The Word

Integraphy

Integraphy means speaking in a language

that is your own, and therefore, always

speaks it’s own truth.

High School

I went to Elgin Academy, in Elgin, Illinois…a co-ed,

boarding and day prep school. I never knew what connection

the name had to the Elgin Marbles, which

I saw in the British Museum…or what it meant that

I lived on Elgin Street in Newton, Mass for a year….

It was a haven for the kids of screwed up rich

families from Chicago. Morton Salt,

Clark Equipment, Oberheidt Coal, Johnson

and Johnson scones were all my fellow

students. The only memory I have from the

first two years, is that some seniors took

me down to a liquor store where they got a

drunk to buy them some booze. They had

me in a long winter coat….filled it up with

bottles. I walked back to school. It was a

beautiful spring day. I walked past a group

of students playing softball in their shorts

….clinking a bit as I walked. I completed my

mission, and was rewarded with not

getting what I would have gotten if I hadn’t.

My junior year, things got more interesting.

There was a gang of whites…including

a mafia lawyer’s son…who went out into the

town and got in fights and got beat up

once or twice. There was a group founded by

my Japanese friend, Ronald, two years

older than the rest of us. We were the

“Kaminaris” (Japanese for lightning), and we

had cards printed up. I got into trouble with

them, of which I will only reveal that

entailed an interview with the Headmaster and

other adults…but I held my mud and

showed my mettle.

I had one great teacher in high school.

I think I was lucky. Alan Osborne attended

Brown. and came to Elgin Academy my junior

year. He was a spark plug of a man,

short, and full of energy and humor.

I remember meeting him for the first time on

campus, and he introduced himself to me.

It was the first time I remember ever

being treated as an adult by an adult.

I was in six plays the last two years of

school, which he directed. That’s where

I learned to love acting.

I graduated in 1967. I had to give the speech

to the attendees, as the Valedictorian.

Someone gave me a copy of Look magazine,

that had an article about the hippies

in California. I used that as the basis for

my speech. I said something to the effect that

my generation didn’t want to do what was expected

of us…that we wanted to find our

own lives aside from the material success that

stood in front of us. My father didn’t

say anything, but I know he didn’t like what

I said. Mr. Osborn thought it was great.

Help Me Romney (with apologies to the Beach Boys)

Well since America’s gone down

I’ve been out doin’ in my head..

I get in late at night, and in the mornin’

I just lay in bed…

Well, Romney, you looked so fine,

And I know it wouldn’t take much time,

For you to help me Romney, help me

Get O’Bama out of my heart.

He was goin’ to be my President

And I was goin’ take his hand….

We had a lot of hope but then

Reality shattered our plans..

Well, Romney, you caught my eye,

And I’ll give you lots of reasons why

You ‘gotta…help me Romney, help

Me get him out of my heart

Help me Romney, help help me Romney

My Grandfather

My grandfather, Edward Felter, was the only one of

my grandparents that I knew. My parents told me

what angels their other parents were….who were dead,

so I got stuck growing up with this intransigent alcoholic…

but he had an interesting history. He grew up in Iowa,

on the Mississippi, near where Mark Twain grew up.

He used to fish for catfish on the Mississippi. He had

an uncle that was a riverboat gambler. He moved to

New York City sometime before 1910, when My

mother was born. His family moved to Chicago, probably

sometime between 1910 and 1918, because my grandfather

told me he shook hands with Teddy Roosevelt, and Roosevelt

died in January of 1919. He worked at the La Salle Hotel,

the most posh hotel in Chicago at that time. He was a barber,

and he cut Jackie Coogan’s, (the Kid), hair.

A barber in a fancy hotel in Chicago was a good gig. He must

have had an entertaining personality…I don’t know…all I

remember growing up were some bad jokes. Grandpa

would walk the mile to the local tavern everyday and

hang out with the seedy drunks that inhabited the place.

