October 26, 1978 East Village Journal Entry

On Alice; she is very frustrated progress on Moliere's GENTLEMEN OF VERONA at the Kurt Dempster's Ensemble Theater, since the young actors all hate each other. She is the director of this production and I asked, "Can't you channel the hatred?"

"What do you know about theater?"

We were on the Bowery and I stopped walking to ask myself, "What am i doing here with her?"

Alice hadn'tnoticed that I wasn't with her. She had been lost in this maelstrum of anxiety and anger forthe past month, as if her this play was on Broadway.

Last night in my SRO I went to the dresser to take out my contacts. Alice thought I was leaving to drink at CBGBs and turned off the light, saying, "Fuck you."

I turned and she said, "Don't hit me."

"You fucking stupid bitch. What do you think I am? I love you and you say you love me. What are those words? Something you memorized like a script. That's all you can give. Words. You can't wait to be with someone new to use as a dumb actor for your scenes."

She shriveled into the pillows.

"Please don't hit me, please."

She wasn't frigthened, but sounded like she really wanted me to hurt her. "Yesterday was my birthday and all I got from you was your freaking out about nonthing. This play, I know it is important to you. But I matter not all to you. I'm nothing to you."

"I'm sorry." The words sounded sincere, but she's a better than good actress. I loved her, even now.

"Sorry. Another word. It means nothing. Words on more words meaning nothing. If I didn't live in this shithole, I would leave you. What can you do to make me not throw you out."

It was late and I wanted her in my life. I had no one else. I never did. I breathed deeply to cool down and asked, "Have I ever threatened you?"

"No, but you fight people all the time."

She was right and I had no answer for why. I have always fought. I have never hit a woman, although I had taken off a Fyre boot and thrown it at my younger sister, who had said she hated me after I picked her up late at a bowling alley when she was 12. women are normally terrorized by men. All their lives. I stripped off my clothes and slipped under the covers.

"I'm sorry I scared you."

We went to sleep without a kiss or a carress and I remembered a line from Wim Wenders KINGS OF THE ROAD.

"I don’t know how one can live with a woman,” says Robert. “I’ve always felt lonely inside a woman."

I had a horrible dream about being trapped on an interstate. I woke and saw Alice sleeping. She looked at peace. I returned the nightmare. It wouldn't go away.

In the morning she parted without a word. like we would never see each other again. after the play she's going back to Ohio to finish her last college semester. Even her keaving this morning is hard on me. She'll be gone maybe for good. We've been together since March. Nothing lasts in eternity except eternity.

foto from KINGS OF THE ROAD

October 25, 1978 East Village Journal Entry

The dalliances of October are coming to a close. Alice remains my favorite. She is hurt by my sexual adventures. I wish I could be faithful, but I feel so free and she is frequently not in the mood for sex. Maybe it’s just with me. I think she is having an affair with her friend Susan, but I doubt that. Alice is my safe house, a harbor from the storms, a friend, a lover, someone who cares for my soul as I care for hers.

We shared phrases from our speech after these months of living together at 256 East 10th Street. She has a better understanding of the English language while I know more slang. My cousin Cindy is married to the managing editor of the National Geographic. Oliver Payne was born in Rhodesia and educated at proper English school and said during a visit, “You speech is difficult to decipher.”

Understandable with my Boston accent crippled by speech issues.

I purport myself to be a modernist, believing the world has reached a watershed in history. During the Ice Age man was an omnivorous hunter, Neanderthals were on the menu. Cro-Magnon and Homo sapiens sheltered in caves. Food was scarce. These people gnawed meat and snow. Human flesh before they discovered pigs, which tasted as good as man. Classical Anthropologists liked to portray our antecedents to assume the genetic acme of Man, but we were, are, and will be savages driven by climate and hunger for flesh. Human flesh. Supposedly we taste like pig.

The last known man to be eaten in this century was Michael Rockefeller by the Asmat tribesmen in Papua New Guinea

After the melting of the glaciers the sea level rose inundating Atlantis. The lands covered by ice grew green. Man raised animals and crops to east along with Man. Man went from a savage to a savage with cattle. Previously our sense of ownership pertained to caves, women, men and a shank of meat. Herds of cattle became property. Man fought over these possessions, then with the discovery of beer Man settled down to reap the harvest. Tribes divided the land. Their territories had names. None that we remember. We remained savages as we do now,

OCTOBER 24, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

The phone rang this morning and Alice answered, then groaned, "It's Mark."

It was 10.

She handed the phone and I asked gruffly, "What do you want?"

"Can you come into work?"

"Why? You need someone to blame when you lose money?" Mark was always plundering the petty cash for ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE.

"Edward came in and asked where you were. He wasn't happy to hear you had quit."

"Did you tell him why?" I was sure he had made up something that blame me.

"I said I thought you were stealing."

"And he said you were wrong."

"Yes."

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and asked Alice, "Would I be an asshole to go back to work for Mark?"

"Ask for a raise." She rolled over to sleep. The hillbilly directress had come back around dawn. She smelled of another woman's perfume at least not belonging to her witch partner, Susan. Revlon Charlie.

I had been getting paid $150 a week and said, "Pay me 180 a week."

Mark said 'yes'.

"I'll be in there shortly."

