Smoking Out The Rabbit Hole

Modern political debate since the 1960's circles around the violent clash of philosophies, sinew, and tidal waves of upheaval, sweeping Revolutions throughout Latin America, The Middle East, and all of Africa signaled a time to many that the world was going to change.

Unions and empires crumbled as fists of children around the world raised, and proud cultures and neighborhoods defiantly stood their ground, protecting their ways of life against outside forces and nations seeking land, labor, and resources to exploit, this is nothing new; human History has shown us how terribly wrong the experiment of teaching the concept of sharing is to infants. In two generations, the face of the world has changed, there are the living and breathing who have seen it all, the Depression, death, war, Polio, drug cultures, shootings, attacks on the country, attacks on civilians, Communism, Socialism, McCarthyism, internment camps, terrorism, media blackouts, repressed expressions, assassinated leaders, rotted through politicians, Madison Avenue swindlers and a loose bundle of problems rolled out over time.

The entire world was at war, and in that peace came the most destructive weapon created, Crippling Fear. People feared to live in a nation where their beloved President was murdered in cold blood, as he promised to change the world, he seemed to be the last who executed in a positive light. Fear of nuclear war, has turned us into a nation willing to destroy any country seeking nuclear power. We break their economies, we starve their children, their scientists are killed, their leaders are threatened, their lands become infested with spies, we carpet bomb their cities...because we have to.We created a demon we battle everyday, and the battlefield has been in the backyards of farmers, seen through the show windows of markets, waiting inside piles of limp bodies and skin turned cold.

In today's world, units can sweep into a palace, silently silencing guards and a target within minutes, a missile could be intercepted in the split second of a button pressed on the keypad, and acts of war can be stored on a USB file double-clicked. Forget days of untrained pilots manning million dollar projects, we live in an age where unmanned planes can be armed and driven, over your families and your friends by a power source. It is for our protection, just as cameras are just monitoring our streets for our safety, as the war on Terror was for our safety, and the thousands of young men we sacrificed for revenge, not a cause, to make a statement, not a difference, were to keep us safe from cavemen.

The world had more color before, everything wasn't charcoal or pewter, black or metallic, sleek and fogged, by empty promises of eternal safety for America and for steel. Our kids don't play in the yards, they sit and play video games, eat McDonald's for their safety, from perverts and pedophiles, who are everywhere, like underground spiders waiting to crawl to the surface and smother the Earth. Every breath of fresh air in this country is followed by a look over the shoulder, flashing lights and a fine, fine executor.

We must be protected from drug lords from Mexico invading our land like the cockroaches and people they are, refugees of a business deal and a handshake called free, and a trade that changed it all. The world is in upheaval all around, buildings burn, people are hungry, they are poor, they are desperate, everywhere. Money is tight, people are rioting for money, killing for their money, rampaging in the streets, stomping out highway projects and public offices, and we are here, in America, safe from it all.

We cannot fail, we are a machine, we are the greatest Democracy in humankind, look at George Bush and Al Gore, George Bush and John Kerry, John McCain and Sara Palin, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, we built faces that emerge from mountains, and points highest in the world, the best place to look down on those all over. We rant and rave, and debate and we change things, we change how people think, we change how people understand us, we give them Democracy, we give them freedom, they feel it when they see assault rifles and flack jackets. We have the greatest economy the world has ever seen, where useless baskets can turn into million dollar machines, and buildings are rebuilt every twenty years, our fuel is our great craftsman ship and our drive to better the world, with apps and bright lights, plastic computers that create illustrious worlds of endless possibilities and falsity.

