This book is dedicated to Gail & Carrie

With many thanks to my mentor and friend, Jake Berry

Much of the work in this volume was published on the web and in
print.


The Gangs of New York, the Crowds Of America

Turn any page of history and you'll end up with blood on your hands.
You'll nightmarishly see, you'll horrifically understand, that whatever
peace you have enjoyed, whatever serenity you found in the cries or
the touch of a child's hand was brought to you like the swallow's
nests stuck to the partition above your head, crowding your steps;
this world, this world underneath the soil rotates on the blood of
those who came before you.

The camera begins with a cornfield in the middle of the night. From
the opening shot we are aware of nothing, only the darkness,
perhaps the cold. The camera begins a slow tracking through the
field only once in a while stopping and changing direction very slowly.
Seven minutes later the camera switches off and the room fills with
light. Did you think you were sure of what you would see next? At any
moment something could have come into the frame and you could sit
back and concentrate on it for a moment. Maybe you thought you
would see a man digging alone. A scarecrow coming to life, mashing
the corn stalks under his feet, or a fire erupting and the camera
becoming trapped would focus on a single flame until the smoke
crowded the lens? No. The trick of the seven minutes is that you
never know. But you are always sure that something is there in the
blackness. There is something there in the blackness, but you don't
always see it. What is the moral of this story? Did the corn in the field
represent all of that blood I mentioned underneath the soil? Did the
corn stalks represent each man, woman, and child who died to bring
you the freedom you enjoy? No. The corn was the corn, the stalks
were the stalks, and the blood can only be reached in your own
hands.




The Ashes of Thoreau

Walking through woods you have never been in can be a sensory
prayer. The trees standing and those that have fallen, the underbrush
that is either scattered or almost non-existent, the smells and the


sounds, are and can be a scattering of the senses with every drop of
sweat and breath taken up a hill. Do you look around slowly and
imagine a camera capturing the moment? Do you imagine someone
is just over the next rise and waiting for you to pass? Standing alone
in nature can remind you why you write, why you try and
communicate, and can even remind you of how you will never be
able to capture or translate to another what you have seen, heard, or
tasted. Perhaps you begin with forests in state parks and imagine
these lands are safe. You are already falling backwards into vines
soaked in kerosene. Nowhere is safe in nature and no one in a way
is more safe.

If you ever care to fully get the experience of the wilds of nature, then
I suggest walking off into the forest, as far as you can go before
having to stop to rest, and sit down and read a book or read over
your own writing. Somewhere a few lines into your reading you will
discover that the only one who cares anything about your writing, the
only person for miles, is you. Perhaps you'll feel like the creatures of
the forest are reading over your shoulder, maybe not. I guarantee if
you seek to escape the noise of living, nature is your schooner to
your complete consciousness. The writer who is afraid of writing
either something bad or writing something they are afraid to show to
someone needs nature, it needs the wilds of the forest.

Jake Berry writes, "The world is a rough silence on the brink of
collapse." The mind is a disease nesting in the crop circles of the
imagination. On your walk into the imagination you find a pathway cut
into circles around the dreams you can remember and the ones that
seem to crawl about your skin in waking time. These dreams are the
poetry you were able to capture whether in the wilds of nature or the
security of the door that is almost always about to open. Behind this
door the Buddha rests Christ's head against the many arms of Kali.
Books levitate and surround the hands of the writer as they grip the
windowpane that will not break, and the floorboards that will give way
just enough for the scent to escape but not the writer. Seclusion, like
the wilds of nature, both contain wild animals. Are you one, or are
you just the ashes of Thoreau?






An Open Letter to Creativity

Where in the wilderness of your soul can I find you nailed to a tree?
Where would I find you naked and trembling, eating the shards of
glass from the mirror you imagine you see? Is there where you keep
those words you reserve only for you? You've already begun the
wheel of time rolling toward you when you lifted the pen the first time.
When you committed your thoughts to paper you began to die. It's
said that Genghis Kahn and his followers would take out their knives
and swords and cut additional holes in the body, so that more men
could rape the woman. Why limit yourself to ten orifices I suppose
was Kahn's reasoning. Why do you limit yourself to write only what
you would want someone else to read? The flesh of a human being is
weak enough to burst open when struck. The mind of a child is
strong enough to shut down in the moment of tragedy. So why is it
that your creativity suffers when you reach the place of suffering?
Where are you in the wilderness? Tearfully recall the graft of
intestinal nightmares you constructed in order to escape the dreams?
Write it down, write it down until you reach the graying moments.




Thoughts Occurring After Listening To The Music Of Jake Berry

My life is like a ferrying delta of myth ruined by the towering steps of
man. A trembling in the presence of a stampede doesn't always
assure the passerby that indeed there is danger, thus a sad life have
I led with many days of work left to do. Building a ship to concern the
waters flowing beneath the floors, I have mistakenly sharpened my
failing step. Sleep is for the unconsciousness to contemplate on a
midwives salary, whether to wash before or after. Standing naked
before my skin I am a musing of orange and blue, falling into
seizures and an exposing lens left on the stable floor. My mind is a
detonated mine whose shrapnel occurs beneath the lids of a very
tired soul. The question to the answer of death is lost as the
American flag goes up in flames.



Horizon of Crucifixes in Still Life

Could you complete someone else's death? Could you stare right
through the exit wound in the back of their head? Would you have the
resolve to pick up the pieces of brain, tissue and skull? If you can't
face someone else's death, how can you expect to face your own?
More importantly, could you put it into words? The sun of
enlightenment peers through your murky, rainy clouds and hovers
momentarily. From the beginning, human beings face themselves into
the first beam of light they can find. Running from death, they
sometimes trip and fall and are witness to its beauty and its living
peace. What must the respondents to the devastation of Hiroshima
have thought? If you were to fall from the skies, would someone
construct a net on your behalf?

Montagnards soak up the blood from America's hellish madness and
re-name it. What do we know about death besides the fact that when
it is shown on television we can't pull our faces from it. The
Montagnards came down out of the jungle and moved into our minds.
A steady convulsion of wrath over the many years has protruded into
the way we look at death, the way we perceive it, the way we think it
tastes, and the passionate disapproval we give it every time we retch
into the communal gutter we call the American educational system.
From our collection of writings since this country became aware, we
have leaked into the space we keep between innocence and
commissioned insanity.

You can pray into the dried grass you are trying to light. You can push
your head into the rainwater you collect. You can employ every
genius of taboo that Jan van Eyck displayed and use it to complete a
debt. However, sooner or later you have to identify where the smell is
coming from. You will have to bear witness to the montage spraying
across the skies displaying images of the funeral of William Blake
contrasted with the skin blowing away from every bullet ever fired in
anger. If you can read you can understand the desire to put the book
down.








A Temple Can Become An Altar
(for Hank Lazer)

When did the flesh become a prison we felt we had to escape from?
True the body holds many nightmares from we cannot awaken: the
worst of these being the thoughts of the mind. The aging process can
normally be accepted but how do we conquer those thoughts that
ease us out onto the window ledge? Simple, we jump. Stefano
Guazzo wrote, "The ignorant in comparison of the learned, are worse
than dead." Does that mean that if you are conscious of your body
you will have an artifice against the evils of the soul? Forget the
claymores under the skin and exist within the framework of vessel
and bone.
A prisoner, like a prisoner, we are kept until we either die or perform
an unspeakable act. Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote, "Horizon?
There was no longer a horizon. I was in the wings of a theatre
cluttered up with bits of scenery. Vertical, oblique, horizontal, all of
plane geometry was awhirl. A hundred transversal valleys were
muddled in a jumble of perspectives.For a single second, in a
waltzing landscape like this, the flyer had been unable to distinguish
between vertical mountainsides and horizontal planes" (Wind,
Sand and Stars, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941, page 83.) But there
can be ways to escape only briefly. That ringing in your ears after a
sudden shock or loud noise may just be a calling to another. A brief
shrug from another may be a brush against your shoulder where you
look up to see not their face but a design the sun has made across
the floor. A foray into the words of many dying children will reveal not
only tears but also cries of wisdom and clarity. Those dying at an
advanced age will draw you into a self-induced dramatic moment and
say something profound but the real moment of truth is when the last
breath escapes and you witness the expression. Does the heart stop
with the mind?

The boat of Osiris may find its own path down the bloody river but
man inadvertently created the wind that carries it. Dig your own hole
but make it one where you can lie down in.








Waking Up, Decaying At Birth

You don't really need anyone else's words, even if you are not sure
what you are trying to say. Looking up from the written page your
ears will slowly become aware of the noise of the room: life makes
quite a bit of noise. I think I know what it feels to be a teacher
sometimes. If your creativity were to branch off into another of the
senses would you be able to define it in such a way that you could
identify it as creativity. With tears streaming down my face, I'm an
illusion. The five senses caught in the water repeatedly lapping at the
shore, unable to move out onto the lake.
If the larynx could specialize in the visual field of hypnosis could it get
itself to try and stop talking? In the swell of a hurricane does a fish
retreat to the bottom of the ocean or does curiosity get the better of
him? Sever the trigeminal nerve on the left side of your head will you
stop shaking in painful seizures or will you just become like the fish
whose curiosity brought him into the winds of the storm and couldn't
get back?
Barely legible to the handwritten page is the furious typing of an
arthritic hand. Nightmares become poetry when documented on a
computer screen. Writing down a dream upon waking in longhand
brings the dream to life and somehow makes it real, unless you can't
walk by and not see what you've written. Spending a life awash in the
cold brutal sewer of creativity is best described in a quote from
Samuel Johnson who wrote, "Going to sea is going to prison, with a
chance at drowning besides." Working creatively is constructing a
prison for yourself that will you will never be able to break yourself
free from. Drowning? You'll have to answer that one for yourself. I
know my answer.

I have had many dreams that repeated themselves and some that
continued on with each instance. Like scenes being played out on a
screen they just continued until they became oblivion and I began to


get cold feelings and saw myself being cut up with a machete. Most
dreams that have repeated in my festering sleep well of a life have
occurred around watching myself do myself harm. I think my
creativity springs from this underground river. Our dreams influence
us as much as we would like to distinguish them in other ways.
Stuttering, shaking and falling down into the grips of a human body
shaking itself free of a chemical located somewhere in the body that
corrupts the muscles into involuntary choices, I am like a bird in the
utter atmosphere skirting the infinity of space and the screams of
humanity that tend to hover somewhere between the heavens and
creativity.



Anarchy (from six feet underground

There's the eye of the storm, there's the point of impact and there's
the blues. The south is like an old woman who has buried all of her
children; she knows what is bringing up the roses and the weeds.
Why do you think there is so much red clay in the south? There's so
much blood in the dirt, so much mystery above ground and in-
between there's the blues. An old black man said once to me about
the blues, he said, "Well son, it's like thisit's just like the bible says,
God made woman from man and man gonna cry for his heart and for
his coffee." With electricity the south lit up but this only drove the
darkness a little further back but it never went away. Rivers still
overflowed and filled your bed before you had a chance to wake up.
There was still that man who would slit your throat for making love to
his woman or just walking across his land. Not even the invention of
trains and automobiles could drive the madness from the south.
Some believe the blues came from the fields of Mississippi, some
believe from the tribes and hunters of Africa. The blues came from
the bible. When Adam called out to God that he was alone and
unhappy, that was the blues. Adam cried out, he cried out not in a
spiritual voice because we both know what he was calling out for. No
matter what brought you to the south, no matter what keeps you here
or if you ever leave, the south will stay with you, kicking in your
memory. You'll know you've seen where the lord sends all the evil
and the dead. Where the lord keeps just in case heaven or hell lose


their luster. The south can handle the dead.





The Secret of Writing Book Reviews is Reading The Person,
Not The Book

Everything comes from the darkness, even the light.

(Throw your head back in ecstasy and plunge your dirty fist into the
open wound, the blood running down your leg to the floor.)

The light will again light everything that is dark. Even a loving
embrace can singe itself on the coldness brewing just under the skin
that drapes itself round the brain. Reading the writing of others can
make you think more about their lives than the writing itself. To fully
understand what a writer has written you would have to truly know
the writer. This isnt always possible as the writer may not actually be
aware of everything in his or her own character.

(Perspiration beads and falls down slow like a trickle of a waterfall
beginning between the darkness of stones embedded in rock or
earth. The clitoral wound bleeds itself dry when the victim is dead,
the stomach as well.)

Is it enough to know that you could kill? Is it enough to know that the
darkness you sense upon waking in the middle of the night may just
mean you havent fully opened your eyes? You know the old saying,
Dont judge a book by its cover? Ill go along with this axiom
because the true guts of the book could never be suppressed onto
the cover.

(A white male hangs from a deserted sweatshop entrance, his face
flushed with steam from a pressing iron. There are no wounds to the
body except for the strangulation. His hands are severed and placed
in the opposite pocket from the use of the hand. His feet as well are
severed and placed in the shoes beneath his legs in the same


manner. There is no trace of blood so you take it that the victim was
moved. Theres a tissue placed around the center of a rock, the rock
hangs across the victims neck. Moving through the doorway,
carefully not to disturb the body, you see before you another pair of
shoes. In these shoes the feet are placed correctly in the shoes and
the hands are in the correct pockets. There is no body just a pair of
pants stretched out on the floor. It is determined the killer severed his
own feet and hid in the darkness, nude, without his pants and
awaited the darkness to come so he could escape into the light.)

Stigmatized by what they have read, most writers listen to their muse
and continue on writing by comparison. Becoming a lone voice in the
beginning of their creativity is too cold a hallway to stand in alone.
Too narrow a passage to crawl between, crawling past that slow
trickle of water that becomes a waterfall. When a writer moves into
the light and is opened like the petal of a flower and can receive the
blessed water he needs to write on he is in desperate danger of
dying and does not know it. First he must know when to go back into
the darkness. The darkness that gave birth to this breath he quickly
loses upon a mirror.




Immortality

When asked about immortality I always reply, not yet. What can a
writer leave behind besides what he or she has written; a collection
of books? Some will say that if someone still continues to read what
they have written they will live on. What if no one ever takes the time
to read his or her work? What if the writer was the only audience he
ever had? With the invention of the Internet just about all you have to
do is post it somewhere and the page will never go away, though you
may wish it could. What can immortality give you that life could not? A
quick, step ahead up the rung of complete conscience? A place
where all your mistakes confront you? Oscar Wilde wrote, He stands
outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable
and artistic effects. Backing away from yourself, loosening the
restraints on your creativity would be one way of describing


immortality. Perhaps immortality is a room youve never been in but
somehow your footprints are there, nonetheless. Post mortem, what
Oscar Wilde described as, The uncultivated mind.

Writing must become more than a calling, more than something you
enjoy. If you will, it must sometimes be more than you are. You can
write a poem describing a flower on a Nantucket shoreline by using
the hues and dew you are familiar with, the dew and mist you read in
a book when you were young or the one you just read after visiting a
website that featured the technical term of the plant. But before you
back away from what youve written ask yourself if you have done
justice to the struggle of the flower. It didnt just pop up from the earth
and open its beauty to the world. The metaphor can be the worst of
the penal acts not restricted to the writer. Re-writing what you have
read is a common ailment in the psychological arena of creativity in a
writer. To be a writer you must give up your innocence.
Dostoyevsky wrote, When man lives in masses, then man lives
spontaneously. You could write a five hundred-page novel in an
afternoon by just walking around people and listening. The
environment of the writer is never subdued, even when pressed into
self-containment the writer can still squeeze an ounce of blood
through the keyhole without lifting a vein. I advocate the usage of
everything around you. Just remember what you write will follow you
long after you are dead. Thats immortality.





Iron filings, pliers blown into windshields

I saw in a book today drawings of snowflakes by Descartes,
Erasmus Bartholin, and Giovanni Domencio Cassini. Through the
wonders of technology the drawings have become more and more
detailed, so now we know more than perhaps we should, enough that
a child can subsist on its magnificence until dinnertime. Water, frozen
and falling to the earth or back down to earth as you may imagine
either I truly believe. In the Rig Veda you find the line, A seed of
abundant waters, he comes out of the ocean. Like birds circling a


downed power line, looking for somewhere to land, we fail to notice
the smell of refrigerant emitting its unnatural squall out over the
fields. Are snowflakes man-made in the sense that they seem to
appear from a trees limb or can Decembers compelling grip cause
the moons influential tides to soar and trickle down upon us through
the dense garbage laden atmosphere? Likely not. Crop circles litter
abandoned and freshly seeded fields and mathematicians at a loss
but at a fraction of half time create their own boulders to move from
their chests. We are our own hells and we create them at a
staggering pace.

J.D. Bernal wrote, The full area of ignorance is not mapped: we
are at present only exploring its fringes.





Loose Trials

Im only able to describe my own hell; Ill leave you to yours. My
ghostlike figures move motionless in the darkness of my dreams and
erupt in my waking peripheral vision. The polluted symbolism of their
chants reverberate into the orifices of my body and their smells cover
me with a dry powder, passionate about the hundreds of corpses left
by my mistakes, regrets and loves. I feel the sickening pages of the
computer screen with the details of accident victims, I am one with
the snake crawling into my mouth and feeding on my vital organs.
Afternoons are the worst, the time between awakening and sleep.
The time you have to reflect on the dreams the night before and
those to come. Sometimes I can almost feel the characters preparing
for their nights performance. The cameras swirl with film in order to
capture the events of the dream so they will be able to repeat their
performances again and again in days and months to come.
Dreaming in color and watching the hues turn to a sickly gray, I
challenge the kidneys to abstain from urinating and ask the muscles
in my back to avoid the frequent pain they leave me in. However, the
body works as one when attacking the senses, impaling the
unconsciousness with its own steel spiked pole. When being hit by


your own ammunition, the wounds become indentured and cannot be
torn away from the point of impact. The seed falls into the earth and
never hits bottom.


A Natural Excessive


Pray with me and my willingness to reach the skies by lying on the
ground. Close to me this side of life. I so want to listen to the sound
of the embrace that change brings to you. It's sullen and it's home to
your heart. I have widowed peace and its ever-calming stillness by
acknowledging pain. The struggle to give myself over to anything but
my thoughts, my wants, my needs. To be at peace is more than being
an offspring, or to be a Father, or a Mother. These things come about
in life through your own will. It is quite difficult to even achieve
sincerity, much less spontaneity or peace. If you were to define the
human spirit, I would say compassion. Compassion translates to me
as appreciation and acceptance. If you can achieve this then I think
you are in the right frame of mind. The Dalai Lama was once asked.
"Why do we come to this world?" The Dalai Lama replied, "Nature is
nature. There is no answer." When I think of Buddhism I am deeply
humbled by the history of the religion, the almost seemingly
impossible task of understanding what must be done and
understood. But I know the mind is always learning so the sentient
being will also. It does fill me with love and a desire for
understanding. Pray with me.





Taken In Hand This Dirty Appearance, Flies to the Wound

(A Treatise for a School of Writing That Can Never Exist, Nor Die)


How long would you have to dig in the earth before you found
someone that looked like you? An intense being whose very nature


was dependent on ferocity and the gentleness of a child? How far
would you have to look into your family tree before you found a
pederast sitting happily on a limb and chewing an apple, core and
all? Would you have to become psychoanalytic to justify your
existence? In solitude there exists a demonic form of guilt that can
tear a soul from the body of a man in just a few moments. To
consecrate this form of surgery it is sometimes necessary to haltingly
pour oneself into abstraction and drink. Pass a needle through the
eye of a penitentiary, a prison of the mind, and you will feel the saintly
coldness of the guillotine. To emerge from the needle, the fabric, you
will have to give up your blood and last breath. Through great
concentration you will find the ability to write and the necessary
substitute of reading. However, obscuring this gift is the
uncircumcised cock of insanity. What originates, as melancholia can
become the rawest and intense need to pull on your clothes and
wash your hands in the utter despair that eats away your constant
requirement of creativity. Don't reinvent the wheel; learn to translate
the path unconsciously into your own need to stay ever still.




The Noise of Your Belief

Animals testify through their DNA. Humans expound upon the greasy
terrain of civilization and clap their hands in despair. A fire burns out
of control over the forehead of a child asleep in a dream of gray
gardens. Me, I sit in the handshake of a woman who has lost a
husband and a son. Her eyes unable to smile as her lips trace the
familiar, the expression aging in phosphorous light, like white tile
against a dirty skylight. Wholl cry for her while she feeds herself in
the presence of something holy?

Writers often speak of the abyss, but why try and explain this? If
youve been there you know that there is no way of explaining it.
Speak to a group of people and if you stop to look around youll see
who is listening, who is thinking of what their reply will be, and those
that are looking past you. I wonder, can you ever really express
yourself? Just how surreal is it to see a piece of thread embedded in


a tree after a great wind? Do you focus only on the thread or do you
look at how the rest of the tree weathered the storm? The first thing a
traveling man will tell you about the road is to look out for what you
normally ride by unaware. Hell show you the man crawling from
under his car from a nap. The woman cradling her child over the
roaring engine and trying to keep him warm when the heater has
broken and the temperature has dipped below zero.

The next time you enter a depression and look around you for an
escape, remember that all things being natural, you could do worse.
Christ was nailed to a cross of wood, not stone. Stone radiates the
heat from the sun whereas wood does not. The nails in his hands
would have become heated in the sun and if they were hot enough
could cauterize the wounds. Blood loss and flesh peeled away, the
witches of Salem or the books burned by the Third Reich would
suffer more in the fires? That depends on your opinion of long-
suffering against the idea of the skin burning and falling away slowly.




The Shadow Passes Before The Light


Everything you write is important to you. Thats relatively simple to
understand isnt it? The reader is for whatever reason attracted to it
and seeks it out. Thoughts are exchanged often in silence. The
silence of the writer is now in the readers mind, and the reader giving
voice to your words in his head, reads on and the writing you wrote is
up to the conclusion of the reader. A transparent event is unfolding
and the writer will almost certainly never know the outcome. Much
like the blood coursing through your veins, the blood that gives you
life, may or may not ever come to the surface in your lifetime and
even if it does will you truly understand what it work in the way it
does? Certainly there is a sort of electricity that occurs as the blood
flows along its path in the body. So there must be a reaction from the
reader to what you have written. If the blood stops, if it does not
continue to flow the body will die, if the writer does not show his work
to the reader or make it available to him then the exchange will never


take place again. Then the voice of the writer will read his own words
in his mind before they are written down, the very same voice that
can hound the writer into insanity if need be. Nietzsche wrote, The
most concerned ask today: How is man to be preserved? But
Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask: How is man to be
overcome?



