Summit Verse 2013

Float Around 2012

"Sleeping with Women" by Kenneth Koch

Maybe my favorite poem ever is by this guy: Kenneth Koch. The actor Hienrich James turned me onto this magnum opus of literature and for that I am grateful. Read for yourself...

Sleeping With Women

Caruso: a voice.
Naples: sleeping with women.
Women: sleeping in the dark.
Voices: a music.
Pompeii: a ruin.
Pompeii: sleeping with women.
Men sleeping with women, women sleeping with women, sheep sleeping
with women, everything sleeping with women.
The guard: asking you for a light.
Women: asleep.
Yourself: asleep.
Everything south of Naples: asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: as in the poems of Pascoli.
Sleeping with women: as in the rain, as in the snow.
Sleeping with women: by starlight, as if we were angels, sleeping on the train,
On the starry foam, asleep and sleeping with them — sleeping with women.
Mediterranean: a voice.
Mediterranean: a sea. Asleep and sleeping.
Streetcar in Oslo, sleeping with women, Toonerville Trolley
In Stockholm asleep and sleeping with them, in Skansen
Alone, alone with women,
The rain sleeping with women, the brain of the dog-eyed genius
Alone, sleeping with women, all he has wanted,
The dog-eyed fearless man.
Sleeping with them: as in The Perils of Pauline
Asleep with them: as in Tosca
Sleeping with women and causing all that trouble
As in Roumania, as in Yugoslavia
Asleep and sleeping with them
Anti-Semitic, and sleeping with women,
Pro-canary, Rashomon, Shakespeare, tonight, sleeping with women
A big guy sleeping with women
A black seacoast's sleeve, asleep with them
And sleeping with women, and sleeping with them
The Greek islands sleeping with women
The muddy sky, asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women, as in a scholarly design
Sleeping with women, as if green polarity were a line
Into the sea, sleeping with women
As if wolverines, in a street line, as if sheep harbors
Could come alive from sleeping with women, wolverines
Greek islands sleeping with women, Nassos, Naxos, Kos,
Asleep with women, Mykonos, miotis,
And myositis, sleeping with women, blue-eyed
Red-eyed, green-eyed, yellow reputed, white-eyed women
Asleep and sleeping with them, blue, sleeping with women
As in love, as at sea, the rabbi, asleep and sleeping with them
As if that could be, the stones, the restaurant, asleep and sleeping with them,
Sleeping with women, as if they were knee
Arm and thigh asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women.
And the iris peg of the sea
Sleeping with women
And the diet pill of the tree
Sleeping with women
And the apology the goon the candlelight
The groan: asking you for the night, sleeping with women
Asleep and sleeping with them, the green tree
The iris, the swan: the building with its mouth open
Asleep with women, awake with man,
The sunlight, asleep and sleeping with them, the moving gong
The abacus, the crab, asleep and sleeping with them
And moving, and the moving van, in London, asleep with women
And intentions, inventions for sleeping with them
Lands sleeping with women, ants sleeping with women, Italo-Greek or
Anglo-French orchestras
Asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with them,
The foam and the sleet, asleep and sleeping with them,
The schoolboy's poem, the crippled leg
Asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women
Sleeping with women, as if you were a purist
Asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: there is no known form for the future
Of this undreamed-of view: sleeping with a chorus
Of highly tuned women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Bees, sleeping with women
And tourists, sleeping with them
Soap, sleeping with women; beds, sleeping with women
The universe: a choice
The headline: a voice, sleeping with women
At dawn, sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: a choice, as of a mule
As of an island, asleep or sleeping with them, as of a Russia,
As of an island, as of a drum: a choice of views: asleep and sleeping with
them, as of high noon, as of a choice, as of variety, as of the sunlight, red
student, asleep and sleeping with them,