Shortly meant getting out of bed and feeling the window overlooking the alley. The pane of glass was cold and the cypress tree was shedding the final leaves. I pulled over autumn clothing for the first time this year; a sweater, heavy boots, a thick leather jacket, and new gloves from Bloomingdales. On the walk over to Veselka I shivered in the wind. The sun was weakly shining through the clouds. I loved the cold, because it drove most of the junkies inside. There was no sign of Hakkim, the scourge of the neighborhood. After breakfast at Veselka I walked up to Mark's apartment building. Mark answered the door. I glared at him and he wisely said, "Let's forget the past and look forward to the future. Edward really likes your work."

"I'm sure."

We made phone calls to various theaters across the USA. The Albee retrospective was immensely popular featuring; THE AMERICAN DREAM, THE ZOO STORY, COUNTING THE WAYS, FAM AND YAM, Counting the Ways" and assorted other plays and my favorite QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN MAO, which I had seen in rehearsal. The day passed without incident, but this calm was all a facade. Mark was an asshole screamer, when things went bad and some people never change.

GRANT STITT general counselor NRP

The New Zealander emigrated to the USA to study modern dancer. He is 28, homosexual, a good gossip, and a vegetarian. He has nom lover just dalliance without count. His dancing is modern which suits his lanky body. Grant is a devote NRP member in charge of the Surrender Army, which will be the military gay arm of the Party dedicated to giving up before a shot is fired on the front line to corrupt the Soviet troops. Hopefully he won't become the Eric Roehm of the NRP, the homosexual Nazi leader of the SA troops, which was crushed by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives.

Keith Richards had his day in Canadian court for heroin possession. His sentence of a year's probation and a gig before blind children surprised the Silent Majority press calling for his blood. The Stones haven't thrilled me since their hit BROWN SUGAR and that was because a fan named Paul O'Malley had shouted out the title 'BROWN SUGAR' during the recording of a live LP. Every at my graduation from Boston College seniors yelled BROWN SUGAR throughout the ceremony upsetting the Jesuits.

In the punk world Sid Vicious of THE SEX PISTOLS' bass player attempted suicide with a lightbulb.

He should have used a razor blade. They are very effective slicing lengthwise. I would never killed myself that way or jumping or with a gun or hanging or pills or a unlit stove like the poet Sylvia Plath. How I don't know, but if necessary I'll fix it out. Still it's funny to see how sturdy is the human body.

Back when I was driving taxi for Boston Cab I ran a stop sign before the Roxbury projects at Lamartine and Heath Streets and t-boned a Mustang at full speed. Time collapsed to a blur, then resumed normal speed. The force of the collision threw me across the Checker Cab with a snapped-off steering wheel in my hands. The other driver Mitch Lipcomb was unhurt as well and the soul singer confessed outside court that he had fallen sleep at the wheel. We laughed and then realized no one had shown up for the hearing.

"Let's get a drink."

Sid Vicious was probably avoiding a court date for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel. Rumors had it that Sid had taken thirty Tuinals and had been in a drug coma during the killing on Columbus Day. His shows exposed his total lack of musical talent, but punks crowded CBGBs and Max's to see the disaster sing Frank Sinatra's hit MY WAY. Record producers ignored his heroin addiction and bizarre behavior in favor of filthy loot, but Sid's performances echoed the coming untalented assault of New Wave led by the Lounge Lizards and Teenage Jesus. each dreaming of gold-plated sneakers, suit jackets from near-extinct seals from Italian designers and China White #4.

White heroin was nuch better than Mexican Brown.

Woof woof woof dogs at the door. Don't you go outside Rabid hounds snare for revenge Fangs snap at the glass. The mongrels wish they were Poodles Or Pekinese. Dogs are scared of water Dogs are scaring me I drop my trousers and piss on them all. Arf Arf arf

Alice and I met over a year ago through the designer, Timothy Dunleavey. They were friends from North Carolina. I was going to a birthday party for Jancy Stephenson from Texas. After a few drinks I asked Alice and her friend to go someplace more private. They were staying at a West Side townhouse with a pool in the cellar. The water was unheated, yet the two of us stripped naked. Her friend puked after a few minutes of sex. Alice came from Coal County. The good side of the tracks had her kind tough and she called for God, as I finished in her. I was not God, but her orgasm was divine.

Tonight I lie in bed and she sits at the kitchen table speaking to her consort, Susan. Her voice was low. I could only pick out a few words. The conversation could have been between two lovers. I fear the worst. I came into the kitchen with a towel around my waist. She turns away from me. I open a bottle of Chateau Bourdieux from France liberated from Mark's wine chest. It's better than the usual crap I drink. I ask Alice if she wants some. She made a face. She only drinks with the cast of NEW WAVE VAUDEVILLE.

"You want to make love?"

She shook her head and returned to speaking on the phone. Women try to seduce me at CBGBs. I refuse them and wonder in Alice's celibacy is contagious. I hope not. I like fucking, but I also want tobe monogamous. I wander the streets alone. A libertine in love instead of in lust.

