Nostagia

You were unhappy. Your body had problems. You would stop walking to massage your feet. This was worse when you were carrying socks full of coins to buy a sandwich and coffee. But you could always talk to the homeless. They were open and friendly. The sun would rocket down through the western sky like a stone of fire and leave the city cold. The café had a parquet floor and strange coffee - muddy, approaching sour. Men and women at tables writing, noise music, zines, outbursts of sound from the punk kids drinking cups of water and everyone lightheaded with so much longing. Your upstairs neighbor played "Shoot Out the Lights" loudly. You became friends. He was more beautiful than you and the women you met preferred him. Another neighbor was an old German immigrant, named Horst, who left his keys in the door. This was more convenient. The tree outside the lead paned windows flowered white and pale yellow in the spring. The couple who owned the turreted building watched business channels on cable TV, tracking their investments. You didn't have any skill or any persistent interest in money, so you vacillated between feeling superior and inferior to the landlords, Bob and Nancy.

No Mast High Enough, No Bridge Too Old: The Void of Bezos

At this point, it is predictable, "normal" when land-water-sky-plant species-animal species-community-peoples-cultures-the self-the soul are sacrificed on the altar of profit. That anti-rite been playing out in its current form for 500 years. It is shocking, and emotionally devastating, but almost tedious or monotonous at this point. Among the many extremes to get normalized under such circumstances, is the vast dead plain that inhabits the land of the soul in ultra-rich individuals (and even those of us aspiring to be them). That's what I thought of upon learning of this latest Bezos Excess™. Only when the simple calm and joy of walking down a snowy path in the morning or reading a poem with a cup of coffee or having a long conversation with a friend has been internally obliterated and rendered unavailable to a person, do humans engage in such idiocy and excess. There is no yacht with masts high enough and there are not enough historic bridges in the world for Jeff Bezos to deconstruct that could replace what has been abandoned inside of him. Likely, only a gesture that is the opposite - maybe sitting at a picnic table in a public park, looking at dandelions and feeling the breeze – could ever begin to repopulate the rubble within Jeff Bezos.

BULLSHIT AND HUSTLE (poem)

Bullshit and hustle Hustle and bullshit

In for a penny you're in for a pound

Open the gates of the city

And dig a hole to China

When the cold wind blows

Out on the plateau

Hang your lanterns

From the willow tree

And say a prayer to Saint Anthony

George Washington spied the striped bass

Leaping in the stream

Shimmying silver mirror flecks

In rainbow waterlight

Bullshit and hustle

Made it all briefly his

A man in a bowtie auction-barked

The acres and the possible futures

Lanterns swung in the wind

St. Peter stood waiting at the gates

Bullshit and hustle

Hustle and bullshit

From the Chesapeake Bay

To the shimmering West

For Morris Berman and Derrick Jensen

Donald into Trump

Broke down. Hiding beneath the front porch. The Queens sunlight dimly filtering through - illuminating shafts of dust, rat shit, pigeon feathers and tinfoil gum wrappers. Fred is stomping around upstairs in a three-piece suit with a Windsor knot, the jacket off, anger concentrated in his mustache. His eyes as fierce the pulsing flames from the pizza oven at Rosati's where Donald would bicycle to after school in secret. His mother had been sick for years. Why would she leave her Scottish island for this? Away to the westward, I'm longing to be / Where the beauties of heaven' unfold by the sea / Where the sweet purple heather' blooins fragrant and free / On a hill-top, high above the Dark Island, she would sing, locked in the bedroom. "Fragrant and free." I'm not smart enough for him. How can I sit down and read words from schoolbooks with his eyeballs burning into the back of my head? He never stops. He's like a broken traffic light flashing red yellow red yellow red yellow. Donald wants to get on his bike with the big triangle seat and pedal to Coney Island, to Rockaway Beach - hell, to that big, empty beach on Long Island! Maybe he could spy his mother's Scottish island from there! The waves against the rocks were loud enough to drown out Fred's voice. It was magnificent and he felt alone, but briefly free.

ELON MUSK ON MARS, A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT

A: Elon! Elon!

B: What? What?

A: Elon Musk! Elon Musk!

B: Oh, now I got it!

A: Elon Musk! Elon Musk!

B: Right! Right! I heard you the first time!

A: Anyways. Elon Musk! Elon Musk!

B: What did he do? What did he do?

A: He flew to Mars. He flew to Mars.

B: He flew to what? He flew to what?

