Chek Bin Carpe Diem - 2011

Three weeks ago Fabo and I were sitting at the garden bar of the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. I hadn't seen the Belgian oil explorer in a year. Both of us had suffered long exiles from Pattaya. His place of banishment was the North Sea. I had been stuck in New York. We were equally glad to be away from either.

He greeted me with a kiss on the lips. The girls on the patio regarded the gesture with disgust. They only liked straight men. Preferably newcomers to Thailand. Newbies spent money like bankers on a cocaine binge.

"Papa." Fabo thought that we resembled each other.

"My son."

I didn't see the likeness, but I drink San Miquel. It's made in the Philippines. Heineken is my pseudo-fils' beverage of preference. He was 31. I had been in Brussels at the age of 36 in 1988. A Walloon girl had taken me home to her parents. They had made breakfast for us in the morning. Her mother was glad that I was white.

"Welcome back home." His skin was tanned from the sun's reflection off the China sea. Fabo looked healthy. He had been a month without a drink. We ordered beers. The time was noon. Loso was playing on the radio. He told me about his months of the oil rig in three seconds, "No fun. No beer. No girls."

"New York. Cold beer. No girls." Six syllables to his seven. The economy of age. I was faightful to my wife. Too lazy to not be.

"One plus. Two negatives." Fabo had once shown a photo of his mother. The skinny punk girl with wide eyes looked familiar. I still didn’t thinkI was his father.

"Now we're here." His nose had been mashed by too many accidents, but his eyes were arctic blue. Mine were high Nordic steel.

"Paradise." Saying that I felt like Adam waking on the day after his maker created 'woman', except the almighty hadn't the heart to destroy his previous failures. The line-up at the Welkom Inn's entrance had a woman for every man's desire.

"You can say that again." I was blind to their allure. Mam dominated my libido. She was too cute for words. Fenway's mother knew that I was here. Trust. I had no choice, but to he true. I ordered another beer. The first bottle died after forty-seven seconds. The heat of May of the Gulf of Siam gave any human a thirst.

"Paradise, and I blame it on our position." He didn't speak about his wife or her German ex-. It was better to not say SS Tommy's name. "The equator?" I had heard his hypothesis on more than one occasion. My one attempt to explain it to Mam had met with her contempt. She had little patience for 'tawh-lay' or bullshit. All women say the same about men. "Only 1200 miles south of here." "I know." I had crossed the equator in the jungles of Sumatra. The relative speed of the earth's rotation is meant to send more blood to your head. "Speed."

"Not speed. The reformulazation of the theory of gravity." These words were spoken in French. Fabo loved the idea, but recognized his conjecture was full-on mad or 'bah mak' as say the Thais.

We argued about acceleration measured in m/s2, air resistance, and the downward weight force. The 3rd beer cured the affliction of banality. We were happy to sit at a bar. Happy the phone wasn't ringing. Happy heading toward drunk. The afternoon sun stretched into the west.

We watched the men run the gauntlet before the entrance of the Welkom Inn's bar. The interior was night. The mama-san played any song from any year. The male clientele liked 1977. No matter what the nationality everyone knew the words.

We had been surprised by the arrival of four Mideastern men. Jeans. White shirts. No robes. They normally frequented the smoking bars at the end of Walking Street.

"Egyptian." Fabo sniffed the air. Strong tobacco.

"Turkish." They weren't speaking Arabic. Neither did I, but I had heard enough Arabic in Paris to know the difference. I bet Fabo 500 baht on their country. They sounded too Roman.

An hour later they exited from the bar. They had barfined eight of the hostesses. One produced a bottle of Sky Whiskey. Half-empty. Another flourished a handful of banknotes. The colors were strange.

Not dollar green or the green, blue, red, and purple of Thai currency.

One girl looked over her shoulder. Prueng. A shortcake angel with soft hair and small breasts. The tomboy was almost 24. Six years older than the first day she worked the Welkom. Her girlfriend worked at a big hotel. Preung saved money to pay for her girlfriend's penis operation. 200,000 baht. She lifted a thick fist of money in the air. Her co-workers cheered her order for more whiskey.

Five minutes later she brought two glasses of whiskey-coke to the bar. We were too polite to say no. Preung slapped the foreign money on the bar. It was a big pile. Many zeros. Zaire Francs. Value almost zero. Fabo was frozen on his seat.

Someone had to pop her balloon. A bottle of Spy Whiskey was close to 500 baht at the Welkom. I was down to 300. Preung reached for the free drink bell. There were about 33 people with the range of its peal.

Drinks for everyone.

"Don't."