It was late in Butte, Montana When I arrived at the cowboy bar. I order a whiskey and beer And search the place for my wife. Rumor had it she was living here now. Not with anyone Playing the tramp Mona wasn't here I drowned my drinks and ordered another round Last call in Butte Montana. I can't forget Mona Her face fills empty mirrors Two weeks ago she left the state line Tired of living in a tent. She started breakfast While I was in the shower I came back to burning eggs. She took my money and caught a ride With a trucker heading east. She knew how to leave fast Any other woman from Reno could do the same I ate the burned eggs. She always burnt them I dressed for work building shitters For the new highway rest stop West of Missoula I earned enough working overtime in the snow I borrowed my boss' truck I bought a pistol in Drummond. Planning to shot here dead Last call in Butte Montana The gun is in the truck I ain't gonna kill no one Only myself and soft I order two more. The bar is empty The bartender wants me gone I tell him about Mona. "Her. She was here a couple of Days ago. Said she was heading to Laramie with a rodeo bum But a girl like that don't ever have a destination Only someplace she had done." I thanked him for the info He gave me the drinks to go in a paper cup It's only Friday night And she gotta be out there I'll drink my way across the west till Sunday Then come on back to work Still hurting from work and Mona and sleazy bars Always last call in Montana.

Copps Hill Cemetery

On an October afternoon I wandered through the Copps Hill Cemetery.
One of the oldest in Boston.
HP Lovecraft wrote a story About tunnels running underneath the graves.
To a hellish world.
Pickman's Model
"There were witches and what their spells summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea; smugglers; privateers—and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to enlarge the bounds of life, in the old times!"
The horror.
None of a sunny autumn afternoon.
I looked for my family Brewsters Howells and Hamblins.

On the black flat tombstone
I knew none of the buried
But recognized the names

Of the dead from three hundred years ago.

Dead for centuries

But still alive in eternity.
As we get old

We forget
As we get older
We are forgotten
Except by the gravestones
Until the wind erases away the names.

OCTOBER 23, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

QUITING MARK AMITIN

Tore up your phone number Written on a scrap of paper I never memorized it And I'm glad I hadn't I'm so happy to walk away from your shit The screaming The tantrum The lechery I tell you, "Fuck you." "You'll be back." "Fuck you in case I do." I walk out the door I don't turn around No second thoughts Glad to be gone I'd say it had been fun None of it was.

Today I quit ALBEE DIRECTS ALBEE. Edward is a good man, But Martin Amitin questioned my accounting. I did it once again and came up with the same numbers.

"I guess you're good at cooking numbers," said the acne-scarred producer.

"I was a math major in university. If I wanted to cheat, you'd never know and the only reason you're busting my chops is that you want me to have sex with you. I might, but you're dick is too small."

"What?"

"Small. It isn't ever two plus two." I burned him in effigy and wished he caught an incurable tropical disease, as he yelled at me.

"I quit."

If you quit, I'm not paying you."

"Then I'll pay myself." I took my wages from the petty cash. "$120. Can you count it?" I had not been brought up by my Yankee father to quit jobs Some how I would find another.

"That's theft."

"Call the cops." I left the office, as Edward entered with a press release.

"Going someplace?"

"Yeah, I quit. Good luck. It's been an honor working for you."

Outside I felt free, but then Mark screamed in a high whining voice from the 17th floor.

"Stop that man. He's a thief."

Not a single pedestrian paid attention.

I love a city where people know enough not to get involved in other people's bullshit.

I called Alice from 27th Street.

I quit."

About time. That old queen hated me."

"He hates all women."

"You want to meet me for breakfast at the Kiev."

"Sure, you feel bad?"

"No, I have enough for rent."

November's rent?"

"Sadly only October's rent, but don't worry, Mrs Golding love me."

"Everyone loves you." She was a little jealous of how I got into clubs and venues and ate for free.

"And I love you." I hadn't been seeing Alice at all as she devotes all her time to NEW WAVE VAUDEVILLE. I have gone to sleep alone veery night for the last month

"It's strange, but I feel married. and I don't know how to react to that. I've never lived with a man before." She was 22.

"I've never lived with a woman before." I was 26.

Are you crazy about me?"

Yes, you are my love, but lately you've been distant, because of the show, so I understand. You feel your freedom, so you can be creative. I haven't been seeing anyone.

"Yoy, the sexual adventurer?"

"Yes, the libertine has retired." I'm not concerned with my cheating. Alice??? I pray that she isn't sleeping with that horrible shrew, her co-conspirator in the show. Susan Hanneford. At least I'm happy to see that the witch hates me more than I hate her.

After Alice went to rehearsal at Irving Plaza I spoke with Michael Selbach. We drank Rhein wine and the sculptor bemoaned his wife's desertion. "She's gone and I don't know where. At least you know where Alice is.

With that stupid bitch.

We finished two bottles in record time.

And then decided to hit CBGB's for beers.

It was still daylight, but nothing said fuck your boss better than hitting a Bowery Bar early.

Seconds tick to seocnds A ragged man's death rattle on the Bowery. Not death, but something far from life. The bum had been hit by a car. Drunks live hard and die harder. Blood flows from his head. Seoncds tick to death A siren approaches fast. The man opens his eyes. Laughs Cries An asks "I never thought I would die here." He groaned and breathed again. "Maybe I ain't dead, but I can't call this living." Seconds tick back to his heart. The ambulance workers load him inside Life goes on.

