THE GREEN MAN

IN MY SEARCH for more information on The Green Man, a rather obscure movie I saw partially, and have wanted to see again for years, I discovered this delicious link commenting on Britain's father and son literary dynasty of Kingsley Amis and his son, Martin Amis.

A TASTE OF TRENCH MADNESS

Thanks for keeping up the resistance, Morales. Just know that the busy silence of we who are marked to fall always proceeds the clashing of the cymbals, while those of us who warned the others (now laughing and mocking, hissing and despising our herald) will have witnessed the fullness of truth, not they, and by inertia or grace will be prepared to shield others from the amplified atrocities as they arrive.

That's the extent of whatever hope I have remaining. This country will probably awaken when Europe implodes, but I believe that America is also marked for crisis, a result of having become sadly corrupted and from our national potential far have we strayed.

Don't fear the Marxist-Islamofascism creep, however. Resist it wherever we can, but don't expect any sudden miracles quite yet. People still treasure their fool's gold, reflecting among the dueling mirrors of social consciousness that they've done the math, not quite realizing they've only been using imaginary numbers while letting the real digits slip away...

And allow me this opportunity to insist that I am not naive, no matter what I choose to paint or wrestle into inconsequential line. It's rather obvious by now that I frittered away that excuse six senses and a million miles ago.

BEATING A DEAD HORSE

Well, Josh, deterrence is not a big headline grabber, but it does change the dynamics of who does what to who and when. And besides, yes, indeed there are quite a few instances on record of someone "successfully" defending themselves and others against intruders, but of course the liberal media avoids these stories, and sometimes even the surprised homeowner is hauled into court to defend himself against charges, while the intruder skirts off. It's an outrage. Criminals use and abuse guns all the time, and yet the system coddles them. Meanwhile law abiders are demonized.

But man, ALL the arguments on this issue are old news, if you've truly been honest in researching it. You know them. I know them. We've each made choices. You have your sense of moral high ground. And I have something just as awesome. End of story.

FIGURES OF SPEECH

A SENTENCE LIKE THAT deserves more than a well-rehearsed handshake, but sometimes those of us who live for the calming caresses a fine line insinuates find ourselves too infatuated to make the first move...

AN INTERRUPTION

BUT SUCH IS TIME and perfect timing, off time, under time, in time, time and time again, sloppy time, never time, Miller time, tea time too.

Neat time, time in a bottle, my time, the time of my life, in the life and times of Uncle Joe Stalin, time to shape up, time to get a job, time it all the way to the bank, tell me when it's time to get married the fifth time.

Shallow time. Shag time. Sane time. In the time it took to drive a bus off the cliff on a Seventies cop show, that's show time. For the third time today I needed time. Time to go to the bathroom. Time to shit or get off the pot. Time was when fun just cost a nickel.

Time this. Time that. Time warp. Time tunnel. Time is where the heart is. Time enough to think of a good response this time. Time to grow up. Time to eat and run. Time to suck the chrome off that bumper crop of party time. Time to beg the difference.

Time to cut the mustard. Time to pick out a receiver downfield. All the time in the world. Time to wipe my ass. Timex time. Time to cash a cheque. Time to win the battle but lose the war on drugs. Time it took six women to satisfy each other in a dark room on time. Time to kick the bucket.

Time to write a novel. Time to brush her hair the same way her sister used to brush hers, timing each stroke to the beat of time. Time to draw a conclusion at the bottom of the class. Time to mark a certain number of correct answers to the questions with a number two pencil.

Time to give up a lost cause.

Time to shut down the chicken farms along that river. Time to read the classics in their original language. Time to make lunch bags sing before the children race off to school.

The time it takes to build a universe only to have it collapse in your face is nothing like the time I helped Aunt Mardis rip through a chocolate cake in the olden days of French ascendency.

It takes time to learn to ride a bicycle. Time to reap what one sows. Or maybe not. Maybe that time is instantaneous time, time accurately remembered. Time to sing before she swallows for the last time that nasty pill. Time to harvest a generation. Time to swallow before you hang ten. Time to look before you cross.

By the time it took to dig up the Erie Canal times had changed. It's not about time, it's about attitude. By the time I get to Phoenix many husbands won't have time to take out the garbage. The driver swore to the witness that he didn't have time to stop. Time takes a holiday but time never vacates the premises.

Time laughs at odd moments but time never bargains with leftover sandwiches. Time is that which doesn't kill you. Time kills that child inside only to seemingly reappear later.

