Tuesday, November 9, 2010

pieces of taxi
jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 1/2010

1. Briefcase
Woman gets in back. Oriental. Chinese probably. Slender. Pretty. Nice biz suit.
Briefcase.
She tosses the briefcase on the seat ahead of herself as she slides in.
Where to?
The Richmond, she sighs.
Have a nice day?
It was OK.
So, what did you learn today?
[I’m always asking questions of the day. Political usually, sometimes philosophical, you might say. Anything to stir the pot. I can’t drive all night to various nowheres without some connection to somethin’. I already feel we are the most alienated society of all time. I think what we need now is a giant national Woodstock the size of Iowa.]
I learned, she said, that there is no such thing as constructive criticism.
Free ride.
—o—

2. Three suits.
Three business types hop in at the Regency–two men, one woman. All in wool business suits. Headed for a restaurant in North Beach for dinner.
They ride in Silence. I’m thinkin’ like this was gonna be a hard one.
I sort through my repertoire of conversation starters. Brain-files marked politics, economics, religion, or sports. I disqualify sex since the woman is out-numbered. I only bring up sex when I’m out-numbered. Or it’s even, of course. That doesn’t mean the roles are the same: I get to risk and they to decide. Equal but different. Funny, how life emulates computer science. Antogeny recapitulating philogeny, I guess. Man is like a river of electrons. Woman the switch.
Since they’re business people, I go ahead and ask, How’s biz?
Not bad, answers the man from the right rear.
So, I go, what do you guys think about the bailout?
Messy. They’re lost. The two men go. It’s gonna be a long time coming...he trails off.
Trying to figure out what that meant I toss out a feeler: Might it be the end of capitalism? I go. A bit cocky, but at the same time, tentative.

Well...uhh, goes one. Uhmmm, uhh..., goes the other.

You know, I continue. Communism–our other economic religion–is blown away.
Right? Since they tore down that wall in '89. Now us. (I say us). Won’t happen tomorrow, I suppose. But the unbridled laissez faire-style robber baron stuff is probably over. Don’t cha think?
I’m driving thru Chinatown as I say this.
Right rear goes, you might be right.
It’s a huge waste, says the Middle guy.

But then, the Middle guy goes, I think it’s the only way to go.
Not referrin’ to nothin’.
We need to keep free enterprise, I answer. I mean people need to start something they like. Something something they can depend on…with maybe a life expectancy less than the immortality of corporations. Maybe they should all have one function only, and not be able to buy other companies...? End of the Big C’s, I go. Chattering a bit. No commies, no robber barons, no...I dunno....
Then the lady speaks, as if from a self-imposed dormancy–ok, she sounds tired.
The next economic system, she says, will be Chocolate.
—o—

3. The artiste:
She slipped in the back-right in no hurry. Somehow we both managed to recognize and say we were writers. So I asked her the stupid question I always get. But she said she didn't want to get published.
What's up wit dat? I asked.
She loved the process...of writing, she said. The choices, the constant cuts, with the bright surprises, but that, she said, wasn’t it as much as:
A. I don't wanna be the court jester, she said. The joker who makes 'em laugh and forget Truth.
And,
B. I don't wanna be the messenger who'll tell 'em the Truth either. Cuz they'd kill me. Things only go smoothly when you're not getting anything done. When you truly create, all hell breaks loose.
Sister, you're an artist. You just earned a free ride
At her destination, as she slides out of the taxi, with one foot on the street, she turns to smile at me.
An artist, she says, never gives ‘em what they want.
—o—

4. something about afghanistan: Trip 2010-233. old vet, new vet

...what you whinin’ for?
Yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer 150s and yer turtle-bots in VC redux? Sheesh
We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!
We din’t even had no war. They called it a “police action.” One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. See what I’m sayin?
All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.
Dat qualify?
So yer stupid winless “war” on terror cost us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.
Desert wars are EeeeZee. Yur mechanized. We’re crawlin' fer cry-eye! Though mud paddies. To nowhere.
I hear tell we both killed 'bout the same # of non-combatants–you call 'laterals. Geez-sheets!
What kinda word is that?
2 million each. Non-com or 'laterals.
Ours took longer, they’re still dyin’.
Count ‘em.
Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. UDU. What you do is Voodoo Militaristics.
Uhmmm, what do you mean by that, exactly?

I mean your mess is so big that if you win you gonna bankrupt yerself tryin’ to clean it. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on kids! Y’know, you saw the photos. No photos on your war!
Or you can drop a fire bomb: true hell: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane --blow it fore it settles--kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. A dome of death. You call that war?

What is that you’re talkin’ about?
Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter...that ain’t war...war is bayonets in guts and sliced arteries squirtin’ blood up ‘n da nite. Hand grenades bouncing into your hole...not no video game you drive to work 8 hours and weekends off.
You punks blow people up all the way from Vegas.?!
With weekends off...!

This where you live?
Whadyathink?
Free ride, Buddie. That’s what I think.


5. Trip 56-2010. whippersnappers.

Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the “halo” got some sticks stuck right into the skull. Same for the shoulders. When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body so his neck won’t swivel.
He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?
Wife blurts up first, Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!
Did not expect that outburst.
Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.
I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. . But I say, Prettiest little girl…what’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time, 10 seconds, the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off high out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.
Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here, snaps the Marine. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.
Why you gotta be in Fresno?
Everybody’s waiting.
Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your inconvenience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet that'd be where you just came from] 'bout that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by puttin' y'all in a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?
He looked at me all stem and stalk and full of macho indignation at me telling him any shit at all. Any kinda shit. Especially true shit.
Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go ahead and blurt. Just look at that back seat! I was not lying and they knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and, how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:
He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us....
And she trailed off.
I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict who’s swinging with the crack heads. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look tha part...and dammit, I wanted them to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love is gonna add to their game...and not detract.
So I asked him, What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it really like? They never tell us anything.
It’s fucked, he said.
In what way?
The people are fucked. The government is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place.
I felt like a tipping point of some kind like I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.
I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.
I asked him. You ever hear of Malaya Joya? No, he hadn't. Remember that name, I told him. (Although i hadn't. I found out later it’s Malalai.)
Why?
She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke‘m part, tho. When she was just 18 she taught little girls to read in secret schools. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy to a people. It has to grow up from within. And she would work to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.
I went on a little roll: teachin’ girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all they can. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...
He said yeah. I’ll look her up.
He said the hotel name they were goin’ Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise looming. Don't blow it, i mumbled. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.
You wanna know what it’s like?
For sure.
OK. We get a report from a farm. The farmer had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit. Now and then a goat…
Yeah?
So we convoy up an’ head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.
Kill any?
Yeah. Several. But I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They always fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.
How so?
He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then, in the middle of him complainin,’ he spits in the Captain’s face.
What?
Real a-hole.
I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the constabulary idea or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.
What did the Captain do?
Do? He did what he had to do?
He shot the guy!?
No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.

Gees-says.
That shuts ‘im up.
I bet. Then what?
We left.
There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae. From on the bay side of the freeway a big expanse of darkness looms off to our left. Salty water, calm and flat.
I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here ‘cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles along the bay. (I didn’t know that for sure.) You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. And I hope you come back.
Yeah, great.
Then it came to me.
The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?
I suppose. Some way we had to know. Or someone else might’ve carried the message in. There would have been some questions. From Intel. How many insurgents? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.
And it was friendly?
I didn’t see that.
Y’know, I said.
The genius of those two, I thought as we pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel.
I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.
[I’m going bananas inside.]
But I tell the girl, You gotta try room service and free movies and order a hot chocolate and try blueberry pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use all the shampoo…
Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher out of his shirt for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too.
Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.
Huh?
I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. Or maybe the Intel was from a neighbor who coveted the farm. The Taliban might’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was for his survival. Your Captain only had to wipe some spit off his face and knock down a crappy house. He saves the whole family.
Huhm…he goes.
You got the same choice here. Only you won’t get spit on. You get loved on. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that halo 'round your head for as long as it takes to never go back.
His wife touched my arm.
He nodded.
Thanks. She said.
Peace, I said.
Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby.
Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...and the mess of it all.

---o---

end of the ride

the end of the ride
jimmy mankind
© 6-1-10

“Omigawd! I’m broke!” she said. “We have to find an ATM.”
“No problem. Which way?”
Turn off here.
Which way?
Uhm, that way?
Which that?
Right.
Got it.
Make it my other right. Sorry. Can you make a U?
I see it.
She got out. Wobbling on her heels. Not as tall and gawky as I’d thought. Now she seemed fragile, vulnerable to the forces of darkness. Her light was low. Scattered by the shards of crashed memories perhaps.
She floundered at the machine. Seemed to be inserting new cards or the same one over and over again.
Any luck? I shouted.
I’m so sorry. Her shoulders slumping. I’ve been denied access.
C’mere. I said. Siddown.
She returned.
Get in.
I reached around and flipped the door open to her.
She hesitated.
You have to pay. So let’s make a plan.
I’m so sorry. My husband and I broke up. Maybe he took all the money. Denied access? How does that happen? My jacket is calf skin. It’s worth way more than the ride.
The meter was over 30 already. And ticking.
No. I said. Too much trouble. They’ll hold it for 30 days and give it to some hooker. Or you’ll have to go down to the produce district, and pay the fare to get your jacket back. Either way they’ll tell me you claimed it. Whatever story they’ll think up leaves me out or costs you extra.
What then?

