… and so, The PIT boys out
three, four at a time
wagons borrowed from shopping centers
stole necessary lumber and equipment
from the sites
where builders erected developments
extended malls for miles
the boys collected wood and tarpaulin

Six by six foot plywood walls and a
measured, sawed trap-door

like all Pyramid schemes its purpose was to get
something done in order to get something done to
keep busy bannish thoughts of criminal intent

…what was the Pit for that made it any different
than the ancient Pyramids or the near-ancient
Apollo Missions to the Moon that dead rock?

Why don’t we, why don’t we take those kids grown
now middle-aged old on an outing to the woods see what
if anything
remains of The Pit
something they can touch
a piece of history
like when the Mayor drove through town
with his entourage…though truly
his limosine was traveling far to fast
to touch and anyway who ould tell if it
really WAS the Mayor behind all that
smoked bullet-proof gated glass…

long curly black intimidating

clotted embarrassments accrue (eyes, hair?)

divine self missing for days, weeks perhaps

hard to know the separation of soul body

so quick unnoticed like death by sniper-shot

Jungian intro Tibetan book of the dead

they really studied this stuff not Jessica Mitford’s

no way to get rid of the damned stiff

without blowing thousands before

lunch, they crammed the exam waiting for this day

or one much like it or near it when abrubt alienation

wandering, ridiculous avenues for souls to

really it can be too much with out the proper

training, grounding faith, whatever this sudden

universal death and everyone walking around

confused but not wise to the no nowhere

near it billions of ectoplasmic chumps turned

Pinhead Zombie chanting translations of

Iggy, The Ramones about all day sniffing glue

nowhere to go nothing to do: no shit on that score

they just don’t realize, not yet, that its forever

Fuck epistemology!

We’ll work it out, you’ll see.

On the other hand

so many things can kill you
dog-shit under finger-nails
wash carefully before dinner
plenty hot water frothy lather
watch yer step lawnmower bloody
afternoon no morning early or late
mowed the next yard revved up
body young body coffee body coffee
drink that beer while there’s still time
where did it all go thirty years
poof just like that? Hell
I was eighteen and taking a leak
against a tree Summer night my
posse, gang, tribe, whatever
high as kites my girlfriend
too all hot ‘n juicy zipped my
fly turned around and like, ZAP,
here I am irrelevant and old doesn’t
make sense especially since…oh…

doctor, lawyer, accountant, thief
saleman, manager, political chief
this is how we live
I chose to entertain
eye-magnet, ear-drum
– comedy –
center stage
people
versus
clown
c’est moi
come one come all
see my
me
hear my
me
applaud my
me
even if
you don’t recall
my me
or recognize
my name

this darkest dark
alone seek shelter,
need a place to
not expensive we’ll
work something out.

post-verbal-comic-realism
cameras in every room
couldn’t tell actors
from waitresses at
Cafe Inn Sanity

Daddy-0
Sol of our System
light of our being
nominated
for prizes
lost them all

four marriages

ten children

tribal patriarch

you promised

we would be

you promised

we would be

you promised

we would be

your last

won’t help you relax nothing will

in circuitry wireless amazed

together sweet by-and-by don’t want

her creative hole wide as a bear’s cervix

lemme go dear lemme go dear lemme go moon June croon

war lost in the database, bedlam bedlam obfuscation: can’t imagine such
perplex of quarter-million soldiers, vehicles, support personnel to
distant shores, track all units, slim margin error, planes bomb
cities don’t exist, did not exist even before the raids, so
many times recalled mid-mission scream confusion-blood cities mistaken
alive, obliteration neither scheduled nor planned, more paperwork
investigation disarray…

No need to apologize at all. Frankly, the idea of sitting down to read a collection of poems and “alternative” prose pieces sequentially and “straight through,” during a certain, specific time-period belongs to the genius of advertising: i.e. “book reviews.”