Time is a long, cool woman in a black dress. Time is kinky. Time paints by numbers. Time is a disease of the pancreas. Time is a pretty heart-shaped tattoo on Wendy's breast in some window in Times Square. Pi is a variable in a timeless equation.

Time understands all wounds. Time wounds all heels. Time is an asset. Time is a pain in the ass. Time is only as good as your next biological movement. Time is the needle in the haystack. Time is secondary but don't tell her that.

Nothing like a good time in the sack to make time fly. Time has no fear of flying, but Erica and Henry both knew what having a good time was about, and it was not about time, but the enjoyment of time. Grown-up time.

There is no such thing as time travel today, but recordings keep time in ways none of us truly understand past its fetish draw, but time was when a fine time was had by all, double time, life plus time. High time that boy got a job. Time the unfortunate child born without legs who beats a faster smile than you do.

Observe that same child pursue time into measuring itself with old technologies in a world that presumes time can't reverse itself while it can so readily repeat itself dipped in statistics. Time is a two-way mirror. Time is a dirty joke flooding the muddy Missisippi.

Time is nothing but what you or somebody else makes it, except when it's game time, and don't try to tell me about how much time it would take to make the timeless world safe for timelessness because everybody knows it's all in the timing, even though most of us are suffering a bad sense of timing.

There's never enough time to transcend one's station, especially when mobile. Time is far too formidable a friend on feverish afternoons to let stand in the cold rain without knowing that time sometimes stands still.

Without time on my side I perish with the daffodils. Time is a time-honored sport everyone must play in order to graduate. Time forgives. Breaking rules for time is not always a bad time, but does require timing it just right. Time scars. Grab the moment to make time while others bargain, losing time to others, until another time comes.

Time is a stiff upper lip in a compromising position. Time defers to gravity, but for one writer, time is nothing but a madcap schemer bought and sold on the installment plan, money paid back over time, but then two-timing Old Doc Celine didn't live long enough to get mixed up in time, time and time again.

Time is a nightmare to Klaw's girls who prefer time raw and risky than more often than their less time-tortured sisters. Time dresses up for special guests. Time is the major importer, exporter of stolen goods across state lines in situations where time is barely legal. That's time standing in the shadows, losing her shirt to timeless romance.

Time is nobody's business but the rates are skyrocketing. Time is colorless, odorless, tasteless. Time left is time right on time. Time left to itself is useless. Time blows tall buildings to the ground. Time grounds water tables and small asterisks into dust bowls older than TIME ITSELF because time is the wind in the sails of marginality until time itself stops.

MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 1955: Relativity Mr. Eliot

(Every opening day event
is safely defined
according to the board
of heavy commissioners,
who having frequently
engaged in parasitic
intercourse with important
anti-matter details, do
thus proclaim this work
to bless the eyes and tongues
and postage stamps of public
yen with fire and dogma, that
these blessings endure secure
as the new lamp post
in the old land of triumph,
as foretold in the chapbook
of Turquoise Laughter,
found on the bookshelves
of those sleazy sectarians,
the Unknown Poets.)


My god! Those scrambled tenses
Are breathing insects
About to inherit the earth
As the meek ones.
Should we give the order to poison them,
The lie more likely to succeed beyond
Crock derivation, say?
The social instincts and mortal thunder
Track across the skies of deprivation. They
Mock us and tell us paradise
Has ranked us this way.

He comes much later than Voltaire.
With able lunacies guarding
Their classical moons,
In numbers too written
To catch a falling
Sparrow by jet liner.

So doggedly
He comes before us,
Letting us spoil him with a role
Abandoned to grief, walking,
To serve eyes never before ruled.
An expanded version of the likeness
Of man is displayed in his temples
More pulled to powerstare.

A coward without wings
Brings no one change, but
To you who think
Without a padlock brigging
Your brain, to you who think
His work is discriminating,
I say knows the difference in universal
Meaning between sugar and salt
And his birthright.

Give fair attention to the perfumery
He exposes, the sweat, the toil,
The semen.

Missing no link!

Question him if in doubt.
The idiom may be lost in translation.
Condemned to die or forty years
He shall return. When he walks among men,
The obvious is hidden, orphic
Associations and fresh failing crops,
And door alarms.

Left Bank will soon pass away like the rest.
And Burnt Norton will accuse Lucifer
As the author of time!