Write me a poem. I blurted. Do that conscientiously. And true. I will take you straight home --meter off.
I can’t, she cried.
You have to and you can. Everyone’s a poet. [That’s why they’re so poor. I thought.]
I handed her My clipboard from My back pack. Fresh white blank sheets; a blue pen.
Go! I said.
I got out of the taxi, taking the keys. I locked the doors. The street was shimmery from the rain like a black and white movie.
Coffee? I gestured at a café half a block back.
No thanks.
She bent over the paper. She started writing. When I returned the poem was on the front seat with the lights off. She was in the back, naked, lying across the seat like a page to be written upon. She was one of those women who looked better with her clothes off. In the street light... I read her poem.
Here is what she wrote:
“i am skin
i have no heart
no eyes no taste no thoughts no brain
my muscle is the kind they allow
japanese-massaged beef to have
if anyone wanted to eat me
I would taste
Bitter
I’m not able to do a thing--I cannot act think care
yet my bones are perfect
they set the stage for my surface picture of skin and hair and nose
cheek bones high--admirably amiable cheekbones
how deep is that?
I am skin A tight wrap
My skin is a highway to nowhere
You can lick me kick me stick me trick me prick me dick me:
leave no marks please
I am my skin as shallow as that
But my skin is holy. It is the pinnacle of god’s creation. I devote myself to its
maintenance and preservation.
My skin shields me from feeling.
My skin is waterproof and keeps my guts from spilling when I cry.
Emotionless.
My skin is emotionless. Kiss me there.
My skin is alive–everything it hides and contains works well,
but is dead.
Somehow dead.
My soul is back down this dark road someplace.
My displaced angel replaced it with tears
that will run off someone else’s newly handy hopeful skin
and drip off My chin into this poem.
Oh grrrl...where are you?
—o—
When I finished reading I turned around and stared at her, soaking up her mute message, recording her skin in the My docs of My brain–she was like a long, cool drink on Mars, a vanilla ice smoothie in the squalid Sahel refugee camp I kept in My Taxi-mind to keep me moving relentlessly like a shark. I re-read the poem. Looked at her again. Felt for her story: another no fault dirty rotten divorce. So a lie lived out as living proof of lies. Me having lived a few myself.
So fear of future failing. Our grand epidemic.
Not that I had this new indelible memory: a slice of art immortalizing her lost spirit for a mere practicality: a retrun to her broken home.
Pragmatically, I turned the key on. The meter off. And asked her my favorite question, Where to?
Are you going to drive me naked? She answered.
We’re all naked out here, I said.
Everyone’s searching for something that fits.
Nothing fits forever.
Things wear out, she said.
It’s been my pleasure to serve you, I told her.
She began to dress in my mirror.
This time/it’s your gift/you wear it well, I thought.
Before I could put it in gear, a tear broke loose and ran down my cheek. It dropped off My chin into her poem before I could catch it.

I watched her run to her house, no longer a home, not looking back.
--End of the ride--
—o—

Monday, May 24, 2010

Obama's tautological error.
That's right i said tautological. Because when Obiwan, you are our only hope, speaks, it's always the same ol' same ol'. He tends to repeat some amorphous vagueness similar to a Brave New World Order. Party like it's 1984. There are something like 26 permits by now for the same ol' deep dish pizza, i mean deep water oil rig drilling that we have seen bubbling up in the form of a gusher...that's right, everybody! A gusher! let's dance under the black rain's a-gonna fall. We got us a gusher!
WOW, let's do the ARCTIC!
Salazar has the momentum. He's feeling it now! On Friday he will decide whether or not to open up the Arctic for deep dish...i mean, deep water drilling. And from there all the way across Alaska to ahhh, uhm, er...Valdez, by pipeline for transfer to ocean going tankers. Failsafe!
Who wants to ride this bomb waving their cowboy hat?
Now let's turn to state banking: bet you can't wait.
What are the chances of state banks getting going full speed if this much inertia is packed up in the oil industry? We shouldn't even be looking for more oil! We should be experimenting with wind and solar as if we were in a survival space race.
But we're not.
Money is bigger and more powerfully entrenched than even oil is. Along comes our little banks. 50 of 'em. And so many billions are to be syphoned off from Wall Street back to the People's Banks? This is the fight. The problem is not how does it work: the problem is will they let it work?
There is no way BP knows how to plug this gusher. Never did never will. They are lost at sea. What happens if they cannot plug it? Will they EVER destroy this well? The government is totally corrupt and yet it must be charged with this task. Before any more oil wells are drilled or any more economic power drifts to Wall St. Same exact deal. The Big Banks, the TBTFs, are drilling into our economy to maintain a dysfunctional inertia of elitist plutocractic piracy. Same way the oil companies trash the planet to augment their income only.
For a state bank to be viable we shall have to eliminate the corporate legal structure completely.
Remember your comparative economics: a corporation is a Stalinist, or Maoist, communist dictatorship with only one goal in mind. Money. Plus acquisition of the power to keep it that way. The only difference between corporations and communism is the slightly more permissive manner people can quit. You try to climb the wall from within the USSR, you die. Quit your job, you lose your retirement, pension, health care, whatever...and you're on your own. May be a big deal or not. The point is that the CEO is beholden to no one until he opts for his golden parachute, and so is a dictator.
All these many corporate dictators are aligned against state banks. There will be more the closer we get to reality. So far this project has slipped under the radar. So it seems to me we have to capture the public's attention and play the change-the-economy card. This is the coming of the age of altruism anyway, so we might as well ring the bell for it. It's coming in anyway.
But these are the Death Throes of Capitalism.
Oblama's big reg. on banks is gonna be a Big Deception.
Same for oil. It's going on now. More drilling is on the way. Plus clean coal--that oxymoron.
Think about it.
If we let free enterprise go and grow alongside state banks (because state banks are benign) then we can and should kill the big conglomerate holding companies once and for all time.
That is the fight.
Corporate capitalism has to grow; Gaia feels that growth like a cancer eating away at Her ability to sustain us. She'll have to act. She be forced to kill us all for the blatant selfishness of a few, the pluto-klepts. So Obama has to decide: is he with us or agin us. Oh, that was Bush's line, remember? How they turn everything around 180 degrees?
The test case is upon us. Full blast.
...even Iran offers help...
...as did Cuba before.
"The metaphysician often takes a dim view of economic exchange. it is the realm of mere agreement and conventional evaluations, rather than intrinsic qualities. but agreement and convention, if consulted, provide a helpful check on your own subjectivity--they offer proof that you are not insane, or at least a more robust presumption to that effect. some of us need such proof more than others, and getting paid for what you love to do can provide it. going into business is good therapy for the feeling that there is something arbitrary and idiosyncratic in your grasp of the world, and therefore that your actions within it are justified."
--from Shop Class as Soul Craft, matthew b. crawford

My take on this stems from inner compulsions finally acquiesced to, and later encouragement from Rumi , who perhaps, too succinctly put it as, "Do what you love." Now i think i'm on a mission to communicate. I want to feed the ignorant, and exorcise the gluttons. I need to empower other speakers to re-form the masses to save the planet because i have learned i cannot. i'm not scared anymore. so that's nice. i just don't want to go over anybody's head. i floundered in business because i tried the wrong things. i learned a lot, but lost anyway. in real estate one is always mixing the familial subjective and the pragmatic cold hard truth. unqualified dreamers need not apply. the need exists to let the customer know the truth as market value, but not to be the one who brings it to them, especially without evidence. the offers are greedy the other way until ultimately agreement is begrudgingly reached. in a normal market everyone leaves the table equally unhappy. until further inspection ruins the whole thing and proves the seller(s) to be either idiots or liars. (that dust was not from our old power saw, it's termite caca after all.) so deals go south and some other agent (crass carrion-eater!) gets to deal with this lying sack of shit and make a buck instead of you. in that dim light i approached poetry, trying to make sense out of why we are always trying to save such ass-holes from their own self-destruction. to discover truth? or to print a pretty picture that will reassure them of their own prescient beauty, in spite of a sad and operative case of philosophical myopia. when we should be saying, "Frankly Scarlette, i don't give a damn. your car's a gas hog and your house hasn't been painted since the Big One." [this is not about you! i think of you as a force of pure art. no doubt. i would come to your aid if required in an instant. you must be served and go on! frail soldier!] this is about life and death and the real and the wrong. finding the essence of them all in pyrrhic searching through visions and dreams and setting them down on paper and baked in porcelin buried in sand dunes and constantly pulsing electrons which no one trusts. so below i send you these tiny story/poems, tiny marriges of rock and water, sisters and bothers, trees and seaweed, whatnot and faction...for your pleasure and a how are ya? why not? why now? is it your birthday or something? pieces of taxi something about afghanistan:jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 2010
Trip 459-2010. old vet, new vet...what you whinin’ for?Wit yer terrifyin’ chemwar and yer spdrs and yer turt-slot-ls in redux? Sheesh!We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!We didn’t even had no war. They called it "police action." One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. Check it out. All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.That qualify?!So yer stupid winless "war" on terror costs us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.Desert wars are EZ.I hear tell we both killed about the same # of non-combatants–you call collaterals. Geez-sheets!What kinda word is that?!2 million each.Ours took longer, and they’re still dyin’.Count ‘em. We had 12 years o’ that shit.Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. That UDU you do. Voodoo. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on peephole too.Or you can drop a Daisy Cutter: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane and kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. In a dome of death. That’s not war!Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter.But that ain’t war....
Trip 556-2010. whippersnappers.Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the "halo" got some sticks stuck right into the skull and same for the shoulders. Sheeee-aye! When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body. So his neck won’t swivel.He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?Wife blurts up first, "Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!"Did not expect that outburst.Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. Sorry. But I say, Prettiest little girl I ever seen! What’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time. 10 seconds the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.Why you gotta be in Fresno?Everybody’s waiting.Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your income-vein-ience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet is where you came from] about that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you by flyin’ a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ danger when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?He looked at me stern and full of macho indignation at me telling him shit. Any kind of shit.Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go on. Just look in that back seat! I was not lying and they all knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and how good she wants to be as a person. She spoke:He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us...And she trailed off.I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict whore. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look like that...and dammit I wanted it to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love i’m gonna add to their chances...and not detract.So I asked him, "What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it like? They never tell us anything.""It’s fucked, he said. The people are fucked. The situation is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place!"I felt I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.I felt, if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.I asked him. You ever hear of Malalai Joya? He said no. Remember that name, I told him.Why?She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke ‘em part. She taught little girls to read in secret schools. When she was 18. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy. It has to grow up from people. She worked to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.I went on a little roll: teach girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all that they can be. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...He said yeah. I’ll look her up. He said the hotel’s name they were goin’ to. Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise TO-night...to decide. Great family. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?Oh yeah, he goes.Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.You wanna know what it’s like?For sure.OK. We got a report from a farm. The guy had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit.Yeah?So we convoy up an head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.Kill any?Yeah. Several. I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.How so?He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then in the middle of talkin’ he spits in the Captain’s face.What?!Real a-hole.I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the vocab-constab-ulary or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.What did he do?Do?! He did what he had to do?Kill the guy!?No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.Gees-says.That shuts ‘im up.I bet. Then what?We left.There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae, California, on the bay side of the freeway. Big expanse of darkness off to our left which was salty water.I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles. I didn’t know that for sure. You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. I hope you come back.Yeah, great.Then it came to me. The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?Yeah. I suppose they had to. There would have been some questions. How many insurgent? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.And it was friendly?I didn’t see that.Y’know. The genius of those two is cool. We pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel. Wow! I go. I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.[I’m going bananas inside.]But I tell the girl, "You gotta try room service and free movies and order a cokes and try pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use ‘em up!"Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too. Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, "They did it so he wouldn’t get killed.""Huh?"I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. So the Taliban would’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was survival. Your Captain only had to wipe off some spit and knock down a crappy house. He saves a family. You got the same choice. Only you won’t get spit on. You get love. You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that thing around your head for as long as it takes to never go back. His wife touched my arm. He nodded. Thanks. Peace, I said. Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby. Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...
—o—

