fifty words for war  

[there must be]

50 words for snow…!

And only one for love.

Oh well, how can anyone force them selves to love these neo-american grrrls?

With their –innoculated—

Sense of entitlement.

easy as pie. Cold as ice.

In the mod-waste wonder-lust of story.

Media content

Formats not considered

They’re all stories.

Things we did fresh

Have always done and will do.

In our ecstasy of songbirds chirping at the dawn

High school cronies

Eaves-dropping stories.

Jackals lookin' for werk.

What my sister did stories.

In the boat.

The villages we killed stories.

We’re not allowed to TELL stories, 
of hell stories.

Fat thigh stories
getting too high stories

Ring yer bell stories

Playing records

Making records

Breaking records

Living dying…

Killing.

Killing by gas by cluster by metal by heat by futures

Detracted, distracted

Exploited, Polluted

Wanna hear a story?

About us?

About now?

About how? We are now?

Can you let me tell you a story?

Wait!  Don’t go.

Let me wash that invisible 
blood off your hands.

Because youdon’tknow stories…

Because you listen—sometimes—

but you don’t FEEL stories.
   you do not feel

when you gonna pay

   for that story?

You told.  From your oblivion. 
Yours.

It’s still your story/you get

To decide…

But you’re too busy

Fuckin’ yer brains out…
in the back of the taxi.

So we gotta

OCCUPY!
Your brain...

Statistics don’t lie, people do.
jimmy.mankind@gmail.com

The upper 300 families of the world own more assets, property, and cash reserves than the lower 3 billion...
Would you fight in a war to maintain this and what would you die for? American interests? Who would you kill? Who would you die for?
Someone who has capitalized and monetized all the people of the world, the world itself, it’s rivers shorelines forests prairies deserts mountains ice caps and oceans and all the life upon it, or the people who live humbly?

Madame DuFarge is knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting…still.

I say hang them all, take the assets, and give them to the poorest people to distribute. Build free lifelong educational systems, free clinics, free med schools, free clean water supplies, wind and solar powered electrical systems, recycling sewage systems as if we are on a rocket ship shooting through space for eternity, which we are…and start at the bottom—one begins at the worst—we begin in Haiti, then Africa.
The wealth torn from the rich like taking an egg from a yegg, and reassembled as an omelet of commonwealth plans. Then it shall be allowed to bubble up through the masses, curing whatever material aid can cure, of its own accord. Reducing their stressful lives of worry. The rich will receive their just deserts…we’ll supply them with the minimum requirements for a useful life…so they may live stress-free also.
We won’t need rich folk nor jargon barons to give us jobs: we are our own destination.
We’ll be the stronger ones, because we are not fighting for ourselves.
The mother of all class wars is coming, but it’s not going to be as you might suspect, not right/left, nor rich/poor. But it will be the unmitigated attack by the Undead Past upon the Unborn Future.
J. Gould’s awful quote [“I do not fear labor at all. I have enough money to pay half of the poor to kill the other half.”] will die in the forest of empathy we shall establish with nurture and care.
I love colors, but I miss them for long whiles. I see the world—during those periods in black and white. Occasionally, comes a bluebird flying through my reverie, she’ll land on my shoulder trying to sing. And,
Coughing in my ear, It’s a hard job, she’ll sing. But it sure would be easier if we were the dictators.
Gee, I thought the wee were.
Whatever happened to the dictatorship of the people?
Whatever happened to the meek?
We’d be nicer than the rich.
But then again, the article said: American self-esteem runs rampant! College students’ inflated egos signal future relationship troubles. More narcissistic and self-centered than their predator prodecessors….
What?!
More self-centered than the “Greatest Generation?”
No way!
Way!
It only shows so, because we need more now. Because we were promised more now—and we’re getting less.
And we’re beginning to see even that drifting away on some melting ice flow. Our predator predecessors were supposed to have designed a magic and universal future of good luck for everyone! It should be in effect by now. They told us. No. They insisted…, that they could construct a perfectly fair and balanced world by way of pure selfishness and greed…and now they tell us by way of a miserably, blatantly obvious self-serving excuse that they will create goodness after doing the following evils for just a little while longer: war, followed by austerity (for the poor and soon to be poor), starvation in foreign realms, real politik imperialism, privatized water, air and education…real means royal in Spanish.
Like bank robbers in the movies deciding to do just one more job, you just know this one ain’t gonna work.
So instead we’ve moved in with our parents again (which ain’t so bad in a evolved sort of inter-generational mental health kinda sense.
Even tho’…we’ve been taught:
We are supposed to have too much and we can see that no one else will ever have enough if they attempt to even have this much and they hate us for our freedoms… so we have to continue to steal from them and kill their leaders, and put new leaders loyal to our royals over this Other and kill their babies by our powerful ignorance and neglect and the pain we sell them along the way to centuries of childhood leukemia caused by radioactive un-depleted uranium…and it’s so depressing to be a part of this…so…
We eat because we are depressed.
We diet because we eat and drink and shop to dress up because we are depressed
We shop until, in our obesity, POP.
We pop out our credit cards
—our eyes bigger than both our stomachs and our backs—
as we pop out of our clothes.