As with an orchid, as with an oriole, at school, sleeping with women, and you
are the one
The one sleeping with women, in Mexico, sleeping with women
The ghost land, the vectors, sleeping with women
The motel man, the viaduct, the sun
The universe: a question
The moat: a cathexis
What have we done? On Rhodes, man
On Samos, dog
Sleeping with women
In the rain and in the sun
The dog has a red eye, it is November
Asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women
This June: a boy
October: sleeping with women
The motto: a sign; the bridge: a definition.
To the goat: destroy; to the rain: be a settee.
O rain of joy: sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Volcano, Naples, Caruso, asleep and sleeping, asleep and sleeping with them
The window, the windrow, the hedgerow, irretrievable blue,
Sleeping with women, the haymow, asleep and sleeping with them, the canal
Asleep and sleeping with them, the eagle's feather, the dock's weather, and the
glue:
Sleeping with you; asleep and sleeping with you: sleeping with women.
Sleeping with women, charming aspirin, as in the rain, as in the snow,
Asleep and sleeping with you: as if the crossbow, as of the moonlight
Sleeping with women: as if the tractate, as if d'Annunzio
Asleep and sleeping with you, asleep with women
Asleep and sleeping with you, asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with
you, sleeping with women
As if the sun, as of Venice and the Middle Ages' "true
Renaissance had just barely walked by the yucca
Forest" asleep and sleeping with you
In China, on parade, sleeping with women
And in the sun, asleep and sleeping with you, sleeping with women,
Asleep with women, the docks, the alley, and the prude
Sleeping with women, asleep with them.
The dune god: sleeping with women
The dove: asleep and sleeping with them
Dials sleeping with women; cybernetic tiles asleep and sleeping with them
Naples: sleeping with women; the short of breath
Asleep and sleeping with you, sleeping with women
As if I were you — moon idealism
Sleeping with women, pieces of stageboard, sleeping with women
The silent bus ride, sleeping with you.
The chore: sleeping with women
The force of a disaster: sleeping with you
The organ grinder's daughter: asleep with bitumen, sunshine, sleeping with
women,
Sleeping with women: in Greece, in China, in Italy, sleeping with blue
Red green orange and white women, sleeping with two
Three four and five women, sleeping on the outside
And on the inside of women, a violin, like a vista, women, sleeping with
women
In the month of May, in June, in July
Sleeping with women, "I watched my life go by" sleeping with women
A door of pine, a stormfilled valentine asleep and sleeping with them
"This Sunday heart of mine" profoundly dormoozed with them
They running and laughing, asleep and sleeping with them
"This idle heart of mine" insanely "shlamoozed" asleep and sleeping with them,
They running in laughter
To the nearest time, oh doors of eternity
Oh young women's doors of my own time! sleeping with women
Asleep and sleeping with them, all Naples asleep and sleeping with them,
Venice sleeping with women, Burgos sleeping with women, Lausanne sleeping
with women, hail depth-divers
Sleeping with women, and there is the bonfire of Crete
Catching divorce in its fingers, purple sleeping with women
And the red lights of dawn, have you ever seen them, green ports sleeping with
women, acrobats and pawns,
You had not known it ere I told it you asleep with women
The Via Appia Antica asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with them
All beautiful objects, each ugly object, the intelligent world,
The arena of the spirits, the dietetic whisky, the storms
Sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them,
Sleeping with women. And the churches in Antigua, sleeping with women
The stone: a vow
The Nereid: a promise — to sleep with women
The cold — a convention: sleeping with women
The carriage: sleeping with women
The time: sometimes
The certainty: now
The soapbox: sleeping with women
The time and again nubile and time, sleeping with women, and the time now
Asleep and sleeping with them, asleep and asleep, sleeping with women, sleep
and sleeping with them, sleeping with women.