Friday, May 7, 2010

longing

Longing is the taste of our
gregariousness
lacking.
Longing is nada.
Longing is no response
no call
no one to call.
Longing is the fullness of need at work:
the root of our need to make contact.
Longing is the proof we are human,
of a species
that recognizes our own uniqueness,
our need to be accompanied anyway.
Longing is the impetus for schools
schools of fish
herds and prides
coveys and swarms
flocks and blooms
rooms and brooms
florists
forests and prairies
aeries and oases
partnerships and villages
townships cities and states
nations homes and domes
crones and bones
loans & phones
coffee and scones
busy tones and my jones
for your moans: Us:
Longing is me without you.
Dear Friends, Poets, Cointelpros, Masters of the Universe: © 5/10 jimmy.mankind@gmail.com
>1
All the previous games are over. This is either the end or the next thing to it. The ocean is an organism and it can die. We need oxygen. It needs oxygen. Plant plankton. Life in the ocean is our life. No idolators, ideologues, or idiots need apply. Open your hearts to action.
Our petty individual absurdities are either sublime innoculations against reality or irritating inanities. So drop everything.
Study this event. Know they wish they could do it better next time. [And do it over and over again.] And yes, there is more oil down by the molten core of the planet, where it's so hot our myths tell us the Devil dwells. He, Beelzee-bubba, bathing in our desire.
So great! Soon as we fix this one mistake, let's drill for more! The Arctic anyone?
How about forming a new limited liability Arctic Oil Co [Arcoco? Has a ring to it! Let's have a naming contest! Yo! Miss Palin? Drill Baby, Inc. Maybe you could write that down and drop it off...?]
I hope everyone who reads knows realizes ...something for themselves and their loved ones.
That's all. There are three parts of GOD. The god of destruction (usually of ignorance) and called Shiva.The god of preservations (like say, Greenpeace, the Nature Conservatory) called Vishnu.The god of creation (some say Monsanto is a bad example for its weird new life forms in our crop world) called Krishna.
As we evolve we assume these duties ourselves.We have achieved so far only the first one....
>2
Take the universe, which is laughing immensely at our relentless sense of self-importance.
Here it goes: we begin to tamper seriously. Tamper, tamp, tamp...tamper.
Let’s say they use a nuke to blow it shut, down at the 5,000 foot muddy bottom (there will be blues records about this), and it blows it OPEN! Instead. whoops. Obama immediately resigns and runs off to Switzerland. This is the Danny Glover role.
[An explosion pressed agasinst some resistence will head into the solid. Air or water, in some counter-intuitive reality absorb and cushion leaving no outlet for the fury: now ain’t that a social breakthrough. Maybe it’s why women live so long.]
The bomb blows all the way down into the core--remember we're talking 7 miles deep, and as it passes its fire and brimstone through the vast reservoir of oil, which ignites of course, and then blows like a mad leviathan whale of Mythologic design...it comes up like a huge boil in less than half a minute. It raises the level of the Gulf like a dome–a fast-growing tumor on the face of the Earth, sending a shit-kicking ripple in all directions, ruining everything man ever thought about, every plan, hope/dream, from up-side the mountains protecting Mexico City out through all the islands and across the Atlantic to low-lying Africa, south through most of Venezuela Panama and Columbia--all of Central America is washed over the hill to the Pacific. Up north as far as Memphis, Atlanta, (soon to become Atlantis), and across Texas to the Red River Valley and up the Rio Grande wiping out Ciudad Juarez, the advanced waters lapping at Arizona's high plateau cattle ranches near Bisbee.
So everyone agrees Obama was the lucky one. Minutes after he leaves, Cheney declares himself president, but gets shot right away by about 16 right wing whiners who were still wearing their prizes from the Phil Gramm skinning e-vent held just days before.
The fire won't go out. Radioactive steam just keeps rising and from under the Gulf comes a huge volcano released from the molten core of the planet, sending a putrid smelling mixture of ash, steam, dioxin, gaseous pcbs, and radioactivity up into the jet stream. Oil falls like rain over Africa first, then the EU, China, and around. The air gets so fouled we cannot see the sun from anywhere except Nome..., when the hurricane season starts...augmented by the intense heat of the steaming simmering Gulf of Mexico.
And those cowboys who haven't lost all their fingers already--this gas seems to attack the fingers of the opposable thumbed--begin to write very somber songs about what the angry Gulf did to innocents like the 8 year old grrl in the red dress in the food line of Haiti's pissed.
Californians asleep at their wheels wake up about a week later--not that anybody can keep track of time anymore--to see the Richmond and Sunset torn from the continent in the granddaddy of all quakes. As days and nights run together in murky filthy beige as the carcinogenic defeats the cerulean.
The bars stay open all night due to popular demand. As the laws we liked to groan about collapse we live within our own consciousness of right and wrong from now on out.
Fools get shot quick. No wise asses allowed to power trip. No mas.
An old guy says, waving his gun. i hope there's some one Rip-uglican left out there cuz ima gonna shoot his fuckin eyes out.
No, says the young guy. Hit his knees and knock him down in front of a TV. Make 'im watch what his god hath wrot.
what god?!
his god: the god of selfishness.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

...such odd musings...

...such odd musings...
say, "arise, mejicanos! Avec solidarite, fraternite, egalite, liberte."
say, "die free! save mama!"
say, "don't tread on me! i'm too small to bail?!"

I should keep you informed:

poets need a scoop. Cochabamba? you might know already? no? well, it's rights for everything! mice, bugs, sand, soil, rocks, trees, outcasts, trolls, water (just think!) even air. the people have spoken (power to the people! all people young old past and present and as yet unborn...)
earth, mother earth, Gaia, pachamama...the unborn of the unborn of the unborn of the unborn to the nth power and to you and me and our friends relatives teams gangs states parties pets homes farms and everything we know about anything and every idea we can imagine and have forgotten and not used by busyness and the things we have kept and that which we leave behind, the trials the trails and the thrills and the failed, the freedoms found and the jailed, the church the mosque the temple and all the lost who think they're found...the bound, the downed down, the brought down clowns the beaten down brown black yellow white taking back their rights making their sound heard round their world!
This glorious cacophony.
This is the loudest cry for freedom ever not heard in the history of Us and Them as We Forever and not scared to share anymore of the things that do not matter because matter no longer matters except to material thugs who think they matter more than the insignificant immaterial matter they worship...as you'me'us'them' all are nothing but WE created hell on earth on our deaf dumb and blind paths to heaven thru death, deathness, darkness and Our (mutually regarded) ancient fears of Others.
finally: nothing is final! everything we do see think feel is starting over and lasts forever! [if Isis can last this long] as we worship life! not death. Let's deny heaven-after-death and instead bring it on down here and now, blue cow pow! where we can use it before--in the nick of time--
we forget this chance...for our nepenthes.
yeah!