A zillion choices of pills:
We got more pills to choose from than ¾ of the planet has choices of food.
They eat the same things every day.
We fuck because we are depressed.
Hate yourself?
Got sex?
We make love to escape depression so much we turn love into sex and sex into depression.
We find out sex cannot carry this load of psychosis
and guilty nepenthes
and transcend us from our relentless quotidian doses of banality.
To be hot
Is to be objectified: oh, what satisfaction.
Well at least they love me for my body!
Who am I?
Ohhhh…fuck me fuck me fuck me….
Make it go awaaay…
People on TV show us how to be important, objectified of course, and therefore “real.”
They wave their hands and jump about. They wiggle and giggle and jiggle and talk too much that they become hard to watch.
Too cute, too nervy. Too perky, too pesty, too irritating.
Like sound pollution.
Impossible to like, our TV heros keep getting invited back. And they
make money!
With their frenetic tics and puerile shouting.
Imagine them at home: the squawking at the dinner table.
Extreme gesturing.
Their kids. Pitching in.
The pace blistering.
[DAD, I’m leaving NOW! I’m walking out. I’m so gone from here.
“My Son,” the moms go, “Why have you forsaken me?”
Gimme the car DAD! Or I’ll go up to my room and take X!
Oh son, he breaths a sighthe size of a mosquito’s sigh.
You’ll take ex-stasi anyway.
Dad, I want it now!
Okaaaay, says mom. “Just make it stop!”]
What’s wrong with the subtle self-esteem of a walking date? Biking?
Meet me at the shake shop.
Walking and fucking don’t mix.
Big shot chicks don’t walk to get fucked. They need 1000 thread count sheets and short skirts in big cars and potent pills that make them go all Krakatoa and shit.
Teen-age preggers makes for how many movies a year and this year’s presidential race dropout?
Themovies reflect us, deflect us, neglect our spirits.
They shoot for the dick.
And hit the commode.
[Except for the Indies.]
Shit jokes are making a comeback.
Ever since “The Aristocraps.”
Shit-throwing is a cretin-us joke.
Quality stirs up the shit in your brain, not on the screen.
We need to see ourselves more clearly, but we are afraid to look.
So we abuse each other—self loathing being the root cause of abuse is still no cause for abuse.
In the mirror darkness preceeds light.
It’s always there waiting.
So we look at movies…at speed we cannot do, at violence we aren’t allowed (unless we make ourselves vulnerable to reciprocation and come back home
too scared to cross the street) and at shit we do not dare to throw....
Don’t tread on me.
Of course our movies show us as crude, rude, violent, pent up, fed up, scary
Hostile/gynecological.
America is a depressing priapic.
In seach of a fellow or female sheeple, dawg!
A peep-hole.
Made hole. In that sense united.
A steeple, made blighted, by self-helping be-nighted
Pseudo-macho racists…and greedy older than old school old fascists.
Even from here I can smell their crusty, old Glory Hole:
GAWD!

What a place for a poet.

jimmy.mankind@gmail.com
© 10-2011

Undoing 500 years of perfidy should take a few weeks.