Things have progressed so much since the times of our fathers and grandfathers, we would never fall back into times of despotism or torture, debtors prison or coercion. Sure there is the IRS and Guantanamo and free speech suppression, but this is America, so love it or leave it, hippies don't belong in the street, cargo does, and it's your own fault you didn't pay someone to do the paperwork right, because after being taxed on food, gas, cigarettes, beer, inheritance, for social security, medicare, property and schools, in cities and state funded projects and federal projects, and sure you were taxed for the clothes on your back, and there was a tax for shipping the finest goods and services to this country, but who doesn't do their taxes every year? You deserve to go to jail if you don't pay income tax, because we are broke and need more, and we need to borrow more, because if we don't spend more we can't grow or prosper, or spend enough money on military and defense contracts to keep us safe.

Because our grandparents survived the depression and the war and the disease and the heartache and hardship, and they survived boat rides across distances and worked hard in coal dust and fiberglass threads, they were safe, they survived, but for some reason they always remind me it is their last Christmas or their last 4th of July, always talking about how they are lonely or blind, but I just ignore them because old people do that.

The Humpty Dump

The wide grin of a dealership's owner raises high atop wooden scaffolds, wavy blonde hair frays from beneath an oak top-hat as his story-high eyes hypnotize the daily sedated. Sparklers and fireworks ignite, mounted into wooden boards of the sign, fools become customers in loose and gawking lines, innocent bystanders are struck and turned into the "target market". They stare at the spectacle, as brass instruments scream into the distant sunset, forced by brass musicians whom insist. A lovely lady poses and presents a limp silk curtain, holding behind it, the inventory of dreams. Her soft legs prance and tangle on coat tails, abandoned at the cheek, cut off by net leggings for all to be drawn. The catch of the hour smiles between false and seductive, unquestioned talents are admired by all.

"One at a time" her felt gloves brace each consuming shoulder, a slight dash of comfort and conveyor-belt welcome into a vast, humpty dump.

Used salesmen greet the colorful and eager families into a new world...with half-empty bottles of scotch and browning pant-legs, loosely secured around ankles, as a pile of Chevy's burn in the distance. Warming extensions of sporadic vomit and obscenities towards invisible fathers echo over blowjob slurs behind unplugged Pepsi-machines and stacks of VHS tapes, molded into castles. Flags rise high above and praise "Fujifilm" as CEO's laugh and banter from a drawbridge made of VCR re-winders. As new arrivals walk past the triumphant tower, at least thirteen feet high, bodies in bandanas constantly grow, tossed out the backdoor of a game of roulette, only a slight glitch in their idea of the chairman.

Children enthralled to see the lot, so excited they bellow and cry for their mothers, who worry and clutch at their husbands, whom grin and accept their new vacation, continue into the wastes, excited to see the variety of food.

To The Lost, Drink Up

Down the back alley of an existence that should never have been thought, trickled streams of stale rain navigate over worn gravel, where they pass beneath rubber souls and disingenuous leather, mixing with the booze and the sewage and the piss, where glimmers of forget and hours of delayed regrets release silhouettes from a smoke filled room, inhaled through a splintered board, dangling by the fibers on the outside looking in a hole in the wall.

Laughter in bursts crowds dead air, as the shrills push and swirl behind force and tradition, no matter how drawn and undeserved they may be. A babbling rosy-cheeked orator squints and sways, toasting his own demise with a belly of joy and a grin peeled far back by blind illusions of happiness and respect, successes and points, truths and paychecks. Acquaintances stare in solidarity, as their blank faces erase self-indulgent thoughts, of screwing and soaring, beyond the orator, or the leaking ceiling or the piss or the bullshit, searching for their own prayers to be answered by their own Gods, whom tend solely to their own piss and shit, while they scream "Fuck God!" within.

Inevitability wades in the air, jumping from lips of passersby and newsboys, punishing sidewalks with repeated paths of late trots and obsessive stares at wristwatches of gifts, and wristwatches of bankroll. Pressure from time opens the cracks, breaking the manly successes of dried dirt mixed with water, where sprouts of reminder of the final dance and last appointment are ignored by "closed" signs and "will returns" battered and tested by swift winds carried through canals of windows, locks of bricks, and the will of the old man we've all come to know, cold and impatient, kicking us along like a can of soup, someday admired by the seeker whom treasures another man's trash and will not waver in the spit of a critic.