On Niceness
Dear Off-the-gridders, Furry-tree-huggers, and Noble savage wannabes:
If you can make it up, you can be it!
We are on the cusp of a major re-thinking of our society and our places in the world. This letter seems to corro-berate that thought. There is a major meeting in Cochabampa, Bolivia going on. They are attempting to put that new idea, this unfailed as yet world-view (as Greenspan admitted his was) in place on paper in writing signed and vowed to by everyone in attendance. Poets should know. Poets should be on the cutting edge. We should be outcasts in fact, off-the-grid, out-lawed, shunned and beaten down, because any new idea comes from the fringes of the known and is suspenseful and greeted by xenophobia. We threaten the static quo vadis.
People laughed at every new invention. newness needs to learn to walk. at first it staggers and falls. then it gets up stronger.
Imagine! poets imagine! inventors do too, although within the boundaries of science, and regimens, and rules of scientific law.
Law is therefore half the problem.
Laws of trademark and copyright and property and property rights. we cannot attack ownership rights by attacking ownership rights so...
Today rights are being expanded in Cochabampa. Listen up!
Limitations to our empathy are backing off. Squirrels now have rights. Fish have rights. All birds. Wolves. Even the wolf at the door! Molecules have rights. Light and dark have rights. Night is equal to day! Darkness is faster--finally admitted by Thinkiers del Nuevo Edad--than the speed of light! How do we know? Because darkness is always there waiting, having arrived first...there is no end to darkness, yet it only appears to us in the light. So we think of even the universe as having limits. Ha. We just cannot see them in the darkness...which we a priori believe in ! Dud!
We do not know enough to limit any expression anywhere, not of life or word or sight or sound, nor to order silence nor to move it around. that is what the system does to us. all systems are built on hate and distrust.
Plus, any system hates it's poets first. because poets are rule-breakers. inelegant outcast freakswho upset rulers and their rule-makers, and scare the gramlinmarians. then after they die--they build statues to the dead poets. trusting they haven't left any fireballs unpublished to tear down the ruling shibboleths.
And they place them in darkness, under viaducts for the homeless trolls to stare at in wonder of how they too are not so memorialized not even by a beer and a burger to their name nor even in their name although that's not thier game. how about a Homeless Burger? Or a new fad honoring troll-wear? A faint commercial kudo for not rising up and killing us all!
i'm dropping out of politics myself. i tried and i lost. it's tearing me up. i move now instantly into philosophy, satire and the joy of curmudgeonhood. viva jimmy. and thank you all for the use of your training ground. let nobody like me anymore. no more hero worship--i crave rejection! i desire only beer bottles at my head! boos cascading down from the rafters so full of illegals waffling between work and revolution. send me hate mail! i'll know that i was heard. i down your religions, your values, your pitiful dreams, your sorrows, your lusts, your heroes...ohhh, how i loath your heroes and your cliques. your groupings, allegiances, cluster-fuckers, unities, Klans all, disgust me.
There'll be days we'll stand together, but there must be nights we sleep alone.
DO and act alone with blind faith that nothing will be done unless you do it and you will fail valiantly and love the process for your own reasons and never retire from sounding off in truth or shy away from being not sorry for trying and embracing losing. because poets know that losing shall be winning until winning matters and then it too will become losing and only the planet mama, via her Daughter Gaia will reward you for losing so valiantly and truthfully with a strong heart and a ringside seat at the Scene of the Demise.
[should anyone applaud i shall take it as a sign that i didn't say enough rightly!]
p, l, pttp,
jimmy
keep your eye on the ball for it does not know where it's rolling.
follow that.
go to the darkness.
you'll have all the light you'll need.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Angel in a Texaco Tow Truck

Angel in a Texaco Tow Truck j r hammond © 08/07

I was stuck late that night between Weed and Yreka.
My rig had broke down; I could not say why.
With the snow and the lightning things could not have looked bleaker.
"Til the Angel in the Texaco tow truck came by.
the highway was empty, hard snow was a-fallin’
so I was a-hugging that long yellow line.
When all of a sudden my rig started failing.
It all came to me as an ominous sign.

I was stuck late that night between Weed and Yreka.
My rig had broke down; I could not say why.
With the snow and the lightning things could not have looked bleaker.
"Til the Angel in the Texaco tow truck came by.
White steam was a-hissin’, my pants I was a-pissin ’.
I knew that that night I would not travel far,
and that sweet girl that I longed to be huggin’ and kissin’
was sittin’ alone in some warm country bar.

I was stuck late that night between Weed and Yreka.
My rig had broke down; I could not say why.
With the snow and the lightning things could not have looked bleaker.
"Til the Angel in the Texaco tow truck came by.
At thirty below, I was about to be frozen.
My life passed before me; I was ready to die.
I was sure that my soul God had a chosen,
when out of the darkness the Texaco tow truck came by.

I was stuck late that night between Weed and Yreka.
My rig had broke down; I could not say why.
With the snow and the lightning things could not have looked bleaker.
"Til the Angel in the Texaco tow truck came by.
Now I ain’t a braggin’, but I’m known as a rounder.
Coming or goin’ I know what to show.
But this truck-driving angel was a three hundred pounder,
a hot-blooded drinker and raring to go.
I got out of my rig in the wind and the sleet.
She got out of the tow truck with a bottle of Jack.
She said, "You come and sit a while in my truck...in the heat,
or you ain’t a-gonna ever get back!"

Well, I’uzs schtuck late that night ‘tween Weed and Yreka.
My rig broke down; I could not find out why.
With shhh-know and the lightning..., thing could not have look bleaker.
"Til the Angel in the Tess-aco tow truck came by.
Now good ol’ jack black is one of my favorites,
but I just can’t drink with a woman who reeks.
But I sure changed my mind that nite near Yreka.
She was warm, we was drunk, and she laughed like a minx.
Chorus:
(Last one...finally. Now falling down drunk.)

Wall, I wash schtuck late a night a-tween Weed and Yreka
my rig all broke down...not finout why...
Snow and lightnin’...
Ahhh...heck with it...we got married!
—all done here—
red spot t-shirt
© jimmy.mankind@gmail.com 08/06
"Haight and Fillmore. Pick up."
"1-8-7."
"8-7, check."
I was driving up Haight with just a twenty to my night;
It wasn’t late but my hand was pretty tight.
Suddenly a fresh-faced blond kid, maybe twenty-some,
held up a shaky arm and signaled me to come.
He stood too long in one place for me to tell.
(There is a ritual for catchin’ cabs, y’all.)
Suddenly he reeled back into the pole,
Leaned there uncertain, not like he would chill.
He wore a pair of jeans, the uni of the night,
and a white t-shirt that looked a bit too bright...in the flourescent blue-white light.
I raised my hands to him, in the universal, Well, what?
When at that moment he sat. He fell phump!
and slid down his back against the pole.
His grrrl friend screamed at me, "Please don’t go!"
 
She tossed her head up, down, to and fro,
Jumpin’ at my door and jerkin’ towards her beau.
While his face turned into some angelic kinda glow,
Her screams rose as if I was something slow,
but I’d pulled over, opened up the door, all set to go.
It was he who wasn’t movin’, seemed somewhat outa flow.
When she tried to lift ‘im I could see the whole
Of a tiny spot of red to the left of center
Below the patch where ciggies go.
It started out real small like that and then began to grow.
His head fell over, the wet spot spread and white went red.
I hit the mike and screamed, "I think he’s dead!"
"I mean," I said. "Mayday! This kid gone red!"
"Corner of Haight and Steiner, send the man!"
"The kid’s been shot! He barely understands."
"Don’t worry ‘bout findin’ us. Here they come!"
Two gangs, I spose, incitin’ fightin’ without bendin’.
Ran by cross the street and veered toward downtown’s ending.
We’ll need an ambulance, two shots a ‘drenalin,
This could be the bitter pill.
He’s twenty-some, looks real ill.
  Grrrlie’s screaming at me.
Her boy can’t talk.
I said, "Just hold his hand. Tell ‘im how you feel.
If he can’t hear you, I think it’s time to kneel.
They’ll be here ‘fore we could lift him up."
She turned to him–and stared–her mouth all stuck
Big red spot from clavicle to down to where he opened
She dreamed of one more chance...with any luck.
But that dream faded as the EMTs arrived.
Seconds later cops strolled ‘round to find that he was not alive.
The big red spot now filled his shirt.
His Grrrl all covered with his dryin’ stain.
Sobbin’. Lookin’ up at me like she’d been hurt.
I nodded her way. Through all her pain.
I tried to say...something any...
Way. Then the bulls walked in between. Asked, who are you?
I called it in. I called for you. So don’t play me to diss. I’m the ride he missed.
There came a squawk from my machine:
"1-8-7! You OK?"
"Yeah...," I heard me say, as I reached back to close the door. "Haight and Steiner, no ride here. 1-8-7. Free and clear."
–omtatsat–