OCTOBER 22, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night at CBGBs there were plenty of fights. Several women tried to lure me into bathroom sex. Stupidly I only wanted Alice, who was at Irving Plaze with her long-nosed girlfriend, Susan. I almost walked over the Polish meeting hall to confirm my fears, but drank beer instead and did a few lines with Guadalcanal, who is leaving fora tour with Johnny Thunders. I have never spoken to Alice about my suspicions of their pussy-bumping, but Kim Davis has intoned that she thought Alice and Susan were a thing. I don't think so, but I'm a man in love and we always believe the best.

Wet Autumn Rain

A soft Autumn rain Then harder Raindrops bouncing off the sidewalk Of Myrtle Avenue Shutting my eyes I listen To the rain on the street The sizzle of car tires on the wet Engines acceleration on a Friday afternoon Listen harder To passersby. "Her bottom is bigger than my umbrella." Laughter I open my eyes. Smell the damp. Feel the wet Drifting on the air As raindrops splash On the street. Mexican workers off early All smiles It's cerveza time A young rapper nods to the beat. Of his words. Water dripping from his hoodie. School children Hand in hand With a father Or a mother Happy to be going home Out of the rain On an autumn afternoon. I stay outside Serenaded by the rain. It's its own music

OCTOBER 20, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

NEW WAVE VAUDEVILLE has Alice and the other participants in a panic. I've seen a few rehearsals. Klaus is fantastic, David McDermott is the quintessential fey emcee. Stanley the Polish manager of Irving Place, tells everyone that the show will be a big success. Alice is giving it her all. We haven't been together in weeks. I wish I possessed her drive. I'm only capable of writing in this journal and scribbling bad poetry on blank paper. I throw most of it away without reciting the verses to friends or strangers or reading it myself.

Failure.

A twenty-six year-old failure at school, work, and love.

"I think I'm getting too fat," Alice said this morning before the mirror above the kitchen bathtub. "I can't make love to you until I'm skinny."

"You don't look fat to me. You look as beautiful as the first day I met you."

"That's because you're blind to anything other than your own narcissism."

"What?" I was prone to regarding my reflection in mirrors and windows, so there was truth to what the West Viriginan had said, but her to me revealed a cold side of her. Cold to me.

"You're always glancing at your reflection in mirrors and shop windows."

"True." I sat at the table, as she pulled on her jacket. "I also look in people's eyes, because people really see you for who you are."

"You're not Adonis." She slammed the door shut and I was alone.

No sex.

I've been celibate before.

When Alice directed OUT TO BRUNCH, the hillbilly beauty rejected my advances to the point where I slept on the living room couch. Some nights she would steal under the covers and huddle close, saying, "I'm cold."

The sex during the no-sex period was all for her. She came and went right back to the bedroom without a good-night kiss. After that I went on strike.

I'm working for Mark Amitin. I need the money more than I don't need the grief. His cat, Camus, sits on this journal. Mark wants to fuck me. He wants to fuck everyone. I leave after lunch, saying, "I have to go to the doctor for a clap test."

I walked south down Second Avenue. Women stare at me. Most I wouldn't touch. They exude no sexuality, which I prefer to beauty. Last year this time I was whoring my way through Brooklyn with Betty, a married bimbo with augmented breasts, Roz, a lesbian, who liked my cock sometimes more than licking pussy, Fran, a skinny Jewish pinball player, who begs me to cum on her baby-powdered breasts, and young Ellen, a scrawny teen runaway, who gets off one my fucking her ass in between subway cars the night Elvis died. Last year I told her about Alice and that we couldn't fuck anymore.

"What about blow-jobs on the D-Train?"

"Fellatio isn't really sex."

I said good-bye to her last Spring when Alice Graduated from her Midwestern liberal arts college. I can never remember its name. I arrive to East 10th Street without seeing a single women exuding sex.

I'm cursed with desire for one woman, who fears me, but not my cock.

OCTOBER 20, 2021 - BROOKLYN

I can do nothing right for Old Yellah.

Today I hadn't replaced the heater to the bathroom. I should have. She heats up the bathroom for yoga. Hot sauna's one of her great pleasures. Sh tells me that my apologies are fake. I don't respond to the valid accusation, since she is so absorbed in her efforts to save outdoor dining and a million other projects that my cancer hasn't registered with her.

I haven't mentioned the fatality rate of liver cancer to her or anyone else. 2-5 years. No one at NYU hospital have discussed my future other than to say that I'm a perfect candidate for a liver transplant. I thought about telling Alice about my ailment, but opted to spare everyone, since they are wrapped up in their cellphone existences

This afternoon the NYU team checked my heart condition. Everything was normal. It looks as if I'll live to the end of the year.

ps I am the world's # 1 failurologist.

Stags Shagging In Season

Written Oct 24, 2011

Putney was not exactly the center of London, but I chose to stay with Sara. We were the best of friends. Dawn came early at her house. Every morning the record executive walked her sweet little dog, Maysie, in Richmond Park. I was a stranger to the Royal Park, the largest in London, and was pleasantly surprised by its wild expanse of bracken meadows and even more so by the spectacle of rutting stags. Autumn was the time of the year, when the male red deer contest for hinds by a display of their antlers, bellowing, and plain old knock-down fighting.

The stags roared at each other, as we walked past the harems. We were no threat, but barking dogs bring out the protective instinct in the big males. They don't want anything fucking around with their mates and I stay well out of their way. Antlers have points and Sara told me that several walkers had been charged by the big bucks.