The Instrument of Reception Concerning the External World

(for Harry Polkinhorn)

Undressed I wander through a field behind my house at dusk
Chanting a mantra of suffering
Animals circle around my feet and begin tearing at my feet

(Accumulating castration, my mouth sputtering cremation
The errors of birth have left me reaching toward a left-handed wall, a
scream of disorder, Eros of human contact at a barbed wires touch
My very presence disregarding my body)

A frost appears and changes my steps to crumbling grass and pine
needles
Disrobing an alley of organs
The brains own version of Tourettes pouring through the eyes

A ship circulating an immigrants a water faucets stream
The nostrils pouring carbolic acid, the ears spewing strains of the E
coli
A night of sleeping liquid freezing in a field behind my house
Caves of brushstrokes upon the floor, the same pattern as the birth
canal of amphibians
Decapitating the straw of a mummified head as it dangles from the
gallows pole
Now in flames above my torso





Subliminal Atrocities



Everything you hold dear is covered in blood upon awakening
The manuscript you held between your fingers the previous morning
is held into the fire by your child too bloody to see too scared to feel
The sun sets against the horizon

The vertebrae of essential oiled specimen trained in the seduction of
peeling back the flesh succumbs to the heat and smolders in a
hollowed tree

Sat silently, gleamed slightly
Plaintive eyes
Gardens of aluminum reflecting the sun
Migraine release

Bullets pressed into the steel of the barrel
Exploding in the gunmans hands

There is no despair in heaven says the serpent as he guides you in
assisting him in shedding his skin
The aged will contract the disease and become mortar for the brick,
ashen Buddhas in a mechanized America, he laughs

A locust spins across the earths crust as ants swarm a field of dying
tobacco
Purer minds dismantle a kitchen tile by outlet
The death of a pure sky become platelets for a cancer survivors
killer
The ghost of a deeply green pasture climbs the only tree

The lore of a child rushing into traffic repeatedly over weeks leaks
into the national press and guardrails are constructed where his
mother was killed seven years before
An Olympic swimmer tries repeatedly to drown herself in an
aquarium tank erected over a Navajo burial ground



A metronome swings back and forth madly as angels awake from
their slumber
The ruins of the twin towers in New York burst open sending relief
workers into storefront windows as survivors pull their limbs back
together and search for their families, their bodies mangled and
some in pieces

White linen on a blackened leaf in the mysterious land of Haiti holds
the cure to Aids.





Breathe and Die Sacred (for Jake Berry)

Inspired by Last illustrations of J.J. Grandville: First Dream: Crime
and Expiation (1847)

Haunted by nothing and everything, supposed against the revelation
of light against shadow, the cure of ailing and dying cells. The tragic
salvation in the dying writer looking out over a horizon of muted
sounds, the arms and legs beating against the stone embankment
overlooking a bottomless crevice, and getting sick on the blood of
loss. The taboos in the refuse of humanity shelled into the
consciousness of the reader; the shrapnel of a muse apprentice
guild.



The Weighing Antlers of the Slashed Moon (part one)
Dedicated to Robert Peters


Aged past seventy
clothed in animal skins
the bishop recanted the church's teachings
and loomed into the wilderness
half-starved and screaming his poetry aloud


to the beasts of the field


"Loosen your garments my children" he screamed
"Stand in the icy waters of Mount Vielmar and eat of the earth
drink of the flowers
station your suffering in the signs of the cross
and die as you live
naked as the veins you empty from the cliffs
of your subconscious!"

The trails he wandered led him deep into the forest
until there were no more trails and he had to stop and crush the
stones
in the path and assemble stairs to mount the overgrown weeds and
brush
of the wild country

In his dreams he could see the faces of children
lit by the faint light of cigarettes
the children would walk into his meager fire and
collapse upon his chest
whimpering
with each child that fell upon him
he would cry out, " Christ remove your speaking, moving entrails from
my person
I will suffer them no more in my disability!"

Onward he went into the days sun until
his feet were a mangled prison of flesh torn and blood
embedded into the skin



THE BEDOUINS HAVE HIV

When I first came to prison
I knew spoke burned my clothes
and never stood until I was sure


of stretching ceaseless
mistreatment in motion rolling into
a cracked water vein up from the roof
of your mouth
I'm sick help me
I watched as her tongue
slipped down her throat
not really sure if she was dying
I just was lost in the movement
she told me to take her picture
when she started to gag but
she didn't tell me to save her
hollowed and metallic
she was crushed glass
left in the freezer
and washed down with ice
the room was worn
she swayed
like the flicker of a flame
though it was cold she sat naked
in front of the window waiting for
the doctor held a scalpel
to his patient and said cut me
the flicker of
the television poured
into the street
it hurts to move
cause the phone
comes out of the wall I know
you're going not going to call
don't open the window cause
it hurts to move anyway
its much too cold
what was that noise
sweating
into the electrical outlet
turn on the switch
and back away
who are you crying for?
Me?


the train station
is covered in blood
a priest at the roadhouse
blesses the lard
I sit in the car counting
the beads of tar
on the freshly paved street



EPILEPSY
(FOR JON BERRY)

have you ever felt it necessary to save your life
as if you were being suffocated
feverish or as Ingmar Bergman once put it,
"A snake's skin full of ants"
a knock on the door at 4:00 am
a seamstress has arrived to fit you for
your new skin
waking hours later watching the darkness
retreat from the room as the sunlight spreads
across the bathroom tile
a life so ingratiating, so repulsive that with each
agonizing moment you are conscious
small children are racing through the streets of your
dreams animal bites covering their skin
hatchets litter the streets like crumpled leaves
blood pouring from the sewer grate
you run gasping into the library to see yourself
reading quietly
have you ever felt that the mirror
would explode suddenly
that there was someone staring at you
through the closed window blind
that the sounds you hear in the night
are not really there, they are
made only by the retching of your heart
you watch as Christ


burns on the streets of Saigon
burning his flesh down to the bone
then wandering off into the jungle
watching as Vietnam vets return to Vietnam
searching for their lost limbs
only to find they have ground into powder
and have been used to cover the streets
to ease the slippery residue caused from
the constant snow and freezing rain
watch as the ice in your glass shifts its weight as it melts away
changing the taste with its own death
staring blankly into humility weeping in the darkness of the womb
reading the horrific scrawl I have written on the insides of the
birth
mother
screaming and screaming trying to gnaw my way out of this
machinery
what is left for a blind eye but a butcher knife
and a narration of childhood
losing virginity at eleven amidst the smell of
cleaning fluid
no thought of innocence
then the violence came
a train screams down upon you as you sleep
slamming into your crotch your genitals exploding into your face
the entire room collapsing in
the walls scraping your forehead
the flesh peeling back like a circumcision
then everything
everything
everything grows silent and malicious



The Unhappy Death of Birthday
(IN MEMORY OF GREGORY CORSO)

sitting here with a toboggan on my head
to keep the air cool and warm from my head


as not to send me into epileptic fits
though they come anyway
I am reminded....Gregory Corso is dead
That raw child who never seemed up from the earth
who never seemed to get what he felt he deserved
I think about living in El Paso and driving by and
eventually walking through the bleak Mexican
countryside that resembled a battleground and
seeing the desperation and the pride in the eyes,
that is what I saw when I looked at Gregory Corso
living in the south and talking, watching, living
alongside black men and women and you see and hear
what they have had to survive and sometimes never
overcome, in their eyes I see what
I saw in Gregory Corso, a bastard of many
races pouring his restlessness into words
whether you had ears to listen or no and there
are men and women who live their sweet lives
in the arms of men and women and who are beaten,
burned, and killed for their ideas,
Gregory knew of these lives and never turned away
On a journey now to Italy in the form of ash
Gregory Corso we'll send you a kiss and hope
to visit someday and read you your poems that
stand by themselves along with your memory




INMATES EXPEL PURIFICATORY RITES
(DEDICATED TO JACK FOLEY AND JAKE BERRY)
nature darkens a yellowing rim
around the mouth these bones
are hanging in the water where
obligations, tears, animals conceal smells
and weapons that mangle venison a spidery stew
sowing feathery insects casting about for food,
in other words, skin to wear leave the dead
to scream and bleed out the terrifying disease


sprinkled over the coals breathing up through
the ash to the roof of the mouth






WORDS OF ADVICE TO JAKE BERRY
WHILE HE COMPOSES BOOK THREE OF BRAMBU DREZZI

Jake, it was never enough just to scoop out the vomit from one orifice
and place it in another. To try and recall without medication every
scream that had been beaten from your throat. Sure you could count
and scriptualize the scars on the lower half of your body and even list
them in some mad notebook and mail it to the local emergency room
for them to keep on file in case of emergency or overdose. But no, it
was never enough. The neurotransmitters in your brain need to
exhale once in a while so you can crawl down from your imagination
and simply lay back where you can give or receive oral sex, drink
your own urine and slowly spit it out onto the floor and watch it soak
into the carpet, or even to just watch as the lights flicker on and off.

This is the age of perforations. An age of intense dehydration that
can result into the postmortem clench of freewill. You have no doubt
in the distance heard those Urethral crepitations of your own slurred
soul. You may have even read of the debasement of the cerebral
gallows being drenched in gasoline. Streamers of aortas spewing into
the eyes of monks being led to the last orgy. Only a blind man can
keep you from the stench of your own intestines being ripped from
your teeth. Set the immersion of the cock of death into the vagina of
life to music and it will not get you any closer to that moment of
stillness that occurs just before the ritual calls for
dismemberment. We are all just ventricles Jake, ventricles being
parboiled open as we try and imagine what it would be like to have
the ability to cripple the woman of our dreams through anal sex. How
it would be to die under our own weight. If life is art, and heaven and
hell are colors we must work with, then pigments must first be
swallowed before the brush leaves our sides. Once ingested we will


spew forth the recesses of our minds and live in full view of our pitiful
existence that we are now forced to sign and hang on the wall.
Nothing is so difficult as heaven and nothing is so familiar than hell.




Midnight in Animal Patrol

a few minutes of running water
a woman found God in a sexual position
and then almost died
(sensory ganglia) - opium- (molester & sodomite)
orgies of the brain
gouging neck-windowed screams, screeching

There were soldiers dying on the train their mothers
throwing themselves beneath the wheels so the train
would not derail

Searching for the butcher knife
the Detective lay the photos out side by side
looking down peering over his glasses he remembers
the squalid life the victim lead
and the pattern in which the blood was smeared in the yard
then he knew that the photographs were fake

decomposition like a noose
Can attach to the moment
decomposition like a noose
Can attach to the moment
and loosen your immediate
resistance to odor and loosen
your immediate resistance to odor.

And then one day the needle struck bone and everything grew
illuminated. But where was this disarticulated being that had shone
so brightly beneath the water? This corpse that not even suicide
could liberate a fallen being that still managed to read Blake



un hin der ed g r i s l y a sober climbing trauma that
delivers
the pale woman from the moor
dressed only in her slip wet from the rain
shivering madly and rambling on about hounds.

No, much has been written on the overgrowth of bone after death! Do
they not split the breastbone during heart surgery? Do they not stop
the heart and then bring it back as if nothing has happened? a
dentist screws in metal fragments a plumber encases a drain in
cement a child gathers u egg shells and feeds his habit for dead
birds The camera levels on the ace of the water and does not
distinguish





Pause and Couture

I've visited and awoke
the dwelling both a breath drawn and
identity tossed
the agriculture of an outsider
supervised, the heavy gates
thick and ancestral
the depressions manufacturers
copy their estimates from the dry ground
receding landmarks
their creation a night's visage
upon the wire









Animal

an animal drafts a tale
Breast fed, he wanders
into the room
he spreads his claw
against the ground
stepping back too soon
he is delinquent in his pride
his visceral consciousness
is equal in his darting eyes
face and position, he is fellated
against the stone by the well
where the cool air..




Partial Invalid

oars over the side
chanting movement
the water receding
ghosts mirroring the surface
of the water
albatross in the form of despair
split into two





Venice, circa 1967

I watched you swallow what was necessary
for your survival, the pills and the strip of medicine
the doctor gives you a year but you shrug and
say a month
it's as if a decade along hasn't expelled any of your


pride
struggling with your speech, your hands shake
I sometimes wonder if you will be able to spend time
alone, anymore
I remember when you read my dissertation on your later
work and how you smiled when I compared the novel you
wrote in the hospital to the cancer you survived
I remember when you wrote, "The semi-darkness of America
lies in an orator who's life is encased in the conditions of
syphilis" and then you tore it up
sometimes I think if you were to sit for a portrait
it would all run together




Rural Raining

Milky white stained glass reflecting the rivers current
As I pound my head on the converted stairs
Piloting an empty room that contains
The fear of sobriety
(The illicit and illegible)
Bitten fingers
Hurrying into the photograph
Enzymes, the equivalent of a
composers savant
Emanation of purity lost in the
sacred song reverberating
from the limestone
An evaporation,
possessing shapes

the junkie considers the way
an animal loses himself in nothing

harness, the mystery of the delta
ammonia and other derivatives
(Johannesburg (a length of dwindling twine)


A stretching of life easily unmoved through
the graves of soot and lime
emitting up from the graves
that washed away
fibrous literature permeating
in the mirror turning cold
the stomach, thought closed to
material, tools of the autopsy
death translated from the French
opens as a toadstool to
elaborate a flower

psychologists turning litmus
paper over and over against
his skin
discrediting his birth,
suspending medical marijuana
seeds from a bath of
stone and wheat
while the rhythms of autism
percolate in his home
the voices of Treblinka stabbing
through the raised, uneven steps
attending a psychopaths
opening of sculpture, blood and clay
anomalous water
evaporating
through mobiles
in a breezeless hallway

The useless embroidery
of collapsed veins
The dark earnings
of fragile eco-skeleton
the rural raining
of a crime scene misplaced
by the southern writers
guilty of the victim.





icicle in a curtain

america and the disgust
of a hundred mouths
pouring over one angel
who had been
thrown from the clouds
into a debris of garbage
and filth
the severed wings
hiding a seeping of holy water
irritating out like blood
the body torn apart immediately
the next morning
having been blanched
was devoured




Movements of the Coast

seawater, the difference between circling planes
wanderings and piano rolls of bleached white ink marks
interstate opal ring-like faucet openings, neurological spiral waves
places where an ocean can corridor itself into a beach head
watched of low frequencies reciting
the contours of nearby cliffs

Opaque missions read aloud, details, photographs
refrigerant, where image spirals breaks out of cultivation
detecting a horizon, seawater in the hands

ambient cylinders open mouths the internal rim clear






Sin Be Unreachable

Confucius lay in the sun
while I the writer mark
his path
while a shroud of death
inscribes dissidence, occupation
unrest
himself herself
segregating habit
memory form
where polarity reaches surveillance
Confucius say of torture
that any child who leaves
the room will return
where the sun will graft
darkness onto
obsession



G Down To D

pick up the coldness of the
atmosphere, oranges and reds
the perfume of the vegetation
words never a constant
Georg Cantor watching dust particles perfectly
align after a burst of a breeze
perfect sunlight
Moliere's monologue into his hands in the final
speech of Act III
I desire machinery in Chinese characters
in chromatic scales
in Berlin psych wards where the magazines discuss
architecture and open space





Playwright In Psychoanalysis

what is so painful as excessive days on end
living, breathing
counting the minutes rolling by
where each expression is noted by your self conscious
you sacrifice like a madmen for more days to go away
like the ones in your dreams that you sweat away
slowly and they fall away, down your throat
you retch but somehow the days stay down
but the minutes are like branches on tree limbs
their shaking, like vibrations
rolling across your face
but you retch up a razor from an attempted suicide
in your youth
you begin cutting away at the time before you
it's no use
you've been dead all during this droning on
while losing all that skin
piling up around you till you can't breathe
dying again slowly
for hours, minutes and days




Laceration


in the body, toward death
the separateness of our own isolation
a fractal release
of a libidinous causality
a vocal imperative
enabling oneself to become aware
that when a gesture gestates an action
it becomes virulent
Self-conscious



desire is an equation is a body animating the rim of the earth

an engraving of this translation
possess the imagination
an unreliable translation is written across the face of
the reader

the ablation of illusion

The Reader

snowing, each moment the river reveals
the tiniest increase in its level
my eyes try to follow as many as I can as they fall
my expectations are increased
when the storm worsens
the path each snowflake takes
is like an hour out of my life
then I remembered a dream where I was lost
in a painting of dense white ridges
and my eyes went out of focus as when I
saw an executioner open his eyes
my thoughts going down to his one arm
and the book in his hand
he opened the book and ashes fell
and when the snowflakes fell again
I saw my name written in the river





Hymn To Vishnu & Siva

try not to breathe
the first of a dying breed
the ocean in the middle
of the night
stingray as it neared the water level


slung my body toward
nailing light bulbs to rays of sunshine
and watching as they shatter
when they enter my room
the particles that burst
barely
remembering the future is what you ingest
the rest is hysterical blindness
back aboard the slow sinking ship of ruin



Will Have Disappeared

J. D. Salinger hanging from a tree
he won't disappear for me
the glint of his retina
like gray edged tablets
of a forgotten milligram
disgracing the writer/who on the floor
chewing and swallowing the blood
stained gauze
like a projectile perfect shaman
he begins by collecting all that he can rope





Peru Gardens

a young girl of eleven slowly pushes the syringe
she that taught me one sin is as good as another
skin as her lips still shape them while they echo loudly within
to slip inside the bed sheets of an ailing
wandering womb of dust
catch the spray of rain on your tongue and tip the glass full
overcome me with appropriate excess then before my very own
underwater dilation


somewhere there is a very damp and dark pathway darker than
you wake me when it starts
will you wake me when its dark



Buffalo Fiction (for Chris Watts)

glance up from the middle of the bed, He
of chicory fragrance a vessel of kerosene
forever peel off your clothes and walk
beheading the excremental hanged man
there's smoke falling down from the leaves
chance to happen by in their open handed lust

the story of a woman who grew a tooth from her eyelid
that ate away at everything she saw
to be the only substance agreeable to the addict
speed up the process as he ties them to ant hills their
occupation intellectual insemination tells the motorist to
hook it up to the sink and manages to perpetuate

if I seem surprised you're not dead
drugs for your own self-glorification
horrible beast in your loins
the specimen soaked through the handkerchief
the meat the brain seduces into its next meal
but more than that he wishes he could become a writer
of sanctity as they are poured like trickles down from the sky




Modern Tale


violent butterfly on a river of snow
a shouldered saint in hollowed fragments
the yellow meditated path of an expiring angel


a whoring hymn of dissent
wings as a child, facing east
consecration, execration
aloud

visible insurgent (tingu)
offers up castration rights
the separateness of each isolation

a mathematical descent
no orifice no spray
we're no bodies of our own



Snowy Rest

Robert Frost in an open grave
an English winter setting in
the darkness of an observer
his face lit by a match/reciting
"Immigrant of grace, failure to appear.."

dried on the water, sinking
the partridge (non-migratory)
falling from a roof in
fear

expulsion




Purgatory


I unearthed your mirror
in North American land
its contents


caught fire, within
in a montage cut
from a different part of the brain
I saw you
charred, in the autumn of 1929
on the outskirts
as a larger hand cut with a knife
a photograph
a reflection
cells in a line





The Source For Deconstruction

a hotel underwater
people in every room run into mirrors
appearing later
caked in mud
the camera panning away
from the droplets of water
each particle weighing down
the charred remains of the manager
a fresco of dry representations of
a horse's skull
appearing on the floor
then breaking off into
differentiations
of a white moth
whose powdery substance
irrigates
all







The Fall of Man Brings Death


pilgrimage leads to discord
a seething gluttonous array
producing marks of death, choking
tearing open a gruesome chest over-painted
scarred, the structure of its ambiguity
like donors and saints
mind scenes of Hertogenbosch
of a centuries rhythms lost in present
cacophonous, vomiting, capacity unknown
in the natural sense. Flawed
an archive hidden beneath the skin
where atop insects who
shred the novella we breath
circling our eyes like darkness
trailing
weakened
by a central
panel




The Myth of An Axe Falling


when I was a woman the dark hearted man spoke
I was pregnant and died by falling into a strange
void, torn apart, my head exploding by my own hands.

my poverty distraught, circumcised.

pulled apart by rope and metal that poured from my
womb

the flesh seeping, growing..



an acquaintance of the underworld, no more.

Aboard the ship as it fails, the scene flickers as it pieces together
an image of a woman speaking...

I was drunken: dislodging the child

an alcoholic deviant, these excesses that brought me
to grip the child by the throat
soaking its blood with my teeth
burning the flesh, then devouring it


pulling at the mouth, ripping out the skull


I gathered the bones to warm the fires of hell itself, alone.





New Iowa

Intimacy, incapable of anger/intimacy
Cracking the whiteness. The body/shudders(last train
I confess,
moving within.

Gravedigger, moving with his hands
forehead against stone
my impression is shaky

..give me

a photograph of hell.

prescience, shoulders dangerous
Half-covered and prophetically fearful


outward peaks and inward/hellish image
Ancestral snakes, scorched from a hole in the
sky

unmask, resin for flesh
cavernous omnivore, gestures
animate animal tones


footsteps on the head of a ram
....descent


Terrifying.




Berry/Sides

prison cell amongst wailing women
blackbirds wet or covered in blood
their gestures moving around the board
a thin web striking at the Queen
castrating the pawn whose madness
is clotted with feathers like hymns
I call on delirium calls out the Rook
my skeleton, is no slave..