My Favorite Things No.6 2008

My Favorite Things No.7 2008

55 Exciting Captions

1. The World Waits

2. Aliens Are Listening

3. Ready for Take-Off

4. The Pilot Dreams

5. Good-Bye Earth

6. Destination: The Stars

7. Ship Off Course

8. Silence from Earth

9. The Mystery Below

10. Who Goes There?

11. The Stowaway

12. Readying the Robot

13. Fear On Board

14. Terror Strikes

15. Trapped

16. Two in Danger

17. Danger Ahead

18. A New Peril

19. No Escape

20. Last Chance

21. The Metal Menace

22. Shock Landing

23. Victim of the Crash

24. Opening the Way

25. Robot Research

26. The Strange Planet

27. The Chariot

28. Robot Reporting

29. Alarming News

30. Urgent Warning

31. The Ground Trembles

32. The Deadly Sun

33. Safe from the Sun

34. The Robinson's Report

35. Penny's Pets

36. Where is Penny?

37. The Plants of Peril

38. The Terrible Sight

39. The Plants' Prey

40. Lost in Darkness

41. The Mystery Ship

42. Running for Help

43. The Search

44. In the Lost City

45. The Stranger Helps

46. The Terrible Cold

47. What Was That?

48. One-Eyed Terror

49. The Giant Threatens

50. The Awesome Menace

51. Readying an Attack

52. The Flying Warrior

53. The Battle Begins

54. In Death's Grip

55. Facing the Future

Denver No.6 (Robert Burns Statue) 2000

Took a long bike-ride through some of Denver and ran across this monument in a park somewhere.

Serial Composition No.2 (O.I.T.W.T.T.O.E.P.) 2001

A Little Science (The Gain Medium...) 2012

The gain medium material controlled purity concentration shape amplifies process stimulated emission state plasma absorbs pump electrons ("excited") quantum particles interact absorbing emitting photons spontaneous stimulated direction passing number particles excited exceeds particles lower-energy population inversion achieved stimulated emission absorption amplified optical amplifier optical amplifier resonant optical cavity generated stimulated emission signal wavelength phase polarization characteristic coherence uniform polarization monochromaticity established optical cavity design resonator misnomer open resonators literal cavity employed microwave frequencies resonator mirrors coherent beam photon repeatedly emitted aperture diffraction absorption (amplification) medium resonator losses recirculating exponentially stimulated emission event atom excited ground reducing medium increasing power unity saturated continuous wave balance pump power saturation equilibrium value equilibrium operating point sufficient overcome resonator losses minimum threshold.

The gain medium amplify photons regardless spatial mode resonator substantial amplification output free space homogenous medium waveguides approximated minimum divergence diameter multimode transverse modes functions unstable resonators fractal collimated wavefronts planar normal propagation divergence diffraction transverse mode inversely diameter required diffraction theory generated common kilometers semiconductor typically exits crystal divergence divergent transformed similarly collimated originates diode spatial mode property coherence replicated standard discarding appreciated spotlight mechanism producing radiation stimulated emission energy extracted transition atom molecule quantum phenomenon discovered derived relationship coefficient spontaneous emission coefficient absorption stimulated emission electron atomic operation exotic device explained mechanics.

Deadbeat Club

Last monday I went with some friends to the Way Out Club for Brett Underwood's Day of the Deadbeats annual event where St. Louis writers read poetry, prose and lyrics by many of the well known beat luminaries and associated writers. I happened to have a camera there, so I took some pictures of some of the readers.

For those of you not on myspace, here's Mr. Underwood's post publicizing this year's event...