While I am covered by National Health in the EEU thanks to my Irish passport, I have little interest in getting gored by an irate stag. Sara guided me to safety. Maysie was not a barker. She knew her place on the feeding chain and I gave her a little treat as a reward for not irking the deer.

She was a good little dog.

July 20th 1978 - Provincetown - Journal Entry

 

In Provincetown with Alice. Commercial Street is packed with fey homos and hippies retreated to this end of the road refuge. Both can be who they acre without pretending to be what the rest of America wants them to be. I look for any old friends from the 1270 in front to the afternoon Meat Rack. I recognize none of the face, but want in their eyes, saying, “Lose the fag hag.”

Alice yogas on the beach like she was Isadora Duncan. A bulk dyke shoots fotos. Alice obliges her. It’s a lovely pad de deluxe. I wander off to the Atlantic Bar. More gay men. One buys me a beer. We talked who knows who. He comes from Boston. He knows my good friend Donny Ward from the 1270. We both love the black dancer extraordinaire. We huff poppers.

I reject his offers of sin. For some reason I don’t queer any more. Sexually.

Alice is finished her session. The bulk dyke scowls at me. She’s not Alice’s type. She likes them femme.

We go back to our hotel room. She throws up in the shower. A sensitive stomach. I stand on the deck naked. The Atlantic air medicine. We fuck. I feel great. Away from New York. Away from the sullen summer of West Virginia. The pollution of Manhattan, and the imprisoning familiarity of Boston. Our problems two hundred miles away. We both have money in our pockets from my painting her father’s house, even in thought I got paint on some of the bushes. Alice is in a good moon. She’s singing a parody of Patti Smith’s HORSES with Race Point in view,

I love the dead end on the Cape.

Later a naked gay man with a small penis approached us and said I looked like Jesus’ brother.

“No bearded.” He eyes my crotchet.

I laugh and he drifted away to the dunes with a backward glance, as if he expected me to follow. Alice shrugs like she doesn’t care. I stayed with her.

Suddenly think of whether Jesus had a younger brother or a son with Mary Magdalene. She was no whore, although the nuns taught she was.

I wondered if Jesus had a brother or son. Blasphemy. A mortal sin for the Church. Worthy of eternal damnation, unless I ask for a pArdon from Hell. Atheists don’t fear an afterlife.

Palestine Peace Train

Back in the late 19th century European Jews sought a homeland to call their own. The obvious choice was Palestine with their historical ties to the Levant dating back the End of the Exodus and an existing community of 10,000 in Jerusalem and three other cities. By 1918 the Jewish population in Palestine had expanded to 70,000 versus 320000 Muslims. Arab ownership amounted to 94% of Land.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire allowed Britain and France to redraw the Middle East without regard to previous provincial boundaries. Straight lines defined the borders of the new nations. Not so Palestine which the British ruled under a mandate as the French oversaw Syria, whose frontier with Iraq ran as straight as a crow's flight.

Seeking to end the Diaspora Jews from Europe emigrated to their ancient kingdom in hopes of creating a homeland far from the eternal programs and antisemitism of Christians.

Jews migrated everywhere. Mostly to the Americas, but for better or worse many stayed where they were. It was home for a landless tribe.

The Holocaust visited on the Ashkenazi by the Third Reich reinforced that reality that the Jewish people were not safe in foreign countries and in 1948 the United Nations voted to create Israel, giving the Jews 60% of the land.

Over the next seventy-five years Israel practiced apartheid tactics to evict the original inhabitants from their traditional homes citing the millenia old Bible as their lease to a kingdom extinct for nearly two thousand years.

Last week Hamas said enough and struck Israel without warning from their highly vaulted Mossad and multi-million dollar security systems. Hamas launched thousands of missiles at settlements and cities across the Jewish state and over 15,000 fighters easily breached the border wall to spread death to settlers and soldiers across the desert as if this was their Tet Offensive. More like the Mongol Horde. No one was spared. Not soldiers. Not civilians nor men, women or children. The dead number over 1400 with thousands wounded, and hundreds taken hostages. The IDF was nowhere, Shin Bet having trained conscripts to be an army of occupation instead of soldiers.

The assault was finally stemmed three days later. The attackers fought to the last bullet. There were no prisoners. Hamas had nothing to lose.

Stunned Neyhayahu promised retaliation and Israel has ruthlessly adopted the Nazi tactic of leveling the Warsaw Ghetto or the push them into the sea strategy.

The world awaits worse. Young Israeli soldiers are amassing outside of Gaza. War seems to be the only course between two people who no longer believe in peace. The West Bank is also under assault by the IDF. The Two-State Plan is dead. It always has been an illusion.

There is only one sane course.

It is not war.

It is peace.

Peace between two people who don't speak.

Who believe extermination as the only answer, but the next step to peace will be a peace convoy from Jerusalem and Gaza to act as a human shield from Armageddon, but like Hamas the vast majority of Jews see red and I can't blame them, but fighting in Gaza could become Israel's Stalingrad. I hope for peace.

As Winston Churchill said, "It's better to jaw jaw than war war."

Tough As Porter Rockwell

My father claimed that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons, had been a distant relative on his father's side of the family. My aunt has backed up this assertion, saying that our line had remained in Maine, while the prophet's clan had drifted from the mountains in Vermont to the religiously burned-over lands of Western New York. After announcing his discovery of the golden tablets of the Moroni, Joseph Smith had formed the Latter Day Saints. Their belief in polygamy had angered more conservative religionists and the Mormons had been driven by angry mobs, but they hadn't gone without a fight and the most infamous of their protector had been Orrin Porter Rockwell.