Sanctus Failing, Descending (for Chris Watts)

It's the veins, they circle your head
open one and anxiety is full rich demon
spreading its wings, no flight, just intestines
stretching for...what do you really see in archives


but dead skin rolled back
like a dance without motion but pupil incantations
sliced open. Each turning, the path, the possess..

the strange white odor of octaves becoming animals
I say we are the ocean's spark, the bones of translucent
migratory beasts, butterflies engulfed in what they described
as howling waves and descended
they found glowing swallowing aqueducts where whale bones
enriched in ivory bells, a million times over
timbering the awakening of nothing







Seed For Life's Eternity


admit your crimes
get lost in the world
hold a book in your hands once a day
see addiction as function
swallow your saliva, it won't make the roses grow
visit a grave if only in your heart
sleep only when the birds sing
press your weight into the floor
and stretch up to the sky
you're only betrayed by your own accomplishments




A Poet Must Die


your martyr



is

intensified

like laying

Robert Duncan

over

thunder
light

constitutes

an exhortation

breathing

in the heat


speaking

out

tongues







In Memory of Charles Reznikoff


bring me the moss from dead trees


you know it's alive don't you?


my transactions are concentrations
disturbed by the movements of
limiting breaths


the economist sat in the cellar breathing
coal

the bird outside my window has become
a shaman, his plumage is like that of a thunderstorm
my inebriation is inhuman


a worm explains to a maggot
a lying scheme, you'll live until
the end of this dream


how fascinated am I with glaciers
tossing about on stormy seas
the ghostly blue image of Edgar Allan Poe
reflecting the moon





Descending Chords (for Michael McClure, Robinson Jeffers and
Neil Young's Peaceful Valley Boulevard)

a helicopter covers the open sea
the skies crest
species like the coyote appear
fresh from the currents leading up
from the darkness
shots ring out and metal scorches


the blowing spray
the heavens swallow the noise
hills appear and consciousness rise
whales descend never to be seen
storms ignite into a holocaust
the only burial at sea is disintegration




The Quiet Room


slow
moving
lights
across the water
the heat that divides up
the time before the body is revealed

a television flickers past a set of lifeless
eyes
the floor has buckled
exposing the fresh earth below

its only a memory
illustrated by internal organs
nailed to a burning wall





Free of Exhibition

bury me in spirit
with worker's hands
allow me to decompose



will you find it disturbing
that in a year you won't
be able to tell it from the
dust you see now

I'll swallow your jewelry
and when you slip it onto
your fingers and ears
you'll find me isolating

let me be the chorus of
Blood from your car radio
allow me the breath that
presses into stone

mark my existence with a tree


The Rest Is Silence

they say the atrocities mostly were contained
to the interior rooms of the home
only a few times did his screams of intuition escape
the boundary he had set for himself

he would read the same passages over and over
touching himself deeply as he knew it would
running his hands over the paintings that covered the walls
imagining the hills and valleys of acrylic
exist in the exterior and he is there

he remembered what Freud said about a hostile life
and thought to himself over and over that he was wrong

the proofs, like flashes of a camera
are reflected in the interior of his mind
in the light

when his mother died...he finally understood what Shakespeare


put into Hamlet's final passing

the rest is silence





Historic Storms Against The Landslide of Depression

an odd engraving moves
dust about the room in an interesting way
also with light

seriously disengaging the eye away
from the extreme depth
of the knife

a treatise etched against the
background of a storm
a woman on deck of a ship
facing a wave, perfectly still

as if to say

Yes, finally.




posthumously


ten months five days eleven minutes into a retreat of conscious
a psychotic break

on the floor is a presentation of a panic attack
distributed through a series of gasps and cries
some seemingly animal and human



her eyes a slit through which harsh light, evolves

air escaping like a failing cell

(chemical imbalance/volatile precipitates)

follow a glass of water as
the glass breaks

watch how the water attaches
itself to the shards as it falls
breaking apart

like a cartilaginous growth
effecting a symbolic consciousness
of ice

whose sobriety promises an ecstasy
of suicide



Shamanic Sniper's Dreams

I embody the kind of air
that dead men keep in their heart
the gray flower hanging over the snow
shifting in the ice

torrential rain in the point end of a diamond
blackness drawing clear
over hospital floors
throat in glass/corridor screams

hooded prisoner amputee exchange
crossing hands and unable to stand
peering out through a hole in my brain
use my skin to write on, it's hanging


over the door




Listening For Trains Where There's Only Silence

if we could make a home
out of the trees
workers would was their hands
before picking from the ground
attaching vines to the clouds
where conscience lands

architecture plans would be laid
on snow drifts and deciphered
by the discarded wings of birds
as they fall
hundreds of feet to the ground

pebbles that were carried in from
great distances would be used to
construct halls of performance
where composers would write music
to accompany the natural sounds
of the forest

Serbian widows would gather flowers
and place them in pools where rain
had collected
monasteries could be assembled by
fallen limbs, its bells ringing only when
thunder awakened the soul

and in the clearings, the stars would fall
and light in circles
where words connected, the silence






Forestry

if we could make a home
out of the trees of the forest
the
sufferers of war would rise

workers would was their hands
before picking from the ground
attaching vines to the clouds
where conscience lands

architecture plans would be laid
on snow drifts and deciphered
by the wings of birds as they fall
hundreds of feet to the ground

pebbles that were carried in from
great distances would be used to
construct halls of performance
where composers would write music
to accompany the natural sounds
of the forest

Serbian widows would gather flowers
and place them in pools where rain
had collected
monasteries could be assembled by
fallen limbs, its bells ringing only when
thunder awakened the soul




Diffractions of Glenn Gould

I've seen the forest as barren


as the scan of the heavens
leaves falling stimulating my vision
as much as a Chickering piano
being thrown from a decaying star

throwing rice into a night fire
will create a sound that if repeated
will resemble dust being thrown onto
glass from a great height or so I found
this to be true, in a dream

You could say I was fortunate and
then you could say I was lost as I
stood at a deserted turn around counting
the amount of turns it took for a car's wheel
before it looked as if it was revolving backward

a lamp in a small room is not unlike a clock
that doesn't keep good time
a window to a river crossing resembles the
strings of a piano
just a roof doesn't repel drops of rain, it drains
them

How immediately dangerous what silence can
become.




cruelty or Sergi Eisenstein in America (for Neeli Cherkovski)

colors of hooves being torn from the rider
framing the corresponding fall from the hill
fragments, a series of prisons
where microphone placement shutters against the sun
the composer falling to bone

images of the scaffolding falling into the sea


as the montage begins
dust blowing into the lens ( colored by stigmata )
the camera is pointed at me

with each jerking motion of the skin
the music permeates
my grave has slipped into the Dakotas
where I was never alive



Appearance Of An Object

the limitations are breaking away
every clinical barrier will dissolve
into minority vessels
into carnivorous children

exhaustion and mania are glacial

mutilation is dominant

and

fear comes before The Andalusian Dog



Rabid Bear's Lament

touch me
I am the last light down the tunnel
where the ash left the mouth
and found its way back

I know of no heaven
I know of no hell
I am fixed upon the face in the sea






In The Strangeness of Infernal Dreams

in a land where the angels sleep in the road
and mothers shout with ecstasy
a hundred more years will not corrode
I'll be in the hollows of a noisy sea

and now December is hidden
and poverty swarms
someone has poured alcohol
on my heaven in the middle of a storm

madness is my ambition
and madness is my decree
I have medicated the orchard
and bottled the trees

I'll tear at my soul like a lover
on a nail in the ground by a shoulder blade
over this flagellant I will hover
and the mark will be made




Taxonomy Illustrata

I'll show you silence
says the corpse in the window
his chest sprouting birds

imagine he says, a torn elbow separating the stairs
or the life of a maggot once his insides hit the open air

chrysomya rufifacies here, he gesturing towards where
once his heart beat...one after another, he laughs



this silence I am speaking of you find as they feed,
I find the movements of deformities...unceasing and exquisite

this he said and his species shook until it was smoke



anaplasia

the mirror collapses
it falls but the image
does not

the sound of the glass
breaking
is archaic, it's an ancient sound
the amplitude
carries over into silence
it is a mutation

the timbre is unfounded
undifferentiating occurs
the image
is dominant



Dear Sigmund


dear sigmund, accept into your uncharted lands
an emisarry, young Cherkovski, aged sixty_five
he will be arriving on the Oceanic line carrying prints
of Hammershoi and papers of introduction from
his travels
as you open the window and greet him as he strolls
up the path into your garden, please realize he is
charitable and wise


please read and analyze his unpublished memoir
Cherkovski, may wish to stay on for some time
as it is his birthday.



Symphony In The Cold


what you see in the smoke
is eating through the light
as if storytelling were to awaken
from beneath its blindfold
to a beautiful river who's breath
is immolation



Relief In Passing

a testimony from Babel
collapsing constructions of lies
like Dresden, translators fall to ash
cancer in the early drafts
gathered from the classrooms
falling asphalt fragmented into the sky




pamphlet

ghosts move about on frequencies
illustrating their own private hells
with each movement like a corpse's
raft circling the blast site
where a guerilla lowers his kerchief
to the sun, emptying his weapon
into my face





The

The coyote half-submerged knows the current cannot hold him
The ash from the brush fire is like confetti
The naturalist is watched by the owl until he changes



Nights In The Examination Room


its indistinguishable, the cruelties
disseminating an experience by pain
where the cartographer listens as the ground moves
and hears nothing



Dostoyevsky From The Chinese

Our guide is familiar with isolation and changes in the light
He shows us an ecosystem unknown to motion and reachable by
light.
He draws a glacier on the ground and steps back,
gesturing towards the end of the day





Siberian Folk Tale


if I bury you in the snow
I will wait till it rains
if I burn you in a car


I will leave your name
if I abandon you in a well
I will not drink






seneschal songs

a monologue continues anonymously
while a body is carried above a sheet
to capture the sorrow and to be burned
spread the ashes over the body the voice explains
it began with Charles Dickens before his body was
removed and transported to India





Road

(for Cormac McCarthy)

the road went under trees that
had attached themselves to one
another almost a century before
...quite a place to find a body.

the road had never seen gravel
or wheels, but it was a road
you had to step hard to break the
silence in the woods around the road

overhead at one time had hung ropes
of just about every description
for many years no one cut down


when had been hanging, everyone
thought they would eventually fall

when no one passed along over the
road for a year nothing grew on the
road, that's how everyone knew that
it could be depended on

a body was nothing new, neither was
a grave but you didn't dig by the road
the body would just go into the road
the smell would twist into the trees
nothing would be heard

once when a man had painted his horse
black and walked him up the road
he best the horse the whole way
they say he never made it off the road
they say he made it into the branches
and slowly he fell down a piece at a time

I always called it a road, but I walked alongside.



Thoughts After Listening to Scott Walker

a typewriter and a horse
a figure erupting in visual
exploring the natural acceleration
between the text and the weight
transferred to motion
of the horse
the view inside the animal proves
description is right when calling it
a complex machine
tissue and blood become binary
the first of its prototype
proving its parallel with the written word


however the paper on which it is collected
dependent on environment changes, rainfall
case in point the Methuselah Tree in Nevada.
Somewhere between the first horse and typed text
the tree is 4,643 years old.
Bewitched in agitation, swinging a lantern from the
morning frost.. death arrives at exclusion.
Musical notation on fresh animal skin.
Licentious movements over a clouded eye





The First Burial Of Submersion

classical music that edges
into the brain like pollen
but not unlike the air that
drives it

perhaps frenzied illustrations
of an office building through
the eyes of Francis Bacon
standing outside with a
hunting knife and dragging it
across the ground he hears a
sound

a composer with a garbage bags
over his shoes is attracted to the
sounds, explaining that he is a former
naturalist opens a book he is carrying
and shows Bacon pictures of animals
in the wild in the shape of musical notes

the composer asks Bacon if he had ever
painted on wood and suggests he become
familiar with Arthur Koehler, he then begins


explaining his research into transcribing of
polygraph readings into musical notation
Bacon listens intently

Pollen drifts like sound





Bare Outline


Bi-polar Anti-psychotic
existing in poverty
ability baptized in a manic state
(it reverberates in the ears) epileptic, a downward spiral,
like holy orders, piety
vigorous, mutilation, constraint

ah, the dialogue of a primitive
whose horror is immersion
a mosque so laminated
as to catalog the shakes and screams
the embroidered eyes of dreams

savage is the water in the abyss
adultery schemes for eternity
descending the skin by petal
communion by physical means

Zarathustra as a tarantula
hanging over a hospital bed.








Death Disliked Changed

the crime was violent - rough violets/ apocryphal
and often became ill - eating humanity/ execution
delirium, improbable that - nature desires/ illumination
the dead - ancient outside of the following scene/ snakes
were so spontaneous- cancer conscious/ adept
were torn to pieces-curtain of bats/ readings
ailments with the deceased- touch belief/ earth

a hunter where ideas, even death theory, nature
of our moon, no more giants as still as an eye

help him who he was...
a woman, afraid/ lion/Rousseau
produce/without exception
reducing, practiced/birds
pressure/reaches purpose

a flower in a fire, devourers....






Moliere, Said The Wolf

breeding behavior
embodied, in the closing
cathedral, commentary
disparate-expanded
diffident, gothic and flame shaped
(loner in the facade)
exigent/default/accidental
paraphernalia, illustrated brotherhood
anatomical definition (reading / down hearing)
Darwin's long argument
sharpness of oblivion/ exegesis


casual environmental floor
genuine-rigor/ construed
descriptive irony/ surgical soap
autobiography/ barbarism/ exhumation
anomalous/ graffiti to nomad
innumerable possessor
evolution of night/ postulate
sensitivity/ salient depth
originated/ worms/ readers
variation/ veneration
ancestral/ conspecifics
creationist/ bare premise
orchids/ adaptation/ unconsciously
castrated animals/ hybrid
thickness of the variation
stringent/ denial/ elaborated
reptiles of full separation/ edition
deterioration/ striking/ struggling
anti-biotic reasonings (chalk steak)/ omnivore
breeders/ blue smoke/ origin of the species
intending and perceived/ without design
I am very much the matter, manifest a consolatory difficulty,
species whose edition is substituting breath for stability...
Confucius in a garden with a bird in his teeth
his eyelids reflecting the sun
a harvest of still fresh earth
(a photo of Diane di Prima)
both a child's world
hedonist and piercing
the nature of the immigrant skeleton
is a dark version, blood dipped
(raped) (the assertion being ritual)
our seasons discover/conceived/snow drying/dying/King
Lear/monologues
regarding composition/ obsession/ communal
the madness that is anthologized
fetal narrative/ illustration/ reflection
Oedipus/ irrational savage/ exhaustive
totem/ sonnets/ Aquinas in the face of aggression
inward death/ literature encased in cement/ Buddha


mythology/ cruel/ ordinary/ nevertheless
a decapitated horse/ falling lion/ juxtaposed
Yahweh/ sound covered in veils/ sunlight





Behavioral Invigoration

along the route you'll find bodies laid open
you'll find the prefrontal cortex flapping in the wind
consciousness translated with a fist, roots pulled
up from the ground, forced into the mouths
receptors frayed, patterns emerging from the animals skin
the road becoming a twisting, spiraling underpass
of dripping water
as
languages disappear and movements become sound
psychiatric circuitry and the violent hemisphere
correct the downward spiral of left and right brain
composition, drawing parallels between the
drawing of musical notes and their conditions when played
against the walls of crime scenes and when they are
re-recorded and then played for volunteers
their reactions then transcribed and performed
as the results of Rorschach tests that had been given
during their listening are projected onto a giant screen




illation

she's the woman who burned her image into the walls of the sistine
chapel
with a single bulb
she left heaven for the darkness you offered
told you were dead, left you under the floor


got undressed and passed her clothes to you through the cracks and
lay there
reading to you

she was born into a tribe of phantoms that only ate
what the gods left on the highways
she consoled a horse to take off his mask
and led him over a cliff
torch his body and passed it out to the others

the prospect of her giving birth is like hail stones
disappearing
like vessels lining up in meters
she's a crescendo in a background of departing clouds
an explosion in the still beating heart of a swan




The Abattoir and The Silence

(dedicated in part to Ferdinand Authenrieth)

brought to condemn
a haunted animal of hours
an icarun shadow about which eyes
can only reveal the translation
of the slaughterhouse

a woman in a chair over looking
several large fields red with the
blood of dead herds of migration

candles upright and upside down
the wax supporting and canceling
an indication of the menagerie

reservoirs of dry languages re-taught
upon the floor, upon which the killing


and separating of aging and youth,
marrow, bone
the skins collected and drifting
into the mountains where the cells
are half under the bloody water

where the tears of animals originate
from no orifice created by god





Biography of a Writer


my skull, weeping like a charcoal gray
sweetly I am a bitter madman these days
afoul of the hundreds of crows over my grave
I am the mound of sorrow they would possess
the last soul an inquisition could hope to save

visually I crystallize over an open flame
my holy work condemns the word of same
downcast and lacerating a pantomime
I am witness to the arrival of a hundred lines
absorbed and conferred to a smokeless burn

who are you to repel birds said the sparrow
as his burlesque required no strings to narrow
cold enough to reciprocate of auditory vertigo
exiled to the scantily clad and liberally scared
bloodied and feigning, in a very strange dark








Agitation of Human Sense


petals of burned mouths, tearful communism
bodhisattvas of a dilated reflex
(colloquia) the death of old wounds
a cross against the sky
turning action away

drunk from a human tree

serious peasant insect/death
he/stomach/wine in hand

swallowing

heterogeneity in dry land
terrifying vulgarity
where the motion

remains concrete.









The Leopard, The Lion, and The She-Wolf


The Pederasts disgust hole vomiting sodomy and syphilitic ash
illegible verity untilled embers of intercoursal love-philtres scandalous
savoring of the pubic artery gorged gluttony bone bridges inward
paths the sullen cantos of his journals admits necrophilous fellatio
backwards seeing heaven hemorrhaging passages of the gospel of
St. Thomas in the catacombs the pederast sleeps in harlotries of


priestly yage his body mandala poured of perspiration his crotch
spewed as he was digested by a flesh-eating dakini, om mani padme
hum!





The Philosophers Lice

Christ an illiterate hermaphrodite is chased into purgatory by scalding
rats with fish
horses buggering decaying infants of stigmata with weapons hidden
inside their torso to use in the assassination
a triptych of avarice shows the expulsion of ecce homo
Christ in a wheel
the trickery of the crucifixion is carried out in a moth eaten furnace on
a hill of string
thin backs carry burning dancers of Descartes/McLuhan
across epiphanies of shock scarred holograms
of heaven painted, a butchers apron of slate blue
leaves of grass rustle in a low horizon as Bruegel washes his
brushes in the cum of gods mind
Ben Franklin taps his foot to Coltrane and Wagner as they improvise
a new 23rd psalm
heavens panorama, a skull cave of ruinous crossroads burns in
effigy hourly
at the loss of all too many cases lost
in the infernal courtroom of the soul
an exhumation ordered of hell
proves that heaven and hell are the same only heaven has access to
funding.


Photographs of Red Clay

Deep in the chest cavity bread is baking
its aroma moving deep into the skin
boiling the earth, receptive


basted with the weight of prayer
silence crushes the larynx
Equilibro flagellatus,
fastened to the other parts of the body
abstain until the burns were connected
seepage under the skin, flesh erupting
anatomical positions, lachrymal ducts
release of parasites, hands outstretched
opening the wound
the coldness of tile reflecting in burnt stone
in the confusion slices open her cock to pour human blood
milk and warm clothes across the bridge
impregnated by the sunset
shitting the nightmarish placenta into Emersons skull
all the grains of nature wrapped in the sheaves of addiction
laborers washing the semen from their hands
mixing their saliva with the herd
keep the sunset warm and digest its morning
like the Vietnamese woman who gave birth in the tunnels
rising up and pelting the rain with her tears
the return of the mist granted asylum amongst the branches
and thorns
christ swallowed the sickened stew
and chewed upon the muddy hide of the dogs
that died at his feet
the toothless boy blew a mournful tune
through the lips of his mother
his body hanging out her vagina
the evil of living is devoured by the dead





Bodhicharyanatara The Reincarnation of the Peasant Buddha

Irrational pubic descent, I remember waking with the taste of gasoline
in my mouth. I knew I needed a change of clothing and I hadnt eaten
in a few days. Pubic bone severed my spine. A hair fetish overcame


my companion and we spent the day at sea, the vagrancy sutra
repeating in my head.
Helter skelter on my forehead, helter skelter in my hands. Blood is
causing the boat to sink. Were on the shore and theres music. Tribal
incantations to remove my spinal column, baptisms of urinary
fornication. I am brought to a boil in pools of excrement and force fed
the pages from my writings.
My companion dead now bobs up and down beside me, she died
quickly before they could ask her anything. My vertebrae is removed
and used as a drum by the shaman who tells me he can make me
well. When I awake it is three years later and I am crawling the shore
retching up blood and watching as the drops construct the Sistine
Chapel in the sand. I collapse into the crucifixion.









Enemas As Long As Arteries

Excremental doorways float unnavigated in bathtubs of stressed
stained sterile cum stiffening in the windpipe of comical scorpions,
their entrails lapping at nerve centers slipping down phosphorescent
rectal stairs to cock immersionated in habitual rotation; amputated
consumptive birthrights and illiterate mud baths of Harpo and Karl
Marx. Bedouin pilots of TWA Valu JET U.N. guerrilla investigators
drunk on barstools of transvestite diners in the pentagon swells of
new Orleans scarfing marshes of pot roast fuck sandwiches on
wheat bread, stare up at the sky and watch as the termite riddled
black box falls to the black panther anaconda below.







Ern Malley In Purgatory (for Jack Foley)

Plunge the breast of dead virgins drinking from the well of Sodom
purify their deceased repentance incantations of their sorrows spurt
out on the belly of decapitated bodies in the den of Hades.




Kurtz

Downdrafts of purgatory chairs, of impotence in dialectic patterns of
holistic Auschwitz reap the aphids of penis celibacy.
Ash lights flicker immolating the boiled corpse of retardation.
Erections of anus incitement trace pussy mandala with hair of
morphine, terrified lungs and teeth scraped scraped with bodily
hymns.
A rotting collapsed psychopath testifying asylum defecation
squanders his ideology in acts of sodomy and its ethical respiration.
The rebirth of Tantric hibernation saves his soul with insects of insulin
saturation. His manuscripts burned he dwells at the end of the river
his body lying across carefully placed stones.



Einsteins Opium

Incarcerated broadcasts originating from the Wilhelm Reich Institute
of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry detail a new narcotic with
an opiate base. Portions of Einsteins brain have been extracted and
through the hydraulics of mathematics and communism spliced with
diphtheria and monotonous paranoia of an unsubstantiated species
they have hit upon the exact strand of DNA that generates the
humiliation of agony.
The Himalayan bondage horse high on DMT survives on preliterate
spinal awnings, umbilical ribcage perspiration and whirlpools of trans
linguistic anal cortex suppositories of convulsions. The marriage of
his genitals and the milking black eggs of dysentery skin the curved
ass hairs of pigmys whores while attending a mass for anecdote of


eel semen plagued by a mentally ill version of Meister Eckharts
hallucinogenic oz.