It took 500 years--basically since the discovery of new world gold by the Spanish, for capitalism to develop. Where a group of people, with money or gold, could band together without any liability, for the sole purpose of making more money. Some say the first corporation was the British East India Company and/or the Dutch East India Company. [Monarchs had always done this for themselves as they realized the need for money, to maintain their power over their subjects and to defend their Aristocracy from other monarchs. But that was a sovereign or national dictatorship, not at all democratic.]
Every human structure has the same problems of order and rules of order.
Most of them replicate each other as communism copied the corporate structure: CEO/dictator, Supreme Soviet or Board of Directors, shareholders/party members, and customers/people. The big difference--which concerns us--is nin the amount of freedom of the people to dictate to their leaders and define their own freedom.
What i saw yesterday was evidence of that eternal strife, or stress. We all know how easily that can be polluted by a few power-hungry, over-eager, well-intentioned, ego-centric, Type A, Straight A, Alpha male, a-holes, who will devise methods to shut up the peephole.
We need to call a meeting of ideas. And of re-recognition of the principle of non-manifesto, if that is the way we go. I think that won't last long because everyone asks, "What's it about?" And this ain't Seinfeld--it's not about nothin'. They want concrete answers not philosophical theories. But i am still unsure on this...would some causes defy logic, or alienate many special interests?
Yet, can't we say some of major big ticket items like NO more war--blaming a whole nation of men, women and children for the acknowledged actions of a handful of terrorists, I'd rather surrender and let our melange of pandillistas pick them off one by one in Chicago and Cleveland. I always welcomed the Russians but they never came: as a kid i offered up the idea of letting them try it for a while instead of dropping the big one in Lake Michigan and making us all radioactive. They'd just just have to wait a thousand years before they could come over and take all our jobs and use our steel factories for the same things we had wanted them for.
They would have had to marry bossy American girls (by now strangely deformed) who all wanted their own cars. And a hose in the suburbs...house. Now we have a new/old movement. It cannot be the same ol' same ol', because we all know that the system is the problem. So we cannot use the same exact menus and ingredients of the system to change the system.
We can't match 'em in raising money, for example. Or by hiring liar politicians who blow dry better than we do.
We have to trash it..trash it gently. One way is to make a new consensus--a consent--that is more fun. I would like the new world order to reject order, and orders, in general. Let's try laissez faire democracy for example. If we decide to put a lifespan on corporations and to burden them with our own responsibilities, like Not being able to BUY one another or merge (marry) in multiple marriages or to eat another corpo-buddy like they are so wont and meat to do. Just like invention rejects the outmoded. We could call it the new world, or part-world, playground. If anyone doesn't object too much to certain rules...we could keep some, say, about not taking over the swings by the big kids. Uhnt-uh. And if we could keep the idea that everyone carry water and chopping enough wood or solar or wind turbines to keep us warm all winter. Self-respect is not always present in everyone. Somewill leach, others will party liike Pan.
Yet we have to be Pan-humanity. So we might look to nature to see how long this will take. WE might even call it a New World Ecology for Humanity. We are a species without a home without a constant format for living--we're ADAPTABLE...when things don't go our way, we can learn how to change them.
AND we can never quit. They are gong to cull us anyway...no matter what we do. There really is no choice on this matter. In order not to want to quit we can arrange to be having more FUN. That's why i suggest the Concensus of Fun! We need to like each other better. Love each other as we learn to know each other. Trust in the common wealth...and the natural replication of human needs and wants all over the planet.
Square one tells us we need to love Gaia first and last and always...because She makes our existence possible. There can be no vacillation on this one. Any alteration of Gaia must demand a rational and scientific Proof of the impossiblity of damage to her sanctity. Reparations are not possible when Gaia is harmed, so the smallest despoilation must be prohibited.
We could make Life our religion. Something we could bring down to Earth and use for a change.
Here then is the beginning--inevitable it would appear--of an abhorent but necessary and conspiratorial (we shall have a plan after the fact anyway) manifesto. It is manifestly obvious that One, we are going to have fun doing this--the most fun of anyone, so everyone will want to be a part of it. And Two, we shall be open to change, evolution, inno-vention, and improvements (that are checked in with GAIA first), and that our overall, over-riding function is to save the planet for the habitat of all future generations, the preservation of species, and the sanctity of all the ecosystems, on air water or land.
The Occupation is our new life system, way, style, TAO, religion, politik, body work, thought, love, knowledge. it is us planning to stay.
To quit is to die off or be culled.