He got an allowance for a couple of beers a day, but often his

entertaining personality would mean he’d come through

the door drunk (in his 80”s), and he still was a tough old bird

to try and wrangle. Sometimes we’d watch T.V. together in

his room…boxing or baseball. He had a stroke and went to

a nursing home in town. I didn’t see him much after that. He

visited us once more time, and he begged me to kill him. Of

course, I had to say no….I was probably seventeen. In the

winter of 1966-67, I was home from school. Grandpa had

another stroke, and my mother and I drove with him in an

ambulance to Chicago, in one of the biggest snowstorms of

a decade. Mom and I wound up snowed in at the Edgewater

Beach Hotel…another one-time famous Chicago hotel…

for a couple of days. Mom got drunk at the bar both nights.

A fast talking business man from Texas tried to pick me up…

offered me a c-note. I told my dad later and he said: “Oh

yeah, that kind of thing happens.” N.B.D. (No

Big Deal). I loved him for that.

Six Months South Of Depends :: For Arn

Standing with my droopy drawers

in the middle of a desert

wondering what happened

to Western Civilization.

Not caring much, really,

time is measured in craps now,

the universal know it all of

old people…how will it come

out tomorrow? A soap opera

of biological reality…a mile

stone of life…where the internal

organs meet the road…

Occupy Me Maybe

Lots of stuff

goin’ down

all around…

send me a tweet

beep me, send in

the heat ‘cause my

heart is out there

for you, for a good

cause, you occupy

my heart ‘cause I’m

stuck in the middle

of all this megillah,

and, maybe, you

could occupie me,

if I’m not too

mesmerangued.

Emergency

The situation continuously emerges….

it never arrives, and it never ends…

Start

Stop

Start

Stop

…it seems to be real, but, looking back,

it’s only a memory….

what is now?

can you unravel at every

unraveling pinpoint?

or, do you need an ambulance

to carry you from you to you?

Red light

Blue light

Special

Not Really.

I Found My Love*

I found my love

in the abyss of the fog

fear has diminished

I'm myself again....

lead on, McDuff!

Looking into your flakey heart,

for the light has grown strong,

my light reflects your dimness...

I walk off the cliff empty handed...

but...do I care? Of course!

*Group poem written by five strangers....two lines, spontaneous, apiece in rounds.

Higgs-Boson

I had a Higgs-Boson once....

I didn't know whether to

marry it,

have it removed surgically,

try to clone it,

take it to a hall of mirrors,

put it up for an IPO,

hope it made a sound like a rubber

chicken....

I think all those reasons are why

they have such a hard time

proving it's existence.

Simulacrum

“Here is a rubbish of human rind,

With a photograph clutched

In the half of a hand,

And the word: “love” underlined.

Here is a dog of no known kind,

With one black eye and one white eye,

And the eyes of its eyes

Are as lost as you’ll find.” e.e.cummings

Even the thought of fame, of being known in

any way, repulses me….I’d cover myself in my

own shit to avoid it…it’s

a world filled with jackals and hyenas of corporate

blood-lust glee ready to tear into whatever entity

seems to be currently ripening….

One could reconsider whether this realm we live in is

the Human Realm anymore…or, is it dissolving from both

sides: Jealous Gods on the one side, Hungry Ghosts drifting

into the suburbs of Hell on the other? Peoples have been

talking about this moment in time for thousands of years.

The handwriting….well….it’s all over your face.

All's Well That's Orwell

Differentiated as opposed to

individualized….your god

doesn’t love you…you are

lost in the dissolving of the

time. Take what you can find

to see it….or, go down with

the others.

Outlier #2

I’m going to unpack my outlier

before the habob proves intransigent,

which might affect my petaflops, but

I’m counting on my Karl Marx credit

card to see me through ‘til my Smart

Phone gets connected……sushi?

Big Chill

Big Chill

“The best lake all conviction,

while the worst are full of passionate intensity” W.B. Yeats

Perfect weather….

a “Servietta”, white

butterfly, flies like

a napkin fluttering

in the wind outside

my window…

watched “The Big Chill

a few times lately…

movie about the loss

of the hope of the Sixties,

the chill that set in when

the hippies got regular lives

in a system they couldn’t

change…

…hurricane off the coast

of Mexico…come on, Baby,

do me….