In the eye of the stream, where tires are busted and dreamers sleep in filth amongst cans of garbage and trash, trampled so relentlessly that it adheres to it's place, though it struggles to float away, a hypocrite bellows and judges, screaming for the attention of humanity, praising it's glory and it's tale.

The braggart accepts the fact of the matter, but refuses to knowledge what the matter was before he took credit for it's explanation, cursing all who question the latter, but he stretches higher into heaven, stacking a ladder on top of a soap box, balancing his act on stories of stilts, pivoting finally on thin pity and the merciful child, whom the braggart tossed a coin, though he relies to steady and overlooks, down upon the crowd who through him a coin, pondering the questions looked over without study and observed for the fate of a debt, a curse or a deal, sometimes for fame, and others for a warm meal.

Rats scurry along the canal, beaten with paddles, by paddies, into patties, they slide into panties, and sneak into parties, only to be greeted and festered by other rats, snickering and such, fitting into the traps of flames, or quakes, or the stakes and retribution, the loan sharks and long shots. In an instant they scatter from sirens, beatings, lashings, electrocution,  hangings, sprayings, in an instant they scatter, chased off by loud buzzes, or loud hoofs, or sticks in the night, cracking over "leaves!" and leafs pleased to disperse.

Seeds fall then spread, then plant just like had a year prior, and will again in a year again, into soil rotten, by the spoils of victory, and the blood or the liquor, or tears, or the come from the years of strangers and seamen, floating into anything unknown, from one port to another; decades of silent communication amongst whores unfamiliar in but one place, itching to find the sailor who on the ground trotted, beating paths as they met others in the service, hoping to be serviced, as the brakes to the morning snap and fail, all sacrificed to find the nearest watering hole, where echos of laughter peer from dim lit rooms, filled with smoke and braggarts, and piss...

Edit This, Bitch.

Before you send praise, doubt, and even credit,
Please keep in mind that I refuse to edit.

I'll drag and drain, complain, and brag "Yeah I said it"
But I'll never erase or re-type, I must reiterate, "I will never edit"

I'd rather be a creditor than and editor, I'd choose infection over correction,
I'll take my typos, chicken-scratch and questioned lines,
Take your opinion, complaints and whines.

No matter how bad, my gramMer or Prose,
Something bores me about backtracking what flows.

Some writers want fame, perfection, or a "mastered craft",
It's all just a crutch, lame, like arm-floaties and such, just use a raft,
Because all they completed was a pure thought deleted,
Readers could have reminisced and some may have laughed,
If they weren't safely guided to shore by the Math.

Subtracting taboo, hoping to multiply an audience by refusal of division,
Congrats on the neutered and snipped, and the overly-respected "revision"

Sometimes I make a point, others I set a mark,
Sometime I jot just to be stark.

So how do I explain my shame to a reader?
Why I'll never find fame or be seen as a leader?
 I don't, because planners are plotters, and in my book, a plotters a cheater.

Ode to Fall

Memories of lives frozen and imagined march across the gentle width of entities far simpler and far above, refusing to look down on those beneath, only into the eyes and hearts of those seen equal and important to all. Expressions of clouds laugh and stare, the grim and dead, the alive and the celebrated all share soft interpretations and softer whites, and even friendlier shadows. Within the smile of the unfamiliar self is perceived, and reminds of flows of change, they rearrange into mustaches and lips, of broken bits and reaching fingers, hoping to caress, but too often interpreted as claws of mischief, and fear. They dance and wander, begging for company, praying for those to join them on the journey over tiers and piers, the fallen and the risen, promising a safe return around the same time of departure.

