517 Social commentaries poems

Frères humains qui après nous vivez, Soon they’ll have the speed freak twisting On a scaffold, soon the birds Will come to peck out his eyes, & when He’s too weak & exhausted to turn His head away, they’ll do it, too, They’ll peck his eyes right out. You’ll want to watch it happen, you’ll want To witness it. You’ll want to see Paolo And Francesca almost touch before They’re swept away again, him in one line Waiting for rations, her in another one, Both of  them naked, standing there, Cock & nipples shriveled in the cold. Frères humains qui après nous vivez, N’ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis.

The dim boy claps because the others clap. The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands. Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back. One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A. Union Station, ’46, sweating through last night. The dim boy claps because the others clap. Score, 5 to 3. Pitcher fading badly in the heat. Isn’t it wrong to be or not be spastic? Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back. I’m laughing at a neighbor girl beaten to scream by a savage father and I’m ashamed to look. The dim boy claps because the others clap. The score is always close, the rally always short. I’ve left more wreckage than a quake. Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back. The afflicted never cheer in unison. Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back to stammering pastures where the picnic should have worked. The dim boy claps because the others clap.

We sat across the table. he said, cut off your hands. they are always poking at things. they might touch me. I said yes. Food grew cold on the table. he said, burn your body. it is not clean and smells like sex. it rubs my mind sore. I said yes. I love you, I said. That’s very nice, he said I like to be loved, that makes me happy. Have you cut off your hands yet?

paint over the dead end sign are police writers? yes they are writing into books our little cherub of misunderstanding a thinking to push us back into body of the whole love yourself more next time their reports read stones sink as they please everything expands at the very end a lit cigarette into our dark hello

Somebody who would never refuse money told me this— about the syncretic effect when each person plugs their attention into a field to read ad copy, let’s just say they become opened up and other beings can see into their minds. This was considered a science fiction idea to many people, but not to me. In my negative space construction is always occurring. The liftoff from awful to tolerable to positive and then finally to bright new beautiful has been my most difficult task to swing. But swing I will; there’s nothing else to do. I live here and being here and hearing myself or my mind’s divide through others convinces me that I must do everything I can to save us from the pit. That is, until the pit splits and the fruit tree finally grows. You may have a tree of your own—you may have a home in your own tree. Congratulations. If you write an instructive pamphlet you can bet I will read it. I do not want to go out in darkness. I am doing everything I know to prevent this, and thank you, by the way, if you’ve written a pamphlet. The shared information system and each being at the end of its screen emits an LED (light emitting diode) on an often green screen—you say I should give my father up to the authorities. You blame your circumstances on my choice—but it’s the authorities who did this to him. How do you think a person loses his mind? He let someone take it. He is sort of my mind and you are too, God help me. The green screen is an ingenious discovery. You can record events in a studio before the screen and then key in whatever environment you like. It’s a special color: Chroma Green, but it can be blue too. The experience of things is determined by our feelings about them. Information is colored by us. You may see remotely, in a photograph for instance, the image of an ambush victim. Maybe it is a war and/or she is caught naked. If she is unhappy—indicated by face and body arrangement—you may feel that. Some people will hate the state of things that made her so alone and vulnerable but few will do anything about it. How do you find her? What guns surround her country? And after all, maybe she would hate it. To have to feel grateful to someone moved by her humiliation. She may only be thinking about humiliation. That is a tough feeling to shake. Then, and I need not go too far into this, then there are those who see the pain of someone and they just love it. This may have something to do with a revenge sentiment over their own unclosed wound. The wound, they think, is everyone else’s fault and they cannot forgive. This is only information, in the form of speculation. Some feelings you get when you consider “What if this happened to me?” and you will want to remedy the situation to secure yourself from the (negative) condition of it. Together, humans create one body—the planet earth and its projections. The things in the stomach affect what goes on in the head. On the web many people make money with miracle potions. Some curb the human appetite. Some say you can lose while consuming whatever you want. I heard the other girl refer to me as a skull. She was very angry and did not look or say hello. There is a prevalent competitive notion that each only has one place. That her face is only hers and that I don’t have a face or to her it is death. This she reads as me—the death of her. Obviously I am not. I write and read and then roll on. I wear an ordinary human face, some could compare me to a bird of prey because my nose is hooked and my fingers are long and I like to ride my bicycle with the wind at my back. I am not here to attack. You are also a mutant. Do you think you can keep the heavy metals outside of you? Do you think you can go to sleep here and wake up the same? The screen is framed by plastic, beneath that you use words to issue commandments or call-outs. Most people use the web to send messages to people who are already their friends. They make arrangements for later and detail what happened in the past. This information may be not true. The web cannot know intention. It records and is open to influence. People make money through advertisements, or so they think—well, selling ads, that’s quantifiable— if ads make money, that is more difficult to know unless there are special offers. The web is full of special offers and 30-day trials. If you fall for those, or I should say, if you respond to the offer what often happens is that your information is shared with other companies who will fill your inbox with offers (that which is known as spam). Because you are someone who wants to look great and there are other companies with products compatible with your stated desire. Ways for you to achieve the prevailing notion of beauty. It is my job to tell you the models are selected because they are physically improbable. They are elevated to be made desirable. Their desirability is physical because they are models. If it were easy to be like that, they would not be sought-after by manufacturers. Generally, working people need to be sturdy. Advertisers want to make money. They go with psychology and so create a sort of self-rejection by advocating forms not reflected in most people. They know that people will pay in to be of an elevated form no matter what station they are from. Everyone wants to be beautiful. Everyone wants to be the agreed-upon beautiful thing. Probably everyone is beautiful somewhere inside if not outside. You can create an excellent argument for your being and improve upon ability. That is my opinion. If you live alone, you may know how great the web can be. On it there is information and pornography. Information includes the prospects. Pornography is the biggest industry in America. It is designed to bring about a certain state of arousal, generally, couched in anger that will allow the person to fuck exactly how they want to without worrying about the one fucked. Pornography is addictive for many. Of course, sometimes people want to touch, to hear a voice to imagine a partner and what they can do together. The web has many dating services. My ex-psychiatrist advised me against trying them. She had transferred the daughter role onto me. I do appreciate the dangers of strangers. I am prepared with the information that pictures are not people in both obvious and non-obvious ways. I know at least three people who have been in love with people they met online. Each one is intelligent and down-to-earth. I’ve gleaned from their descriptions of online courting that the early questions are essential. That and no expectation and somehow you have to withhold your own personal information. That is, until you meet up in a non-threatening place. You will have to have someone know where you are, a point person. And you will need a defense; mace, for instance or a rape whistle or a dog leashed nearby or in the car. It will be important for him or her to know you have a dog. They should meet each other as soon as possible. This is the magic of the machine. The meeting and love trial and, if it works, the love made. Well, that really is amazing. Objectively amazing. And good for the machine. Good for the machine. The electric web courses heavily through me. This may be how we make history: we can put up our movies, our words, or costume dramas. We say we are so and so and people follow the saga. Do you ever get the problem which is opposite to the problem of the watcher? Have you ever only seen yourself through other people? Or thought that’s what it was but it was really your thought processes transferred through them? I should look up the word rubric again. That and lacuna and devi. In the thrift store nobody looked at me. But the woman said, “Devi (hee, hee) Devi.” A celestial being: what we all are. True she might have meant devil. I am not a devil. I love my friends most of the time. I love animals—I don’t think devils do that. My friend sends me pictures of jackrabbits and frogs. Yesterday, he said he saw buttercups, a type of flower. You go over the tracks first, on the other side of the river and there they are.