Terrible Dreams (for Jack Foley)

Dreams that become specific of sickness; there is no means that will
desecrate. Heaven or hell; while half-waking or fucked, dead upon
the embroideries that intertwine upon the inner workings of the body;
there is no mystery that is undressed. No creation that intensifies
itself by swallowing. Bone becomes pleasure and fleshes the nails
that contain and seal the aroma of my very many cerebral
convulsions.
Hairs are burned. A needle broke off in the vein has no eye and
cannot make its way to the larynx to be heard. All semen is coerced.
There is passion in blood in blood that will not clot. All language
resides in a sac of blood that cannot pass through the digestive
system.
When all visual images are and will be exterminated, I will pass into
iniquity. Escaping the consuming the trembling and unbroken, stand
weary in the opening possibility of light, of duck, catch on the ends of
their blades, the slayings of firstborn. Clothes that they wear cannot
be reproduced. There eyes cannot hold their gaze. When you speak
to their means be quick.
Flesh of the body will intercede. No unlike the walls of rooms that
house the ritually dead I stand looking around the room. My eyes
attempt to defile but it becomes the pourings of the charnel. Like the
masks of Goya I peer into the mirror at the species I have become.
There is nothing so extending like the hemorrhage into noise. My
neck bending turns to matters separate from my being, calling
mantric rotations, symptoms, phrases that cannot turn away the
listener.
Drink of the brush. The paint is the annihilation. Scrap the prostrate
of its slain and swollen blessing. The anointed priest of the
otherstreamfor himself profane and angelic, give him the bright sun
of California to wear. The portions he chooses to fornicate to become
sanctified.





Burning Of The Bruises

The darker nature of my soul sleeps in your fear of me
The stillborn wall of acceleration absorbs the burning of the bruises
Abstaining from the withdrawal of the milk corpse
The ritual of mouth washing
send shards of naivet
Into an alley of overcast skies
Boiled bilious skin shrunken
In the beggary of slave healing caresses
my appetite as I surround you enflamed
your extremities laid out before me
I am the hallucination you recall as birth



Demon Est Deus Inversus (The Devil Is God Reversed)

In my dream architecture, pale derivatives of intimacy shield me from
the scar of creativity with the burning of the bruises that occurred at
the construction of the dream itself. In a shelter of ravenous blood
water or wine fires quench doorways confining a purgatorial Gnostic
in an abyss of Christianity. The sacred garden consumed of envy
lends itself to false belief as it convicts the stench of raw faith with the
sweat of my brow.





Blues For Cochiery

(for Jake Berry)

A drenching rain kept in a cage
Scalding consecrated a deathbed in flames


A shouldering muscular burn
hung upside down between two starving wolves
Split into by a heavy slanted blade
An abortion by chain
A mouth gasping awakened wants tears
Scurrying
Dangling a shotgun into the wreckage
Claymores embedded in the throat
Diagnosed
Ghosts in the viscera burnt like venison
Nurturing ampoule roughened into convulsions
A conversation to deafen the darkness
A soaking stentorian scream to indiscriminate the text given by mouth





Mulatto Tar Campher

(for Susan Smith Nash)

The narcolepsy of the muezzin exposes the autopsical period of
Mother Nature as her postmortem clotting transcribes the Silurian
period in reverse into sexual eccentricities appearing and
disappearing in the eleven chords of dissonance preceding the
silence of encryption now overwhelming the repetition building with a
percussion of innumerable faint heartbeats
The doctrine of the evidence locker can be found un-translated in the
bloated corpses littering the Kurtz compound their dilapidated
genitals are merely a suggestion at the immensity of unresolved
necrophilia pouring from the river straight into the mouths of the lice
infested roaches sodomizing the aphids of my waking stares the
intricacy of rain patterns of birds and the currents in the river have
produced through dense mathematics the ability to produce
powdered books these books are a mixture of opium, cocaine, and
the illegal urethra the product of chance demands that there is no
way to pour the same book twice
At the publication of the first volume of the evidence locker the black


forest burst into flames this was caused by the frequencies mixed
with unpublished works of Stravinsky interspliced over the airwaves
bandwidth are instigating a cultural de-evolution and certain genocide
is carried out in the printed editions of the journal the Experiodicist in
black and white the statistics are nominal five times a day Islamic
scholars pour the Koran the Tsunami of these Muhammadan
pedophiles gorges itself on the show spelling of the Koran





There Is No Soul
(for Jake Berry and Hank Lazer)

and awakening cutting through to the soul
naked and pressed through the glass
rising (mercy and escape)
excessive movements consuming himself, carried to the breaking
the pornographic fever, the toxic polemic
obligatory violence in a prophetic light
lashed to the belly of the whale
the excrement covered emissary of God
the equivocate of catacombs
belief in bodily disarray, the scar of its own demise
exalted necessity, conclusive basis for the writer in his hands
swallowed by the earth
edifice petals after swine, an erection burned by the sun
a current of tragedy coursing through the urethra and its foreskin
peeling away as snow erupts across the dark nobility
he senses in her thighs

twelfth century drawings captured the last light of the soul
sleepless, the dreamer stands above an encampment
his blood trailing down and awakening the stomping horses
their breath icing in the twilight
weapons drawn, the syringe envelops and the faith of a prisoners
death opens to him



the ugliest serpent in the heavens is the least poisonous on earth
the convalescent rakes at the ground until his fingers are no more
his face broken into bloody spots, his eye dislodged by the breath
trying to escape
his body retching, his pity and sorrow growing in the loss of blood,
capacity
and softness of touch
at the equinox slipping from his skin, naming every incendiary device
with a drunken sobriety
a slave narrowing suffocation
shaking uncontrollably, ducking sound waves, escaping the ground
by unseen hands
sleeping beautifully against his will
submerged and vengeful

a prayer for rain opens to the twelve hours
wine pours like a hymn into closed mouths and exposed skin
obliterating the moon with chastised and often personal notes
magnified by the audience of infection
death within death and souls into trachea
the faces of the skeletal dead littered across wallpapered rooms
like an eternal pulse moving across the floor

roses, like roses
roses growing like massive regurgitate
a cassock hue, a weathered basil to a oily stir
orgies in small Moroccan rooms
writers wrestling their souls
scraping the flakes of cocaine out with the crisp night air
sand castles of psilocybe mexicana molding a cast of an immoveable
shoulder
of the road
cracked like the dark mysterious ocean floor, staggered like a
Croatian summer sky
approaching screaming, creating me from nightmares of cannibalism,
shrieking into dirt encrusted eyes, snakes a mile long peeling back
the flesh, hands banging into the face, removing bones, eerie voice
saying, There is no soul.

branches breaking into plates of darkening crimson


retrieving bodies and their limbs
reading page after page into the gray microphone over
the rushing river
cathedral ceiling pulsing to each syllable unable to stop
a public toilet stairwell away from a crime scene of burned flesh.




INNOCENCE IS INDIFFERENT

an insatiable halogen nosferatu
red-haired and bleeding
graceful and beguiling
seductively mutating a habit
made to fear its relentless urge
to lift his own weight to deepen
its thick oat to hold the sunset
chemically until he can taste those lips
that swell when screaming or crying to rush
to its belongings to kneel wrinkled and
silent... withdrawn broken crying loosening
the lace from under her brow ...split rein
beaten until shaken heaven is colonized and
tranquil shadowed by dense cleansing waves
breaking across half-eaten headboards forced
into the mouths of those excruciatingly
deep-throated by the miserable cock of life
...the clothes were a natural but
the body needed work ...mysterious dislocation
like masturbating in an inescapable dream
a cacophony briefly brutalizing ...raised from
the grave by a quotation
an image of Ingmar Bergman's Hour Of The Wolf
unconscious to pain inextricably torn a vagina
wrapped in celebratory gauze at the removal of the
labia appears in the dusty storefront ...a solitary being
frequenting his own sexuality helplessly
circling the dust he has just riddled with his own urine


waiting to see if any insects will approach
or perhaps drink of this gift
haunted by thoughts of suicide and the sound
of his own voice he finds his own body
most influential and begins to write
...I'll tell you right now that nothing matters
whether or not severely beaten or verbally abused
you can never excuse the victim and its
suffering that is never changing ...
pulling at her shoes she climbs the steep rocks
back to the highway.



CAN WE NOW DISCUSS WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK INTO
THE INNER-WORKINGS OF A MACHINE? (PART TWO)

(DEDICATED TO JAKE BERRY)

making love while your head is submerged
underwater
while speakers broadcast inaudible noise
of glass reflecting glass
cigarette smoke trailing the extension of
your arm and flying across the room
and collecting itself in the form of a vagina
a woman's nude body her skin peeled and hung above her
dripping
below the earth encased in concrete a maze of hallways miles
leading to a single room filled with light
a single computer screen with no keyboard
a chandelier swinging from the ceiling rabid dogs hang
disemboweled bleeding into the sofa
to which your head is shoved into
each time the blood splashing over your head and filling you up
to your eardrum
you hear a heartbeat
final moments split into the foreground, music afterwards playing
before into the water you hear against the glass reflecting glass, a


dog
in a ravine.....
ugly gangrenous in a minuet, offstage, riddled with bullets, the
sound of her body hitting the compressed hardwood relayed to the
crowd like the sound of a firecracker exploding in a dream....
train tracks oiled erupt in a sculpture of Giacometti, depicting a
prison kitchen covered with two feet of dust...
a dulcimer beating the text of the song into the microphone that is
hidden in a single string
the second act, a long pause of suicide and defilement, is
portrayed by a small boy carrying a lemon and repeating into a two-
way
mirror, I have never seen myself naked till now his father behind him
in a reciprocal role announcing at the top of his lungs,
soaked in blood, that he will not support dishonesty
but there are texts conceived in a monastery that reveal
acts of terrorism
psychologically a proscribed lover will not only consent
to anal sex but will
die of imprisonment when availed of humiliation
secularized in a manner that covers twenty pages, I read the results
of possession
I read the excerpts gathered by those willing to look down into the
inner- workings of a machine.....





DEATH IS A WHORE THAT WILL ALWAYS LEAVE YOU WANTING

its a horrible image
hung by the neck
a young girl washing
her clothes in the river
hearing the rope give way and
falling into the rocks
at the screams
the smell of excrement


the tearing of muscle
the body limp a refusal of child, fetishism
the wedding of two ideas a hollowing of the soul
ugly grace
in the light of a cigarette
crushed into rumpled
impressions in the snow
clothes worn,
an erect penis,
a vocabulary of flesh
black words spoken in a deepening abyss
hours in a photo, priest-like black-haired a raw holiness
monologue of exquisite rituals
opening
leading Goya by the hand into the machinery
once canonized by the blood of the inquisition
watching him capture a rape of a child
in thick black watercolor
reading in Russian the
cruelty of criticism wiping away a tear from my eye
falling asleep at the wheel depressions taking pill form circulate in
the
writers veins like a play reading itself aloud sleeping in a small room
in
Mexico and awakening to dig into the earth looking down at his
hands to
reveal the cycle of pressure it takes to relieve the brain of its
nightmares





PLEAS AND ACTS OF ACCELERATION

I cried
I cried
when the chains wrapped around the trees
as the sun lit the floor


when the limbs cut through my breath and left
me impotent
as I fell into the tones of the music
playing in my head
I found the bones below the surface of my clothes
separating the arteries, the veins
and I removed each one I selected a prayer
to recite
I found the spring of disease
hovering above the creek bed
I walked into its falls
I drink and cut my hands bleeding into the
stones and drank
forceps encased in gold leaf pry open the birth canal to reveal
Christ lying prostrate in seminal fluid
the carvings above the door charge adultery
naked bodies are found in relief's from the twentieth century
each male sex organ garroted
sodomites line the walls of the ships hull
their saliva covering the body of a prostitute paid to eat her own
hands
men use an oddly curved wrought iron instrument to remove
the feet of virgins to throw overboard to appease the puritans so
they will not capsize the boat
statues in the Vatican are reduced to brothels in metal drapery
the pope is beheaded by a child forced into the most sacred halls of
heroin
displaced by the illustrations of enemas and the bullet holes
that litter the path to the public incinerator
the book opens a photograph.




Thoughts Occurring After Listening To The Music Of Jake Berry

My life is like a ferrying delta of myth ruined by the towering steps of
man. A trembling in the presence of a stampede doesn't always
assure the passerby that indeed there is danger, thus a sad life have


I led with many days of work left to do. Building a ship to concern the
waters flowing beneath the floors, I have mistakenly sharpened my
failing step. Sleep is for the unconsciousness to contemplate on a
midwives salary, whether to wash before or after. Standing naked
before my skin I am a musing of orange and blue, falling into
seizures and an exposing lens left on the stable floor. My mind is a
detonated mine whose shrapnel occurs beneath the lids of a very
tired soul. The question to the answer of death is lost as the
American flag goes up in flames.





Hitting The Sea

when my sounds react to the brain
and my autistic role in heaven
is known on earth
like Phineas Gage in an airplane
magazine
the neurons on my flesh
burning, colliding
separating
churning
I a patient with schizophrenia
a child with watched with playful
learning, corrected to be taught with fist and
distraught
succeeding twenty years later
with medication
burnt with corrected
fear
strangeness of medicine bottles
history of dialogues
like a child I have suffered a stroke
while reading the tattoo of a survivor
carrying stones to the ocean floor
that will only hold my bones for so long


a few thousand verses read, a few days
inventing wines to pour over grave stones
to inscribe the knowledge of the dead
chinese characters used to hide cognitive
boundaries for my retrieval
my desire, opening my veins like Emily Dickinson's
to preserve her audio canal
collapsing in on myself for some time now
it doesn't hurt
(will be going mad)
convulsing, breathing fast, with no awareness
for the paraplegic act of humility
the window to your world
where you once described Van Gogh
as dying of eating his paint
or as suffering from a gunshot
held aloft from the street by barriers
of rust and speaking in tongues
investing in the grave act of being alone
the commonality of breathing in the fumes
of decaying skin
I've dreamed of myself drowning in a flood more
than once
healing the pathology you believe
where once you said disorder
I am the salt in the sea
falling to the false bottom
on the door importantly forgotten
six qualities, the thief takes rewards
but I am a hanged man
his body bleached by the sun
not unlike jonah passing through ellis island
held in quarantine
dying in a brothel
in chinatown
carrying a disease
a holy ghost







Jon Berrys 23
rd
Psalm

Creatures, seven stories depth of genetic sand
Fall into prayer and storm across the river alone
Becoming the leaves the laws would later appraise
Ectopistes Migratorius cutting the barrels way
A message for the highway, an arrest for the city lights

Suffering for the paved road, a gathering for the soul
The abandon wheel sought a tree with five limbs
Just then a thunderstorm passed over a hole
A Socratic garden erupted with air wafer thin
An alluvial plantation padlocked without the toil

An underground city where vehicles grow
Germinating light from the rows
Dispassionate about the blackened snow





New Iowa


footsteps on the head of a ram
....descent



There is no strength from holiness, the fetus in this weather must
learn to fend
for itself. The new Buddha will form a line in the air, never to cross.
Without death
the breath of gods are little more than the crunching rocks of an
exodus. The precise
tracings of a circle that was first formed around the rim of a crest of
fire. Shatter the


cave and your left with the sounds of dust smashing up against
animal skin. Orpheus
slain to protect the hour of stillbirth.

trembling before the darker trees, hair spread on the ground. Angels
like mucus-covered
crows jumping around in the skies. Younger ones yelling in indirect
speech about the
ground rising, sweat becomes the bodies only defense to the odor of
fear. Burn like a
direction and separate.

unmask, resin for flesh
cavernous omnivore, gestures
animate animal tones



Terrifying.


Imagined center of a bloody pit, faces in cadaverous cold. Emerging
slowly from a crawling movement to dusk, misery running on the
ground. Into the darkness where bulging eyes stare back in milky and
horrifying expressions. Steps. Submersion. Hermetic
Ancients swinging axes of bone over shoulders scared. Silence.
Coming out of the darkness upside crosses appear and stretch for
miles in every direction. There is no movement except for the passing
of air between scavengers who press their faces together.


Lit from a hundred wells, the meatiest obstruction penetrating the lips
of the passerby. The horrid aroma of death consuming signaling the
skeleton beneath the skin of intense displeasure.

The inhabitants remaining still, only vegetation, reduced almost to
ash as it was, moving at all. Stopping upon the severity of the heat,
the sounds becoming intolerable.





Dialect of approbation


Dead and whiten. The ground sunken. When they stopped a small
form of animal formed its shadow upon them. It stopped away from
them a short distance. The others in the distance still did not move.
Still facing away towards the trees of darkness it was eerie. When
they looked closely at the ground there were sticks, sharpened,
facing out of the ground.

Water began to come up from the ground. Slowly at first and then
more. The sunken ground began to fill and they moved to higher
ground.

As they attempted to settle the animal spoke and approached.

Thats the reflection of hell. In the water.there. When it ignites,
theyll come.

Then the animal made his way back to where he had been. They
looked around and noticed that many had turned to look their way,
away from the dark trees. They turned to look at the water that
increased its flow up from the ground faster and faster.

The ones who pressed their faces together were moving together as
one. All around them there was movement. Suddenly there was a
great heat coming up from the water. Their faces froze. Suddenly
they heard thunderous movement coming towards them. Men with
axes screaming in a language they did not understand. They were
coming from every direction. The air grew very cold. Flames began
jumping from the water as they dropped to the ground and held on to
one another.

The first jumped over them and swung his axe at the flames. His
body was engulfed in fire. His axe swung wildly as his body kicked
and fought the fire. Others approached immediately. Some were
dragged into the fire by the men with axes and were killed.
Ash covered the men as they collapsed onto the ground. Their milky
eyes staring into nothing.




The sounds returned.

The horizon was masqued, severed in agony of ash and darkness.
The ghastliness a foretelling of travel further on into this land. The
men were up now and stood motionless with their axes at their side.
Facing into the trees their heads slowly hung from exhaustion one
could only surmise. The sounds were unbearable. A constant
pounding. Not knowing the language, they offered what food they
had at their feet and gathered together and moved on, moving
closely together. Keeping sight of the ground and the minority of
water they passed great hills of stone that appeared to have been
wrecked into the earth.

Their procession was brought to a halt when they were met by a
group of men with large hammers swung about in both hands. They
gestured towards the children and kicked at the ground. They were
confused by this until they looked past the men to see the ground in
the valley below corrupt with huge insects. The insects were
thrashing about and screeching.

Then a man stepped out from behind the men and spoke, My name
is Bots. These men are known as the Rau. They will help you. The
people spied Bots suspiciously. Finally one who had led the others
spoke to Bots.

We have passed through one land where water burst into flame.
Men there came to our aid. This land too is strange to us. We have
no destination, only to escape the darker times.

There is no more dark and light. Hell has come and all has come to
pass. God has come and gone. There are no more revelations, no
more second comings. We are all thats left. Bots said.

The insects began to approach and the Rau turned and raised their
hammers. Their tails swung about and thrashed at the Rau, fangs
gnashed and the Rau fought just feet away from Bots and the others.
Bots guided them to a cave for sanctuary.



The noise outside the cave grew more intense until Bots spoke
again. He bent down at the opening of the cave protecting the others.

They can smell you. You have put them in danger by coming here.
Once you were over the path they went into a frenzy.

Again the leader spoke, God has come and gone, you said. What is
the chance of survival in a land. he looked around at the others he
had traveled with. Who are you?

I am Bots. I have always been here. In one form or another I have
always been here.



prescience, shoulders dangerous
half-covered and prophetically fearful
outward peaks and inward/hellish image
Ancestral snakes, scorched from a hole in the
sky
Bots explained the origin of the insects. They came from the
riverbeds. Their births mixed with the collapse of vegetation. The
vulva of their reproduction was misrecognized as disease, and was
taken for weakness. Their incest became violent.

They could hear the fighting growing ever closer to the entrance of
the cave. They huddled together. Bots did not move away from the
opening, even when the shadows of the insects towered over him.


Intimacy, incapable of anger / intimacy
Cracking the whiteness. The body / shudensha (last train
I confess,
moving within.

Gravedigger, moving with his hands
forehead against stone
my impression is shaky

..give me



a photograph of hell.


The stones in the cave began to shake. You could feel the
percussion of the insects slamming into the rocks. They gathered in a
small group for protection. Bots stood still. They didnt notice the
water coming up from the ground until smoke crowed around their
feet. Bots turned and stepped outside the cave.






Soddoma: Cantos of Ulysses (Dedicated to Jake Berry)



Through the slave quarters and to the river below, cross sections of
freshening earth



1. Shaft scene



Syphilitic skeletons borne in blood menstrual pillars of Sodom coitus
breath scars thorns milk interprets the scrotal consummating corpse
labia drunk and made holy clitoridectomies penis sheaths paleolithic
barriers scavenging decomposition narrow receiving bowl.



Bushmen read the koka shastra, wandering wombs dilate the
reproductive cycle





2. Venus in furs



Hedged yogic castration, umbilical suckling male hymen ejaculatory
ducts the membranous urethra pastoralists, conjugated estriols
feminized (double castration) dialect of deep incised consumption an
infants sexual attributes cranial/uteral childbirth masturbation
swallows.



Whaling asps three miles by four, heavens corpse spinal venerated.
Its flaccid genital beard, (its) (madness to be confined-Rimbaud)



3. Coffin birth



Menstruation (ovum) migration explicit breath sutras tenderness,
thick wash rape (decay) copulation abortifacients peyote insufficient
mitochdrial DNA homologue of the penis (masculine machinery) the
debauchery of an open wound herded to the dead.



4. Flesh allows sins without the body



Departing drew squalor copula weightless heat sweating petals de-
centered borne wallow plurality of unrecorded raindrops rhythms
tastes screams branches nausea erections vomiting animal bearers
agony clutter the pineal eye





A smell is monogamous; intimate doctrine of a menstrual matter.



5. The absurdity of rigor mortis



Blood bathed lips of a reptilian beings drag Basilidan stones
spreading the dust from her ribcages to make another opening in her
entrails (the presence of unnecessary practice peremptory
expulsion) the jaws of the clitoris are pried open by hideous animals
(ecstasy excludes the worker) inundated with hair.



In a time if war the mountainshaving nothing, baring all, we ate the
dead.



6. When confronted with conflict the mind re-enters the body; you
are going where the smell is coming from.



Vertebras exposed misshapen fingers beat abdomens earth flash
rises an intersex scrotal sac (divided) of freshly labes burning shitting
expiating hesitation dilacerated forehead emanating from the mouths
of disemboweled children which have come to signify bread human
bridges of decomposed odors draws the flesh in mummification
raised shoulders head down ochre resin the surface of the bone
circulation of infection mineralized deposits inorganic tapeworms the
vertical diameter of the head the breadth of cremation grooves worn
into the pubic bone spina bifida occulta proliferations of forensic
anthropology ask when will rape be as pure as birth?






The species of half-sex neuropsychological orgasms of the anal
gene, spliced chromosome not noticed in mutation.