CASE HISTORY IN SO MANY WORDS...

nondum blanda tuas leges
et vacuum pectus ab igne fuit
—Elegy 7, John Milton

The real and the unused.
Crust to call it out of work homages,
thus imply, willed as poet the surveyor—
bust subjugationalism, hurry
grave, easy tones as captor as comforter.
Not yet did I know your laws
and my breast was free from fire.
The missing I. The real and the unused.
Behold your applicant as he struggles to strip
the veil of anguish from the master of ceremonies,
characterized by constant papersludge, choices
that lead to detention, standard sophistications,
irreparable materials at hand. But every
mother worth her milk refuses, calls
us heretic, criminal, an awkward position
endorsing belligerent behavior I say's
better built for lazy ones who street it,
gas grinners, cigarette teeth and whiskey eyeballs,
starving, filthcoated tongues
lost in gutter grime and babythick weathered lips
long ago. Celine's boys. Dreaming dogs.
The real and the unused.
Do you really know this man?
Or they called it infantile ascension.
Case history in so many words.
I mustard promise at every passing fancy,
drill skirts through the pedestal inviting
every passing nancy
to cut out my vital stat,
roll it in dough,
unscrew the nerves keeping me out of work,
in homage, and out of the Goethe Institute.
I feel like night, my creeds as complex
as the birth of an incomplete child,
regardless of pace,
breed or compatibility with a dead hero. The latter,
a pneumatic pretense of distinction. As bloody gnat,
I lust to feel burning glacier women who believe in the holy captive,
the real and the unused, naive truth, blanket nerve, price wars,
comparative nostrils. Wah but, such works of true determination
are reserved for the few, rarely an overnight sensation.
The real and the unused.
I, Gabriel Thy,
I, the richard spalding nix,
I, poet of cull verse and friend to all natives,
I, the missing I, complete the roulette parallelogram,
the pickpocket's trilogy terrorizing
self in search of the city,
this corpus christi,
her sand and her silk and her honesty,
assembled in the punished faces of the wedding tree, wah but
Young Man of resembled talents redeeming
the real and the unused.

That was before I read a book on windmills by Kierkegaard.

WHEELING

With little idea of how emphatically alert
the carrion forces of irony would approach me
in this odd doohickey state of mine,
I was celebrating with moving trucks
and farewell glimpses like signals from another frontier
that I, yes, the royal roving eye
had finally escaped the nation’s capital after twenty-two
scalable years of stifled scream, fish tales, and orgasm,
my formidable punk rock years frothing and frosted beneath me,
punishment enough I had hoped for choosing the prophetic muses
of blathering fifth angel guitar heaps over the deadly aims
of the finely papered greed and arrogance creeps
the city of Washington breeds, imports, and exports
across its continental colonies and beyond, far beyond,
gesture control, this leering lawmaking
jeering jawbreaking city’s major industry,
and by that I mean ONLY industry...

but obviously I had miscalculated the odds—
the shady odds not even a straw hat hombre from south of the imaginary
Mendoza line as legal as lint, can beat. Flattened by repeated failure,
and by failure, I mean absolute and uncompromised failure,
I had become nothing more than an aching suburb of my former self.
I had gone west by God. In smutty nutty wisecracking Wheeling
                      West Virginia
I soon found myself smack dab in the middle
of the next pygmalion effect.

Allow me to elaborate my first full week
here on Main Street in Victorian Old Town, I saw,
and by that I mean O-L-D, the flaking, rotting, stinking carcass
of a former glory gone desperately poor, I saw myself
perched eighty feet on a bluff above the historical
but now quaint yet periodically swelling, raging,
bank-defying Ohio River down below.

First week here POTUS came to town,
a speech at the Capitol Music Hall,

Floods in Wheeling, nope, in DC.
Presidential motoracde.
punk city, nope, wheeling, tats & nose rings
few hicks, lots of itching though.

[ 2006, Wheeling, WV ]

TWEAKING THE MULTICULTURALIST

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF in picking up Charlie's theme of inclusion, even though I am alert to the fact it's not the original thrust of the thread.

One of the many ironies of FORCED multiculturalism, and I do know something about the realties first hand, is the myth that we are all the same. Well, if we are all indeed the SAME, why the great push to make sure we test that theory by forcing all this sameness together? And yet when given the choice of aggregating freely under general conditions, we notice the tendency that real (or superficial) likeness does indeed TEND to gravitate together, but not EXCLUSIVELY.

This predilection is seen everywhere; in nature, in human society, and in logic itself. Some may laugh, and call this an over-simplication. I'd agree, but then ask the question, an over-simplication of what?