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

in the face of murder

in the face of murder
by jimmy.mankind@gmail.com 3-23-10
i can't be funny unless someone laughs at my jokes. it upsets my sense of humor when there is someone in the room and i'm the only one laughing. or speaking. or warning. or making suggestions for reparations to the daughters of the slave gender or for re-invigorating our dead plastic soil so drenched in disappearing oil.
it's kinda like writing a note to someone and not getting one back.
poetry police have struck me down.
the answer is not here. there are gremlins in the woodwork. between the walls of wills and wishes. waving little flags of futility and fruitlessness.
[Do we poets lack the alacrity required to be the leaders of the losers? The difference is, when the Establishment loses with its anachronistic shibboleths, its worn excuses for the con-job of Greed Forever, we lose the planet. If poets lose the Upper Ten Thousand get soap. So we poets are worth saving.]
poetry police have married me against my wishes to the outcasts of the outcast mob of the outcasts.
i am the maverick of poetry which is the out-casting of writers who are the outcasts of culture.
i have no hope for established venues, methods, masters of pedigreeds, of ever rising above their training--they're too proud of their cavil to become uncivil...in the face of murder.
i have no hope for any of this. in like two days or two weeks, two months or two years, we will have passed nature's tipping point and ripped Gaia's patience out of her gut...and she will begin the great puking of the human species from her shores. Head for the high ground folks, and hope you can plant up there. and that the rain falls gently in the hot months, for you'll be living closer to the sun.
i have seen the armies of the poor and ironically they are fighting for the rich.
i have been inside the gilded meeting rooms, my head upon their walnut desks, and i have heard their evil orders flying through the veins of loathing. i have mumbled through their oaths, so secret and unopposed. venal. no deal that we'd have closed.
the deal is cast upon the steppes and down into the seas.
up-wells the cunning meth to make lost hot memories of youandme.
we'd most likely join them if we could...pretty grrrls form lines to enter into the house of maidens, so ripe for sexy offers. *
men with callouses stand over there...by the buses.
soon to be led to voluntary slaughters.
[The abattoir has surely gotten smarter.]
Now they have a choke-hold upon things we used to barter,
preferring to make of us more oil than working harder.
If your body contains six quarts of gasoline, some ash for N, P, and K, and water,
you’re worth more dead to them than what you may think you oughta. **
–economics has become religion–
–religion has become a business–
and when capital has won there will be nothing left for sale.
whatever spoils remain will be theirs only for the taking.
—o—
* Pretty is in the eye of beholders, because it’s only skin deep. Yet pretty is thoroughly embedded into the minds of its holders, those self-conscious little air-heads on cell phones.
Addictively Waiting for their beeps. Read Alwater’s Handmaiden’s Tale.
** One and ½ gallons of gas would be about 6 bucks as I breathe and write this. They would have to support you, with a steady dose of room and board, and oh yeah, health care, while you remained what Kissinger so aptly termed-out as "useless eaters." You can see they’ve reached this conclusion some time ago. That quote came while Sukarno ruled Indonesia–a bad man, evil, in fact. But one of our evils. One of our lives in a way. A keeper, because of the way he did so much that is "useful."
 
 

Monday, March 29, 2010

pieces of taxi

something about afghanistan:
jimmy.mankind@gmail.com © 2010

Trip 459-2010. old vet, new vet
...what you whinin’ for?
Your terrifyin’ chemwar and yer spdrs and yer slot-ls in redux? Sheesh!
We fought back in the day where they had mosquitos! Fer cry-eye!
We didn’t even had no war. They called it "police action." One that cost 50,000 ‘Merikin boys dead and buried. Check it out. All they names on a big black rock a half mile long in DC.
That qualify?!
So yer stupid winless "war" on terror cost us 5,000 boys [and some grrrls] dead and buried.
Desert wars are EZ.
I hear tell we both killed about the same # of non-combatants–you call collaterals. Geez-sheets!
What kinda word is that?!
2 million each.
Ours took longer, and they’re still dyin’.
Count ‘em.
Course, gotta admit yours’ll die for centuries, y’know, that DU stuff. Un-depleted you ask me. UDU. Or, you do. Voodoo. Sheesh! We used white phosphorous on peephole too.
Or you can drop a Daisy Cutter: you go an’ toss some fine spray napalm from a plane and kill ever’body ever damn thing that lives or breathes in a big circle. From six inches deep to twenty stories high. In a dome of death. That’s not war!
Don’t know the name...wanna call it a Daisy Cutter.
But that ain’t war....