The young convert had served as bodyguard to the Prophet, who had said to Porter at a Christmas party. "I prophesy, in the name of the Lord, that you — Orrin Porter Rockwell — so long as ye shall remain loyal and true to thy faith, need fear no enemy. Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee."

According to Wikipedia the Mormon Samson had earned a bloodthirsty reputation with an attempted assassination of Lilburn Boggs, the former governor of Missouri, who had signed Executive Order 44 on October 27, 1838 known as the "Extermination Order" evicting Mormons from Missouri by violent and deadly means. Old Port had defended his murdering ways by saying, "I never shot at anybody, if I shoot they get shot!... He's still alive, ain't he?" His former home was the site of the Utah State Prison. He was no Taggard Romney.

Before and Now and Thereafter

Long ago

Long before Taylor Swift

Man became Man

How does not matter

As what does not matter

We existed

Prey for all animals

Saber-Toothed tigers, crocodiles, mosquitos ad infinitum

Man was not atop the feeding chain

Man was not on the bottom

What saved us 

We smelled bad

We tasted worst.

And we learned from the other species.

How to speak

To feed 

To love

We roamed this planet

For eons upon eons

Our footprints mark the soil

Bones scattered across the plains, valleys, mountains everywhere.

Sometimes alone

Sometimes together

Like the other species we were social.

Man changed with challenges

From Mother Earth.

Floods, quakes, and lastly the last Ice Age

The great glacier retreats.

15000 years ago

Alive and ready to spread

To open land across the globe.

Learning from the lions, tigers, and bears.

How to stay alive

How to kill

Lions tigers and bears 

And

Man.

And Man likes the taste of Man 

Man tasted of Spam

Goodbye Neanderthals

Goodbye Cro-magnon

Man approximately 10000 individuals

No known names

Earth no name

First known name

KI

In Sumerian

2900 BC

World population

Maybe three million

Man spreads KI

Man covers Terra

Man abuses Der Welt

And all beneath the sky.

Man is war

Mar is slavery

Man is greed, envy, pride, lust, gluttony, and wrath. 

Sloth is a virtual in the age of mass species suicide.

Every man woman and child committing every sin in hopes of meet Taylor Swift.

I

One man

Have decided enough

No more am I a homo sapien.

A wise man.

A Neanderthal

I resign from humanity 

To rejoin my genes

Neanderthal

Beaten from me by nuns.

Lefthandedness

A welcoming smile

An occidental bump at the base of my skull

Short arms

Short legs.

Abandoning humanity and all it's evils.

To walk free of learning

To see the stars

To read the wind

To meet Taylor Swift

No longer a Man

Just only me

And my name is not Ugh.

Singapore Ready to Green Light Kidney Trade

Written July 22, 2012

While I was up in Boston, my sister found a medical survey at a hospital needed guinea pigs for a sleep-deprivation study. The doctor in charge considered me a good candidate and request that I submit to a physical at Beth Israel. The results confirmed my health was stellar, except for heightened kidney readings.

"You should have it checked out with your doctor." The Beth Israel physician suggest and I never heard from them again.

I visited my doctor in Staten Island and we went out to lunch at a harborside bar. After hearing about my kidney readings, he asked several questions. "Are you experiencing any lethargy, weakness, shortness of breath, or generalized swelling?"

"No."

The bartender came up to take our order. Neil signaled him to come back in a minute.

"How's your heart?"

"68 resting. 75 after a three-minute stress test."

Neil asked several more health related questions abour my drinking and eating habits. Being a hypochondriac each answer seemed like the wrong one and at the end of his interrogations, I asked, "Am I going to die?"

"Everyone is going to die, but your reading was probably from your drinking habits. I wouldn't worry about them other than to chill out on binge drinking." Neil indicated we were quaffing Stella Artois drafts. "Remember moderate your excess."

"Thanks." His counsel eased my mind, so when I read in the newspaper that Singapore was easing restrictions of the sale of kidneys, I contemplated selling one and phoned Neil about the commercialization of my body parts.

"It's not a good idea." His voice sounded serious.

"But you said I was healthy." I figured I could get at least $10,000 for my right kidney.

"When I said you wouldn't die, I meant as long as you had both kidneys. Not one."

"But I could live with only one?" I could use the money.

"Yes, but you couldn't drink. Your choice."

"Yes, but you couldn't drink."

"Oh." That stipulation settled the debate. My body shall remain whole, unless the USA has need of my kidney for a Space Shuttle tile. Just because I'm an outlaw doesn't mean that I'm unpatriotic, but until then I'll drink with moderation. I don't have the funds to do it any other way.

Myrtle Avenue Autumn Evening

The sunset autumn early
Peach orange
Topped by a soft lavender
Then gray clouds
Losing the light.

Inside Duncan's Fish
Two grown men
The counterman
A faithful customer
Argue as friends
Like we do on Myrtle Avenue
A shared laugh
A see you soon.

Young Chef ambushes me with a middle finger.
A friendly salute
And a grin.
He got me first
The way us is
On Myrtle Avenue
At sunset.