jimmy's list

Jimmy’s list: a pool you might have missed under the radar to dive into on lost nights:
0. Margaret: this is already under-rated. Maybe the most under-rated of all time. Considering the quality and depth of the acting. Prepare for emotions. I never wanted it to end. A new standard of movie honesty has been revealed...and no one knows. Perfect for the jimmy list...tha's wha' i'm talkin' about.
0.1
1. 11:14
2. Bandit Queen,
3. Betty Blue,
4. Baraca,
5. Babette’s Feast,
5a. The Boxer,
6. Brothers.
7. Babel, ....all these B-movies on the A-list.
7a. Bullets over Broadway Best of Woody: he's not in it. A first?
8. Y Tu Madre Tambien, Cuaron rises to Innuratu level here.
9. Amores Perros, great dog fights.  just kidding too many dogs were killed...just kidding.  only people were killed.
10. 21 Grams,
11. Talk To Her. [or anything by almodovar, Including women on the verge of a nervous breakdown.]
12. Salaam Bombay: boy survives being lost in Bombay far from home. Could you?
13. Little Big Man,          from novel by Thomas Berger
14. Dances with Wolves  try to fond the 4 hour versions with dramatic love scenes once deleted and more. Upset winner improbablew savior of studio and actor/director, of 3500 buffalo, 500 extras and summer /winter in Dakato for real life movie...one horse would have blown me away.
15. Neighbors By T. Blake director. Get 1981 movie with Belushi and Ackroyd. althouygh i liked the Seth roen one (2014) with Byrne that sassy Aussie chick comedienne.
16. Next 3 from Ireland:
My left foot.
The Connections,
In America.
6. Bonfire of the Vanities [only if you read the novel first.]
7. The Girl in the Cafe  7.a. Sincerity and talking truth to power alters plans of World Bank.
8.   Grand Central,
8a. Grand Canyon,
8b. Laurel Canyon.
9a. The Green Wall
9b. Fried Green Tomatoes,
9c. The Scent of Green Papaya
10. Kite Runner
11. The Stoning of Soraya M.
12. Colma, the Musical.
13. Mystic River [pretty pop big movie for this list…anyway, good.]
14. Hobson’s Choice
15. Sideways [saw this one 6 times, can’t wait for more…]
16. Junebug. Amy Adams debut.
17. Gallipoli, Rabbit Proof Fence, Lantana.  Al Aussies. Add in one more i forgot about a transvestite in the desert.
18. Two Women, Malena, Woman in Berlin.  and and end to war, please!
19. red rock west
20. A Night Around the World, best taxi movie ever.  hilarious.
21. Seven Samarai, classic Japanese study on violence.
21a. Magnificent Seven, same as above in wild west US.
21b. The Unforgiven, Eastwood gets real.
22. Noises Off: hilarious British fart, i mean farce.
23. Celebrity, Woody writes a movie to make out with Elizabeth Shue, whom i love more than he ever could.
24. Realm of the Senses, oh c'mon, take it ALL OFF!
25.  A Simple Plan and a not simple end.
25a. Blood Simple
26. Pieces of April: best thanksgiving movie.
27. Monster Ball halle makes love to me in the form of Billy bob thornton.
28. Sweet Hereafter: daring and deep and meaningful story by an indigenous person writer, damn i can't remember.  oh yeah, Russel Banks.  oh, him.  this is serious folks.
29. Home for the Holidays
30. Dancer in the Dark [Bjork]
31. The Harder They Fall [jimmy cliff]
32. TSOTSI, which means thief in Zulu.
33. Zulu, which proves the Zulu did not have rifles.
34. Maria Full of Grace
35. Sin Nombre, kill me too/also/again.
36. The Road
37. a. Red, b. White, c. Blue
38. Before Sunrise/After Sunset
39. Gilbert Grape
40. The Graduate/Easy Rider: iconic generation formations.
41. Amalie: dances with doors.
42. Toulouse Latrec, becasue short people don't got no...
43. Camille Claudel (About Rodin’s sculptress g.f.) who is so much better than that fraud...i do not trust that man.  no no don't let him.....ohhhh.....
44. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, or 45.
45. [Almodovar…anything by this voice of Modern Spain, like Talk to Her.]
46. Medicene for Melancholy
47. Ray, by Jamie Fox
48. Edith, by Marion Cotillard
49. City of God, City of Hope, City of mutha phuck da mutha phuck for da mutha phucka mutha phucks you.
50. Zabriskie Point, Grosse Point, Point Blank, the Point After, Turning Point.  you tell me, what's the point?
51. Thelma and Louise, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Spring Breakers!
52. Network
53. Mildred Pierce
54. The Postman Always Rings Twice: any version.
55. Bugsy Malone, Little Man Tate, the Accused--all Jodie all the time,  perfectly.
56. Anniversary Party, Wedding Party.  So far apart, how could i juxtapose these filmatic miracles.
57. Mystic Café
58. Natural Born Killers--try not to find Juliette Lewis in this one.
59. Body of Lies, Decaprio and Crowe in a mid-east thriller.
60. Mondo Cane/Mondo Patzo, older glories al la Baraca.  See Baraca, where the baby chickies come rolling down the slide into the ckicken soup life they will live.  it's so BEEE ute i full.
61. Mississippi Masala: so can a black man marry a gorgeous Indian girl in MS.ippi, why? When California is only a couple days' honeymoon away, and Oakland, Watts, and Compton.  she be queen and yo uand i can bleed all over this so sad, maybe i pull it.
62. The Gayle from Kansas/Brian’s Song, for Bears' fans and the art of running.
63. I need more secret sleepers, dark horse entries, and ringers. OK:
64. The Reader,      all 4 are German and you VELL enjoy der fraulein.
65. Lives of Others,
66. A Woman in Berlin,
67. Run Lola Run.
68. Winter’s Bones, another young actress shows off. in her first one.
69. A Year of Living Dangerously
70. Natural Born Killers or anything with Juliette Lewis
71. Loose Change/911 Research/WTC7—free from google
More to come…
72. Eroica. The story of Beethoven's 3rd. Amazingy simple poetic and beautiful.
73. The Sessions, so Hellen hunt haed to go full frontal to make this list.  you will cry ar how stupid yo have been about sex until after this.
74. Sicario: best shoot 'em up so far i ever saw.  so real you will shiver.  no mre guns, please
75. Something About Mary: just to recover from the above thank you.
76. did i say SIDEWAYS? my pick for funniest movie ever, of course. if you are a femme you get Paul Giamatti, and i get Virginaia Madsen, whom i am planning on marrying in 2017, after i get rich and famous for my gorgeous hairless head.
77. mealancholia. whoops melon cholic,ca.
78. Margaret: got to mention this twice since you won't finish it unless you die there. so do not die.
79. Take This Waltz: if you like to hear Sarah Silverman cry out for love and watch Michelle Williams find some? or if you only want them to take a nude shower with you for 15 minutes or until you get used to seeing them both naked washing off all the men they've known.
80. i think that might be 100. but i won't stop i can't stop and i'm gonna ad in one more by michelle williams, who i'm gonna marry right after i dump Virginia madsen and juliette lewis who scares me anyway.
and non one ever went to see Meeks Cutoff which is as close to her as you will ever get.

i hate to end on a boring sleepy but true life really interesting and uneventful and beautifully somewhat terrifying film like Blair Witch Project which was also a terrifying movie.  i'm not listing The Blair Itch, sorry, i hated Blair's Bitch, plus The Lair Nitch projector that kept breaking down...and also the couple who were gonna drown the whole friggin' movie and DID...which i forgot. On purpose.  Because i wanted them to....die.  i'm so sorry....and i also love chicken soup.  chicken anything really.  and a toothpick.  get to know one before you judge me.
later gator.
really
i'm gone
out here
so
yeah
me
i
.