Friday, October 16, 2009

Day of the Dead Beats 2009 Category: Writing and Poetry 7 p.m., Monday, November 2nd at The Way Out Club 2525 S Jefferson Ave Saint Louis, Missouri We have an enormous line-up this year. There are 17 of us presenting the message of the Beats. It will be a challenge to get everybody up to fit into three hours, but we will do it. We'll need to keep each reading under ten minutes. I am excited about this year, because we have a solid core of powerful performers that have graced the stage in the past: K. Curtis Lyle, Michael Castro, Ann Haubrich, Bob Putnam, Phil Gounis, Chris King, Ken Brown. Stefene Russell returns to us this year and is part of a sizable group of women that will present their selections, including Haubrich, Russell, Erin Wiles, Lauren Keefer and Mary Fisher (coming all the way from Salt Lake City!). Also returning are a powerful contingent from the Get Born Readings scene: Joseph Sulier, Brock Walker, Mathieu Paul, Ken "the jokes are in there, Kids" Brown and Wiles. Joining us for the first time are Sean Arnold, Lauren Keefer, Fisher and Typewriter Tim Jordan. We'll be missing a couple folks this year due to life and death and time constraints, etc... I know that there are many who have performed in the past that I am not including here, but have to mention that I will always miss those that joined us since I've been at the helm of the event and brought it to the stage: Hunter Brumfield (R.I.P), Ben Hanna, Bob Wilcox, Agnes Wilcox, Joe Wetteroth, Mariah Richardson, Greg Hazleton, Kevin McCameron and Cynthia Sutton. There will be many highlights this year, but perhaps the most theatrical of the event will be that of Tim Jordan in his persona BodyBag Man while channeling William S. Burroughs. Yep. AND, this just in: Bob Putnam is going to read from the works of the recently departed Jim Carroll. Bob brought Carroll to St. Louis twice back in the day. It seems fitting. I will pick up Herbert Huncke and leave Brion Gysin to the spirit of the dreamachine. What's that? Yes, James Ottolini has built a dreamachine and it will be strobing on stage or in a corner, adding to the experience. You can read more about this stroboscopic gizmo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine After all of that, we'll have the musical stylings of the St. Louisans of Humdrum http://www.myspace.com/humdrumsound and Jason and the Beast http://www.myspace.com/jasonandthebeast You might want to cancel any Tuesday morning activities! Here is the lineup in no particular order: Phil Gounis---Lawrence Ferlinghetti Brock Walker---Gary Snyder??/Peter Orlovsky??? Bob Putnam---Jim Carroll Ken Brown---Charles Bukowski Sean Arnold---D.A. Levy Mathieu Paul---Hubert Selby, Jr. Chris King---Kenneth Rexroth Ann Haubrich---Jack Kerouac Tim Jordan---William S. Burroughs K. Curtis Lyle---Bob Kaufman Stefene Russell---Allen Ginsberg Erin Wiles---Ruth Weiss Mary Fisher--Richard Brautigan Lauren Keefer---Leroi Jones Michael Castro---Gregory Corso Joseph Sulier---Kennetch Patchen and Brett Underwood (that's me!)---reading Herbert Huncke

You Look Like Someone Who Could Use a Little More Dorothy Parker In Their Life

"A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika."

"Scratch a lover, and find a foe."

"Brevity is the soul of lingerie."

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."

"I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it."

"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."

"The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires."

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."

"They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm."

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

Of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Parker said: 
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

When asked to use the word horticulture during a game of Can-You-Give-Me-A-Sentence, Parker replied: 
"You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think."

Three you may have heard, but didn't know were hers:

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy"

"Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses."

"Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone."

A frequent misattribution, but telling anyhow:
"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

And a little verse...

"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under the host."

"If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think, "How lucky are the dead.""

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania."

"Whose love is given over-well
Will look on Helen's face in Hell;
While they whose love is thin and wise
May view John Knox in Paradise."

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)"

"Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live."

Two Belford Clips

Kevin Belford is one talented dude.
I really like these.

See this, Kevin?
I'm putting your pictures on the refrigerator door!

"In The Sewers Of My Veins"
Poem by Ece Ayhan.
Music by Fred Friction / Three Fried Men.
Video by Kevin Belford
Produced by Poetry Scores, St Louis, Mo.




" I Didn't Run Away And Join The Circus"
Poem by Chris King
Music by Tom Hall
Video by Kevin Belford
Produced by Poetry Scores, St Louis, Mo.

Bitch

Bitch.