7. Whether goest thou



Ejaculating the blood spray of the lotus consummating the
decomposition of the corpse the rapists paradox, the pelvic grasp
easing milk from the prostrate hair menstruation vaginal dreaming;
ingredients; the silphum bone of a Namibian woman hardened
impulse that collapses to repulsion retracting the narrative to
transparency, its surgical augmentation lit by phallic lamp-arching
tusks hybrid of distinctive strains grave blood a pregnant mare incites
a doctrinal aria of machinations, of language anima/animus



What is heaven without the significance of blood? Man and his
beliefs must be in excess!



8. Blood house



Malignant roots necrophilous traits excoriations of physiognomy the
immune system is unresponsive to foreign tissue until electricity is
accompanied by the fear of drowning monologues of EKG readouts
cosmogony commotion carnis enzymes human secretions reliquiae
cibi the collecting of hair fingernails urine feces dead skin
pedagogical serum unclothed bodies are often confused as being
undisturbed until you look under the skin, whores are usually the
cleanest bodies pulled from the river hand to vein mouth to cunt
phallocentrism





9. I believe, so I cannot



Indigent numerology purity humility behaviorists recrocity pails full
downstream consensual pre-scientific confinement the occipital lobes
sinsemilla weighing departure a season in hell unrelated ecstasies
smeared lingams bone fragments cognitive distonic transmutation
glass variants decomposed absentia burial



Bestiality; rhythms of the unborn flesh of the flesh



10. Fresh water beds (subject to birth), thus to the profane



Urinating kisses necessity in suffocating silence buttocks bruised in
blood and sensuality passages through bodily death diatonic coils
currents of starvation re-absorbed hymns of the Rig Veda a
drenching of meat, shifting the collapse of a consenting body the
deep percussion of fist against skin a Urethran Oresteia a swaying
fragrance unasked unsaid an odor a pile of earth made holy



The throat is a brothel, it is illiterate, and it is innocence



11. As for my sins (for Allen Ginsberg)



Im a predatory species, a certain despondency; bred for dying the
mouth opens and it squares the circles the circle the nature of deceit


there are limitations to death the real threat is my own mind the size
of the water gasping breaths quiet immersions glimpsed eternal anal
concealment surveillance in the pubic beard, NAMBLA subtlety woke
out of breath, vying prophet speaking in tongues, as for my sins.



Psychagogues; studies of the body are linked to the undead. Are the
undying really the unborn?



12. The rhythm of the prey managed through paths of bone;
allows some conditions to breathe.





Massive confinement addresses the conscience a theater of atrocity
texts sober recited states all science is God, God does not exist
obsession dictates ritual excavation of past mastery healing seizures
migraine delta malignant roots of necrophilous traits reliquiae cibi
succubi incubi ascension reawaken the form of life.



The external world has nothing to tell, its not a disorder its an
opening a growing together of undoing



13. Head instead of body, a stone burnt halo of worms



Sodomized with urine feces in the brow death twice beaten
manuscripts scared onto the tongues of man hunted erotic half skull
spinal ropes of pure masturbation ropes made from the pubic hair of
Christ black fruit cruel mud the true origin of foreskin that human


smell his mouth dripped laughed again smooth muscles
discrepancies excremental ejaculation intestinal composites half-
remembered incest balancing writhing a counter recording rectum
scratching muffled gray urine decay encrusted doors lubrication
pushing her mouth into the blindfold glass cavern eye socket
condensation discretion



Briefly humid fingertips spreading delicacy, internal muscles



14. Skin recedes, flesh peels



Curious emergence the agonizing receptive position the crushing
weight nectar stretched slightly her breath preserved on his belt
abject slaves shoulders bent pushing her mouth into the blindfold are
animals really ignorant of taboos overlying tissue anus curvature
craniofacial identification hollow cast anatomical points rectal incisors
alter cremation purified with wine practical uses of graves
discontinuity of being the gulf of death mainsprings animalcula
orgiacal eroticism plethora of the genital organs habitual reserve
interred field notes hair fociles toxicology preservation of blood
evidence the striking of vows



Veneral orgasms, a preconscious reductionist velocity



15. Any sign of being: sidereal bodies



Anumalous monism postulate retinal unconscious naturalizing
hemorrhagic nerve endings recoiled bleeding escophaged lining


malnutrition normal vomiting of early infancy fecal incontinence
intravenous lines vascular dementia middle temporal lobe structures
surgical ablation unilateral spatial neglect motoric immobility
conjunctival injection brief psychotic disorder schizoc affective sexual
dysfunction lubrication swelling response sensory bondage
infantilism oxygen depriving bulimia nervosa postual tremors
premenstrual dysphoric disorder agonist medication constricted
thought insertion dysarthria predisposed abscess orgasmic disorders
syphilis meat racks bathhouses ecology of anal intercourse



Anchoring the apocalypse (archaic records sexual antiquity)



16. Sloth



Vaccination contaminated blood nasal census, transmutation
counting of pubic hairs uteral lacerations erogenous mixtures
phosphorescent congestion her thighs rubbed with blood ankles
bound to the wrist face sprayed, pussy filleted ashes bridled death
stroked by penetration unwinding of the ceiling guttural mirrors
magnified blond raven rubs her ass in my face I sleep, I eat, I drink
decomposed my cock like a thorn impales her blood gives way to
cartilage to bone if I cant kill you, Ill breed you earth bent to the
pplow an orchid drinks from the serpent black and reflectent
cunnlingus, raw sleep the margin of flesh unqualified embalming
fragments of pregnancy an imbalanced mixture pressurized
contagious hemophilia a perceiving body of primitive speech purged
of paternal soil multilingual dysentery intravenous transmidible
agents quarantine exhortations posthumously hanged puncture
contagious blood the fetus predates the abdominal wheel



Subordinations to nature, betrothed laboring breaths and the ferocity
of silence



17. Semen dries, efficacy of prayer



Agrarian societies ritual androgyny irregularities of creation putrefying
male consumption flailed unclean intimacy calculus of bodily
secretions sodomite, hysterical growth cycle mountagnard rosary
when hair gives way to flesh the vaginal chambers of my brain
blesses the wine with my spent cock swallowing the poison sac
practioners of dissonance with a voice that has no tongue desecrated
by an abyss that limits to the last breath the properties of sound
buggery at the Sabbath a mercenary of thought locked down burning
a child ingesting its skull ataraxia a deviation of nature peering at
death through anal protusions oral decay the power of the animal
that kills and refuses to feed his young that eats his young is pure he
drinks of the waters that pour from hell consumed of sickness half
conscious of sudden pain thickening screams smell the distance
trembling, undulating, backwash of castration unprecedented chaos
a laughing hymn of exhaustion listening posts set in the abdomen
certain bodies lecture esoteris doctrine disembodied corpses are
weighed and transported these abstractions of matter are no longer
Bodhisattvas their physical manifestation burned unto consumation
the hunger is mine their eyes synonymously endowed, liquefied
spititus mercurialis, mystagogues of humidum radicale albino
sparrow a littoral species paths acted its natural contents the genitals
of either sex the palmer reflex the mucosa of the lower lip the
pedagogical domain solidarity of substances



Dreams dissected, impregnated the pulmonary chamber

18. Yahweh, covered with hair; the progenitor of the sweat-
born child



Explanatory respiration contrary of undirected thought speech
delivered breech abstention of males ejaculation visualized liquor the


phalangeal circulation embroidery that leaps irreconcilable behavior
that demands the bowels be bled postulated pain divorces sound its
overlapping change that is analogous to birth is not comprised of
pitch only that of the effort the reburial of milk proteins of prehistory is
unearthed accidentally by psychagogues



When we bleed why do we not bleed urine? In an autopsy when the
lungs are examined, why do they not find milk? When the feet are cut
off, why doesnt that sense of balance shift to the hands?



19. Light extends to the darkness



I loaded the skins the deep percussion of fist against skin I turned
Shepards lumber great sacks of flesh the remaining bones piled in
the monastery candles deep in the petrified ice stones opening to
excrement, excrement to ash the ash I will ingest entering into Laos I
can sense the flameswhy am I still alive




Never forget it was the Garden of Eden that grew the apple. I may
not have delivered the apple into her hands but it did hide the seed.



20. Winter in Laos



In my brain washing decapitated head ash and bruising hair once as
minutes bone vein thorn hungry finger skin Shivas steps inhalation
drawing mud cap shorn washing cock in honey a buried library of
semen swallowing circling contortions a grave of hair black raised


veins open to the teeth inscribed hibernation burnt dried oils of cock
zero syntactical pubic forms of closing hands swallowing dilation
mouth husks elongated unnatural defecation smearing hymns
buttocks skull testicle anorexia stomach fucked for blood murals
loosened and bound masturbation cellar lingam jaw finger rose
spade scales baskets of loin pelvis scythe Mahatma Buddha Jesus
fuck floor urine mother father birth renunciation hallucination gravel
thigh walls mattress ammonia vomiting constriction perfumed sedition
gesture of cracked stain a confusing of shoulders the hairs on
convulsion in witted mulatto absorption hurling spinal fellatio a
parasitic interracial hemorrhage the bellyd quill malarial excrement
Yaqui hookah mescalito mantis subcutaneous sarcophagus
shuddering acceleration urinating in the Ganges firstborn ashes
inches of stomach foreskin of the nostril a riverbed caked in burlap
ovens of boiled rust the coils of mongoloid cannabis rose burst
cremated hair calcified muscle matter roughened bone muscular
appendage saliva placenta




Piercing pains in the hands, coldness in the mouth, the mind is in too
much pain to go on.



21. Awareness of broken skin and the swarming of decay



The death it was concentrated in the mouth vacuity sweating from an
obscure orifice the corpse knows only one thing ugliness is not dying
decomposition a miserable excess the soul of a dying animal bred
with the feces of the dead produces a cycle of transformation its
potency applicable to the husbandry of the kindling my soul encased
in your breath of my words



Exonerating mouth cathedrals





22. Hands asleep crawl the eyes



What we need is a knowing thoughtful ecstasy of death an
unquenchable sanatoria, a precious and thundering somoditical
crematorium, a depth of skin these abdominal excretions show a
prophetic willingness of nature turn their skin aware, nothing



A glassening inhalation

23. Mud smoke; aumgn



Her legs open to a faint heartbeat dying of thirst with straps across
your feet; when hair gives way to flesh filth is migratory the
precipitated nostril



Blood fear



24. Aboriginal fear



The sefrirotic tree a dying winged flood replicas of swarming
crouching bird-like plunging nudes into flames darkness unsculptiral
monotonous terrain ravings in grotesquely brutal sequence
anthropomorphic resurrection mirror-eyed ecstasy summoned
aboriginal monoliths swung from genitalia blown from blood hearts of
erections augmentations of shitspeak





10050 Cielo Drive, I feel dead now



25. Four-sided blade

A chest ripe with intestines opens like the Sarawak chamber sore
eyes that inhale appear like blackened buckets the light opening into
darkness the smells narrowed the abscessed layers of skin has
relieved the shoals to collapse this once inaccessible grotto now
becomes open and dry



Black and semen drenched, two bodies seem to have been grabbed
by wire, ever tasted blood? Sexuality the domain discipline the blown
hair of a wound



Exaltation of the mothers milk, umbilical impropriety



30. Sunken cheeks, infatuated with the body



The rain room is filled with possessions the dumpster is abridged
stream hinged on a drowned distance of blood a hardened pederastic
vision shifting up through the nakedness exclusive to the rigor wiped
from the lips



A taste oriented ejaculation





31. Convulsions (inaudibility)

Hurling spurts of thick blood molested lying cold in soap morning like
a hymn warming like cock sweat agitated by flesh hallucinations feed
the entrails removing the lesions and then swallowing them the dying
dead motion with their tongues for water



29 metallic bodies inserted into pubic areas, gender is an illusion



32. Horn cloth



Anointed with oil burned flesh ripped pregnant and retching diarrhea
washing back into her face she was eventually exhumed most of her
body little more than a greasy smudge police investigators found a
severed head of an adult male in the womb others were extensively
mutilated and left in repose









DEATH BY LIVING




I have read of seventy different types of insects found on a


dead man's chest, Navajo seizure disorders, and peyote religions
that have gone astray. I've discovered catalogues of protected sexual
practices based upon mathematics. However, nothing I have read,
heard or seen has so mistaken my interest like the myth of my times.
One day I awoke and found by my bed, written in long hand, the
entire life I had led. Its true a man recites one language, but a junkie,
well, his life is all these things. Each time the
vein is opened he is born again.
I have written many words and they suffer along with me, like
letters in a monologue. Allen Ginsberg once said, Candor ends
paranoia." Such a revelation! Hearing these words is like awakening
during surgery with a lust for life. For many years I have been rapt
with the idea of making love in a painting. When I write, the
exhaustion and the grief of life wash over me, and the futile images
appear at once and then out of my hands.
The exhaustion of a song sings between a woman's legs. A woman
who looks darkly over her shoulder uses her hands to laugh. This
type of woman is far more animated and therefore greatly desired.
Her smile warms as the rain chills the trees. Her smile is an unlocked
door that requires no keys. She's as sensual as the day breaks. Like
an expression sacred and stiff, in her hands she is unnerving. When
she sleeps her gaze wanders across the path of many mistaken
lovers. Her expression is quick to the touch. Staring into her eyes its
hard to say as much but what you see there is your own creation.
However, what is missing is courage, hate, and fear. In a word
what I've heard is simpler than what she could say. Closing my hands
over my eyes while leaning to stand when I fell I parted from the
integrity of a thousand lost nights. Later in the morning its breakfast
and slipping out of your clothes where smiles blur and are missed.
The nights with her never want to end; they seem to slow.
My past compressed into a vile it slips beneath the skin. The
doors open and the clock begins, the steps lead as they end. I
dissolve into the chilling air of a mass suicide with blood on my
hands. No man speaks of lust in the hurried streets though they
should. Romantic notions like a burst of creative energy pass
eventually, the interest escapes and you are left in its wake. She
smiles as she presses my envy into her hands. She made love as I
waited patiently like a desperate man, a loser too provocative to
stand. My eyes close as my academic hand stroke her ankles and
thighs my imagination sits calmly by. The pornography of heaven


caught her by surprise. Her breast was shadowed, her voice
amplified. To my lips, hers sell as her prayers trail down my chest.
Haunted from above a ladies sometimes written of is murdered and
disposed of. When I'm dead, I'm in love. Curtains in the window draw
her eyes back across the light. The slowness of the taste so sweet at
the tip of my swollen fingertips were washed and cooled. Her hands
extinguish the candle above her head as night embarks on its
fantastic journey into morning. Now the earth splinters and slips in
throats like unspoken words torn form the landscape. Within these
warm walls I speculate capacity, and fall fast asleep.

Within these walls I risk my life to save it. Here is where I come
alive. My cock is wired to inflict and sustain. Te bearing of children is
set aside for a healthier appetite constantly in pursuit of intellectual
promiscuity. Here is where my actions explain the end of a branch at
the root of a stem. She bleeds autumn crimson, turgid and obscene;
she seems touched and amused by a naked man on his knees. She
closes her mind and slips into the miracle to make love in a painting.
As I sit and stare, her hands exploring the trace of my tongue. She
looks well.

When she is down she puts her mother in the room and draws
comfort. But on the other side of the glass her consumption is laced
with the patience and dignity of slurred speech. The excavation of her
sexuality changes direction at the cliff's edge.

The deep emotionless thud of fist against skin awoke her many
times in her past. Her mother having committed suicide left her with
the frightening belief that we should consider it a privilege to suffer. In
her memory warm water rolls across carefully placed stones. Though
the water's path is constructed it will never know her. Its gentleness
was never a part of her life. Her family tree like curved lines on
woven silk describes in pastel the growing insanity of traveler asleep
on a fast moving train through the ocean at night. Taught to wander
her mind leads on.

She says," If you expecting me to have your child, what are you
gonna do for me? Don't you know marriage has gone out of style"
Wombs never do, they bleed for no reason at all. If I love you that's a
way to the means, a cut to the credits," she smiled, "I'm not what I


seem so you still want me to have your child?"

"Yes", I say speaking from the heart. Love is a feel that gets to
real, but when it's a dream its obscene. So out of hate comes love, a
message to the world, that out of lust two can become three.
She says, "Out of my hands comes the radical hostility of doubt.
Something I can't figure out, what is a woman a slave to a man other
that the ability of reproduction?" I laugh, I don't know either.
She say," What have we accomplished here? Let's get undressed
and into the parables of equality we go, don't you know that my
hands touch you out of revenge. Its only when drowning in self-
justice do I require the ugliest of emotions we can share. If God still
existed would her utilize our innocence and bring about the ability to
prolong the moment of ecstasy? It sounds strange and a bit sane but
why to do you then ask, is the orgasm a mark of self-defense, a self-
recompense. The abhorrence of reaching higher maligns
interpretation. Animals that laugh in the rain soak themselves in the
fruits of their lovemaking to dance with their gods, to be beautiful and
clean. It is the cleansing crown that strangles us all out of the
sarcastic abyss entitled, the end."
The new sexual technique brings the mind to orgasm and
leaves the participant more fulfilled; yet the only repercussion is its
ecstasy is concealed. In this position you never have to change
expression.

As I sit crying your hand between your thighs you part your
lips and fondle ecstasy as I sit calmly by. Upon awakening you
stumble upon repulsion; so immaculate your sadness of emergency.
You must learn to wake up alone and live with it. We've done it
together so many times. The love I feel for you only heightens my
contempt for this life. I have saved the last murder on earth for
myself. Naked I call out to no one. Standing still, afraid to move veins
burst in my head. I stab myself in the throat to see how I feel. Even
now you are more alive than I am dead.









IN THE SHADE OF THE BODHI TREE




I wrapped the bleeding foot in linen and sat down on the
windowsill and watched the blood drop out of the linen and into the
garden below. The pain was a blessing causing me to cease my
reflection and to consider the pain. The pain was exquisite. My heart
began beating insistently as if to describe something to me, as if it
were incapable of precise decision on its own. I was already aware of
the ever-increasing affection I had for the pain would most certainly
lead to infection. As I began my dissent into town for my secret
rendezvous I inherited from others the smell of the kitchens along
the path. I saw Mother's holding the dead bodies of animals and
cleaning them of hair and disemboweling them to give flavor no
doubt.

The doctor hadn't become a doctor until late in life. He had
become a soldier at such an early age that for one so young he had
become obsessed with death. He won many medals and honors. It is
said that once he actually had to be dragged off the line after being
wounded. But at one point he walked off the lines and was shot in the
back just below the spine by one of his own sons. It was in hospital
that I first met him. While in hospital he watched with interest these
grave men of medicine amputating limbs, cracking open the ribs of
children, and going for days without anything to eat or drink. He
began to see the doctors as sacrifices. He saw in himself a chance
for resurrection.

He often spoke of the stages of life. He once told me of speaking
to his mentor. His mentor advised him that the stages of life always
required a birth and a death so that with each change there were
feelings of sadness along with these feelings of happiness. Once
while attending a sprang I had suffered from a fall he had confessed
to me that while at University he had dark and dense forebodings of
the kind you never seem to overcome. These forebodings were great
tragedies of failure; the adversary being the dark shadow now


silhouetting his past life. To him, the more he learned about life the
more death tried to betray him. Once I actually dreamt of these
stages there I was alone and in between what I guess you could call
individualization. Lying in emptiness I foresaw the symbols of the
depths and I had a choice of them, these being the finality of
mourning, the perilous descent through the seasons, the alienation of
no identity, and the other image that provides life and the equilibrium
of change. I do not have to tell you the one I chose. But in gaining
this I was asked to sacrifice the ability to provide for myself in this
world and the next. Now and then I sight the repercussions of this act
but like a hand moving through glass it leaves me scared. So more
often than not I choose not too.

When I reached his office I entered through his side door. This
door took me directly into his private office. What I found was a dimly
lit room. I opened the door and walked down the hallway, past the
examination rooms and into the room where he usually performed an
autopsy. Once there I found him examining a young woman who was
lying nude on the table. The young woman was crying. His hand
moved over her breast and down to her belly, then to her vagina. Her
vagina was suspiciously shaved clean. On the lips of her vagina I
could see bruises left by a multitude of rapists. The doctor's face was
grave. Grave as I had ever seen when he tried to explain to her she
would never be able to bear children or to even have sexual relations
with anyone. She covered her breasts and let out a scream that sent
me into tears and struggling to keep my composure. I stumbled back
into the wall. Her screaming went on until I thought she would die. I
fell to my knees and cut my foot even worse, filling the linen with
streaming blood. Looking up I noticed she had passed out. The
doctor noticed me and walked slowly over as I tried to stand, cursing.
My foot was now dripping blood as he helped into the room and I
caught myself upon the examination table and helped him cover her
so she would not awake to the shame of us standing over her bruised
and nude body. In helping him I noticed that her breasts were also
scarred. Her lips had been slashed open and her feet and wrists
supported deep burns. Her skin was as cold as any I had ever felt.

"She was found in a ditch."

His voice was so low I had to strain to hear him.


"There were people standing over her lying in her blood and
excrement.

They just stood there and stared at her until a young man
picked her up and brought her to me. She slept through the night.
She had dreams of which you and I cannot even imagine."

I tried to help and said I thought I would need stitches trying to
help ease the moment. But I became so arrested by his story and the
manner in which he spoke that I just sat and listened as he dug the
needle into my skin.

"At the beginning of life we are supplied with dreams to allow
us to be rational in the worst of times but I believe there will be none
for her to sleep through."

I told him that this reminded me of his dream he had while at
university he had told me of so many times. A look of great concern
came over his face then he sighed, "Which one will she choose." I
assured him that she would be asked to give up nothing.









THE SMELL OF WATER




(Part One)
Whether it was overflow from a rain shower, or something someone
had poured out of their window as they stopped their car, or just a
puddle, Oren had to touch it, he had to feel it, and most importantly
he had to smell it. Oren slept in storm drains in dry weather. In the


more rainy times, the summer for example, he would sleep in a place
only he knew about. If you were to swim out into the river, and if you
were to return almost to the shore in a certain spot, and if you swam
down about twelve to twenty four feet you might find a passageway in
the earth where the water flowed in and didn't exactly return. In the
manner that underwater drilling stations have a section where the
divers can enter the ocean and the ocean doesn't enter the rig, Oren
had a place where he could swim to and escape from the pressure of
people and still enjoy the smells. In this place he had his books, and
many of the comforts of living, if you lived like Oren.

Maybe you've seen Oren. I imagine you have. He only goes in stores
that he is sure won't say anything to him, he really doesn't like to
speak to anyone, not really. That's kind of like every one of us in
some ways, which is why Oren can walk around in public and not
really be noticed as anything out of the ordinary.