Female torture victims movin' on up!

From:
-Sophie Scholl, The White Rose Society

"There is an active resistance forming in the United States. It’s young, it’s unemployed, it’s creative and it has potential.

Recently I sat down with two of the young adults who organized and led the Egyptian resistance movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The media narrative said it took 18 days, when in fact, they had been organizing for over five years.

According to these young men, the moment they knew they had won was the day Mubarak’s government shut off the Internet and blocked cellphone communications. When people could no longer get updates about what was happening in Tahrir Square, they had to come out of their homes and see for themselves, tripling the size of the protests in one fell swoop.

The global plutocracy is terrified of dissent. In some places, the war on dissent is being fought with bullets. In others, the war on dissent targets social media and mobile communications, while repressing and deceiving communities of struggle. It’s already happening."

Friends:
Chile, Spain and Greece lead the way. Iceland votes not to pay back the banks. WE should have said the same thing. What the first 3 have in common is they have had dictators in recent familial memory.
Mom and Dad remember, so the kids can still go out at night after throwing bricks all day.
In Chile, the richest man is now President. Pinera. His approval rating is 26%. Obama is at 39%.
Google Camila Vallejo only if you want to see the face of Chilean Student resistance, or if you understand Spanish. Dilma Roussef was a guerrilla marxist living in the jungles of Brazil under the Generals' Junta. She is now president. She is the second of the first two female presidents in Latin American history to also have been tortured in prison. The other female torture victim/president is Michelle Bachelet of Chile. Christina Fernandez is leading the election for Argentina's president. She is the incumbent. She was not tortured, and was President Kirchner's wife until he died in office.
[You should see Oliver Stone's documentary on---mostly--Hugo Chavez. Esp. the scene where Geo. W. informs Sra Fernandez, that if she has an economic problem she should try a war. that's the way i did it, he said. You should see the look on her face. It is reminiscent of Merkel's response to his weird shoulder massage at the G-8.]
Women marxists abound...wherever there was fascism, the reaction to IMF austerities is strongest. We should all read the Open Veins of Latin America before our own are opened.
McGraw-Hill owns Standard and Poor--a clear case of slavery since it has been illegal to own a person in America since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Mr. McGraw is a campaign mgr. for Romney.
This is how Mussolini did it.

pieces of taxi

Pieces of Taxi

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—
I drive away thinking. I wanna express the truth as I see it. My vision.
If I only try to please, what am i? A decorator? So leave it alone. The world’s already pretty enough. The demand is simply too great.
So we have to make ourselves smaller.
—o—

And one more, measuring 900 wds+ just for fun:
4.

The Greatest Couple (in the universe)
[Pieces of taxi # 76]