A: He flew to Mars!

B: Interesting! Interesting!

A: Yes! And let's stop the double lines!

B: OK! OK!

A: Just say it once: OK!

B: OK!

A: Elon Musk. He flew to Mars. He almost crashed and then he got out of his spaceship.

B: And then? And then? Shit, sorry! I mean: And then?

A: Elon Musk. He flew to Mars. He kinda crashed, but he crawled out of his spaceship. And he totally almost got vaporized into space dust when his spacesuit got fucked up when the hard Martian winds blasted him backwards.

B: Ooooo. That's cool! Tell me more. And then?

A: Then Elon Musk walked over some craters and he felt totally high like that time he when he went one toke over the line on the Joe Rogan show.

B: Wow. Scary! That's scary!

A: Then Elon Musk, high-as-hell, looked around at the Mars landscape and it was like when you open up a candy wrapper and all the sugar got crystallized and dried into dust and shit and it's chalky and faded scarlet. And he said, "That's cool. That's cool."

B: Then what did he do, that Elon Musk? That Elon Musk, then what did he do?

A: I'll let that one slide since you switched around the words. Then Elon Musk started to freak out. Because walking around on Mars wasn't like bitcoin and electric cars and all that other shit he's into.

B: Sure, certainly. I get it. That makes sense.

A: He started to freak out and maybe even went pee in his space suit, but he was always quick to think on his feet. So, he sat down. To do some mindfulness. To calm himself down.

B: So, Elon Musk sat down on a crater. A crater on Mars? And Mars looked like an abandoned red golf course?

A: Yes! So, Elon Musk sat himself down to follow his breathing. Then he wanted to Tweet some snarky shit, but he didn't have Wi-Fi.

B: Then what did he do? Did he 23 skidoo?

A: Never, never. Perish the thought. He stood back up and straightened his helmet. Then Elon Musk saw something strange. Something strange coming from the west (or the east or whatever the shit, I don't know if they have the four cardinal directions on Mars).

B: But that cannot be! That could not be!

A: Then Elon Musk saw something strange in the glimmering heat. Was he starting to melt in the glimmering heat? I cannot say. I could not say.

B: So, Elon Musk, what did he see? In the far away haze, in the Martian breeze?

A: Elon Musk saw some little green men! They were coming fast, so he had to run. They had ray guns and they sang like an orchestra of bees. Then they charged poor Elon Musk and he started to wheeze.

B: OK! Then what?

A: Then he started to sing a Bryan Adams song alone to himself. He heard it one time near a Canadian lake. He heard it again in the Martian haze.

B: And the little green men, what did they do?

A: Well, they liked the song, the Bryan Adams song. So, they tried to sing with him, but they still sounded like bees. Then they got bored and they walked away.

B: And Elon Musk? Was he OK?

A: As for Elon Musk, I cannot say. Some say that he is space dust. Some say he's still lost. But that's the last we heard about Elon Musk.

Strange, Deep Culture

Strange. Strange that if we and our fellow Earth species are to have any hope of survival, the one thing we need to do economically is the same thing we've been told never to do economically: STOP growing, contract, stop buying and selling shit, stop making most shit, even stop consuming many leisure experiences. We all see how such activities are incompatible with the persistence of life. The Earth can't take it anymore. Strange warm weather, strange cold weather, strange dreams, strange Canadian geese that seem to fly south and then north and then south again in one season through the mottled sky. What is happening? Children feel uneasy. Uncared for? The late Gary Gripp, who I knew only through Facebook, talked about "deep culture," that the changes which we need to make have to occur on that level. He thought it was a long shot - not because he traveled in cynicism - just based on an understanding of how people tend to be... We all wish we could do more. Some things cannot be done alone. Perhaps many things cannot...

Another World (poem)

Mothers disappointed in their sons who want to become billionaires.

Schools that teach people to be bad salespeople.

Armies that teach recruits to hang out, shoot the breeze and read poetry.

Armies that teach recruits to settle disputes with games of chess or singing competitions. Or dance offs.

Churches that admit the Bible is weird stories.

Churches that admit you'll probably never see or have a two-way conversation with "the man upstairs," but that's OK because it is the desire to reach the divine that is the divine in us.

Churches that admit "the man upstairs" isn't a man.

Gun ranges for squirt guns.

Ad agencies who create ads unrelated to products or services.

Marketing that reminds you of how you are already whole.

Stores that serve as places of exchange or just presence.