Breaths of Fall, sweep through the dank and humid, the labored and tired, sweat dries as vapors of relief cleanse through brisk wind and gusts of comfort, whispering to never be afraid. In it's yearly hymn of release and reminder, of days ahead, where we must warm ourselves and others around us, for the blisters of Summer are soothed by the revival from the steady and drooping, what leaves follow and forge the foliage will forever be, the whisper asks to mourn not the tree.

Behind screens and mist, beyond rooftops and hilltops and manicured fields and the unkempt, oaks and pines join in rhymes of taunts and dares to wander and climb to visit their prayer. For it is all silent, and unexplained, and it all constantly reminds, it needs not to, and the furious may argue, and draw, and explain, and frustrate themselves as they try to control, what cannot be kept and cannot be explained correctly by the tongue of it's shepherds, who dwell within a gift they tend.

Swift gusts roll over the hills, and the fields, through the leaves and the trees, enticing all affected, on behalf of those who cannot speak, as they rush through open windows, waking children and adults alike, without a shake or alarm, nostrils widen and relax, only to huff and puff, welcoming and hoping the rush will come back. It's not too this, nor is it not too that, we marvel in perfection of the day and the month, knowing the bitter is ahead and the party is behind us, but for a moment we all bask in the perfection of being somewhere between, the morning and night, the dull and the excited, what is planned and what is random, but the degrees of these are not overwhelming, they are accepted, and will leave as they came, abruptly and unannounced, only to return another day.

Untitled

Has anyone ever cried for you? Have you cried? Has anyone told you they would die for you? Have you lived? Did some tell you to lose the glory? Because it's all guts and innocence drowned, in the torrents of reality and numbness to life, smells of morning dew slowed to decades of ignorance of the simple pleasures of breath that help you slow the clock and take the ride.

Did you lose? Did you let them heckle and runaway with your pride? Did you stop caring, or did you ignite the flame within that only the omnipotent question can understand or fathom? Did you walk out on the entity that knows you better than yourself? Did you quietly return into nothing but clay in the Earth?

Did you cash your check, did you pay your bills, or did you just survive and let the nightmares of reality dictate how thick the bars to your cage are? Did you grasp them, or did you simply look at them and roll back over?

Do you even care? Have you even cared to accept the random, Does Murphy tap on your window and remind you of the law? Did you a?ccept the fate of a mindless drunkard, or did you find the truth?

Did you realize how reserved judgment is and let the machine flow, or did you stand aside and wait for the blind to lead and dumb?

Do you care?

My Left Hand Jam

Writing with purpose is difficult, especially when no matter how extensive your vocabulary is, a natural instinct to grab thy genitals and furiously shake shifting facial expressions to loud tunes of "fuck you's" grabs hold of your muse.

In times where creativity screams behind a core completely paralyzed, logic and understanding dissipate, ashes broken by gravity's wind, gentle fury, nothing in a whisper. Everything has been done, everything is old to everyone, and all things exist only to expire. There is no point, thus, there is no punctuation, or pride,or glory, or triumph, or hope or victory, no changing of the tide 'nor the guard. There is no art, because all things extraordinary are a distraction from the gray and dull, the predictable, the accepted, the missionary, all demanding respect for their subsequent boredom.

This is a left hand jam, so there is no pressure of anger or junk-grabbing to tunes of "suck my third thumb", as writing itself is task enough, and so is the drive, the smoke or snuff. Fill out the sheet left handed, get the prescription left handed, take the pills left handed, get pulled over left handed and acknowledge the court date...left handed. This is my left hand jam, and it is scientific fact, that lefties have the worst luck.

Hey did you see in the news that.....I'm on drugs. So in conclusion, in matters of the "what have you's" and "what you will's"  of the whole thing, life goes on, and naps are an inescapable, inevitable, impermeable, omnipotent, palatable, parabola, hyperbole, rhetoric-filled quagmire of depth and drowse, limp leg, mind roused, numbing portals of deceptive snores and collective mind-boggelry, beyond which there is no alarm, left handed.