In the foggy cool of what otherwise would have been a hot summer’s night any place else (south of Nome) a snapping and pouting couple got in the taxi on a street of fine Italian restaurants.
Man first, he slides in from the right rear across the back seat to sit upright firmly pouting arms crossed over his heart like a wall behind me.
His mate, his mistress, maybe his wife, a partner on this mite’s team in this two-person team sport they’re playing, did the most graceful knee-swing entry and stretched for the door. I half wished I’d run around to close for her. But I prefer to watch women move so I did not help. In stead, I appreciated.
We are dancing on the open covers of our gaping tombs. Nevertheless, moments of beauty….
“You are stupid and should not have the right to any opinion,” her hubbie said.
An ominous void of silence followed, leaving me no other recourse but to say, “Could you sit on the other side, sir?”
“Beg yer pardon!”
“Men to the right rear, man.”
“What?!” he yelps.
“Well, are you a robber? You could kill me easily from there!”
He’s not that kind of a robber,” she uttered calmly.
“Good then. Having cleared that up, where to, folks?”
After a few more dullish moments filled with the ostentatiousness of their self-indulgent expressionism of pouting, she smiled into the rear view, and asked, “why don’t you ask Mr. Know-it-all?”
OK. Yes.
Well?
I mumbled as I punched the meter.
They gave me their addresses—leaving me to decide the matter.
So we cruised off to make the choice as we rolled along in silence.
A silence which she soon broke by saying, “You are too stupid and should not have the right to any opinion.”
“Ha!” he went, unswqyed by her retort, identical to his starter phrase.
“YOU are too stupid and should not have the right to an opinion!’ he blurted out warmly.
“You should not…!”
“You should not….”
“You…”
Suddenly, I had heard enough!
Forced to interject simply for my peace of mind—I felt some risk of becoming collateral damage—I recommended, “Why not say, WE are stupid…et cetera…?”
There ensued a long silence.
During which I went, “Huh?!”
“We used to,” she said. “We used to say, ‘We are too stupid to have an opinion. But he changed it one day…one fine male chauvinist day!”
She spat the letters, c-h-o-w v-i-n-ist day.
Huhm, he pursed his lips in a way I found decidedly unattractive and pompous. Then began stroking his chin professorily. “I remember it differently. I remember having my degrees disparaged as, and I quote, ‘unrealistic, over-priced ivory-tower opinionationisms…’”
What!
“…yes, and brainwashing. I believe yo said that also.”
Why! You! You know you were talking about the limitations of the female brain! Math and science…in my face. How?! I aced physics!”
“Yes, you who strike the first blow, Madame Curie! Can dish it out, but…”
“Dish it? Sexist! You degraded my mind! My choices. That’s what started it.”
“You attacked.”
“I defended…!”
“You…!
“You!”
“WAIT!” I screamed. “Stop it!”
They crossed their arms over their hearts and got their pouty little kid thing going again.
“Let’s go get some ice cream,” I suggested.
Vanilla. He said.
Chocolate. Stupid.
OK. Wait! I shouted. I know where that comes from: gimme something hot and cold and black and white, demanded the petulant princess to her cook. Or it’s gonna be off with your lousy head!
The next day, he brings for desert, a first, a great big hot chocolate sundae. And so proved vanilla and chocolate were made for each other. Dig?
And it don’t matter who started it.
See?
Whenever a cabbie gets up a dead end, he stops, turns around, and goes back to where he came from. To where he began to get lost.
We reset. Restore.
Start over.
Or we escape a place.
Drive down hill, to the river. Follow the river to the sea. Across the sea is either France or China. So you’re never really lost. The big sky up above, land under your feet. Or tires.
So remain seated and listen up!
You guys taught me something: we’re all too stupid to have the right to an opinion! We should seek out facts.
“He said ‘first’ first!” she butted in.
“You started it off.”
“well, you said the stupid part.”
“I remember saying, ‘opinion.’”
“I’m just as sure you said…”
“That’s your opinion!”
OK! I shouted at the windshield.
Guys! Dudes!
We’re almost there.
It’s a team game. Let me believe yo can do it again. Create something else together…besides, say, rancor.
You’re not really stupid, y’know.

So. Tell him.
Tell her!
They then mumbled something inaudible to their own selves.
10 bucks folks! …and skip the tip.
Here’s 20. You keep it.
20?! Why did you…
…I was already around the back about to open the door to the side walk. “Hey,” I went. “Did you slide across to save her the inconvenience? I mean, to wipe off the seat of any untoward taxi juices for her lovely dress.”
“I do like to kinda swipe off the seat with my pants,” he said. “Y’know, just in case.”
“He always does that,” she smiled.
Save that opinion, I thought, smiling at them, jimmy-jamming my 100% tip into my filthy cabbie pants.

–omtatsat–

system is the problem

…SYSTEM IS THE PROBLEM.
We cudda had it all.
But we could never get enuff.
We coated ourselves w/ the pelts of torture.
The warmer we made our bodies the colder we became inside.
We are like doctors in the death camps:
Saving the babies only for them to be executed in their own coal mine.
(We have run out of songbirds long ago.)
You...
cannot work for change within the system when the…

[repeat it until you gt it...]

a little old lady

a little old lady (died today) © jimmy.mankind@gmail.com


All more than replenished by her unfailing love of family.
And their love for her.
A little old lady died today.
But not exactly.
She was killed.
She was somebody’s mother.
She was somebody’s grandmother.
But she was also a poet who wrote funny, pretty stories for her children
and her grandchildren
she wrote stories and songs for babies to sleep by
she wrote lullabies
she knitted and she sewed
so many gifts of time and energy
All replenished by her unfailing love of family
And their love for her.
A little old lady died today.
But not exactly.
She was killed.
She was somebody’s mother.
She was somebody’s grandmother.
In her later years she was a writer for grown-ups.
She wrote about life’s foibles with an inborn sense of humor.
She wrote a cookbook: she sold it through various shops in the bazaars
Throughout Baghdad.
She studied Rumi although she was brought up Sunni and
Rumi was from Persia which is now called Iran,
which is Shiite.
She studied all the religions over the years.