Trip 56-2010. whippersnappers.
Young guy gets in my taxi at the airport with his wife and a little girl. He’s got a big black halo ‘round his head on stiff little poles attached to his shoulders. After a better look I can see the "halo" got some sticks stuck right into the skull and same for the shoulders. Sheeee-aye! When he turns to talk, which ain’t often, he has to turn his whole body. So his neck won’t swivel.
He’s got the Marine cut so I ask him. He says yeah. Get that apparatus from the Afghanis?
Wife blurts up first, "Yes, he did. IED. It killed his best friend and nearly killed him!"
Did not expect that outburst.
Shrapnel just missed my spinal cord. He explains. By a quarter inch.
I look the situation over as we pull out of the airport. Pretty hectic behind us tonite. Pretty wife to die for. I pause to check out with the mag card press it to the reader screen. Look back at the little girl about 4 hugging her dolly. Boy! I go. Sort of losing it. Sorry. But I say, Prettiest little girl I ever seen! What’s your name, angel? I fergit what she said. I flash one more glance at the wife–I swear. By this time. 10 seconds the A-hole driver behind me is honking. I flip ‘m off out the window so the young wife don’t think I’m a jerk. We head out.
Spent five and one fucking half hours waiting for planes here. If they don’t get their shit together...I dunno...tomorrow we gotta be in Fresno.
Why you gotta be in Fresno?
Everybody’s waiting.
Relax. I tells 'im. One, you’re a national hero. The airline company is heartsick about your inconvenience, and I’m as sure as hell [on this planet is where you came from] about that. They are probably sick about disappointing you. But they do not want to kill you with a plane with mechanical difficulties or some other kind o’ dangerous flight when you are about two days away from paradise. You hear me, Marine?
He looked at me stern and full of macho indignation at me telling him shit. Any kind of shit.
Nobody has a better shot at happiness than you right now, I go on. Just look in that back seat! I was not lying and they all knew it. A woman knows how good looking she is...and how good she wants to be as a person as well. She spoke:
He got hit on the road. Just driving along. We are so happy to have him back with us...
And she trailed off.
I didn’t want this to get saccharine, nor worse, theoretical. For all I knew the wife was a lazy, ego-maniacal heroin addict whore. All I’m sayin’ is she did not look like that...and dammit I wanted it to have a chance as if some dumb cabbie’s tough love is gonna add to their chances...and not detract.
So I asked him, "What’s goin’ on over there? What’s it like? They never tell us anything."
"It’s fucked, he said. The people are fucked. The situation is fucked. It’ll never work. I think we oughta nuke the entire country and bring everyone home. Nuke the whole place!"
I felt I was in the tilt position to be able to have some positive input–as a random source of some sort of coincidology. Just one American speakin’ to another.
I felt if not pressure, then the seriousness of my imagined responsibility. Under the gun so to speak.
I asked him. You ever hear of Malalai Joya? He said no. Remember that name, I told him.
Why?
She agrees with you. About gettin’ out anyway. Don’t imagine she’d go for the nuke ‘em part. She taught little girls to read in secret schools. When she was 18. She’s 25 or 6 now. She’s the youngest woman, of the few ever elected, in the Loya Jirga. She rocks, man. She wants us out. She says you cannot bring democracy. It has to grow up from people. And she would work to teach girls to read and vote and work and go to school like they never could before.
I went on a little roll: teach girls. That’s what you want, I bet. And let girls become all that they can. Let ‘em learn physics. Become doctors, scientists, architects, politicians. I can’t believe women would have got us into this mess...
He said yeah. I’ll look her up.
He said the hotel name they were goin’ Snarled a bit. I said, Paradise. You got one night of paradise. Great family. I had loved these guys at first sight. Man, I said, enjoy every breath of free air you get with these two angels. Take that hotel to heart. It’s free, huh?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Get smart, says I. It’s a holiday. Now tell me what’s it like.
You wanna know what it’s like?
For sure.
OK. We got a report from a farm. The guy had been having trouble with the Taliban. Stealing his food and shit.
Yeah?
So we convoy up an head out there. It’s good intel. We get into a fire fight, and we chase them away. So it’s over quickly.
Kill any?
Yeah. Several. I didn’t see the count. Don’t matter. We didn’t get ‘em all. They fade into the hills. So we return to the farm. The owner is an ass-hole.
How so?
He’s pissed we upset his schedule. Says his goats and cows are upset. Gotta milk ‘em and the chickens are over the place. His wife is crying. The Captain is trying to pacify this idiot. Then in the middle of talkin’ he spits in the Captain’s face.
What?!
Real a-hole.
I look back at the wife. She is nodding at me. Positive. About the vocab-constab-ulary or what? The whole interrogation? This is de-briefing taxi style. I’m into it.
What did he do?
Do?! He did what he had to do?
Kill the guy!?
No. He ordered the house cleared. Then he had a tank run over it. Back and forth a couple times.
Gees-says.
That shuts ‘im up.
I bet. Then what?
We left.
There was a bit of silence there. The little girl was looking out the window when I took a glance in the mirror. She was hugging her dolly and looking out her window at the night. At Millbrae, California, on the bay side of the freeway. Big expanse of darkness off to our left which was salty water.
I said, if you got time. You get up early. You go for a walk here cross this street. Big, long park. Goes for miles. I didn’t know that for sure. You can see the birds flyin’ in under the jets. See the jets flying in to come and get you outa here. I hope you come back.
Yeah, great.
Then it came to me. The farmer. The captain. Had they talked before?
Yeah. I suppose they had to. There would have been some questions. How many insurgent? Maybe some directions. I guess. Stuff like that.
And it was friendly?
I didn’t see that.
Y’know. The genius of those two is cool. We pulled into the driveway of a very nice-looking hotel. Wow! I go. I ask the girl if she ever stayed at a hotel before. Unt-huh, she says.
[I’m going bananas inside.]
But I tell the girl, "You gotta try room service and free movies and order a coke and try pancakes for breakfast...that’s what you do in hotels. Use everything. Use ‘em up!"
Mom was sliding over to the girl’s side to get out. Daddy was pulling an airline voucher for the ride. I’d seen those before. Heck, happened to me one time. I’d had an angel with me too.
Gettin’ them together like that, almost out of the taxi, I said to the Marine, "They did it so he wouldn’t get killed."
"Huh?"
I mean, you guys couldn’t be there all the time. You had to return to base. So the Taliban would’ve killed this farmer if you hadn’t knocked his house down. It was survival. Your Captain only had to wipe off some spit and knock down a crappy house. He saves a family.
You got the same choice. Only you won’t get spit on. You get loved.
You’re the luckiest man in the world. If I were you, I’d wear that thing around your head for as long as it takes to never go back.
His wife touched my arm.
He nodded.
Thanks.
Peace, I said.
Driving back to the airport and the short line, I almost cried like a baby.
Joya. I kept saying it. Thinkin’ how I forgot her first name in the tears...
—o—
gonna be his moon
jimmymankind © 07/07
She knew she wasn’t ever gonna be his moon.
‘cause the things he did to her were dumber than a loon.
He’d promise her the worl’,
then she’d find him
chattin’ up some other grrl.
He’d tell her he’d be goin’ down...town
and she’d see him in the mall.
(You could tell he wasn’t that enthrall’d.)
And she’d hear...he’d been seen
rubbing faces with some...ditzy human bein’,
blond...
While Jojo languored cooked up
instead of hooked up
somewhere on the softer side of
On...
You here, me...it’s the hold-on
grrrl, you, me, the good man at your side.
These bright wondrous days are for when we love.
Life–y’all–boils down to a few salient days:
the ones when we are love.
You who make me laugh.
You here, me.
The rest be chaff.
Yesterday afternoon
I was sitting/in my car/in the safeway/Sparkling lot
Listening to the snooze upon the radio.
My car’s burnin’ oil just like the nation
(tryin’ to stay ahead of China and Big Oil’s constipation.)
And I’m Thinking,
angry. romantic, and dangerously lost ! ,
of Starting up
Some sort of "Don’t Tread On Me"
to make the Boss man even more angry.
Like me:
romantic, and dangerously lost.
He be some kinda foo’! Man!
He turn my brown ass blue.
now:
She knew she wasn’t ever gonna be his moon.
Because the things he did to her were dumber than a loon.
He promise her the whirl,
then she find him in the mall
chattin’ up some other grrrl.
He tell her he be goin’ down...town
and how he got aroun’.
She hear he been seen
rubbing faces
with some ditzy free for all
Latina human bean-a.
While Jojo languored all cooked up
curled
and broke-up
like some defunct...
Concertina.
No where she’d be seen.
It was a day for the audacity of hopes
I had the newspaper open to the Sun.
Cuppa coffee on the dash–this was some kinda fun.
I was counting the dead as best I could,
Until the numbers turned to oatmeal
In my head. Or vice versa.
I dug into the billions wasted, stolen, lost...out upon the sea...under desert rocks...
...in bad peephole’s pockettes.
Burnt. Manured somewhere. Or forgotten like squirrels lose nuts.
I got all confused.
That led me to a-dreamin’ ‘bout the more manageable simple number
of wars per century, and if ours was not the worst of all the bad...
ones viewed from this late perspective,
from this point of human evo- devo- or our reso-solution.
On sun-dried killing fields where there was only one army
not at home
whose jones was blowing
up no one’s
homes Or homes unknown,
So that was not a war...exactly. (If you don’t know who you killin’.)
Like unintended murders have unintended consequences w/o intent
–these gloves fit all sizes.
When my eye caught something all weird and fluttery ‘cross the street
high up on the tarry old telephone pole–slash–dead tree:
y’all be darned if they wasn’t a couple a coupling
California Blue Jays up there high above it all,
Kali-forni-cating’ they (dumb little) brains out.
"Omigod! Omigod!" she seemed to squawk,
squashed down upon their/her polestand. "Omigawd!"
As her old man pounded, "Uhnt. Uhnt-uhnt!"
And–finally, "Uhnt...! Squawk. Caw!"
Just like any man would sound if smaller,
and with wings in feather.
One more Spring.
Oh. Joy,
I thought:
High hopes.
You here, me...it’s the hold-on,
grrrl, you, me, the good man at your side.
This bright or gray, illuminated day, when we love.
Life boils down to a few salient witnessings:
the ones when we are love.
You here, me.
The rest be chaff.
High hopes.
–omtatsat–
red spot t-shirt
© jimmy.mankind@gmail.com 08/06
"Haight and Fillmore. Pick up."
"1-8-7."
"8-7, check."
I was driving up Haight with just a twenty to my night;
It wasn’t late but my hand was pretty tight.
Suddenly a fresh-faced blond kid, maybe twenty-some,
held up a shaky arm and signaled me to come.
He stood too long in one place for me to tell.
(There is a ritual for catchin’ cabs, y’all.)
Suddenly he reeled back into the pole,
Leaned there uncertain, not like he would chill.
He wore a pair of jeans, the uni of the night,
and a white t-shirt that looked a bit too bright...in the flourescent blue-white light.
I raised my hands to him, in the universal, Well, what?
When at that moment he sat. He just went phump!
He slid down his back along the pole.
His grrrl friend screamed at me, "Please don’t go!"  
She tossed her head up, down, to and fro,
Jumpin’ at my door and jerkin’ towards her beau.
While his face turned into some angelic kinda glow,
Her screams rose as if I was something slow,
but I’d pulled over, opened up the door, all set to go.
It was he who wasn’t movin’, seemed somewhat outa flow.
When she tried to lift ‘im I could see the whole
Of a tiny spot of red to the left of center
Below the patch where ciggies go.
It started out real small like that and then began to grow.
His head fell over, the wet spot spread and white went red.
I hit the mike and screamed, "I think he’s dead!"
"I mean," I said. "Mayday! This kid gone red!"
"Corner of Haight and Steiner, send the man!"
"The kid’s been shot! He barely understands."
"Don’t worry ‘bout findin’ us. Here they come!"
Two gangs, I spose, incitin’ fightin’ without bendin’.
Ran by cross the street and veered toward downtown’s ending.
We’ll need an ambulance, two shots a ‘drenalin,
This could be the bitter pill.
He’s twenty-some, looks real ill.
Grrrlie’s screaming at me.
Her boy can’t talk.
I said, "Just hold his hand. Tell ‘im how you feel.
If he can’t hear you, I think it’s time to kneel.
They’ll be here ‘fore we could lift him up."
She turned to him–and stared–her mouth all stuck
Big red spot from clavicle to down to where he opened
She dreamed of one more chance...with any luck.
But that dream faded as the EMTs arrived.
Seconds later cops strolled ‘round to find that he was not alive.
The big red spot now filled his shirt.
His Grrrl all covered with his dryin’ stain.
Sobbin’. Lookin’ up at me like she’d been hurt.
I nodded her way. Through all her pain.
I tried to say...something any...
Way. Then the bulls walked in between. Asked, who are you?
I called it in. I called for you. So don’t play me to diss. I’m the ride he missed.
There came a squawk from my machine:
"1-8-7! You OK?"
"Yeah...," I heard me say, as I reached back to close the door. "Haight and Steiner, no ride here. 1-8-7. Free and clear."
–omtatsat–