Oh, but it is dirty! —this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it’s a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color— of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: esso—so—so—so to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

Once, boarding the train to New York City, The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed An open space—more pushing, stuck in place— And then saw why: a man, face peeled away, Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth, One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard, I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on Through to the next car, and the next, but now I wonder why the fire that could have killed him Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life Is what he calls this space through which he moves, Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire Burns in him when he sees us move away.

one lies in rags on the street and his stomach is empty and he wishes for death one sits with friends at tea and backgammon and his mind is empty and he wishes for death one sits in a straight-backed chair at a desk and his bank account is empty and he wishes for death one lies in bed staring out to sea and the place next to him in bed is empty and he wishes for death one flies back with food in its beak and its nest is empty and only this one says we should give it another try

"I see you," she says— one of the flickering homeless with gray alehouse hair, pale blue eyes, crunchy lips—a methadone- troubled moth by the YMCA—but who does she see?—is it the chubby, right-handed schoolboy sent out by the nuns at St. Joseph's to clap the chalkboard erasers clean? Or the giddy teenage shipping clerk at lunch break smoking pot for the first time behind a curtain factory shed? Perhaps the middle-aged mortgagee? Maybe an ex- proofreader in lawyerland or betraying husband? Maybe the good loser? How about the new father smiling in tears? Why not the complainer's ally, or the devoted wanker, or the inert doubter, or the annoyancer or toddler?— if not the circumspect bald man, crank, or unselfish lecturer— or does she see each of them?— maybe each would like a lantern to carry; tho there are nowhere near enough lamps for all.

Jim Gott and old money don’t mix. There is no possibility of change. He sent flowers to the old lady, to no avail. Then he fought the Chinese laundry over the disputed crease in his last clean shirt sent by ups ; the Chinaman got a court order that he not be so called. He makes peanuts: Jim’s thousand a year is viewed as a decent living: you figure it out. Old Gott was taken to court, a kind of maze synod, that September, ornamental cherry petals littering the streets. Thirty-eight years later the charge sheet tells us that he was called The Fiendish. In the distant future, I shall be as efficient as you.