Covertly, of course.
She didn’t want her husband, who was Sunni, to get the wrong impression.
She decided that all religions were good and
All were flawed.
On that subject she kept her own council. As a woman would in Islam.
She was writing a novel when she was killed.
She was somebody’s mother.
She was somebody’s grandmother.
She was walking home
Her arms dragged down
By the weight of vegetables and bread and soap
From the marketplace.
She had sold four books that day:
2 of children’s songs. what she called poems.
1 cookbook.
1 storybook for children.
This little old lady died today
well, not exactly.
She was murdered.
The smell of gasoline. Some other similar chemical...
[A child running–a girl from the abstract shape of her charcoal stick statuette–
arms outstretched to greet her grannie.
Diminutives,
in a village of
miniatures.
Charcoals on a canvas of sand...
from 10,000 feet.
From 2 miles up one sees landscapes of sandy curves studded w’ squares, rectangles, lines, shadows, disappeared into a large zone stirred by dust devils.
Not god’s werk. D.O.D. for sure, not GOD.
Here. No god.

Would. See.
A grannie’s carbon remnant posed as a black replica bent over in the act of setting down her grocery bags...the little girl running arms outstretched still. now. forever. the dust. beginning to swirl on the breeze...filling in for the rising heat...striking the fragile charcoal figures...spoofing their lives as in modern epiphanies they crumble.
To dust. They. Return.]
As the Gringo * flyboys call it in, they reminisce: (We used to strafe their free range chickens for fun. Creating feasts for the farmers. Every day a holiday! New weird toys make new weird games to play. Like Gog, Magog, DOD, our god, their god, all the gods there ever were.)
The US DOD pays 5,000 for a man,
2,500 for a woman
500 for grannie or a child.
..if any soldier and his translator has the temerity to lift the knocker to the door of a charcoal house in a half-mile wide circle of death.
These numbers are not publicized.
Control information; you control this poison dust.
To dust we shall return: some sooner than others, some over and over again, creating more of it.
Here, fate is our call. We apply it randomly for fairness sake, and balance.
Of course. In case they’re out when we call, we make the land radioactive...dust blows.
The soldiers say. But that’s another story.
A little old lady died today.
White heat came over her like a hot flash.
She’d felt plenty of those welling up from within in her life. What with having six children...in
Her lovely, innocent life.
This flash came from without.
It took off her robes and her skin as quickly as it blinded, muted, and deafened her.

It gratefully benumbed her
As it sucked the oxygen from around her from above around and below, yes, down below her feet even six inches into the soil and removing O2 and H and all the roots ryizomes fungi dueling dancing so long and peacefully with their enemy bacteria worms, detritus, the stalks barks trunks leaves and out of her lungs and out of the water molecules of her body as if she was turning into a dried sprig of rosemary or sage in her own oven
in her own kitchen
in her own home
in her own village.
She became a stick figure: black and crisp and much smaller than she was.
They’d conjure later that this was not her, must be the body of a child.
When they found her. It could not be her.
But it was her. Known...
Because of the melted gold that formed a droplet in the middle of her char-coaled hand.
No child would carry gold.
For this mistake the Americans paid her children and her grandchildren (those left alive for their fate of living in a village distant from this week’s carnage) $2,500.00
[Something for her husband who died three days later of no discernable military-medical cause.]
The American who brought the money seemed sincerely sad and chastened.
[Her children and her grandchildren said he never told them America was sorry.]
He said it was an accident. That she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
[A place she’d been in almost every day at any time she pleased for over sixty years. A place Americans had been for seven years. Time enough to have earned degrees, married, started families, if only the schools hadn’t been targeted. Seven years of the worst nightmare imaginable, the worst seven years of any being who ever lived in Mesopotamia and worse than that for any living soul that wound up burned maimed bereft alone amid the degradation, squalor, pain of war, the nada caked upon idiocy and hubris and the useless, dangerous indifference.]
The American officer seemed to say, “Here, take this as a token of our sorrow, our pity, our empire, our pride, our bad aim. It’s our place to pay.”
Which meant to them–her children and her grandchildren–something smarmy in their culture,

“It’s the price we pay.”
which in American ears, would sound like accidentally tripping someone in a soccer game.
Or spilling coffee on the homework. Or sewing too close to the fireplace or the dog hit by a grenade, shrieking home, your youngest run over by a truck, shrieking in the street, your fruit trees knocked down by tanks in search of places to park.
So sad to free your land.
She might have been number the millionth, as that total’s never in the news.
[Since they refuse to tell us, no one really knows.]

A little old lady died today.
Well, not exactly. She was murdered. She was somebody’s mother. She was somebody’s grandmother. She was a wife and she was also a poet. She wrote funny, poignant stories and pretty poems for her children and her grandchildren.
She wrote lullabies. She hugged babies to sleep as she sang to them.
She knitted and she sewed:
So many gifts of time and energy.