Thursday, March 4, 2010

fry pans or hot head, cold feet

fry pans or
hot head, cold feet
(c) jimmy.mankind@gmail.com
everyone wants to win; nobody wants to work up a sweat.
everybody wants to know the ANSWER; nobody wants to read a book.
everyone wants to go to heaven; nobody wants to die.
everyone wants to be free, and yet, is repulsed by politics:
whereas, refusing to get into politics assures politics will get into you.
So. It’s not so surprising to watch the eyes glaze-over when 911 comes up.
I went to a Thanksgiving Dinner Party the other night, and the hostess comes out of the kitchen bearing a really great tray of oeurs d’oeurves.
As she sets it on the table she announces pleadingly, "Tonight let’s all promise not to talk about sex, religion, or politics. OK?"
I quickly blurted my agreement, smiling, "Yea! Sports!" And some of the looser guys cheered.
"No! Not sports either!" she cried, returning to her kitchen.
Hey. What else is there to talk about in America? Music? I’d rather just listen to it. Art? Who knows anything...? Lit? Who reads? Science? Yeah, how about chemistry? Like what’s cadmium doing in our landfills and hence, water tables?! Or what about the amount of lead in our nation’s meth supply? What is coltan for?
"BPA in baby bottles!" shouted a skinny blond I hadn’t met, yet, and whom we all wanted to take home. So we all stared...the guys wondering if, and even the girls, whatever they wonder. "I mean," she pursued her thought languorously like a wide river rolling past Natchez, "It might be a cause of autism."
"Hey!" I shouted toward the kitchen. "In Seattle they measure the air for silt levels wafting over from China’s Badain Jaran and Tengger Deserts, or whatever...want some Gobi in that souffle? Anyone? The air is yellow from nano-particulate. Worse than smoking cause it won’t leave your lungs!"
Omigod! I’m making myself sick.
"Stop it! Jimmy!" she screams from the kitchen.
"Hey, chemistry is good things brought to meth!" I went, one time too many.
"Oh. God!" our hostess uttered at the point of exasperation.
"That’s religion, dearie!" I countered.
Then she dropped some lid or pan on the floor and I backed off. In soto voce I offered up this one: the melting point of structural steel is 2900 degrees versus the combustion temp of kerosene, or jet fuel, is only 1450. Duh....and it makes one wonder how the buildings fell. Is alllllll...i'm sayin'.
I went on: "If petroleum could melt steel, the City of Pittsburgh would’ve been in Texas. And Cheney ran NORAD that day," I added. "Drop a bowling brawl fromthe roof and see if it doesn’t hit the sidewalk after the building does!"
"Shut UP!"
"Why all the secrecy?’ I wondered out loud. "They could’ve let everyone go down there and look around after the steel stopped melting. I mean we had to wait a month for it to cool, just to send it to China and India?!"
Jimmy! If you wreck my party...!
"Just because they repressed the evidence, don’t mean they didn’t do it. Ha! There was enough circumstantial evidence buried in there to hang a black man in Texas!"
Jimmy, if you wreck my party...!
If you wreck my country...!
"That does it!" She squawked.
"One question: what happened at 8:36 AM on 9-11? And Where? Anyone have the answer?"
Huh! Went someone. The buildings didn’t collapse until after 9...
So....?
Yeah?!
Two jet airliners were in the same exact spot! Guess which ones!
So what?
Huh!?
Dig it.
Yer crazy.
How could you be so fucking stupid?!
You’re a glazed donut, you sheeple!
Fuck off!
Fascist.
Go to hell!
Die, fascisti...!
Great party...!
Another grand banging from the kitchen. Something smashes. Two of the girls jump up. Then, blocking them at door, this...
"JIMMY! I want you to leave my house. Please Go!"
"Well. Happy Thanks-f-ing-giving."
"Go!"
"Well. There’s no red-skinned naive-american indigenous people here anyway...just dupes. Great, I get booted from a dupe party.
I left. Stormin'.
I went to a Chinese market. Almost all the way across town. I was so riled up. It just happened to be the only thing open. I bought all the iron skillets they had. I charged it. It cost me 128 dollars.
You bettah off.
He helped me carry them out to the car. I needed a plastic tank and or I mean a five gallon paint can. Make that a pail. He had one. No, two. OK.
The Chinese man thanked me repeatedly–I thought for what I was about to do–me, the patriot. But he was thinking he’d made money this day! Now he could return to his own home, to his chiding wife, head up. I had just verified his whole existence.
I went to a gas station. Filled up every thing I had that could carry gas, including the car. More credit. I bought a hose for syphoning. Used.
I raced back to my ex-friends’ house. They were eating dinner. Talking about anything they wanted except sex, religion, politics, shopping, sports, environmental issues, drug addiction, war (a subset of politics), and I guess, 911, [as well as the insidious perversion of woman's lib.] They were drinking and having fun. They were laughing like Mad Nazis around 1937, and I, paranoid, imagined I was one of the jokes.
I began stacking the frying pans on the sidewalk in front of the house.
5-10-15-20-30-40 pans high. [At 3" each that would be about 120 inches, so maybe only 30 high. All I know is no one noticed and my arms grew tired.] All the once-strong good ol’ US Steel from the WTC, I’m thinking, now laced throughout these iron pans, and maybe some (un)depleted uranium waste product also...it was all I could find here in this town of West Coast Thanks For Us-ers. Of all days. Maybe it went into syringes, or stainless pots, or desk chairs, eye glass hinges...bomb shells....
I filled the frying pans with the gasoline (careful not to let my fucking cigarette drop into the mix as i flipped it downwind.).
Carefully pouring, more and more easily I poured: as the lifting becomes higher, the load becomes lighter. Or me stronger, under the spell of my rising revolutionary zeal. Soon the volatile liquid filled all the pans. Up over my head. Here, a couple more!
All filled with more jet fuel, proportionately, than the Twin Towers 1 and 2, and on every floor, but not any on Building #7, remember! And if this doesn’t do it!? I squealed in my excitement...viva Zapata!
I ran up and rang the doorbell. I knocked ten times.
I yelled. I yelled, "Fire!" Someone finally came to the door. I screamed, "My head is on fire!" Actually, there is going to be a fire!
I ran down the stairs before anyone could figure out they ought to stop me.
I yelled, "LOOK! You'll see...!"
And I tossed the match about 1/5th of the way from the top, right where the jets hit the towers more or less exactly. Only in MY tower experiment the whole thing went up like Jonah’s Ladder! WHOOSH! It went.
Up over the power lines and way past the phone polling interview telecom lines that made Lynn Forester rich and famous in semi-cryptic FISA-justice the entire stack exploding in a grand sigh, sucking all the Oxygen offa da street for miles around just like a mini-Daisy Cutter bomb would.
Cough, cough, I went. I can’t breathe!
in mute resistence
to all the liars
and all the psuedo-analysts
and corrupted sycophants
and the lying fraudulent fascists of Amerika, Inc.
And in front of the glazed-eyed don’t wannabe involved non-thinker sheeples i used to call friends...oh god...what sublime aloneness i was feeling in my satori bliss moment...in...
the NEO NAZI WAR MACHINE NEW Weird DISORDER.
My frying pans held: 30-plus weak-sister precursors to steel, mere iron, just like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Strauss, were precursors to Hitler, and he, maybe more accurately, Mussolini and his cheap, Slutty g.f. Carlotta Petracci, were precursors to Wolfowitz (and his chp. S. g.f., who got him fired from the WTO), Perle, Kissinger, Friedman, Harriman, Cheney, Bushes I and II, Hannatty, Limbaugh, Baker, condi "legs" rice, the Rothschilds, shoops! don't kill me! Kill us all!
Stoically ironically steely-eyed, standing beside my own burning man the burning Bush of un-melted metal lightness and brightness in the Tower of Truth that I’d built--just slapped together--in front of one and all. I yelled out to the populace, "Wake up! Wake up, Viet-nam! Iron does not melt under flaming jet fuel! Come witness the TRUTH!"
A curtain moved ever so slightly in a window across the street. One eye added to the witness pool. A phone picked up faster than if i was ms genovese screaming for her life.
30 frying pans strong. Holding in mute infernal evidence another inconvenient truth we got to deal with....
Mute evidence unmoved and unshaken by this paltry heat of 1450 degrees just like science would have it.
On Thanksgiving Day, 2008. Seven years is never too late...
While the oil-based plastic coating of the communication lines above dripped all over my antique Plymough Valiant with a goup I’d never wash off even if I could.
"How did you know?" someone asked. (I think it was the skinny blond.)
I read a lot, I said. Staring at the fire. And I began to believe the fire would have been even hotter where they really go, on the stove. Over flaming natural gas, sometimes all day...never melting in mute service to knowledge. Steel pots simmering stews for hours around the world. I thought of: Mere iron gratings of the millions of stoves over natural gas, and jet engines made of steel, steel branding irons; conversely, perversely raw steel being melted by chemical actions in the Bessemer process. All the fires that went out too soon (in skyscrapers) and somehow didn’t let us know that steel don’t burn, or melt, by any plasticky burning of mere carbon...all the losses we have incurred for not knowing that...not to mention the loss of spunk. The demise of American Don't Tread on ME! vs. the crying shame of sheepleness.
What a dumb waste.
Of our trust...and our senses.
"C’mon, baby. Let’s waltz," I said to my Valiant. "Our work here is done."
Someone grabbed my arm.
Wait a sec. I’ll get my purse, she said.
My name’s Sheri, BTW....
And the fire on the sidewalk slowly died...for another one risin’ in the heart.
"Where are we going?" she asked in admirable amiable wondrous-ness.
And I said, "Wherever you want. Thankyouverymuch."
–omtatsat–ok?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

jimmy.mankind: gulag master

From jimmy to all gulag masters:
Everything is impermanent. impertinent, and either older or raw.
Nothing has intrinsic or inherent reality. love doesn't abother with such distinctions.
All emotions are painful (including love.) all feelings are variations of pain (unless you like it.)
Enlightenment is beyond concept or understanding by the intellect.
Too bad some intelligent lad had to say that. I just about had this life figured out.

These are the Four Seals as taught by the Prince Siddhartha after he became the Buddha - or the Awakened.
Of course, this all depends on what your definition of "IS" is.
We think we know what we know. We have suspicions about what we don't know. We don't know what we need to know. And we now know what we didn't know we know now. Which is:
Do not drink any more aspartame, Donald.

solid dare is he.

No bacon, no bullets, no butter, no beer.
No backup, no bail-out, no bitchin', no bench.
just: jimmymankind.blogspot.com

The Best Of My Life

these days are love
these days are blue
This is when we feel deeply: what's wrong with that?
this is where the march of life has taken us.
this is when we know we know.
this is where know-how pitches in
for sure.
this is when love surrounds us
in its purest form
this is where each word and hug and howyafeelin' ?
really means it.
this is whew! the next hill looms!
and that last one! whew-ee!
this is truly Now!
i like to think with substance all stored up for our use,
i like to think with the track records we have set,
and prior displays of courage
to remind us
how strong and competent we are...
Today is the first day for the best of my life.
i'm working free of me.