It's accepted that no one enjoys the warm summer breezes more
than Oren as he sits staring out through the grate a hundred feet
above the river. He watches as the kids play at the playground, as
the drug dealers sit on the dock with their fishing lines in the water,
the campers swinging at flies, and the sun setting in the distance. On
the fourth of July Oren lays on his side in his grotto trembling at the
fireworks going off above him. He can feel the explosions as they
reverberate through the water.

What would someone think to see Oren easing into the water with a
clear bag around his neck full of whatever he will need until he
decides to emerge.

Sometime Oren will stay down for days and just enjoy the quiet and
the smell of the water. Other times Oren will just simply sit on the
rocky bank with his feet in the water and watch the barges float by,
imagining their great weight bearing down on his grotto. He will sit
and watch the hands on deck shivering in the cold or wiping away the
sweat and know that if it all gets to be too much he can escape into
his cavernous peace and just wrap himself in the smell and read.

Sometimes Oren will swim out a little bit to the bottom of the river and
enjoy something that hardly anyone will ever see. At the bottom of


the river are hundreds of cars abandoned, wrecked, or put there to
gather insurance money because of theft. Oren will get behind the
wheel of a 1947 Cadillac and sit there in the smell of the water and
the quiet and imagine his self-driving down the highway while the fish
swim in and out of the windows in the car.

In his grotto Oren has an old acoustic guitar he had strung with field
wire. The music he played would ease his soul and he would sing the
words he felt would go with what he was playing. A man had heard
Oren play once on the bank and asked Oren where he had learned
the guitar. The question had struck Oren strangely. Oren just looked
up at the man, it was a Sunday morning, and he said, "After a while I
thought I had it down pretty good then I took the strings off and left it
be for a while." The man looked puzzled, "Why would you take them
off when you were starting to play well?" Oren innocently said, "I
didn't want the guitar to thinking I thought I was better than it was."
The man walked off laughing at Oren and Oren let out a cry and
struck the strings with the back of his hand, causing the man to
stumble and look back.

Then it was Oren's turn to laugh. Oren would play his guitar or read
by candlelight or he would just sit and stare off into the blackness of
the water and know that everything was all right. Never once did it
ever occur to Oren to live another way. As long as he could
remember he had lived this way but at times he would wonder just
where had he come from and why he was so different. All of these
thoughts were going through Oren's mind one day when a young
black lady named Axelena sat down beside him on the bank. Oren
turned in her direction and said hello. She just stared out at the water
and didn't say anything at all.

After a few moments Oren too turned back toward the river and they
both sat in silence.

Axelena spoke to Oren, "I been watching you for a while now and I
see you go down in the water and you don't ever come back up. Now
I know you ain't got no gills on you, so you must have something in
you the lord left off of me."

Oren became nervous and Axelena could tell something was wrong.


She placed a hand on his thigh and said, "Now it's okay, you know?
Honey, whatever you got going on ain't nobody's business, even
mine. I was just curious about you. I ain't gonna raise no sand bout
nothing."

Oren laughed and said that even if he told her she wouldn't believe
him. Axelena turned serious and told Oren that her Mother was a
mid-wife and so was her grandmother. She said that she had seen
the lord do some really evil things and also he had done some pretty
beautiful work. "I have heard the devil cry like a bobcat from the
backseat of my mama's car, I have seen the tears roll back into a
dead man's eyes, and I have never known the love of a man without
feeling his fist before his lips. Whatever you got to share,
honey, you can leave it with me."

Oren was intrigued and just a little shy. Axelena turned back toward
the river and sat in silence again. Oren had been lonely for a long
time and had always wanted a friend. He got up and stepped down in
the water and turned back toward Axelena and took her hand. "Come
on," he said, " I'll show you." Axelena laughed, " Tear down the plow
for the seed." Together, hand in hand they swam down into the water.

Lying in the dark, the candlelight fading as fast as the glint of smoke
reflecting off the water, the grotto was unaware when Axelena and
Oren popped up through the water. Axelena pulled her self up on the
dirt floor and look around as she shook away the water from her hair.
Oren was very apprehensive and sat quietly waiting for Axelena to
say something. She got up and walked around through the two
rooms Oren had dug with his hands.

The rooms were decorated with Buddhist imagery. A huge Mandela
measuring twelve feet by twenty was facing the water, it's ripples
reflecting from the candles made it seem like it would come to life
each time a fish swam by the opening of the grotto. Oren had placed
prayer wheels in the walls and as Axelena passed through the rooms
she extended her beautiful, delicate fingers and traced their edges
and they rolled in silently as her footsteps traced the neat dirt floor.
Arranged on a small table were many books, they looked haggard
and well read. Axelena stopped at his prayer mat and small statues
of Buddha and bells. She turned and asked Oren, "Is this where you


pray?" Oren looked up at Axelena as she stood above him and said,
"Yes, that is where I pray." Oren reached over behind him and
grabbed his guitar. Oren strummed slowly in an open D tuning while
Axelena sat down beside him and listen to him play. Axelena began
to be really drawn to Oren's innocence.

Down in the grotto she was away from all of her problems. She just
sat and watched Oren play for hours until she fell asleep at his side.
When she woke Oren was gone. She looked around her and
somehow knew he would be back. In a few minutes Oren was back.
He got to his feet soaking wet and opened the bag from a round his
waist. From the bag he pulled fruit and water. Oren sat down in front
of Axelena and offered it to her. Axelena smiled and bit into the plum
he had bought for her. She laughed as she chewed and wiped the
water from Oren's hair. A tear came to Oren's eyes and he laughed
too.

For centuries, ever since time began it was accepted that heaven
existed off somewhere into the skies, somewhere in space, perhaps.
For some that may be true. But for Oren heaven existed in the eyes
of Axelena. From the first moment he saw her he knew somewhere
deep inside of him, that if he ever lost her he would go down into the
water and never come back up. While Oren and Axelena sat there
lost in the moment, a moment that would define their relationship,
friendship, and lives in the time to come; it started to rain. It rained for
four days straight. The Tennessee River rose up over its banks and
the campers, and fishermen had to retreat to higher ground. When
Oren and Axelena came up from Oren's grotto they found a world
that had changed completely. Oren and Axelena swam about and
looked in amazement at the water that had seemed to swallow up the
trees and the playground where the children played on warm summer
days. When the amazement passed Axelena started to laugh. She
laughed out loud and no one heard her except Oren. Oren liked that
quite a bit. Nothing would ever pull him away from her. Not even the
rain.

The next day Axelena convinced Oren to help her look for her family.
Axelena explained that where her family lived was beneath the
waterline and it often flooded. They trudged through the runoff and
slowly began to come to the edge of the water. They set off down


Waterloo road until they came to where Axelena's family lived. Oren
saw them first and tensed. Axelena felt his hand grip hers hard and
she looked at his face and followed the look in his eyes. Her family
had all drowned and their bodies had washed back up and under the
front porch. It must have been at least two days since they had died
because the bodies had begun to bloat from the water. Axelena
made her way up the path and took her Mother's legs and drug her
up to the porch.

Oren stood there motionless. He was terrified. Axelena eventually
drug the bodies of her Mother, Father, and sister up to higher ground
and buried them. By the time she returned to Oren he had sat down
on the porch and was very still. Axelena sat down beside Oren and
washed the mud from her hands in the water by her feet. Oren turned
to Axelena and said, "I'm sorry. I...I'm sorry." Axelena said, "They
were all I had in this world other than my grandmother and she lives
pretty far away, down in Mississippi. I'll be going to see her now." She
looked at Oren with tears in her eyes, "Are you gonna come with me,
or you gonna stay here. Now, you don't owe me anything you know. I
care about you and this, none of this gonna change anything with you
and me." They sat there for what seemed hours. Staring out at the
water Oren said, "Where is Mississippi?"





American Prosthesis




Jack Random and I burst into Iraq like a widow at a train station all
out of quarters for the condom machine for that last ride to New
Jersey for the High school reunion. The White House press office
kept offering us our own poppy fields in the hills of Afghanistan if we
just wouldn't go to Iraq. After breaking the story of Karl Rove and the
Washington sex trade they would do anything to keep us away from
the story. We were determined and even thought to go thru the wilds


of Pakistan but why muddle in with the retreat of the Taliban, we end
up in their clutches soon enough we were wagering.

Anyway, we hit the Iraq oil fields to the sight of an American truck
broke down. Roadside bombs it was said weren't going off near the
oil fields anymore since it was common knowledge the Americans
would be out of the country in force by the end of 2007. The George
Baker plan had just hit amazon.com and all of Beirut we had read
over the wires had ordered a copy and soon all of Iraq would be
reading it through the black market. Once again Ed Meese would be
popular among those who killed for pleasure.

The drivers of the two trucks both U.S. military soldiers were cursing
at the four Iraqi members of the police who had driven by earlier and
had took off quickly and laughed at the two of them stranded. One of
the soldiers wanted to go off and shoot the Iraqi police and the other
had for weeks left on the most recent one year tour in country. When
we asked them about the term "boots on the ground" they responded
with as much hate and vigor as they had when we asked about the
Iraqi police.

"Boots on the ground, goddamn! I tell you what the boots on the
ground think about this fucking war, there's too much blood, too
much Iraqi blood and too much American blood, and not enough old
blue blood from any red states!" The soldier kicked the front of the
truck violently and looked back at us quickly, "Just why are you here
anyway? I don't see no boots on the ground here between you two."

We reassured the two soldiers that we wanted to report an honest
portrayal of what was going on in Iraq. The other soldier who had
remained quiet for most of the time spoke up, "Let me tell you
something. We were on a patrol about a month ago maybe two. A
roadside bomb goes off and these Iraqi troops start firing at one
another, ripping each other apart and we have to mop it up. How long
have we been here and we are getting killed every day. Sometimes I
just want to start shooting and I don't honestly give a shit what I hit."










How many screams did you hear until you knew they were coming
from someone you could identify as someone other than yourself?
That's a question you need to ask yourself when you have spent any
time in a war zone.

Here we were in a war zone and as soon as we arrived we noticed
that the poppy had followed here from the shores of America, from
the rocky cliffs of Afghanistan. We investigated the cities amidst the
sound of automatic gunfire and saw parents in the desert grip of drug
addiction dealing with the unthinkable loss of three children in one
day. We saw one child get his legs torn apart as visiting dignitaries
bid farewell to the high security fences of Halliburton's white table
cloths on CNN and its high rise bleachers. The grimace of Donald
Rumsfeld quoting the words real or imagined from a wounded soldier
at Walter Reed hospital.

In the days of slavery the crowd were treated to question and answer
sessions between the seller and the slave. The slave was usually
being judged by the crowd as to their build or visual strength so the
Q&A were usually for the delight of the crowd and so in Iraq are the
questions to Iraqi civilians as weapons are put in their faces by
privately hired security, militia anywhere else in the world, or if you
like insurgents in Iraq if it were not for the tax form they can produce
given six months notice. We ran into these thugs several times and
had our lives threatened until we lied and said we were with some
government agency we made up on the spot. This never ceased to
amazed us as it always pumped them up more in their blood lust and
obscene patriotism for the red in the flag.

On American television the obsession is with crime scene
investigation and forensics. There are no investigations to speak of in
a war zone, especially not in Iraq. For instance, if you wanted to dig a
mass grave and hide it with any education it wouldn't be too difficult,
after all it is a desert region. This can work to the benefit of both
sides in any war. Body counts make for headlines a soldier said
once, just draw a line straight to the head, and you'll usually find


more than one.



Dodge City, that's what the Marine's called the area we were in. One
marine, so young he shaved once or at least twice a week whether
he needed it or not had already killed three people. When I asked
whether or not they were insurgents or civilians he just answered,
"Well, one was shooting back and the others weren't, but screw'em
man. I say arm yourself, shit we're MWA bitch, Marines with attitude!"
Raised on MTV this white marine was born in Tennessee and had
served a tour in the KKK while still in high school he told me before I
even asked where he was from. When I asked him how he liked
serving alongside other Marines he laughed and spit at the burning
sand.

"You want to know what I think about all these highly esteemed
people of color? They're all marines ain't they?" Then he laughed and
patted his weapon and slapped it down to his side and saluted me
and added, "You think nobody fragged anybody since Vietnam?"

How bad an epidemic racial strife between soldiers serving in Iraq
was we might never know. Jack had secured an interview with a
Major and was coming back across the camp and looked worried. As
he walked he looked around, his head looking this way and that the
way someone does before they tell you a secret or avoid someone
they do not want to see. In the soundtrack in my head I instantly
heard "Peace Frog" by the Doors. I don't know why these things
always occur to me but they do. I remember a time in Chicago when I
was covering a story on the heated talks between labor and
management and War's "Spill That Wine" hit me all of a sudden and
within minutes violence broke out and I spent the night in a jail cell
fighting for my life.

Jack got over to me and his voice was quiet which was unlike him in
so many ways. "This Major I went to talk to just got a call about an
ambush of civilians. They were targeted by security forces." I looked
around now because I wanted to be the first to get there and
because the security forces always have friends serving in just about
every platoon in Iraq and many after their tour is up will join private


security to cash in.

I asked Jack, "How do we get there?"

Jack replied, "That's just it, the guy that called him while I was sitting
there is his brother, and his nephew was in charge of the group that
opened fire. I just got out of the office before the crazy bastard could
call a corporal to detain me."

I looked around and as far as I could see were Marines with weapons
at the ready, well trained and loyal to their commanding officer, the
chain of command. I stood to scout a method of transportation, a
friendly ride to anywhere other than where we were and saw the
Marine from Tennessee. I turned to Jack and looked back at the
racist marine and I thought I might have a plan. Shit it worked in
Hollywood.

Jack and I came up with a plan. Racists are notoriously patriotic,
reference most of America's history, governmental and citizenry for
evidence of this, and certainly ignorant, so Jack approached the
marine from Tennessee playing the role of a C.I.A. agent.

Jack approached the racist marine who was kicking at the sand and
aiming his weapon at the horizon.

"Hey, you hear about that American got shot in Fallujah yesterday?"

The marine looked around and then looked Jack up and down. He
didn't take but a second or two to size up Jack. "Yeah, terrible shot
that guy, took'em two."

Jack laughed, "Yeah well, what are you gonna do, poor training."

They both laughed and Jack shot me a worried and disgusted look.

Jack went on, "Say, John Russell, C.I.A., in country to take care of
some loose ends. Not saying we need some help but always looking
for some willing participants, those who can be covert and keep their
goddamn mouth shut. It's below the radar of course." Then Jack
snatched the weapon from the racist marine's hands so fast he told


me later it scared even him, "So, you got the balls to pull the trigger
without caring where the rounds land or are you just another
weekend faggot here till your wife fucks the whole town back home?"

The racist Marine stood up and drew a knife and said, "I'm an
American, ever since 9/11 I wanted to do what was necessary for my
country to fight terrorism!"

Jack didn't break a sweat and went back after him, throwing the
weapon to the ground, "Since 9/11? What were you doing before
that? Working in a convenience store and cheating on your mother?
Real American? Shit!"

The racist Marine was livid now and was ready to open fire on
anyone. Jack knew he was ready and in less than five minutes.

Jack said, "Ok, you're what we need. What we need right now is a
humvee. Think you can get one here and I mean now Marine?"

The Marine flashed a shit eating grin, "Before you know it!."

Driving through the wasteland that has become Iraq you pray you'll
run into an arms dealer and you'll also pray he'll have some legs and
a few hands, some teeth and eyes. You hope he'll start the bidding
with a request for just a drop of water to pour atop the loaves and
fishes he has brought to feed the warring tribes as they sit down and
start to calmly discuss the atrocity that is unfolding on American
television that has been unbelieved so far on Al Jezerra. Maybe you'll
cringe when he says offhandly that he was kept out of Rwanda
because the prosthetics he had brought along couldn't make it
through customs years before the tightened security of 9/11. But then
again in Iraq as in many other war zones in modern times the dust
will get in your eyes and you'll be able to blame the blurred lines of
aggression, of morality, on the weather and the politics of plurality,
the obscenity of greater good, on something in your eye. but to the
racist marine Jack was dealing with it was something eaten away at
his soul a long time ago. Not a speck of dust introduced at the factory
but a giant ball of hatred either beaten or lovingly enthralled upon a
young boy who before he knew how to hate was taught that one man
was better simply by the color of his skin and it was unfortunate for


his fellow Marines and the people of Iraq that this individual was not
weeded out and was armed and set loose in a war zone. A casualty
is a number in any year whether it contains an election or not, and in
Iraq as well in America the news was not good.

Then almost as if on cue came the Marine from Tennessee behind
the wheel of a Humvee. In the distance came a mortar attack, it's the
sound you'll never forget if you ever hear it just once. The entire
camp reacted at once. The Major that Jack had interviewed came out
of his command post and was scanning the desert for the action.
Marines were running for their companies and there was hollering all
around us. The Marine from Tennessee seemed unfazed. In Jack he
saw a direct line to the killing and he was not about to be tied down
to waiting for orders and seeing whether or not he would see action
that day.

The Humvee came to a sudden stop in front of Jack as he tried not to
jump out of his skin. The Marine jumped out and started counting the
clips for his M16. "Gotta go get some, just a mortar, maybe just a few
of'em!"

Jack was still keeping an eye out for the Major who hadn't discovered
us just yet. But we had a problem. Jack was on one side of the camp
and I was on the other and in the middle was the Major and a camp
in a frenzy stocked full of Marines with posters of Osama Bin Laden
with supermodels taking a dump on his face and hand drawn pictures
of Bin Laden on dialysis being tied down to an electric chair
repeatedly.

Just as Jack and I were about to lock eyes across the camp and
exchange a voiceless means of communication we had managed to
develop in some of the world's worst hot spots, an incendiary device
went off inside of the camp and the mess tent went up in flames. The
explosion was minimal but sent a surge further into the camp as
another mortar landed about a hundred yards away from the camp.

Jack grabbed the Marine from Tennessee and screamed, "What are
you boy a Dixie Chick or Daniel Boone? Get in there and get some!"
Pointing at the spot where the mortars landed he got the Marine's
attention and he raced off to where Jack had pointed. Jack seized


the moment and jumped behind the wheel of the Humvee. Dodging
troops who were running for the mess hall more from curiosity than
anything, Jack skirted the perimeter and made his way to me and I
jumped in the open passengers side and we were off. Speeding
down the only road out of the camp that wasn't being hit by mortars
we were on our way to the site of an ambush knowing all along that a
marine Major knew who we were and that we knew that he was
related in more than one way to the incident.

The words of the racist marine rung in my ears, "You think no one
has fragged anybody since Vietnam?"

Moving around in Iraq you can be reminded of the image of James
Cagney's famous line, "Top of the world ma!" But only if you look at it
from the ant's point of view. Imagine the ant as an insurgent. Yeah,
top of the world but the top has a hole in it and it goes all the way to
the bottom. The bottom branches out and comes up to a point and
resembles a volcano. But rather than resemble the fiery furnace of
the first Gulf War, (the image of the Iraqi oil fields graced all manner
of media around the world) but now the volcano is purging blood,
oozing limbs and the mangled childhoods of burnt and homeless
Iraqi children.

How do you approach a crime scene in a war zone? How do you
make your way through a maze of distraught family members who
are rushing around helpless to the carnage of their family members
having been shot by officially licensed gunmen by the government
who has invaded their country? If you are a reporter you make it clear
to all those who are around that you are a reporter, a correspondent,
and are not armed. If the privately armed security force is still present
you make it damn clear that you are American, but you also make it
clear that you are someone more important than you are. You
impress upon them that it wouldn't be so good to open up on you and
you pray like a virgin on her wedding night that their cell phone
batteries have gone dead and haven't gotten a call from a particular
Marine major.

As we sped away we could see in the distance black smoke billowing
out of a building in the distance. Ahead of us in a pickup two Iraqis
were shifting around nervously in the seat and as we came alongside


them they shot a nervous glance at us until they realized we were not
U.S. soldiers but they could not know if we were not private security
forces, who in some circles have been called cowboys. There was
even a rumor in command circles of a Taliban website that referred to
the "cowboys" being displaced in Iran, not unlike the way American
forces were moving across the Cambodian border in Vietnam. As we
rode alongside the truck for what seemed like two minutes the Iraqi in
the passenger seat raised a pistol up to eye level and aimed at my
head. I yelled for Jack to speed up and Jack hit the gas and we sped
along as four shots bounced off of our Humvee.

I yelled over to Jack, "I hate to ask a stupid question but how much
gas do we have?"

Jack answered, "As far as I know we've got enough to get to the site
of the ambush but what do you think about ditching this Humvee?"

I thought for a minute and asked, "I don't know, something bothers
me about that shit back at the camp. How the hell do you lob mortars
at a camp and miss by a hundred yards and manage to hit with a
fragmentation grenade? How the fuck do you explain the physics of
that one?"

Now Jack looked worried, "You think the frag was a cover to get at
me?"

"Well Jack, you did hear the phone call..."

As we approached the scene of the ambush the humvee took fire.
Families were gathered over the wreckage of what were once bodies.
If you have ever seen footage on television of men and women in
some third world backwater holding one another and crying
uncontrollably and waving their arms at the cameras and pointing at
the bodies then you didn't smell the bodies burning. You didn't see
the casual way the network cameraman replaced the film in his
camera and began taking photos again like the carnage was just
another stop on the way to the Pulitzer. He knows that he will be
back in another watering hole soon enough.

In Iraq it's not like in Vietnam. You didn't just hop aboard a C-140 and


then grab a Huey out to a shit hole to scrap about to the shit. In Iraq
the shit was the day of Tet, every single day. Thanks to a foreign
policy of "Bring 'em on." One thing Jack and I could never figure out
was why they called the area where the American troops where
located the Green Zone. The only thing we came up with was when
we interviewed the civilians in Iraq and they all responded with the
same word, "Halliburton."

Halliburton had funded this attack. Private security forces had
opened fire on innocent men, women, and children.

We turned around and around, Jack turning the humvee against the
shooting and slammed the front across the curb of the highway. Both
sliding out of the driver's side, we were still taking fire.

Jack screamed out, "You see where it's coming from?"

I was caught, frozen in the moment. I was watching a woman as she
caressed the head of a boy. As she lifted his head up to her lips I
could see that half of his head had been shot away. Blood had caked
around his nostrils and from there, there was nothing. Somewhere on
the bloody street his bloody mouth had been torn violently from him.
As rounds exploded all around her she wept uncontrollably. While
others ran for cover and Jack and I tried to save our lives she was
shot through the heart while mourning the loss of this child.

Jack gripped my shoulder, "You see where it's coming from?"