This movie, “The Big Chill”,

condensed what happened

to Boomers…in the 80’s…

specifically, some of the truths

of our generation (“My Generation”)

are behind the “Occupy” and other

movements as an antecedent…

as were John Brown’s raid on Harper’s

Ferry, the massacre at Kent State….

yada, yada, yada……until now….

when the chaos is, more or less,

becoming full blown….so, “Big Chill”

becomes a quaint remembrance

of when we were still human

and being compromised... eaten

by the system....while there still was

something else.

Are We There Yet?

Are we "That" yet….or

still clinging to "This", the

Big Drag?

If you’re not Nowhere,

you can’t be Here…

clean the mirror, Tommy….

crack a Pabst and

call it an aeon,

or, get down on all fours,

and try to make it as a dog.

Pleasant Afternoon

Pleasant Afternoon*

Music…in my studio… well placed for serendipity…

it doesn’t happen, which is the same as if it had…

or, maybe this is it and I just don’t see it…now I

know how you feel…

It’s pleasant, but…(it’s complicated)…(call me maybe)

it’s the top of the roller coaster…my objective correlative

for the end of the world…..wheee……..

*With A Touch Of Horror

Now Would Be A good Time To Write A Poem About Mexico

It’s no longer a different country…

it’s no longer a different world…

now it’s the same world that I live in

that people call “Mexico”…. but I

don’t see it….everything’s melting,

“I can feel it, Dave…” the more

primitive the end of spectrum you

live in…well, let’s just say it dissolves

from the other end…the U.S.A.? that’s

where the malignancy is based….just

observe with awe…awe…the fibroids of

power it has metastasized…

Are you kidding me?

Yes, I like living here…there may still be

pockets of “autonomous zones” in the USA,

but, in Mexico, at least, I feel I can be an

audience in the theatre, not part of the movie…

Poem After Miro

naked

sun

red moon

starshine

ice in the glass

pretends to cut

the lip in

living color

inside out even

it’s there challenging

with movement

and goofy brilliance

so you may often wonder

if the whole thing is a joke

which it could be if you

had a sense of humor.

Rant #9

I hide in my drunken barracks, no cocoon…

in the sun and rain and earthquake…ready for

seppuku by natural causes…”IN UNITY IS PARADOX”

…never mind what the caterpillar said, or, is never mind

what he said?…it takes two to tangle up in blues…

Lilly Krauthammer was a sweet young thing ‘til she turned

psycho killer for the cache…no use making faces to meet

the faces…might as well go in with your pants down because

that’s they way you’re coming out anyway…nothing sane

about adjusting to insane society, says Krishnamurti…

we believe the lie so bad we can’t even see the truth much

anymore…flags of all colors obscure the horizon…

everyone’s trying to get to “normal”, but. like a mirage, it fades

back the closer you get to it…this ain’t just happening…clouds

just happen…trees just happen…but, no, it ain’t natural and

someone’s doing it…everyone else, mostly,

just going along with it.

Got any ideas? Well, no, I mean I think this one is going to burn

itself out like a bonfire….take the whole world with it…not a big deal

as everyone’s karma gets distributed throughout the universe

appropriately….mind not being created or destroyed, as we know.

I think yelling “FIRE!” is OK, particularly when the theatre IS on fire,

someone might wake up at the last second, instead of watching the

camera lens burn the film and think that’s part of the movie.

Apartment 3-B

"Life is a dream that's already over." Jack Kerouac

He woke up…it was Tuesday, 10 A.M. . He realized with a smile he hadn’t set the alarm.

Usually, when he went out on a week night, he’d set the alarm for 5:30, so he’d

have plenty of time to scrape himself out of bed and put on his game face for work,

but not this time. He realized he didn’t have to get up at all. The urge was there, the

previous momentum, to just fall into his usual routine: start the coffee, shower and shave,

open the door to his apartment and grab the paper, start the bagel in the toaster while he

was pouring his coffee…read the comics and do the crossword while he was waking.

It seemed strange to think about it, still in bed, knowing that he would never be able to

do that again, follow that routine. He looked out the window of his apartment. The sky

was pretty clear. He had been blown away when he found out that his uncle had left him

this small condo on the East Side of Manhattan…he’d wanted to live in New York to

pursue his acting ambitions, and his uncle, who loved him, gave him this in his will.