“Wanna review ‘Tender Buttons?’ or ‘The Wasteland?’ or ‘Howl?’ You got three days to read it and one day to write up a print-ready/screen-ready ‘review.’ And don’t forget to include some out-quotes and a buncha high-brow stuff about THEME and CONTENT. Oh, and ‘clarity of language,’ and ‘vision,’ are always good for ink-space, write about dem things too. Good luck (thou lowly pissant scribe!)!”

Really. Take your time. I really appreciate your reading it. Along with my sister and X-mother-in-law (she always had a soft spot for me), that’s a readership of three people already. A few good reviews and word-of-mouth (the poor man’s Internet), this book might even break double digits in sales. But I should shut up. Don’t wanna jinx the poor li’l consumer-friendly, recyclable, 90-percent “Organic” processed print-product (may contain additives; processed in an environment of piss, vinegar and outrage, trace-elements of which may appear within )…

“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,”

ASE

Before reading and writing and thinking became shameful things, especially if funny or subversive or rhythmically inclined, as opposed to (official) narrative-defined, or said stuff nobody wanted the fuck to hear, or wouldn’t tow the line among the Established Professional Avant Garde Guildersburghur committee poets… before my green under the apple bows youth became gangrene, snot green, puke-green, green like ectoplasm, green like halitosis…green as the old fart I’ve become — like, literally, flash-zoom-overnight, man. Like, poof! You know?

Clearly, banking on the melting of the polar ice caps has taken priority over halting or even reversing the catastrophic effects of climate change. The Arctic contains as much as one quarter of the world’s gas and oil reserves, once hidden under huge masses of ice and inaccessible through frozen seas. However, ice is melting faster than predicted, presenting profitable business opportunities which are leading the Arctic countries to lose sight of longer-term climate issues.

I have a friend,  Rand Clifford, a novelist, out near Seattle.  He’s been doing a series of articles for the past year — thoroughly researched; he’s a “classical” sci-fi writer, i.e. gotta be based on scientific fact, not fantasy — on how the methane released by melting ice caps will mean certain, and perhaps near-immediate extinction. 

They’re “getting ready to do battle.”  That is, the corporate interests (I guess the half a dozen conglomerates that own all mainstream-media and all mainstream-everything-else are fighting over resources in the various countries they own) are programming their respective operating systems to produce citizen/consumer/cannon-fodder.

Or, as Lenin (Trotsky? Molotov? I forget) said, “The Capitalists will sell us the guns we’ll shoot them with…”

Or, as X sang in the glorious Punk Year of 1978, “The television rang and it rang off the wall/that was the preacher-man making his call/He said, “Kind friends, this may be the end, this may be your last chance for salvation from sin”/…so he folded his bible and took up a collection…

Jenny "Devil Doll" Gonzalez-Blitz

I guess in Oliver Wilde and Mark Twain’s time (of course today they’d never get published) what  “President” KrapForWits is referring to was called something like “belles-lettres” or some shit like that.  Well, maybe the modifier is a sign that they do possess, if not humor and most other human traits, at least some small sense of mercy.  After all, they could have called them “Daily Poems” or “Hourly Poems,” but settled for “occasional,” probably to prevent those pain-in-the-ass “emotional trauma” and “aggravated assault” law suits…

Anyway, fuck all that.   Petronius was hardly Nero’s favorite (though he had been before he fucked up  by fucking the wrong harem girl or losing his liquor license or whatever the Emperor’s Official Orgy Arranger did to piss Nero off), yet who among his contemporaries, save Juvenal, is worthy of “today’s discriminating reader?”  Well, Tacitus, I guess: the Walter Cronkite of the Roman Empire…

Tomorrow is our turn to throw a public left-hook to the jaw of Big Media. 

By the way: we dumpstered hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of hummous, dip, pre-cut carrots and celery, 30 boxes of ripe cherries, and a veritable cornucopia of pastries…

Total spent on Seven bottles of Amazing wine (and one champagne): $61.00

Total spent on cheese, crackers, dip INSIDE Trader Joe’s: $21.50