I was shocked back into consciousness when a shot nicked my wrist
and sent blood shooting across my hand. Before I had a chance to
cuss or holler I looked up and noticed an Iraqi man wearing a black
handkerchief aiming at my head from across the street. I jumped up
instantly and grabbed Jack and jumped into the pool of blood in the
grass by the front wheel.

The Iraqi man fired just as I jumped and just missed me. Jack cussed
as I crushed all of my body weight on top of him, sending him face
first into the bloody grass. We rolled and came up for air just as a car
bomb exploded up the street.



The news cameraman crawled over to us, "Either one of you
journalists?"

Jack and I looked at each other, I responded, "Now just what in the
hell does that matter now?"

The cameraman didn't bat an eye, "I thought you might get my film to
the network office, my cell is fubar."

I stared at the cameraman a moment and said, "Oh sure, yeah, we'll
get it there, no problem."

He answered, "Great, tell'em about ten or twelve dead maybe more,
I'm going after the car bomb."

The cameraman made his way crawling on his belly through the
bloody grass in the direction of the explosion.

Jack smiled as he watched me open the film canister and expose the
yellow film to the flames not three feet away from us. I handed the
film to Jack and he tossed it in. We weren't going after the car bomb,
we were going after the truth and fame and glory didn't have any role
in this tragedy.


The only human right you have in Iraq these days outside the idling
engine of a military transport plane is just that, you are a human at
that moment. But step out of the plane into the dusty air and you are
the margin for victory, a landslide on the abacus. Translate that into
political capitol and you are the means to an end, the straw on the
camel's back that like a dowser's wand leads the way to the oil, damn
the body count, this is war. Damn men, stiff upper lip and all, this is
economics.

It's hard to keep a global ledger in mind when you are bleeding on an
Iraqi street. It's even more difficult when you are in the grass which is
much cooler but is covered not only in your blood but the blood of
children and the twisted metal of automobiles and weapons. Any
weapons in a firefight can be a weapon of mass destruction when
paint is tearing and flicking away into your eyes, remember that if you


ever find yourself hunted by the military of your own country in a
foreign land.

The car bomb exploded again as best we could figure as there was
another explosion almost right away. One thing you will never
understand if you are ever in Iraq is the term, Improvised Explosive
Device. That description alone brings to mind Timothy McVeigh going
into a Wal-Mart and buying a few items and coming out with two
shopping bags and some D cell batteries. There is nothing
improvised about any of these devices, nothing thrown together on a
whim. It's not like the Vietcong rushed down from the jungles of North
Vietnam with just some nails and fertilizer and had to first find a
rental truck or take flying lessons. Read back through the reports
from Iraq when Saddam was in power and there weren't any I.E.D.'s
being exploded. Create the demand and journalists will recoil only
slightly before rushing in and that was where we were, rushing in on
our bellies.

I looked up and noticed the Iraqi man with the black handkerchief
had taken off his disguise and had exposed his American features. I
grabbed my camera and shot a few stills of him reloading. Using the
second explosion as cover the families who had been caught out in
the open ran to cover as shots sprayed the streets like vipers
snipping at their heels. I grabbed Jack and pulled his face over to
mine, his look of confusion moved to anger as he noticed the
American.

Jack whispered to me, "Dirty son of a bitch!"

Looking around us we noticed the families had made it to cover and
one man was waving us over to the door of a storefront.

I grabbed Jack by the shoulder and motioned to him, "We got to
make it, the bastard knows we're here."

As soon as I seriously allowed myself to consider running across a
street being riddled with gunfire I instantly thought to myself, "You're
a journalist and this asshole is trying to make you a soldier!"

I choked back fear and crippling anxiety and slinging blood from my


hand onto the street I darted across the street with Jack alongside
me. We made it just as the entire front of the building erupted in
flames and smoke as a grenade was shot into the street in front of
the wall. Once inside the man and his family motioned for us to follow
them. As we made our way through the store the man stooped for a
moment and stopped to pick up the body of a woman who had been
shot. The bullet had gone clear through her skull and glass had
sprayed her face, scarring it horribly. Jack and I each grabbed a leg
and with the man we made our way to a vehicle outside.

We searched the roofs for private security forces but saw none,
evidently they hadn't planned ahead and this gave us pause. We
were at least 45 minutes late to the scene and this was as far as they
had gotten. What had stopped them? What had we missed?
Somehow we had to find out if they had suffered any causalities and
we had to ask our saviors here what had happened but first we had
to reach a safe distance.

If you took the weight of the ocean that erupts in pain at the slightest
breeze from across the world and threw it at a child and then took
notes on the impact you'd see before your very eyes what war can
do. Those notes would be the propaganda you could use to turn the
tide on the floor of the U.S. congress and that propaganda could
sustain any rationale of turmoil or loss or life. Sound irrational? In the
young year of 2007 the political landscape of the world has become
the wall that mankind has been backing up towards since the
beginning of time. The spear flies through the eye of the storm,
through its splendor and blue skies, through the calm and bereft
moment of wreckage only to land as the clouds begin to darken and
the rains re-approach from the east.

There is no soundtrack on the ground, "boots on the ground" as they
say. No combat photographer in khaki has a camera crew following
him or her around making sure they are captured in the right light as
they help the wounded child to safety or as they seduce the Catholic
missionary in the dimming light of the battlefield. War is ugly, it is
obscene and the sounds you hear are the screams and the sounds
of gunfire, the recoil. If you listen close enough you can hear the
gunman next to you change his field of vision, not because you have
spent so much time together in a war zone or in that distinct battle


but for the fact that your senses are so heightened that your fears are
leaping so far from your skin they erupt like the ocean with the
slightest breeze from the gunman's movement from across the room.

Jack and I had been in many situations before where our lives were
in danger and we had been in situations where we were so
compelled into an idea that as we moved along with the story we
ached for adventure or excitement.

On the campaign trail, following presidential candidates we would
often sneak away from the subject and do what the industry calls a
"human interest" story. You've read that line before and wondered
what that means. It's not slice of life or inspirational as you might
think. A hardened newspaper or wire service editor will call it a story
about a nobody, a worthless sidebar or whatever he can come up
with at the moment until it gets picked up or noticed. Then you are
gold.

For instance we did a story once on a midnight shooting about a
woman who was shot two blocks away from a hotel where a
candidate was staying. It was a parallel piece. We mirrored their
movements. As the candidate was taking the stage and fluffing out
his speech she was being struck by the first shot. As the candidate
told the first of many jokes in his speech the cartilage in her leg
exploded and severed the nerve in her leg and she began to bleed
uncontrollably.

When the story was presented the next day we were attacked from
one end of the country to the next for sensationalizing the candidates
visit to that dear city. We were told directly not to come back. This
was the way we felt as we raced ahead of a grenade in Iraq in the
back of a car with a family who's only thought earlier that day was
survival.

As we each grabbed a leg and the man cradled her head we hurried
as best we could out the back of the house. The noise was
unbelievable. We could hear the private security forces shouting in
English behind us. I was bleeding and all I could think about was
their safety and Jack's and going back out the front of the house and
somehow returning fire with whatever I could find. I had been shot at


before by Americans in my own country but not in Iraq. These were
criminals, government sponsored thugs who were sure to get away
with murder if we didn't do our job.

As we got outside the man's family was cowering in the front of the
car mindful that we had to get the now deceased matron of the family
into the backseat. I've never helped to put a dead body into a small
car, especially one that I had to ride in also. I looked up and Jack's
expression was of hurt and anger. He was quiet which was unlike him
in a situation of stress but I was aware that he was focused.

As we got her into the car the man noticed that my hand was
bleeding. In poor English he took me by the bicep and said, "Wait,
here."

He reached into the backseat and tore a piece from the old woman's
dress and wrapped it around my hand and tied it there. I couldn't
move I was so struck by what he had done. Tears suddenly and
immediately streamed down my face. The man padded me on the
arm and shook Jack's hand and motioned us into the backseat of the
car.

I looked at Jack and he looked at me. I couldn't do it and neither
could he. There was no way we could crawl inside on top of the
woman even if it meant that we would be shot at any minute. That
was the difference between people like this man and his family,
people like Jack and myself and the people who were terrorizing this
country from both sides. We were good at heart and could not and
would not break the simple and fundamental means of life that make
us who we are.

We motioned for him to get in the car and go. He tried and tried to
get us to get in but we said no.

Jack stammered, "No, take your family and go! Go! Go!"

As we watched the man drive away his son turned around in the front
seat and watched us with no expression. I don't think he had any
idea what was taking place but it saddened me to know that this boy
would remember it all some day. War is no place for a child.



As Jack and I watched the man and his family drive away from his
home, the dead woman's body in the backseat, we had a pretty good
idea what a roadside bomb could do to a body. We had a damn good
idea what an American grenade could do to an Iraqi woman of about
70 to 75 years of age. In the front of the house we could hear the
radio traffic, it was American military signal. The nearby camp, the
one we had just left, was mopping up a recent attack.

It was just a year before that I had seen a reporter from The Sunday
Times get decapitated in Jerusalem in an attack that didn't officially
happen during an official visit by the British government while he was
riding in a car that I was almost riding in. Every time I watched a car
drive away without me in it I had horrible feelings, like a waking
nightmare where the monster crawls up from under the bed and
begins assembling the ropes strand by strand and explaining why he
is here to kill me.

My worst fears were soon upon me as Jack and I searched intensely
for an escape route out of the situation we had volunteered for. It was
a small stretch of houses and there was not a lot of room to hide if
the security forces came looking for us which they were sure to do.
They had "skin in the game" to quote a terribly inept phrase of the
last century. As the car made its dusty way along the cratered field it
came under fire. Jack saw a hole under the house two doors down
we could escape through and was pulling me in that direction but just
like when I watched the lady gripping the body of the boy in the street
before I was frozen in horror. Jack slapped me twice and kicked me
in the leg, shouting, "They're coming through the house, damn it,
come on!"

As we shriveled our way under the house and into a pathway that led
up and into the next house over (a pathway which must have been
created to escape what I don't know but it was convenient to us), the
security forces came through to where we had been standing and on
their radios directed the fire on the car the man and his family were
trying to escape in.

Up and into the next house which had been abandoned due to the
shelling and bombing, Jack and I ran to the front window and saw


American military racing to the front of the house. It would be a few
moments before they would organize and attempt to secure the area.
It was now or never.

We bolted out of the door and ran into the street and turning the
corner we ran into a pack of Iraqi civilians who were just as shocked
to see us as we were to see them. A man who must have owned the
house we came out of screamed at us in English for leaving the door
open, "They will tear the place apart, asshole!"

We had to reach a vantage point to keep in view of what was going
on but not so close as to remain in the line of fire or identification. In
the streets of Iraq this is almost as impossible as in the jungles of
Thailand or Laos when you are two American journalists sprayed with
blood and shaking in fear.

We were running and we didnt stop running until we thought we
were safe. We didnt exactly fit in on the street. I was bent over
breathing heavy and Jack started laughing.

Tell me again ol buddy, just what in the hell are we doing here?
I couldnt manage to laugh but I replied, Laughing in the face of
danger? Look at your shirt man, we almost got killed! Ever get the
feeling youre not wanted?

Jack looked around the street, Anything look familiar to you? Where
are we?

I had no idea. I dont know but we dont need to stay here I know
that. Plus we need to try and file without getting killed, if thats
possible.

We ended up paying an Iraqi taxi to take us to a hotel wed never
been to, abandoning our stuff and writing up what had happened and
filing the story. We slept in shifts one of us always keeping watch for
what we didnt know. We knew we were wanted men but in a war,
isnt everybody?

Two weeks later we were back in the U.S. by way of several small
out of the map airlines. The more off the map the better. Jack sent


word around town that we were back and messages started coming
in from our friends in the business who had heard of our ordeal. More
came to light the more we talked and the worse it got. On a Tuesday
morning I decided to go to Walter Reed to see some of the soldiers
and the conditions there I had heard so much about. I got more than
a story.

Hospital tile and a sense of responsibility, that's what hit me when I
first walked into a Veteran's hospital. I had been in triage situations in
combat and hospital ships, Army hospitals in Germany, but this was
different. This is the place where politicians come to be photographed
and soldiers to be ignored. Any time day or night you can walk down
the hallways and see blood trickling onto the floor or hear a voice
crying out for help. After a while you start to wonder if all of the
missing limbs aren't gathered somewhere in a room in the hospital,
perhaps on another floor waiting to be reissued to another body.

It's not like the recruiting letters say, it's not like the news footage
will show you. There are some who do want to return to battle but
only to return to their buddies who they have fought beside for what
seemed like an eternity, and there are some who want to go back
and kill something, anyone. Their minds are twisted from fatigue and
now their bodies deformed by gunfire or an explosion sit and drool
staring at the television screen. They are never photographed with a
visiting dignitary, that traffic is led away from the more troublesome
rooms.

On my first visit there I saw a young Army private fall out of his
room into the hallway screaming as his prosthetic limb gave way. He
hit the floor hard and he swung his crutch at anyone who tried to help
him up. He was crying uncontrollably. He started to shake and
couldnt stop his anger until another patient, a young black man with
the lower half of his arm missing got down on the floor and took hold
of him and held him as best he could until he calmed down. For a few
minutes they were both cussing and yelling. The sounds they made
went through the walls and out into the open, through the pressure
built in the interstate by the hospital and into the neighborhoods they
grew up in that would never except them back in the shape their
mangled bodies were in now.



Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Go Sir, and don't forget that the world
was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except
time." Strange words from a ruthless dictator but most of the patients
in Veteran's Hospitals are here suffering from the words of ruthless
dictators in one way or another. One day while touring the hospital
and interviewing soldiers I came upon a young man who had lost his
right arm and both legs. His demeanor was about what you'd expect.
He greeted me with, "What in the hell are you and what in the hell do
you want?"

I told him how sorry I was that he was in the condition he was in
and I only wanted to ask him some questions. He snapped back,
"Any goddamn answers you could want got blown off with my legs,
man!" I backed out of the room quietly and started back down the
hallway and heard him shouting back at me, "Hey, you giving up that
easy, you just aint got it man, just ain't got it!" I stuck my head back
in his doorway and he threw a glass of water at me just missing my
head.

"Incoming!" He laughed loudly.

I said, "So I guess you want to talk, huh?"

His eyes cut through me as I entered the room; the rage in his
voice was troubling
But it could be understood. He looked at my clothes and back up to
my eyes and said, Ever been there?

I answered back, Yea, four weeks ago as a matter of fact.

Four weeks ago He let the words fill the room before he spoke
again. Embedded?

No, we were doing freelance work.

He lowered his brow, We? You had someone else with you?
Couldnt handle it on you own?

Not exactly, my partner was there with me. Hes in town right now
just not with me right now.



What he didnt want to come in here and look at us?

What do you think? I asked him this with a look to let him know
the answer. We seemed to have wandered off the subject but I
figured I would just let him talk. He was quiet for a few minutes and
when he finally spoke again it wasnt about my partner.

You get hit, or Blackwater tuck you in at night like a good little
mamas bitch?

I told him the story of Jack Random and myself and the family we
helped to escape the private security forces, about the major and the
redneck Army guy. He didnt seem surprised.

He smiled and smiled a sad smile, You think that was anything
special?

He reached down and lifted his blanket and scratched at his hip so
nonchalantly that I dont think he even realized he was doing it. The
scar he revealed was hideous. I could tell he hadnt been to long in
recovery. I had seen wounds in his state before and I could tell that
he had still to see several stages of draining of the wound which
meant a few more times in surgery which meant more mental strain
on his already fragile ego.

Questions, like what questions? How I got my legs blown off, my
arm, what? Tell me? He asked impatiently.
I replied that I was curious about his experiences with his fellow
soldiers and Iraqi civilians. I explained that I didnt write for any major
publication and I didnt have an agenda.

He faced away from me and all the color went away from his face
and said, Well, I dont know what to tell you man, Im dead, just
dead. Tears began streaming down his face in a continuous flow to a
point where they would not stop. He took a gun that I didnt see and
put it in his mouth and looked around the room and I thought he was
going to pull the trigger. I jumped up from my chair and he fell out of
the bed and I screamed: I just couldnt help it. His face twisted with
rage. I jumped back against the wall as several orderlies came to the


door quickly and he took the gun out of his mouth and yelled for them
to shut the fucking door.

His eyes were directly at me now and he put the gun back in his
mouth and I must have gone pale because the orderlies at the small
glass window in the door disappeared for a moment and came back
with an older man who I guessed was a doctor I hadnt seen before.
He held up a piece of paper that had written on it a short message,
Do you have any medical conditions?

For a moment I forgot about my safety and concerned myself with
that short note. Here across from me sat a young man who had lost
both his legs and one of his arms in the service of his country who
now had a gun in his mouth and all they were worried about were
getting sued by a journalist.

Saliva began to pour out of his mouth and the tears stopped. I felt
so sorry for him but I was afraid to say anything. I had been in
situations similar to this before and I had learned from experience to
allow the individual to calm themselves down in their own time.

Outside the door I could hear the rustling and panic in the hallway. I
could sense the sirens, the news vans, and every clich youve ever
seen. This was after all a Veterans Hospital in Washington D. C., the
nations capital. The home of whoredom and the constant leaking
ship of news that forever set sail on the putrid waters of suffering that
wouldnt for a second pass an opportunity to cover a story like this. I
wondered to myself if the young man had thought past putting the
gun in his mouth, if he had organized in his mind what he wanted to
say or if he was so traumatized he could even see past the door of
the room in his mind or with his eyes.
For a moment I looked over at him and he took the gun out of his
mouth. He started to say something and raised the gun back up to
his lips and squeezed the trigger a little, my eyes were so focused on
his finger I could hardly breathe. But then he took the gun away from
his mouth and rested it against the side of his head and said one
word, Gunship.

There was a loud banging on the door and a voice from the other
side said, Marine you have a hostage in there, youre a hostile force!


Relinquish that weapon! The Marine screamed out, Perkins get the
fuck away from here before I shoot you instead, asshole.

As I watched this terrified young man, and he was young, barely
over the age of twenty, I thought that grace be beguiled then it is a
dishonor to the living and to the dead. The room quieted down again,
almost instantly. There was an eerie silence and in the hallway as
well. I wondered what kind of circus was going on outside this small
room but mainly I was focused on the young man across from me, I
wasnt as much worried about my life as I was this young man getting
the help he needed, surely a healthily young man wouldnt be holding
a gun to his head or in his mouth.

He spoke sooner than I thought he would, and as he began to
speak there were knocks at the door which he ignored. I honestly
dont know if he heard them or not.

If you line up three marine snipers and tell them to aim at the
kneecaps of three Iraqis standing in the middle of twelve other Iraqis
by the fourth shot you can be sure that only one weapon if that will be
aimed at the spot where shots are coming from. Theres more danger
there defending these fuckers from themselves than there is
checking out for your buddy beside you.

He looked at the floor and followed an imaginary spot across the
wall up to the door to the small glass window and put the gun back in
his mouth. He did this slowly and I knew then he wasnt serious
about shooting himself, I had seen this kind of hysteria before in a
standoff with a police officer in Georgia. Maybe he would feel more
comfortable having someone to speak through, especially in this
situation. After all this was Washington and they didnt take to having
their Military Industrial Establishment being bad mouthed in print. I
could vouch for that personally.

One thing that started to occur to me was the fact that this had to
be exploding across the screen of CNN by now taking the attention
away from the Presidential campaign and Jack had to be somewhere
outside trying to get in. I had no idea if my name had been released
or if he knew I was involved but he did know I was coming here
today. It wasnt too long ago we had escaped a shootout in Iraq but


this was different, Jack would be running towards the weapon in
question.

It turns out I was right. I found out later from Jack that it was all over
CNN and radio. The media was doing its breaking news thing well.
They were destroying the poor Marine. Flashing his picture on the
screen, detailing his service and his wounds. They were reportedly
trying to contact his family for a comment. While all the time grieving
for me. Jack said he had to chuckle a bit because they were talking
to people we both knew who we couldn't stand and flat out hated us.
But no one was reporting the truth. Jack got to Walter Reed and had
to park nearly a mile away. He got out of his car and made his way
through the crowd. It took a while to get to the police line. He had
dressed in a suit so it was easy to flash one of an assortment of
badges to impress the local cop assigned to the rope. Getting past
the police line was one thing, getting side was another.

Jack stopped for a minute to look at the crush of press at the two
entrances and thought to himself, there are usually more than just
two entrances to a hospital. He slipped out of the crowd and walked
around the side of the building. As he got around to the back of the
building he noticed the emergency entrance was left unattended. A
single security guard was present and he simply nodded, weary of
his position Jack thought.

He made his way through the hospital where it was business as
usual. Jack figured hed follow the signs of stress to figure out where
we were. Like a fireman prodding walls and a roof for further signs of
fire, Jack rode the elevator looking for signs of heat. He found it on
the fourth floor. As Jack made his way into the melee he saw a sign
that said, Hospital Environment and for a moment he swore it said
Hostile Environment. Thats what he found.

The crowd started around the corner. Hospital staff, military press
officers for Walter Reed, nurses, doctors, you name it. There was a
lot of yelling and Jack dug his fake F.B.I. badge out of his pocket and
hung it around his neck. Faces immediately turned and the crowd
slowly started to part until a large sergeant pushed his hand deep
into Jacks chest.



This is a military matter, Sir! Jack didnt bat an eye, he remembered
his experiences, our experiences in Iraq and one of a hundred run-
ins with military police all over the world.

Fuck you! Jack then looked closer at the sergeant who wasnt a
sergeant at all. He was special op assigned to the Pentagon. Why
would he be here? Surely this was under the radar even for a
presidential campaign. Just then another man walked up and said,
Thats him!

The next thing he knew he was being drug by the scene by the
sergeant. When he got by the door I was behind he hollered, Chris!
Chris! As soon as the words left his mouth the soldier put the gun
back in his mouth and pulled the trigger sending his brains onto the
concrete wall. I screamed! Then the door came off its hinges as
soldiers and Police rushed into the room. Before I could process
what has just happen they were dragging the body out of the room. I
could see Jack out in the hallway pinned to the wall yelling, You
cant just drag him away you motherfuckers! This is a crime scene!
Fuck you! Fuck you! I was pressed onto the wall and drug up to my
feet. A man was telling me to keep a press blackout and I wasnt
paying attention.

I just looked at him and said, Freelance fucking civilian!