His uncle hadn’t told anyone in the family that he was dying. He remembered his

uncle with love as he laid in his bed. He reached over to the night table and took a

cigarette from a half-empty pack….

he’d quit smoking two months before and wasn’t having a problem with it….but,

like having the apartment, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

The radio on his computer came on. He didn’t remember setting it. It went through

his ipod and out the Bose speakers. It was a classical station. They were playing

“Afternoon of a Faun”. The beauty of the music juxtaposed against his situation almost

made him burst with laughter…but the irony was too strong for that. He just laid there

and listened. There was the sound of a few birds outside, but the usual street noise was

eerily not there. This surprised him, but only for a second.

He decided he wanted a cup of coffee. This was a big decision, as all the small ones

that used to be had just become. He wasn’t physically impaired…there was nothing

different in his physical health from a year ago, as far as he knew…

Luckily he’d been saving some Blue Kona for something special. He put the water on,

and measured three measures into the French Press. That would make two good, strong

cups. He checked the clock: 11 A.M.. He went back to his bed, sat down, and lit

another cigarette. He wasn’t ready to check CNN, MSNBC, or any other media, if

they were, in fact, still on the air.

Last night was, actually, one of the best times he’d ever had. His best friend, Gaud

Klammer, had a club off the first L. stop in Brooklyn, and they partied like it was

1999! Somehow they had it together by three P.M….invited guests only… and they

took their time and made the party last. Everyone brought everything they’d been

holding back for “the” occasion, because, this was it. He remembered that the first drink

he had the night before was some Nineteenth century cognac. He could still taste it.

Gaud had been the master of ceremonies last night, and he did a fantastic job. Once there

was a majority of guests, he interrupted the random action and made a little speech. It

went something like this:

“Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome All to this momentous event! In order to make

the most of our time here, we request that you make any cell phone calls to relatives

and friends within the next half hour, after which your phones could please be

remanded to our phone-check-girl, who will have a nice tag for each of your phones

so you can get them back, if you should so want to at the end of the evening…

whenever that might be.

Other than that, there are no requirements or limitations! Enjoy yourselves in the

spirit of the occasion!”

He thought that was quite nice as an intro. And he was right about taking away the cell

phones.

Most of his friends from the City were there. Tammy, his old girlfriend who grew

up in Brooklyn, was there. Her daughter, Miata, was with her… a beautiful young

woman. Tiny Bobo, the video artist and teacher showed up. Tiny was his best friend.
He was surprised to see Tiny there because he was such a misanthrope…but the event

was such that it managed to drag even him there. We spent some time getting

sea-mashed together while the evening progressed. “Help Me Rhonda” seemed to

have been played more than once….

Most were there to get drunk, and most succeeded easily. The conversation wasn’t

too stimulating…a kind of intellectual daze hung over the evening….a daze gone by,

or, of bygone times and what used to be the relentless search for the truth.

There was nothing left to speculate about now.

These were the thoughts he was having about the night before as he laid in bed.. He

turned the radio off.

The profound silence hit him, and he started to cry.

.

Outdomanship

Well…we had sportsmanship

and showmanship…all that’s

left seems to be outdomanship:

Sending your child up in a balloon,

but not really….

media videos of

gratuitous grisly gore….

Medieval media buffoons like Trump,

carnival barker conman extraordinaire,

clog the airwaves  with trashy malignancy….

As do the politicians, talking heads, pious

religion aficionados, fanatics of every persuasion.

just to notch the ante one bit higher, solely to

render the populace harmless to power,

to  subdue their ability to think or speak….

Yes, we’ve seen it before….but never done

so well. 

Cutting Into A Dance

Poetry is not something I do…

it comes to me like the accident of life…

it must be a propensity from previous lives…

it constantly wants to cut into my life

and show me miracles I need to see…

it spins me, keeps me dancing to the music,

the momentary manifestation of the sphere…

the orb of silence, emptiness, the ground…

where the dance originates, where I cut in.