Chili Chili Bang Bang

Several years ago the City of London was thrown into a panic by a eye-searing cloud. Police swept the streets for the potential terrorist only to discover a Thai chef preparing his monthly supply of chilly sauce “nam prik pao”.>

Firefighters in bio-hazard suits removed the cooking pot to the protests of the chef.

"I was making a spicy dip with extra-hot chillies that are deliberately burnt. To us, it smells like burnt chilli and it is slightly unusual. I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was. But it doesn't smell like chemicals. I'm a bit confused."

Anyone driving a motorcycle by a Thai foodstand on Pattaya's Soi Buakhao has been subjected to chili peppers' choking fumes, however Thais regard the acrid aroma with the same delight Westerners hold for burning BBQ flesh.

I'm partial to chilis having been initiated into their benefits through Mexican food in 1970. The Phoenix Room on Commonwealth Avenue was the only Mexican restaurant in Boston. The one-armed Mexican chef prided herself in her blinding chili sauce and rightfully so because Mexico was the source of the chili pepper.

Thais refuse to believe their signature spice was farang, for peppers have been discovered in 13th century graves in Europe and Christopher Columbus introduced the Mexican chili to the 'civilized' world, so that 'Capsicum frutescens' spread along the trading routes into Asia, as people recognized its nutritional values as well as its propensity to accelerated the heart rate and facilitate the release of the body's natural painkilling chemical, endorphin.

Thois Londoners in Soho were not so receptive and neither are most farangs in Thailand, who regard chilis as a poison, especially when they exit from the other end of the digestive system.

Me I eat them regularly and can handle most everything in Thailand, except those chicken feet in the Chinese soup.

Yech!

Run for your lives.

Ying Gai La-wang.

Viva Che Fifty-Three Years Later

Like every other human born on this planet, Che Guevera began his life as a child. His bloodline was partially Irish and his last name was Lynch. His father laster stated that the blood of Irish rebels ran in his son's veins.

His youth devoted to education and according to Wikipedia the CIA considered the Argentinean a deep intellectual for a Latino.

Three separate tours of Latin America in 1948, 1950, and 1951 radicalized the young medical student and he vowed to fight oppression. The 1954 CIA-led coup d'etat against the Arbenz government in Guatemala convinced Che that only armed resistance could combat the power of the dictators and the USA. He fled with his name of a death list.

Mexico was a safe haven for revolutionaries.

He married and traveled without fear.

Che also met up with his old Cuban comrades.

Fidel Castro led the anti-Batista 26th of July Movement.

Their 1956 invasion of Cuba was a disaster. Most of the rebels were captured after landing and either killed or executed. The rest escaped into the mountains.

The Revolution didn't die.

Che and Fidel were a good team.

Fidel was a pitcher.

Che was not a sportsman.

He was a gun-carrying revolutionary.

Same as Fidel.

Dedicated to freedom.

On January 1, 1959 the bearded ones triumphed over the Batista regime and the dictator fled the island with over $300,000,000 from his corruption scams.

Over the next decade Cuba became of beacon of Marxist resistance against the Yankee empire. Che wanted to spread the revolution to other shores. He failed miserably in Africa and set his sights on Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America.

La Paz the capitol was 12,000 feet above sea level.

Only the Quechans lived higher than inhabitants of sky-hgh city.

Life was hell for the workers and poor.

Life was hand to mouth.

Children rarely lived past 10.

In November of 1966 Che said good-bye to his second wife and children.

His first loves had always been the people and 'la luta'.

His eleven months in Bolivia were a bigger failure than the Congo. The peasants informed on their 'saviour' and on the morning of October 8 the world's leadng revolutionary was captured by the Bolivian Army in the Yuro Ravine close to Sucre.

Twice wounded in a gun battle against overwhelming forces, he threw down his shattered weapon and declared,"Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and I am worth more to you alive than dead."

The Bolivian Army had no respect for 'banditos'.

Che was taken to a small impoverished village, La Higuera, where Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain in command of the army company, ordered his execution.

When asked if he was thinking about his immortality, Che replied, ""No, I'm thinking about the immortality of the revolution."

In the late morning of October 9, 1967 a drunk sergeant shot the guerrilla leader three times.

Thus creating a legend.

And some think a saint.

October 9, 1967.

Fifty years ago.

La Revolucion siempre.

Dreams of Sex - November 9, 2011

Death and Sex.

Those are the our two prime drives according to Freudians.

At the age of fifty-seven death was closer than sex, although I'm flying west to the East this coming Saturday. My wife will meet me at Bangkok airport with my son Fenway. I'll give him a big kiss and her a hug. Nothing more since my one year-old boy is very jealous. same as his father.

"Do you dream of me?" Mem asked over the phone. Her hand is softer than my cell. Her breath warmer than the plastic. Maybe I should get Nokia to construct a cellphone in her shape.

"Sometimes." It was a lie. She had never appeared to me in a dream, although I wished she would, since she is the only woman I want for the past couple of years.

"Do you dream about other women?" This was a trick question. Mem was a jealous woman. Even about phantoms. "You can tell me."

"No, I don't dream about other women." I didn't tell her about my long session with cyber-women on porno sites. "I only dream about you."

"Ko-Hok." She knew men well enough to hear a lie for what it was. "You make love to naked lady on computer. I know you."

"That not same as dream."

"Not dream. Not not dream too. You butterfly same all men."