Poem

if & when
you pour the rain down
& my eyes are open wide...
summer is over
the coffee is hot
it's still opening
over the highway
lookin' like a day on fire.
there's too much
world to wander
to sit so still
& to fade so pale..
when it isn't even over
it isn't even close...
it's still opening
over the highway
lookin' like a day on fire.
there's no water around here
the line & the color both disappear here.


Now don't go getting the idea I'm into poetry.
I'm not.
I think poetry is stupid.
Maybe not as stupid as musical theater,
but certainly something approaching that vicinity.

But lately,
I find I'm noticing certain written works that have me rethinking my opinion on the matter,
and this is one of those.
Written by my friend, Rebecca Ryan,
whose lyrics, voice and adept songmaking I've admired for some time now,
I received this in an email just the other day.
It came without title or explanation,
so I might have to confess that some of its appeal for me is the mystery of it.
(Seemingly) random occurrences rule!
I am a total serendipity addict,
and though I know that's not quite what this is,
it could be something approaching that vicinity.

Poem

Found this in The New Yorker once...

Poem

I don't know who wrote this, but it wasn't me.
I don't write no poetry.

"Nailed Seraphim" by K. Curtis Lyle(2008)

So, the Poetry Scores Art Invitational went really well on Friday night. The whole thing came off without a hitch, it seemed. The show was actually a lot better than I expected and I had all kindsa fun yakkin' with old friends and making a few new ones. I may have been a little mouthier and less dignified than I would've liked but, eh, I'll sweat that in the afterlife.

The deal was this, for those who don't know: every year a poem is selected by Chris King's Poetry Scores committee (I think) and then a roster of visual artists are invited to select chunks or lines from the poem and illustrate or interpret them in the medium of their choice. Neat, huh? And then the show is hung in sequence according to where the artist's chosen selection appears and it all makes for a very interesting room, ultimately.

Also, the inspirational work is performed aloud by the author, with musical accompaniment, and that is all very beatnik and cool. Here are some pictures of Mr. Lyle doing his thing...





Nailed Seraphim

Spirit Catching: “What the astrologers don’t realize man, is that, in the Age of Aquarius, Scorpio is on the mid heaven.”
- conversation between myself and the Raspoet Ojenke

Spirit Catching: “You don’t know what you can do!”
- John Voigt as Oscar Mannheim
in Akira Kurasowa’s
RUNAWAY TRAIN

Spirit Catching: “Say man, what happened to Lamonte?
- "Lamonte, man, Lamonte been gone five weeks. You just missed him?"
- "Whatever, man. The brother ain't here. What happened to him?"
- "Nigguh caught on fire, man. We had to put him out!”
- Conversation overheard in the mailroom at Schnuck's Corporate headquarters


1. Descent From The Stars

The first step was the hardest
Like the first word of a poem
The pen scratching uncertainly
But indelibly, across the paper stairs
Of the babbling tower

The first step was the hardest
The heaviest
But, he didn’t stumble

The second and third steps produced
A tumbling sensation

From here to there was eighty six flights
Of defiance
Of the laws of gravity
speeds of light
quantum mechanics
quantum physics

He didn’t know shit from Shinola
But, the exalted alliance of his mind and his heart
Grasped hands exceeding his reach
Waist bent
Thighs stretched
Knees extended
The end of each nerve in his being
Sent the same long Fats Waller – Stepin’ Fetchit song
Screaming back to his brain
‘Feet don’t fail me now’!

2. The Arrival At Ground Zero

Spirit Catching: ‘home is where the hatred is
and it might not be
such a bad idea
if I never went home again’
- Gil Scott Heron

At first he was welcomed;
Home is the hunter;
Home is the hero

Home is the man who looked upon death
The demonic, the unspeakable horror
Of the reversed god joke

Here is the carrier of the new word
Raised magnificently
Against those who would enter the exalted crucible
In shroud
Soak themselves in camphor, swallow marigolds,
Wash dead flowers down with embalming fluid
And chant the song of the scorpion
From the mid heaven
Of the Age of Aquarius

Here is the man who is whole;
Who is one, distilled, refined, synthesized
And nailed to solar essence