A little old lady died today
Well, not exactly.
She was murdered coming home from market.
Along with a grand-daughter, a husband, nearly seventy, some neighborhood kids whose names she would forget in that moment, and a daughter...she wondered about her daughter...
And if she was murdered too. In that same flash, or some other, and if she would see any of them in Heaven.
She didn’t have time to wonder if Heaven really existed...her eyes locked on her purely innocent angel’s eyes as she running arms out-stretched laughing, to greet her grannie...
last thing she saw was the light shining in the eyes of the bright adoring face of her
baby grand-daugh…then she died instantly. So she died happy.
...but knowing, in that split second, Hell existed.
Right here. Where she had been.
–omtatsat–

give and shake

give and shake

end of then, start of now
poems are the shards of thought
Broke upon
The rocks of reason
Shattered–scatter-blown–by the roiling
Ephemera of life and
Illusion’s duty.
Splattered against each other in too rapid confusion
for logic
(which only moves at the speed of electrons while poetry unlocks the heart
To feel
at...the...speed...of...light.)
Whereas:
Poems dream-on
Despite the herds
And tides and
Give and shake,
In spite of hunger
And desire and
Logic.
For logic aforehand builds the bridges
That outlast us all.
Yet poems dream-on;
They want and keep Truth.
That is their job.
But my poem is to want to please
Your golden dream of skin and yin and
Face
And soar with You in honor and in
Grace
–way past the time of bridges–
To put the kibosh on logic so we can scream while we dance
–laugh while we make love–
And not worry about babies and bosses or
High school indoctrinations
That mandate entry exams to
Careers as races for payments for policies
Of...death insurance...and
now...pretty soon,



(way before the bridges die)
You’re gonna have to ask and sigh,
why
me?
And i’ll have to tell You it’s because
You gave me your number,
(we all have numbers now)
permission, as if granted long ago, by proxy,
To open lines of heart,
Already pulsing,
through the ever-present Universal Current,
(I was ambitiously speaking
Of Prana to impress
And get close to you)
when you smiled
(Embellishing the altar
At which I worshipped
In my graceless hard-up
state of thinly won
courtesy and appropriateness)
And then...
Dear goddess of love and beauty
you showed the kindness
(My religion is kindness,
Said the Dalai Lama)
that You feel for all humankind:
You
Thanked
Me
(In rare ironic reality)
for simply coming by.
As I,
Worshiping your existence, could scarely breathe
To sigh...
Your name...for...
You were meant to be appreciated, treated,
Protected, admired, and praised.
Viewed and feted/
Sated...for
You are the source of civilization,
The heart and soul and meaning of restraint,
The guarantor of nature’s order


(by the need to appeal to your favor for the continuance of man),
And the source authoress of all comfort, joy, and good.
And you are child so future.
And you are Woman, so therefore tied to pasts
Passed on
By Logic’s Rule of Women
(chained to history’s graces and disgraces.)
And you are Reason: a Reason of the Heart
(for the order your sweet smiles and tender kindnesses invoke
saves me from a darkness that tries to fill me from within
chasing ‘round my brain like mute children crying “Help!”
filling me with
guilty
needy
angst
and enough self-doubt for: fear.)
So, Dear.Displaced.Angel, Sweet Refugee From Heaven,
Dear Bridge between carnal craving and spiritual security
(Do they not have the same destination in mind?)
I do not want to win or get over even if I’m alone
and losing as I gain.
(Why do we get confused?),
Yet I am sweat (let’s face it).
You are Beauty (turn around).
But you are not a decoration:
Decorations fall from style.
And You are not a flower:
Flowers fade.
You are what flowers turn to
when they seek the light
(as I may turn to you,
sweet sunshine of my night.)
And You, bright miracle, thanked me for coming by!
You are like a poem:
a poem that wants to light the world with
...truth....
A poem that’s job it is...is to prove love.
So: start of now: end of then,
Future everlasting,
to all Women,
All men.
–omtatsat–

Born again jealousies: jimmy.mankind@gmail.com 1-1-11
We gotta wonder if the born agains aren’t cheering these days. The old end of the world meter must be closing in on midnight.
Birds are dropping out of the sky all over the world. Fish are bubbling up dead in Arcandsaw (although someone could have had a meth kit accident.)
Haiti is sick and homeless and starving again—what keeps the uber alles rich alive in that country? Huh.
The usual starvation and disease is everywhere. More wars in places no one can even get to…and for no reason. Suicides are up. Business is down. Education is too expensive…although some say it was never worth that much anyway—I know mine wasn’t worth the time. You cannot cram knowledge into your brain—one has to live it in.
But what for if the planet is gonna burn—or whatever way they predict it?
I bet the Southern Convention is jealous. Hey! He’s taking the birds up first! [Although it is nice to know he’s not so interested in their bodies—we don’t need those good ol’ homie asses up in Heaven. In Heaven everyone should have a nice ass or a virtual one that others can fantasize on.]
If he takes me I’m going in as a dancer, female, slinky with a nice face and no brain…I just wanna have fun! There are no hangovers in Heaven.
I gotta wonder tho’ why he’s taken fish…eeewwww! I’ve kinda wondered how people can eat fish for so long and to see God actually calling ‘em up…well, I guess He loves all his creatures. But black birds!
What’s He doing with that scene? There are so many pretty ones out there. Oh, I get it…black birds singing in the dead of night!!!
Clever.
Well, gotta go now, and wash up. It’s a lotta hard work being a dancer…but maybe in heaven you can just eat off the fat……