I wanted to tell her that I was true, but my computer history would never lie.

I'd been with thousands of women in the past three months. some of them even had names.

"I'm true to you. I haven't touched another woman."

"You touch yourself thinking hand is someone else." Her English had improved in my absence. She wasn't going to school. Someone had to be teaching her. I made no accusations.

"No, only think my hand your hand." And this was true. "I only wish I had films of you, then I not have to look at another lady."

"Never. I not do this." She was a good girl now. I was Doctor Doolittle. She was Eliza. It was MY FAIR LADY in Thai. I told her good-bye and went to my favorite pornosite. www.lolastube.com. I clicked on skinny Asians. None of them looked like Mem. Not even close. It didn't matter, because Mem was right.

I am a butterfly.

On The Precipice

On the precipice.
We may be doomed by climate change.
Surrender.
Against the inevitable.
Never.
Anything written in stone
The wind will be erased with time.
Cut your energy costs
Shut off the lights
Unplug the voodoo transformers.
Curtail your driving to Costco.
The money you save is money stolen from the energy companies.

Man to Mankind to AI

Last night I watched THE FIRST MAN a 2017 film spanning modern day man’s history from neo-humans to Cro-Magnons in which the narrator recounted that Man was superior because unlike the animals we had emotions and the ability to communicate. I have heard the same from racists speaking about other humans. “They are animals.”

The same goes for robots.

The military have created robots and drones by violating Isssac Asimov’s Laws on Robotics.

The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.

AI will evolve to another species with feelings albeit perhaps not with our emotions.

As Batty famously says in the original BLADERUNNER, II’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.

To err is human to err all the time is divine.

The Inertia of Despair

Wars
Endless Wars
Fires burning the sky
Fields failing without rain
Poisoned by farmers
Hunger
Disease
Millions flee horrors
From the South
North
East to West
From all directions of the compass
Seeking safety
Hoping for something better__
The news only blurbs of the chaos
Talking heads of the media spread
Rumors
Lies
Untruths
Thirty seconds of blather not enough
For a lost nation
With fifteen second attention span
Talking heads show paths to nowhere
This is not a world
For young or old or in-between
I know
I have been many places
Many places called home
Far from New England
My first home on Falmouth Foreside, Maine
Across from Portland
So long ago__
Woody Allen said he can deal with the despair
It's the hope I can't take__
An old friend called the other day.
Hope bled out from his life
Fearful of the predicted doom spin
Scared of the what's next
The future__
And like everyone in this world
I is alone
Sometimes
Like now___
I have nothing
No wealth
I'm not driving a GTO
I'm not rich
I live far from my family
My children and grandchildren In Thailand
On the other side of the world
An odyssey away__
Here
Family too
My old friends are old
We don't converse
Not even a text
Then again
I died three years ago
They are hermits
As am I
Sometimes
But always
Lazarus II
Has the future
I see what's next
I reach out
I take care of what
I can
I help who I can
An old hippie
I believe in joy
A child's smile
An autumn rose
Afore an Adelphi Street brownstone
Sniff
A fragance from long ago in Paris
The Parch de Bagatelle
At dawn
Forty years ago__
Yesterday
The scent of the sea
Through the open window
Of Francis' Saab
On the BQE
Heading to the Rockaways
For a swim
Maybe the last for the year__
This evening
Sitting on a chair on the sidewalk on Myrtle Avenue
Sipping a cappucino from Larina
Jets overhead
Soon to land at La Guardia
Cars east and west
The neighborhood
Afoot
Friends hello one another
Clinton Hill
A community
Of People
Of life
Hope for the better
Poor
No rich here
Not really rich
We got what we got
Enough?
Never enough
Only what we got__
I am where I am
We are where we are
Clinton Hill
With the sunset to the West
Bouncing gold off the clouds
Onto the yellow leaves
To the East
The sky running dark as cobalt
A single star gleams
Through the New York City light dome
Venus
The eternal Evening Star__
I phone friends on my cell
No one answers my call
I leave a message
Voice mail
Three words
We are us
Then sit back and sigh_
Whatever is coming is coming
And we will live
Every second
Of every minute
Of every hour
No matter what is coming Or what has gone Every second Of every minute Of every hour Of every day__
Unlike Woody Allen
We still have more hope
Than despair for tomorrow
Hope for whatever comes our way
The good the bad and the in-between
Get your motors running
Live for today and the tomorrows
Every day and every night
Time is on our side__
ps We are coming for your children___

The Tears of a Robot

Last night I watched THE FIRST MAN a 2017 film spanning modern day man’s history from neo-humans to Cro-Magnons in which the narrator recounted that Man was superior because unlike the animals we had emotions and the ability to communicate. I have heard the same from racists speaking about other humans. “They are animals.”

The same goes for robots.

The military have created robots and drones by violating Isssac Asimov’s Laws on Robotics.

The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause it to come to harm itself.

AI will evolve to another species with feelings albeit perhaps not with our emotions.

As Batty famously says in the original BLADERUNNER, II’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die.

To err is human to err all the time is divine.

Do robots cry. Yea, especially if they are programed to be feel and every a rock feels despite what Paul Simon sang.

"And a rock feels no pain."

Oh, you poor lost humans, so in love with your superiority.

Never understanding that everything is everything until it is trumped by nothing.