I read the finance section of the Herald Tribune, studied currencies, and studied Karl Marx's Manifesto. An exchange rate came to my head.

“62 baht per million.”

Preung was holding ten million.

The buffalo herd for her father was kidnapped by disappointment. Her daughter was banished in the hicks or ban-nok. Her girlfriend stayed a woman. 600 baht for a short-time trip to heaven was the asking price at the Welkom. Her math was good.

"I not win. I not lose." Preung dropped her hand from the rope hanging off the bell. "It was nice rich one minute. You want go short-time?"

Preung was asking me, but Fabo seized the gauntlet. He had been at sea three months. No fun, no beer, no women. I was one hour late for Mam.

"Another step closer to a million." His arm encircled Preung's waist. She was no longer an heiress. A common girl. One with a good heart and smooth skin. Fabo paid the bill. 300 baht was tomorrow's breakfast or five beers tonight.

Paradise.

I was heading home. Mem was waiting. Fabo and Preung strolled to room 101. It was the closest. He did look like me only me from six years ago. I had been only 51.

Not young, but younger and therefore rich, because youth was always worth billions in both dollars and baht.

But never Zaire Francs.

Karl Marx on AI from the Communist Manifesto 1848

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered forms, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.

Karl Marx wrote this in The Communist Manifesto almost two hundred years ago with chilling application to the AI investment by banks, nations, and religion. The wealthy are eager to rid economics of workers once and for all. They have always been regarded as a pest by the upper classes only good for cannon fodder or buying their new fangled improvement on life. Ease and comfort and never having to break a sweat with the promise of a guaranteed living income. But the wealthy are after the destruction of capital by excluding the under-classes access to the means of production. Some tech investors are now concerned that AI will eliminate all humans and everything else. Robots need nothing.

Unlike humans and all living things.

In the most recent Predator movie BADLANDS not a single human exists in Space. All humanoids. never needing any substanence. Homo ex Machina, but not if the proelitariat of the world unite against the scourge of the wealthy. Forget the USA. We live under the protectorate of the demented right. I saw this coming long ago, but had hoped for Obama to right this country's path, but like their GOP comrades the DNC sold out to the rich. Thankfully some socialists have risen from the people, because Marx had predicted all this and in 2011 I visited his birthplace on the Moselle River.

That summer I was appointed writer-in-residence at the British Embassy in Luxembourg. The old fortress city was centrally located in Europe and I visited to Paris, Brussels, and Charleroi in the first month. Triers on the Moselle River was very close and I planned a trip to the ancient Roman city of 70,000, only a forty-five minute ride way by train.

Telling the Ambassador my plans, I caught the morning express to the Moselle and ferried across the river to Konz for a short train ride to Trier. On my arrival I half-expected SS Tommy, abpimp frm Hamburg waiting on the train platform. Thankfully not a sign of him there on in the streets.

Germany had changed in the last thirty years. The old Nazis had died off and, while the young Nazis had become very active in the East, they weren’t in Triers, but I kept my eyes open. Walking through the old Roman ruins I studied the faces of the young and old. I didn’t spot a single Nazi. It was, as if their genes had been erased from the Germanic race.

In Triers the only broken glass was from broken bottles and not the windows of Jewish homes and synagogues as was on the morning after Kristelnacht. I ate a bratwurst from an Imbiss stand and drank a Kloster beer. I visited Karl Marx Haus. The creator of Communism had been born in the old city. The street was in the heart of the sex zone. Nothing was happening in the afternoon. As I stood outside the house and old man passed and muttered under his breath, “Juden.”

“And fuck you, you old Nazi.”

My comment turned his head. His skin was withered by age, but he still stood erect. He had never asked for forgiveness for his deeds under der Dritten Reiche.

“Ja, du alte arseloch.”

I rushed him and he prepared to take a blow. I so wanted to hit him, but he wasn’t SS Tommy.

“Gehst heim,” I said with a Boston accent and he stood his ground with Nazi arrogance.

He was about 91. I was 59. 1945 was well back in the 20th Century. I stepped closer to the old man. He did not back away. He still stood for his beliefs and so did I. One blow would have put him in the hospital and me to jail. He was still a Nazi and I was me. Some things never change. I shoved him and said, “Go home.”

Our eyes said everything else. I was a Goy like him, but also a race traitor. I wasn't anything like him and neither are the millions and millions of Germans in this world. Some of my best friends are German. I love them. Ehrlich, but not Nazis. This old man and I will always be enemies and I would never have it any other way.