Like Lord Krishna
HE HAS PERVADED THE UNIVERSE
With a fragment of himself
And remained

3. The Old Commentary or S. O. S. (same old shit)

After the bouquets
After the plaudits
After the elegies
After the eulogies
After being swept up
Paraded, feted, clothed, fed
And fucked

After his mama was promoted
After his daddy was hydraulically raised and paid-off
With the inscribed misnomer ‘disabled for life’

After he saw his brothers and sisters,
Aunts and uncles,
Cousins, near cousins, fake cousins
And straight up gangster-pimp cousins
All enshrined in a mythic black heroic pantheon

After the rain
The shit hit the fan

First question:
How did Mortice Juwan Menifee manage
To run down eighty six flights of stairs
In less than seven minutes (six minutes and two seconds)
And escape the collapse of tower number one
Of the World Trade Center?

Second question:
How was it that nobody above the fiftieth floor
Survived, but him?

Third question: Was he really on the eighty sixth floor?

Fourth question: Who the fuck is Mortice Juwan Menifee?

4. The Interrogation

Spirit Catching: ‘Beware of the good pilgrim
He will not kill you
But, he will ruin your reputation
- Marcus Garvey

The Washington Toast got it first. Crack investigative reporters Bobby Woodchuck and Larry Burnside scooped the New York Rhymes
With this headline:
‘Lone Survivor of Upper Tower Revealed to Have Checkered Past’
Mortice Juwan Menifee, the lone survivor of the upper floors of
Tower Number One of The World Trade Center, has a record of minor convictions in his past. It was revealed that Mr. Menifee had been arrested in high school for possession of less than a gram of marijuana. Although Mr. Menifee performed three hundred hours of community service and under a plea agreement his record was expunged, this crack in the so-called hero of Tower Number One’s armor might lead to the discovery of more significant problems in his past.

Next came a black reporter from S. A. N. N. (The Sorry Ass News Network)
Smiley Travis, who had somehow tracked down and then gotten and old girl friend of Mortice’s to talk about the time he had thrown a McDonald’s wrapper in her face at a drunken post prom party. Somehow Kadrisha had translated this incident into sexual abuse and aggravated battery, based on the fact (according to her) that Mortice had no shirt on at the time and the McDonald’s wrapper had some hot melted cheese on it ….. or ‘sumpin’ (her words). She was also suing Mortice for thirty two million dollars based on his projected earnings over the next twenty years from public speaking honoraria, books, films, land purchases, etc., etc., etc.

A week later NATA (not accountable to anyone) Dayline broadcast a special entitled, Mortice Juwan Menifee, SINNER OR SAINT? NATA now revealed what their deeper investigation had recovered. Mortice’s great great uncle, Dutro Menifee, had purportedly killed a white man in Mississippi in the 1920’sover a gambling debt. Dutro had escaped to Mexico and then made his way to Guatemala. He had lived there for twelve years in relative peace and obscurity before being accused of killing another man in a dispute over money and a woman. From Guatemala he had fled to honduras and then late in the summer of 1941 was accused of selling diseased cattle to Texas ranchers. He was jailed briefly, but escaped again, with the help of two Nicaraguan women who claimed he was their protector, i. e. , pimp. They got to the north coast of Nicaragua where Dutro stole a fishing boat and set sail for Cuba. According to this ‘deep’ investigation, he stayed in Cuba during the forties and fifties and became moderately wealthy running a small Havana casino for some American gangsters until the Cuban revolution came to power. Dutro had sold out the gangsters, backed Fidel Castro, and become a financial advisor to Che Gueveara during his short sdtint as head of Cuba’s National Bank.

In the mid to late sixties Dutro met and married a beautiful Spanish woman who had come to Cuba to join the Revolution. They had four children together; the last, a girl named Josephina was born on Dutro’s seventy eighth birthday, January, 2nd, 1979. He died in his bed, with his boots on, on his 100th birthday, January, 2nd, 2000: forty one years and one day after the triumph of the revolution.