Written by:
jimmy.mankind@ gmail.com
(c) 02/10

Sunday, February 28, 2010

238

238
© 2/10 by jimmy.mankind@gmail.com
...if your poem is going to be so short, the substance of your subject has to be:
Pithy Denser.
Like those 2 hundred and thirty-8 electrons packed into your molecular rhythm ‘round
that potent nuclei baked into your yellow cake,
You must pack your works and verks and verbs into a sphere–the most doable shape for constancy and efficacy of size and the nature of things–you can pack it with your hands. And it will spin forever, unlike a tortilla. That’s why Suns are round and all their itty-bitty pets, the planets, are balls they left strewn around the floor of 3-dimensional space so-to-speak.
[remembeRrrr, THERE ARE NO SQUARE PLANETS. YOU THE WRITER IS ALL(YAH)WAYS GOD ALLAHTIMEBUDDHA POTENT TIGHT N HOT.]
Packed even more tightly, under performance pressure, is your Nobel Peace Prize nitro-glycerine think paint–non-Gaian–over that the Nobel Dyno-mites, ageless, silvery, shiney dust mites for the Millenium.
I’d be eclectic and dyslectic if I didn’t say, Pick a City.
For mad max effect. Flip the switch and drop it in the water like a toaster, boaster.
Gods do not play around the donut, they drop it in the hole. Oh, yes they do, but only by incident. Gods are incident prone, ms Living Proof.
Da Russians never wood-ah bombed Chicago/Gary/Hammond In Diana (ohhhhh...) They wood-ah aimed at Lago Michicano, cue fade, the fog ensued for comport, e.z...wood-ah spared US (Morgan) Steel before he sold it off to China, for future exploitations. Remember full employment was their cause. Even Orange Krush-shiv–benevolent violent megalo- altruistic sonic splatterer believed in verk. Imagined gud ol’ Russian boys on ev’ry corner (a hunnert years later) passing out piroshkis to the warped survivors. Wood we ev had rock n roll or something like a dirge in short skirts in short stints? Wood dat’ev poisoned Who Dat Down Der? Say...do you have any gauze? I’m peelin’ in da South Side. But a little rain washes away the stench of bodies...
...is dat succinct enuff for sumpin’, muffin?
238 answers to your question:
whereas we cudda blown da top offa der Mt. Fuji, but we dint want ta ruin der future postcards.
Quiant and outmoded as that
j oy o f coo king
seems
now
in
Nagasaki
pop.
[Tight, see? Like a metaphoric tourniquet around their neck.]
But who said "short and sweet’ was better?
Not on our livesies!
You can fasten that to other sheeple, Little Boy!
We don’t care what we breathe! and here comes China.
droneon.
–jimmy.
[when it’s short it’s gotta be cogent pithy nitty gritty somequick lil ditty the right size n speed for any City.]
Then it’s over.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Pubic option the excuse for no option?

The "option" we need and should be talking about is the "private" option.
The whole, the base should be the public option as in what we really want.
The public option is still only a vague term for a weak cop-out on the universal single payer thang. We have to reverse the context: universal heath care shall include a PRIVATE option for those who are sure they want to pay through the nose to some avaricious health INSURANCE corp for the right to be turned down when they are sick. that will always be their option. let birds of a feather go flock themselves together. the rest of us will have our medicene as we like it: with no denial between us and our doctors (who we can put through medical school for free from now on...if we will simply quit starting wars all over the place.)
To get started:
We could just lower the age qualification for medicare to fetus and be done with it like every other major, not minor, nation of the world. Costa Rica has better health care than we do...Canada seems to, and, for sure, France does, and Sweden, Finland, UK, Germany...but not all are alike. Japan has universal HC. Talk about Africa, China, India, nothing.
But hey! We COULD give every american the same health care as our soldiers IF we pulled them out of our current misadventures. It's the old story of swords vs. syringes, soldiers vs. surgeons.
One thing more: if some believe that private insurance is better, that choice could remain an option.
So why don't we create universal public health care with a private option?
(c) j.mankind 2/2-10 and thanks)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Thursday 2-18-10

WHY I DID NOT WRITE YOU FOR SO LONG...
[the enemy is complacence. you are a sleep-walking materialist. if you have a warm bed in your place by the Bay you are happy. should your streets run red with blood--and there will be blood--you stay home and play music. to you, music is just another blanket.]
i dropped out. i took acid. i got caught in a terrible snow storm. I moved to Haiti and opened a frozen yogurt stand. jimmy's chimis. it took off. i met some woman on the internet from santa barbara on green singles while lonely there last summer.
she was shocked i had sold my car.
[i was shocked that today Obiwan--you are our only hope--just gave Tibet to China. What do we get? Haiti? Well, let's do a better job: and set it free. Yesterday, Obiwan gave 8 billion more to nuclear energy (what the world needs now.)]
i even told her it was only an experiment. i tried to explain in that in SF, like in other big cities, NEW York, Chicago, people did not have cars as much. because there would be no parking wherever you might go. and if you had a spot you would think twice before leaving it. (i've belonged to Car Share for two years and haven't even used it yet.)
she said she needed her car. she would use it to clear her mind when she got, i dunno, uptight. she would just jump in her car and go for a ride sometimes, way out into the desert and sit on a rock or have beer in some satanist cult bar or coffee shop out at some cat-killer junction Manson family-worshipping shrine...i dunno. and come home refreshed.
i was appalled. this on Green Singles. Car Therapy. really. get a gerbil. a love bird. a monkey.
one puppy can change a life.
what ever happened to: take a walk?!
what do you do when gas hits $4.69 a gallon?
i tried to explain. she was negative. i said bye. see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya...
now i get you. [clean coal.]
you send me all this great stuff. it's a good step. everyone has to pass through the space where you are. you go grrrl! we need spiritual cleansing. the new age oneness. sure.
And i agree with the idea of it. we should adopt haiti. But first we need regulations. day time stop signs--when people are present. like the 15 mph in front of schools.
we don't get to take out the kids whenever we want.
but blinking yellows at night at Sahara Desert crossroads. c'mon. how much conditioning can a driver take? Citizen.
what you offer is warm and fuzzy, BUT, it is not formed into a mission. and probably never will be. There are laws you will need to change: Zoning. you want to grow nutria? LOL you go, grrrl!
right now we got to get out of our cars. we need to put electric turbines on every roof. vertical cylinders, not propellers. they won't let us. PG&E wants to control our every shiver.
Southern (electric) Comp convinced Obama that hope we can believe in includes nuclear energy.
There is resistance. but it's a fact: Mush does the same thing. hot mush under ground can warm, but not heat yer home. Instead we get neo-nazi socialized nuclear owned by rich guys in dark suits with Haitian girls waiting at home. with loan guarantees by us who already guarantee Iraq, as if we need that mess on our table. France sends it's nukulage waste to the North Sea toilette so Norway can eat it via their herring. ohhhhh...
your spiritual group has to pick a material world FIGHT! the time for prayerful conversation is over. let's socialize/super size Wall St. all one bank like Broner's soapbox. A-1 Bank for real instead of bia(bancos in action)/CIA interlocking directorates. how about non-corporate government banks like government airports or steets or post offices or police stations or clinics in Haiti. where you just walk in and nobody gets to know yer name unless you got a bullet hole.
[what is the Blue Cross/Blue Shield/Anthem/Health Net/HCA presence in Haiti at this time?]
zero.
who shows up when you need help? isn't a loan a kind of help?! Help!
how to fight? information. sorry information upsets you. it is not MY information. i simply find it. and dispense it. and i will fictionalize it until it becomes common knowledge. and i will project it onto my stories and poems until it becomes a living mythology. the mythology of the real reality. because there are powerful people lined up against our children and grandchildren and the planet...who ridicule the concept of Gaia. Imagne their organisms!
if saving the planet is too complex, then people. there are people out there whose lives are rotting. save them. but remember...polar bears eat seals adn seal eat herring too just like neo-Vikings...with their prettydaughtersmarried to rich golfers and their bankers.
Holistic means everything. eclectic. Rape and love and art and childbirth and war and peace and murder and hope. obesityand hunger. all of it comes to us side by side. secrets from the public sector. [what up wit dat?] not to talk about any of it is to blinder oneself against all of it. this is the world. "we are the world" the song says. so we have to decide. we are deciduous. but we have to know first...what to cut.
end.
more:
or we'll drop our leaves in summer and try to grow 'em in winter.
i am so tired of being defensive and cautious. i have tried hard to find the courage to speak the truth to power and i'm not going to back down now. so if you can't take it, let me go. nag not. i'm not waiting for drags to let go of their selves anymore. i, too, need a push. i make a very weak Quixote. Dorothy is stronger than I am. i am the Tinman.
so we're just another g'bye and g'luck.
the bad guys will not succumb to wimps. this evolution will be bloody. wee will bathe in it, and piss inthe tub.
do you know, e.g., that our government actually flew Duvalier's haute couture wife out of Haiti to Paris? we backed both papa doc and baby doc Duvalier for twenty years. our marines set the stage for their coming by organizing the nat'l guard, for the 20 years prior to Papa Doc, which became the "ton ton macoute". it's all our fault, because our parents did not notice. it was too dirty and it made them uncomfortable. The Duvaliers were the saddamhussein's of el Caribe. the other half of an island was run by Porfirio Diaz. i remember him. he rode a horse. there was a booze named White Horse. they were friends of ours--the saying, "but he's our dictator." was born here...
and now Haiti is the canary in the coal mine for the whole world. this tiny neighbor: if we cannot save freedom and democracy in Haiti, we can not do it any place.
and that means Malalai Joya is right when she says she'd rather fight for her own democracy than anything we can give to her. no one can impose da-mock-racy. it don't stick like oil does.
so thanks for inspiring me with your head in the sand. you look good that way, speaking through your butt...and hiding from the news. i'm saying it loud and saying it proud.
best i can. the Upper Ten Thousand own all the land and half the peephole.
eat the rich.
end.
more.
rant on:
how about an asset tax? let's replace the noisome nuisance that is the income tax [only the poor pay it anyway] with an asset tax. one that balances the budget year by year. the worse the budget, the more we take from them.
whoops, is this it?
who's calling?!
here they come!
jimmy out
da back....