Workers of the world unite, we have to stop the rich__

Atop Montauk Bluff # 45

Early morning Just After the dawn Wake slow Open my eyes Look at my phone 6:21 am__ I want to die Fall asleep Dream nothing White light All is nothing__ Wake up Still slow Seconds tick Open eyes Look at phone 6:58 am__ I want to die Fall asleep See nothing Wake up Look at phone 7:43 am__ Wlll past the dawn Open my eyes Sunlight In bed on the 9th floor of 4 Washington Square Park I'm not dead I still want to die I don't fall asleep I do not dream I am awake I live Wanting to die I get out of bed Go to the bathroom I pee I live Life goes on 8:36 am___ Death goes away Life come to stay For today I am not dead I open ny eyes 8:37 am__ Living is life Today 8:38 am Still alive On my feet A deep breath Time to start the day August 20 1974 This night that Year The Ramones play live for the first time CBGBs live Blitzkrieg Bop I wake on a bluff Overlooking the Pacific Moonlight Beach The end of an LSD trip 1The end of America__ Fog fills the dawn windows White all white Floe in bed with me Naked like me Asleep Fingertips on her bare shoulder Warm flesh Alive same as me then PSame as me now August 20, 2026 8:51 am I shower I dress Blutzkrieg Bops LP pp The Ramones I live I hope tomorrow too The Ramones forever todaypp Me alive too Gabba Gabba Hey__

Go Bee Go

Summer near the end A bee on the 9th floor balcony Overlooking Bleecker Street The bee still Not 100% Its mandibles move Exhausted I get sugar water Pour it before its head I bend over Its tongue feeds on the sweet nectar__ C'mon little bee Get up On your legs Summer isn't over yet Neither are you__ A minute later The bee stops eating Stops moving C'mon little bee Rise Fly Buzz__ Nothing I pray Not to any god To eternity This bee has lived forever The last two months Same as me__ I go inside Come back out The bee gone A miracle Fly little bee fly One day I shall do the same___

I'm A King Bee by Slim Harpo < p>

Yo Da Man - 2020

“Hey you know something people
I’m not black
But there’s a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I’m not white.”
I have lived by these words from the Mothers of Invention’s FREAK OUT LP, which I stole that record from Zayre discount store in 1969. I was working at the same store. I took the LP as a goof along with Wes Montgomery’s DAY IN THE LIFE. My crime was witnessed by the skinny assistant manager. Mitch didn’t like me. The girl at the cosmetic counter was sweet on me. Sookie and I made out at the store’s Xmas party. She liked outlaws and boosting that album felt like a crime until Mitch called my father.
“Pay for the music.”
I obeyed my father. Charges were dropped by the store. Mitch fired me. Sookie and I had a thing. Those were good times.
Occasionally I play TROUBLE EVERYDAY to hear those infamous words. “But there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white.”
I cheered the Panthers, the SLA, Tommie Smith’s clinched fist. I’ve danced in Harlem. I played basketball on West 4th Street. I smoked crack with dealers on Avenue C. I was no whitey, but my non-whitey status was only in my mind for blacks saw me for who I was.
An ofay honkie wanting to pass.
It took a long time to realize that I was not alone in wanting to burn my race card.
Whites wanting to be black and blacks wanting to be white and that goes for the poor wanting to be rich.
Few rich want to be poor, because as Karl Marx said, “Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honored, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?”
You da man, Karl.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can rent it and if the OJ trial proved anything, it was that even a black man can buy justice in America if he has enough money.
Let’s all go fishing.
Ice Ice baby.

NICHT FUN - 1982

In the autumn of 1982 Henri Flesh and I flew to Berlin. We booked rooms at the Hotel Kempenski for a three-day holiday from BSIR, Hamburg's most popular club, after working the entire summer. That night the French DJ and I went out to the Dschungel in Charlottesburg, where we ran into a pair of Christina F lookalikes. All the girls wanted to be the junkie teen refugee from the Zoo Station, who had become a star thanks to her bestselling book, THE DIARY OF CHRISTINE F. My girl's name was Chloe. The ex-ballerina from Koln was as blonde as Ilsa of the SS.

The next morning and gray and misty. We bid the girls auf-wiedersehen, giving them taxi fare and money for a breakfast. Henri and I strolled over to the Brandenburg Gate. The photo image of a Red Army soldier waving the Red Flag over its battered arch was burnt into my head. Concrete barriers barred any approach to the monument to national unity. Nina Hagen, a punk singer, had been granted deportation to avoid becoming a protest figure. This was not the Free World. 