Here are the implications of this information:
Mortice Juwan Menifee was a dope smoking, woman abusing drunk, who was descended – peripherally- from a gambling, murdering, Mississippi pimp cum Cuban Communist revolutionary (by proxy), who probably raped a beautiful but confused white woman and made four half-breed babies. To top this off , he had the nerve to die in his bed with his boots on, on his one hundredth birthday like some crazed nigguh Zen Buddhist priest. Now America, What do you think of this? Is this the man you want lighting the torch at the Winter Olympics? Is this the hero whose photo-shopped picture you want on the front of a Wheaties Box. Is the dawg you want to send to Disneyland?

5. The End

Spirit Catching: At the end of the story
You’ll find it all been told
- Earl Grant

Mortice Juwan Menifee was an accountant
Who took his job seriously
But, on September 11, 2001, he forgot to count
He did not compute or crunch numbers that day
He ran and he jumped and he bolted
Revolted against his formal calling
And instead of falling
Instead of choosing air over fire
Or fire over air
He caught on fire
Not physically , but psychically or energetically
He penetrated some kind of center
Or spiritual vortex
He dialed up some impeccable code
Some blacked out strategic safety valve
That allowed him to evolve, for a moment,
Down some mythic magnetic corridor
Some rear window in a parallel universe
That occupied the same space and time
As the transcendent crime taking place

In the midst of total in sanity
He remained divinely sane
And came down eighty six flights of stairs
Intact

But, the facts, of course, belied this explanation
The nation revolted against the exception
And Motice Juwan Menifee was set up for execution
By media, by photo journal,
By external and internal pressure
By gossip
By isolation
By the inability of those who live highest
On the tree of life, the Christ-like exalted flowers and leaves,
The seraphim
To retrieve their exposed beings or protect themselves
From the relative hurricane of humanity

The Mayor, recently transfigured from a right wing racist
Republican jerk, to a moral paragon and transcendent communtiy
Leader, demanded that Mortice give all the flowers back
And admit publicly that all the plaudits, clothes, parades,
Were undeserved, and that Mortice make arrangements
To financially re-imburse the city
The Mayor even threatened to charge Mortice
With statutory rape
After all he was descended from a Communist rapist
One of the young girls who had come to his suite
At the Waldorf, in the sweet days
Now said she was only seventeen

So Mortice wilted under the pressure
He was an accountant not a warrior
They ruined his reputation and that was all he had

The dirty looks on the subway
The epithets in the neighborhood
The cousins who once basked in his glory
Were all gone

Mortice was alone
Not with the letter
But, finally, with the spirit of the law

He was Mortice Juwan Menifee, accountant
Not Job, not Elijah, not Isaiah, not John, certainly not Jesus

His mama turned on him, wordlessly
His daddy had to go back to work
The pump in his chest gave out massively

6. The House of God Is Also A Black Hole

Those who experience the created thing
Must also experience the uncreation

Mortice caught on fire
And got completely fulfilled
He came back home
And got completely cancelled

It was sort of like training for twenty years
To climb Mount Everest

Your time comes
You make the ascent
You court that impeccable calling
You come back home
You get run down in the street and killed
While jay walking

7. God Is Anything But Merciful

The moral of this story is
If you catch on fire
They will put you out!

David Z. Bornstein's 24 Steps To Beating Depression

Josie & the Pussycats(2008)

Josie and the Pussycats
Long tails and and ears for hats
Guitars and sharps and flats
Neat, sweet, a groovy song
You're invited, come along.

Hurry, Hurry

See ya all in Persia
Or maybe France
We could be India
Or perchance
Be with us in Bangkok
Make no difference
Everywhere the actions at
We're involved with this or that

Cone along now

Josie and the Pussycats
No time for purrs and pats
Won't run when they hear, "Scat!"
There where the plot begins
Come on and watch the good guys win
Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats.

Shakespeare(2007)