or expressionless
I have an ocean of emotions

There's a potion for that.

Here's yer goddam Doha journal

Motorola (patent pending) & minaret. As in, Hello globalism,
I shrined a mosque today. Tapestry boulevard with the hoodlums,
late morning Fresca on email. Not women but buttons, buttons,
my chief concern now; Maintain cogent garments. [Shortage of
sewing equipment here. --Doha.] Business trip to the Solomon
Isles before--how lovely. Even marmalade at tea & those double-
jointed Incan twins from Fandango. Boy, their product is tight. I-
PO. Mailbox in the morning; mild trouble with drug users. Rest of
stay--superb. Now a minor wrinkle: a taste of rain, removed from
the memory, in the desert. This is a miracle or portent of doom.

Barely articulate sentences about a "blog plan"

I'm sick of text edit. I need to install Microsoft word. A microcosm of the Baby-Boomer sell-out: I don't like Microsoft and don't want to give them my money, but I want a nicer computer program.

My roommate said to me: "I was always convinced that if I started taking Adderall, I'd be Under Secretary of the Navy now." That's when I reminded him he WAS the Under Secretary for the Navy. [This is where I consider taking the joke too far, looking up who the Under Secretary is (which I should probably know anyway) and making a joke about my roommate actually being that real person. But instead of making this kind of weird joke that would be too specific to follow without raising your eyebrows/gizzards--going one step further than would likely be funny--I just look up who the person is because it's an important position and I'm on a mission, albeit an extremely small and specific one.]

Mission Completed: Rob Work. A real "piece of work,"who actually went to the U of I. Kewl.

Ideas:
1) Blog about culture wars, somehow involving science.
A main character would be a hyper-honest postgrad liberal who could examine some of the more disturbing aspects of his/our legacy.
I.e. NOBODY understand something as commonly talked about as dark energy.
As far as I know, the whole thing could be an unmitigated, foaming-at-the-mouth lie. And to perhaps put more of my cards on the table than is comfortable, I do think it is basically bullshit. How could we possibly know there's a thing called dark matter and dark energy, and furthermore that the universe is accelerating? I readily admit I don't know the advanced math that they have used to get to this point. But knowing some math, and having as logical a brain as possible at this moment in time, it smells, you know. Dark energy? Give me a fucking break.

Another character could be like CK, ranting & raving about conspiracies, elites, the intelligence community, tha Rockafellas, Rothschildz, Kissinger, Z-Big, Soros, multiple-linear regression, the Butcher of Belgrade, etc.

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Annie Alabaster and Fred Filibuster

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DR: Das Racist, Duane Reade and the D-R; doctor.
If you give me a test I'm obvi tha Proctor