We strolled over to the graffitied Wall and climbed a scaffolding to view over the twelve-foot wall. The heavily-mined 'death strip' was a barren patch of dirt stretching right and left into the murk. Another wall barred any escapes along with an electrified fence. The Cold War was running strong on the front line and the two us smoked Gitanes on the way to get into East Berlin. A huff of Persian Brown helped pass the time and we arrived at Checkpoint Charlie in a nod.

The squat female border guard wasn't happy about letting us into the workers' paradise. We were enemies of the state in her eyes and those of the West as well. She stamped our pass light as ether. The Stasi or secret police had ways of dealing with our kind and two bland men followed us. Unlike the prosperity in West Berlin entire neighborhoods bore the scars of the Fall of Berlin. Bullet holes, shell holes, collapsed buildings, and empty blocks. In many ways East Berlin looked like the East Village.  

We walked through the deserted city and crossed the River Spree to arrive at Karl-Marx Platz, where a thin concrete communication tower rose into the graying September sky showing off the achievment of the DDR.. The fog was so thick the radio spire was barely visible. The stomp of boots startled us and across the plaza a troop of armed Soviet soldier goose-stepped out of the mist.

"There's parking everywhere." Henri wished that we had my orange VW bug.

"Here comes a car." Henri pointed to where a small car whined down the street.

"Wooo, ein Trabant." We waved to the driver and Henri explained that East Germans waited for years to purchase one. It sounded like a lawn mower. The Stasi agents didn't appreciate our laughing.

We drank bier in a restaurant. The people at the tables avoided lifting their heads. They knew how to act around the Stasi.

One big glass cost twenty-five pfennigs. I had enough money for a hundred beers and bought a round for everyone in the restaurant. No one said thank you. No one touched the glasses. They stayed on the bar.

The Stasi approached the barman and spoke in low voices.

"They are no fun." Henri wasn't liking this day trip.

We left the restaurant and went shopping, except there was nothing to buy in the shops.

"Maybe we could score some drugs." Henri entered a pharmacy and exited in a huff. "They were only selling steroids. Last thing I want is to look like an East German female athlete."   

The Communist competitor were three times the man I would ever be in real life.  

"Us too." The girls acted out weighing weights.

The Stasi were no amused by our behavior. Two more followed us. Their message was clear

Heraus auslanders.

"Wir zuruckgehen nach Ost."   

I had had enough of East Berlin.

"Communism is a failure." Henri liked his socialist France.

"Same as capitalism." I hated the consumerism of the West, where everyone's soul was for sale.

I wanted to go back to the hotel and nearing Checkpoint Charlie we gave our remaining East German DMs to a young boy. He looked at the Stasi agents and threw them on the ground, then ran down the street.

We passed through the Berlin Wall at the sunset. No one stopped us at the frontier. We were no threat to the DDR. The dyky border guard was still on duty. Helga had to love her job. Once more back in the American sector I waved down a taxi and told the driver to take us to the Kempinski.

He asked about East Berlin.

"It's a worker's paradise."

"Schiesse."

Even Henri knew the meaning of that word, but neither did I consider the west the Free world. I like Nina Hagen was a punk.

I doubted I would ever see East Berlin again and bid the half-city 'Niewiedersehen', although that night Chloe and I pretended we were spies and I loved lying in bed with her, whispering in my Boston-accented German, feeling oh so James Bond. Oh, 007.

$1 Billion For The Common Man - 2018

Karl Marx co-authored THE COMMUNNIST MANIFESTO with the son of a capitalist owning a large English Textile factory owner. Frederich Engels was the funnier of the two and once said, "Money is the only thing that can make a beautiful woman think a bald man isn't bald."

The co-father of Communism spoke the truth about the rich.

Not so much Millionaires.

There are 2,208 billionaires from 72 countries and territories, which is the population of Lincolville, Maine.

This gang of thieves' collective wealth is $19 trillion.

None of them are worth a lobster at the Lincolnville Lobster Pound, but they rule the banks and the banks run the wealth cloud for the billionaires.

The rich only fear the loss of wealth and the nouveau-riche.

Revolution?

No one, but me and a few thousand people believe in revolution, but tonight all that will change..

The New York Megamillion lottery's payoff with be $1 billion.

After taxes the winner will get $400,000,000, which is $400,000,000 more than any billionaire paid in America.

$1 is more than most of them pay, but this week we all dropped $2 for a play at not fame, but fortune. I bought three chance at the dream and picked the numbers myself, because we all know that the final numbers will be decided by a computer designed by the billionaires' lackeys to rob the poor. It does matter, because this evening at 11pm one of us will join the two-thousand cocksuckers.

I can only hope it will be me.

As does my family.