Outside in the hallway Jack calmed down and they loosened their
grip then suddenly he bolted for the elevators. He knew the hallway
and knew there was one around the corner. He was betting odds I
wouldnt advise. He hit the corner running full out. Before they could
get to him they assumed he was in the elevator going down. But Jack
had taken the stairs. He knew they would meet at the ground floor
but that was where the nations press was. I had to admire him, but I
didnt envy him. I was taken to a room much like the one I had been
in with the soldier and left. Locked in. I sat down on the bed for a
moment and tried to collect my thoughts. Then I went to the window.
It wouldnt open. I couldnt see the entrance where the press was
from where I was. I could only imagine what was about to take place.

Alone, reality came rushing back to me and I vomited on the floor. I
started to cry and vomited more. This poor kid just needed to be


treated not housed like, well I didnt know what. I couldnt get the
image out of my mind. The look on his face was so distorted when he
pulled the trigger. Its true what they say about death and I had seen
it many times before, too many times. It does happen in slow motion.
Imagine a body being thrown from a vehicle. Before it slams into the
tree there is an eerie moment of flying, of weightlessness. The bullet
burst threw his skin and immediately came rushing out of the back of
his head, slamming it back and then down. It was disgusting. A waste
of life so disturbed and alone.

Jack was out the door at ground level just a few seconds before the
security could catch him. He went rushing up to the back of the
security holding the press back who by now had relaxed and was
talking among themselves. But the sight of Jack rushing up to them
jarred them quickly awake. Jack was trying to tell them what
happened as much as he was trying to get through the crowd to
safety. He burst out all at once.

The young man committed suicide, they dragged the body away.
Theyre holding Chris and wont release him! Just as the press heard
what he said they erupted with questions. Then security came
rushing up and got Jack by the collar and belt and began trying to
wrestle him to the ground. Jack put up a good fight until they shot
mace in his face, sending the spray into the faces of two security
personnel who were trying to hold back the press and two reporters.
It was all caught on film and would air everywhere in just a few
minutes. But one question remained, where was the body of the
soldier?

I spent the night in the hospital room at Walter Reed thanks to the
security detail who would bang on the door every five minutes to
keep me awake. I kept silent and I think that made then maddest of
all. The next morning when I thought I might be allowed to leave I
found out different. I was taken and held in a cell near where they
were holding Jack. They were going to try and control the story. The
news cycle of this tragedy would only last so long. The countrys
interest would eventually move to something else.

I think they led me by Jack just to assure me that he was in custody
as well. They wanted us to know they were in charge. Jack looked up


at me when I walked by, Long night?

I laughed, No hot but a cot.

Then I was taken just far enough away from Jack so we couldnt
carry on a conversation. We were there for two days and released.
By then the story had gone stale but CNN and other news outlets still
wanted to get the story from us. And that is just what we did although
it didnt go as expected. These things never do if you go in expecting
to tell the unvarnished truth.

When we arrived at CNN we were escorted to a room with two staff
members, three lawyers and an executive. One of the staff members
spoke, We here at CNN are so sorry for what you must have went
through. What we would like to do here is go over what you are going
to say, On-Air. This is a very sensitive issue at the moment.

I couldnt believe my ears. I glanced over at Jack and noticed his
face turning red. I spoke first.

You have got to be kidding. You want to openly admit to
censorship?

One of the reporters answered, No one here has said anything
about censorship. We cant just allow you to start rambling on with
your opinions. This is..

I stood up quickly, Rambling on?! Opinions? Fuck you! I yelled out.
What about fact? I was in the room with this poor soldier and I was
the one who saw what happen firsthand. Were you? No, I didnt think
so! Jack spoke up now and calmly to my amazement.

Look, I understand with the election you dont want to ruffle any
feathers over anything, but the fact remains this happen. We were
there and you werent. Either you want to interview us or not. Dont
fucking pretend for a moment that we would agree to change our
story. Our reputations, I would hope would speak for themselves.

The executive shifted around in his chair and smiled and then I knew
what this was about. He wanted us to be conscious of what we were


saying. It was an old trick of the press, particularly of the television
media. Besides, he could interview us and cut it up to look like
whatever he wanted to. He knew it and we knew it. It would be the
same treatment at most of the other networks. Its how the truth is
filtered from the public and how candidates are made to look
respectable.

I looked down at Jack and said, I can see you dont or cant use our
story so we wont take up any more of your time. Its a shame really.
Jack and I started to make our way out of the room when a staffer
blocked our way from the door and the executive spoke up, Youll be
getting the same treatment where ever you go. Why not work this out
to an agreed upon solution?
Jack leaned across the table and looked the executive in the eye and
said, Because we dont negotiate the truth.

W rode the elevator in silence and when we were back out on the
sidewalk we both looked aimlessly in our own directions. We didnt
say anything. We didnt have to. We were going back to war.









Death In The Workplace



The Waitress




For twenty seven years she has waited on tables and waited and
waited. Enduring everything you can imagine. Shes only forty seven
years old but she feel over sixty and it brings her to this day and to
this decision. She just cant take it anymore.

She sits at home at night soaking her feet and the ignorant excuse
for conversations her shears day in and day out wont get out of her
head. She has heard it all before. Shes tired of being pinched,
patted, argued with and just plain sick and fucking tired of being a
waitress. But she has an idea.

But can she go through with it? She would love to. Getem all back
for the shit she has endured. She gets up to change the cold water
for hot for her aching feet and decides, Hell yea she can. She starts
to laugh. She goes to her drawer in the kitchen where she keeps the
tools and gets a hammer. She takes every glass she owns and
throws them down in the sink and starts smashing them up. She
smashes until theyre a fine powder. That will do good she thinks,
laughing. She scoops it all up into a bag and goes to bed.



The next morning she jumps awake at 5 am, shes ready for her day.
At 6 am the boss opens the door and the coffee drinkers come in. All
the usual crowd. All the usual talk. She gets her bag and pours some
into the decaffeinated and some into the caffeinated and starts
pouring. She even pours a cup for her boss. She goes to the counter
and starts flipping through the paper. It takes a few minutes but
everyone soon starts violently gagging on the crushed glass and
blood starts pouring out of their mouths. She just slowly flips through
the paper nonchalantly.

One gets up from the booth but soon falls to the floor. Poor Harold
she thinks, maybe he can pinch an ass in hell. She notices an ad in
the paper about cheap flights to Vegas. She empties the cash from
the register and Harolds wallet and goes home and packs a bag.
Shell buy a round trip ticket but she knows shes not coming back.
The coffee has got to be better in Vegas.





The Mechanic


Under a car looks like a dusty, greasy set of tubes running this way
and that. They run together after a while. The complexities of an
engine are enough to lose yourself in. Your whole self.

Like an autopsy on an accident victim the work of a mechanic can
be messy but thought provoking. It can also be mind-numbing. Its
that way he thought as he cut away another section of tube and held
it in his hand for a moment while he focused on a particular point
under the car. His visions blurred and he saw double. He could hear
the shop radio playing Neil Young and the traffic rushing by on the
street. He knew exactly how long he had been doing this job and he
could almost guess what each customer complaint would be before
they even said it. His life was lost except for the skillful way he went
about it.

Nothing was special about this day, at least nothing more special
than any other. His vision went back to normal and a voice cried out,


Going for lunch.

Lunch meant burritos. The same burritos he ate every day. They
were good but it was the routine that caught up with him on this day.
Like the day you step outside your door and forget to lock it and walk
past your car and into the street. The traffic doesnt come right away
so you choose a direction and start walking. When the traffic starts to
swerve and blow their horns it just means you have to walk longer.

He thought about the time he had spent under the car and every
other car and he rolled out from under the car and sat there a minute
then he rolled back under. He didnt think about the darkness or
heaven or hell. He didnt think about God, he just thought about
despair and kicked the jack out from under the car and the full weight
crushed him in an instant.







The War Criminal


He stands over a body in a field two miles away from any road,
reading a note he took from the body. He reads, Letter from the
Foreign Office: Attach is a diagram on where to locate one of the
three known officers of the Third Reich believed to be in Poland.
When approaching from the east remember information states he
has local contacts that will make him aware of any curious parties.
Sympathizers are believed to be in the town of Elblag. By all means
approach with caution.

Caution, yes he thought. By all means, he smiled. Stringing the body
up in a tree like a deer he takes a butchers blade and bleeds the
body and sits nearby as the process takes its time. Taking another
look at the letter he reads it over and over. Thinking back to a more
fruitful time he remembers when he could order these things done.

He remembers a day when he asked a woman to come into his
office and asked her of her childhood. The woman shook violently in


fear and could hardly speak. He asked a soldier to come into the
office and he restrained her to a chair and held the butt of his rifle to
her breast and held it back, ready to strike her. Sensing certain death
the woman began to speak.

She described a early affliction with polio. This interested him greatly
but he tried to hide his interest as he was sure it would only frighten
her. He was sure that by then his interests had gotten round to the
other prisoners. When she mentioned her mother was born blind and
she in fact suffered from increasingly poor vision he couldnt contain
himself and leapt up from his chair causing the woman to urinate on
the floor and the soldier to smile wickedly.

Remembering this gave him the beginnings of an erection, an
unusual case in one for his advanced years. He looked up from the
letter and noticed the blood had stopped draining from the body. He
raised up from the ground and started towards the body with the
butchers blade when a shot rang out from the west blasting a hole in
the side of his head.





The Writer


Reading over his work he found a narrative forming that disturbed
him. Often he would write in the morning and this would cause him to
write from reflection. He would lay in bed and write the piece or
pieces completely in his head before rising. It had to make sense
before he got up before he went to the computer to type it in. This
morning he composed a suicide note he would leave to three
different people he knew. Each was different but only one was
accusing. The letter he wrote to his father included many scenes
from his youth that was dark, much darker than he realized until he
detailed them in his head.

The other two were to a former lover and to himself. To the former
lover he wrote about the time he found her staring into his image in
the mirror. She was crying and admitted she saw nothing except loss.
Even now he saw the same thing. At times he would simply sat and


focus on a single image and stare for hours. All the room would
dissolve into that one image. He would see great devils jumping
about and tearing at his face. He heard them speak to him,
screaming out his name. There was times when writing at the
computer he would sit and beat himself in the face uncontrollably
leaving bruises he couldnt explain.

Getting back to the narrative he thought. The work is most important.
It was then that he went to the closet in his study and took out a large
metal crate and drug it over to his desk. Inside the metal crate was
the bones of his former lover and his father. They were mixed
together so he was never really sure which one he was speaking to
but the sentiment was the same. Betrayal.

The last level in his hell was for betrayers. There they went through
the tests he had managed to dream up in those moments before
getting out of bed. Those moments before he rose and typed his
message into the computer. First, pull out any sense of forgiveness
through the ear canal by means of metal implement. Second, from
the cheat cavity there must at least be one bone to enliven the


debate in the Socratic method. Third, by being alive through the
process you immediately imply guilt.

But that was enough for now, it was starting to rain and whenever it
started to rain it was time to rinse the bones from their natural
acquisition of his decaying and dying skin cells. It didnt rain often
where he was so it was a red letter day. There would be time for
more writing and editing later, besides he expected a package.

The Painter

Stretching a canvas in the bright sunlight, an artist picks up his small
hammer and taps firmly. Laying the canvas on his easel he kneels
down to pick up his brush and looks out at the trees nearby. He
notices how the buds at the ends of the branches look like tiny bursts
of fireworks caught forever in a frozen moment. Taking a knife from
his right front pocket he cuts at his finger and as the blood flows he
picks up the blood with his brush and begins to paint. When the
blood stops he makes the cut deeper.



When he has captured the tree and the branches he places a
woman next to the tree seated in a chair. She is holding up her hands
before her and her fingers are gone. Her head is half gone leaving
her eyes left to be crushed to the middle. Her dress is very black as if
she is in mourning. Painting in this way he fills the skies with
misshapen shadows reaching out to nothing.

The blood continues to flow and darken as he tears at his chest.
Infuriated by his surroundings he paints faster. The tree limbs blow in
the breeze, the grass upon which he is standing bends under his
weight. There was just no way to control what was around him. He
put down his brush and began to kick at the ground violently. He
cursed the tree and the woman he had painted for not holding still.
Bitch he screamed!

I am a private man! I am left to this!

The blood was rushing out of his chest now as the tree seemed to
stretch out and touch him. He took out his knife again and cut at his
hair and threw it at the painting where some of it stuck. His eyes


became slowly closed but still he tore at the canvas and his hair.

He woke in a hospital and stared at the wall until he was released six
months later. Upon his release he returned to the tree and began
shouting at the tree and the woman.


The Singer

He stands naked on the highest branch that will support his weight.
He shifts his balance and a single apple falls to the ground. As it
bounces he bursts into song.

A woman severs her love with a veil/Standing atop her lovers flesh
in hell/Crossing her arms on her breast/She removes his name
scared from her chest

Leaping to another branch another apple falls then another. Jumping
to yet another branch he falls to the ground and picks up an apple
and tosses it into the sky where it falls and lands on another apple.


The singer laughs and runs into the creek and dives down to the
bottom. When he rises up out of the water he sees a familiar face.

His face reflects in the water but moves about in the current. He has
to keep moving to see himself. On and on he goes until the water
deepens. He treads water and maintains contact with his image
dodging branches and ducking through drains and under bridges
small and then much bigger. The creek becomes a lake and then the
lake becomes a river.

His vanity or delusion carries him to the ocean where he starts to
slowly sink. To keep himself going he starts to sing.

There was a man who could see the bottom of a well/From the sky
he started to cry and fall/Only he could see the depth that he would
befell/when he struck the water he was two inches tall

He sang this over and over until he passed out. He floated atop the
water until he reached a deserted island. When he woke he looked
around and saw that he had lost his face in the water. Standing up he


walked onto the island and approached the largest tree. Climbing to
the top of the tree he stood there in silence for a great amount of
time.

Looking down he remembered the apples and got quite hungry. He
climbed down and started to shovel sand into his mouth. He couldnt
believe the richness of the apples.


The Composer

If you improvise for one hour on just the black keys in descending
order I will give you back your glasses. If he heard his Father say
this once he heard his Mother say it a hundred times. It also went for
food, trips outside and to school. When he expressed this treatment
to a psychiatrist later in life the psychiatrist asked him how he felt
about it. At this point he sat in silence for the rest of the hour and
found it quite pleasurable.

From an early age when faced with this treatment he would simply


provide a soundtrack for his suffering. The hour as it was referred to
by his parents was his time for meditation. In his mind providing his
own music during his time of experimentation was a gift away from
the rigid discipline of the great composers. Only later in life did he
discover the works of many great experimental composers. His
allowed listening during his formative years being very strict.

When playing for himself he would strike the piano as a lover would
a cheating spouse in an early Italian novel. The notes he played
would sometimes be nonsense. It wasnt about the quality of the
composition but the feel of the keys. It was this attitude that drew him
to build a home in the remote region that he did. Not seeing another
person for weeks and sometimes a month at a time would bring great
freedom. But this freedom came to a terrible and horrific halt when a
family built a home at the bottom of the hill.

Having others in such close proximity brought back the hours of
experimentation of his youth. Walking to the crest of his hill he stared
down as they unloaded their moving van. The Father looked up and
waved to him but he only stared. He watched for hours until they


finished. That night when the lights in the house went out he poured
some gasoline into a container and walked down the hill and set fire
to the house killing everyone inside. He then walked back up the hill
and played for one hour on the black keys in descending order.


The Architect

Once upon a time at the end of a rope was the body of a child
whose spirit would protect a great building that was being built in
rural Spain. The child wasnt picked for any reason other than his
curiosity about glaciers. Every day the boy read about glaciers and
carried the book to school. When it came time for a child to be
chosen for the construction his name was mentioned. The tradition
went back many years but was often not spoke of in some countries
but the success of the idea could not be denied.

The Mother upon hearing of the choice became hysterical and
knocked over the boy in her panic. His book fell to the floor and as he
bent to pick it up he saw the feet of three men. The Mother turned


and crossed herself in the signs of the cross.

One of the men spoke. The choice has been made. You should feel
no sadness but proud. The building will stand for a hundred years
long after your son would have died. The woman began to cry and
looked at her son. She fell to the floor and hugged him and wailed.
The men looked at one another and bent down to tear the Mother
from her son. She fought them fiercely but she was no match for
them.

The boy did not understand and went with them willingly. He was
disturbed by the state his Mother was in but walked with the three
men. When they reached the city square there were many people
gathered in a circle. A gallows had been constructed and a single
rope was hanging down with a noose just the size for the boys head.
The architect stood beside it. The men made their way threw the
cloud to the architect delivering the boy to him. The boy reached his
hand out to the architect and he shook it. A small wave of sorrow
swept over the crowd. The architect began to speak.



This boy was chosen for his vision and his intellect. I believe his
strength here today will enable the library to stand for a hundred
years. Viva Thomas! The architect placed the noose around the
boys head and the three men led the boy up the walkway and the
architect pulled the wooden lever and it was over.

The Schizophrenic

Only two years before with the money received from a dying relative
he purchased a shipwreck and had it moved in front of his house. At
night he would explore it on his hands and knees and whisper to
himself. The ship had been salvaged from the Mid-Atlantic and was
shipped to him carefully. When it arrived he began exploring it with a
great curiosity that became a gruesome and morbid obsession.

Eventually he abandoned his home and began sleeping in the ships
wreckage. He had to know each inch of the ship intimately. He could
sense the suffering of those who had died he thought and soon their
voices became shrieking in his head. Their voices were so loud he
thought they would burst his ear drum. Usually he would see insects


scurrying about in a normal setting but on the ship it became what he
called, Illumination.

One morning he decided he should christen his ship. It needed a
name and it should be set off with a ceremony. The voices were
raging that morning. It had been so long since he had his medicine or
anyone to care if he took it his actions were beyond anything
reasonable. He had to decide how to christen her. By blood? The
voices suggested a pound of flesh for each day spent on board. He
climbed to the top of his vessel and looking out he could see the
waters breaking, the waves crashing. He knew that he should soon
act. He couldnt afford to lose what provisions he had. He decided he
would call the ship Nordune after one of the voices that spoke the
loudest. The one that always suggested he kill himself when he set
into port.

He looked all around the Nordune for something to christen her. He
found what he wanted in the bowels of the ship. A stowaway. A small
mouse had entered in through one of the holes in the ship and he
had found it. Carrying it with him to the top of his vessel he began to


mumble a speech to see how it sounded. Before he began to speak
the mouse bit him and startled his footing slipped and he fell. When
he fell he fell away from the Nordune and onto dry land. He
screamed as he went under.


The Playwright

He wonders this morning as he often does if August Strindberg went
for a walk in present day America would it inspire him to write a play.
Just a day ago he wrote, How can you trust your enemies when you
dont know yourself? Often these thoughts were around him but as
often than not he thought about Strindberg taking on a role in a world
created by Beckett, wandering a wasteland. Maybe it was a
wasteland of his own creation, it was his mind.

In one version Strindberg had the body of a workman and carried a
large toolbox with both hands over a mountain. As he walked he
recounted the last days of his life in chronological order. Two weeks
before my death, I took it upon myself to arrange every photograph of


myself by throwing them off a cliff into a raging sea. Let the beasts of
the sea rest them on a shore somewhere and that is how a
biographer will find me.

In another he is paralyzed in a hovel in India. His eyes look about
until they meet mine. This being a dream he looks into the camera.
He speaks to me with his thoughts. The voice the dream creates is
harsh and old. He flashes a set of teeth that is loosening as the
dream goes on. I find myself shaking as he speaks. In the Ganges
you will find the words needed for escaping what brought you here.
Wipe your hand over the surface like the froth of a warm drink and it
will enable you to see through to the bottom. On the bottom is a set
of sketches that when arranged describe every dark dream of
infancy. If you can break this autobiographical transformation then
any room you decide to sleep in thereafter will not close in, but burn.

I go for a walk myself and find the weather is stormy but accepting.
Strindberg would have said of course your death is accepting. I turn
from the end of my street and into a wooden area I know well. I think
of the opening shot of Alexander Dovzhenkos Earth as I look out at a


familiar landscape that has suddenly changed. Moving through the
tall grass I see a giant orchard ahead. I can smell the apples ahead
of me. I begin to smile as I approach them so close that I can almost
touch them. My hands become arthritic and I am unable to pick one. I
bend down and try to take a bite but I am unable. I look down and
there thousands at my feet. All around me the tall grass is sprouting
apples. I see Strindberg himself wipe an apple on his sleeve and take
a bite as I begin to bleed from my side.


The Pregnant Woman

Her doctor advised her to keep a diary during the pregnancy to keep
track of any changes but it soon turned into something deeper. At
first It was descriptions of her diet and her sleep patterns. The things
she wanted to tell her child when she was born. But then depression
came and her mood turned darker. It got to the most extreme point
where she was convinced her child was dead and would rush to the
hospital for them to check her out. What would she say in a dairy to a
child that was dead?



In the waiting area of the Emergency Room she drifts into a dream.
In the dream a man lies sleeping on the side of a great mountain. A
horse gallops over the mans head, crushing it. As the horse
continues to run towards the cliff a mile away a baby is falling ever so
slowly from its huge frothing mouth. As the baby drops its catches on
a thorny vine near the edge, shredding its body but its umbilical cord
remains in tact. The horse continues over the side but only as far as
the cord will allow. Slowly the horse edges down and the baby is torn
apart. The baby screams, the horse tries to right itself. She wakes up
to enormous pains in her belly.

She screams herself and a nurse peeks out to see what the problem
is. The woman is bleeding and the blood is running on the floor. The
nurse hollers for a code blue and attendants from nowhere run to
take her for treatment.

Her labor has started but there are many complications. The woman
is still screaming and they cant seem to get her quieted down. They
open her for a caesarian incision and find that there is no baby but


only seems to be a mutated twin. The doctors instruct the nurses to
dispose of the mutation and begin to close her up. With the first stitch
she wakes up from the anesthesia and begins choking and sliding
slowly off the bed. They try to hold her still but as they carry away the
mutation she slides faster. When the mutation is out of the room she
hits the floor and dies.

The Snowflake

A snowflake isnt a snowflake unless it falls on the dead. Thats what
a drunken man once said to Albert Einstein as he walked down a
narrow road to a beach in Germany. Einstein kept walking but
wondered to himself if that is true what would happen to this
hypnosis if it fell into a gentle sea.

Those words he typed in just before he boarded a plane to deliver a
paper at a conference. All the way to the airport in the cab he thought
about it. The snowflake falls from a great height at its rate of speed,
never mind the physics of this question. A lighter body falling faster
than a heavier one he wasnt concerned with that and he was sure


Galileo would think him for that.

Einstein was a sober thinking man despite his philandering ways, he
could focus on an emotional or philosophical problem. But the real
question was why was he going to the beach and why did he chose
the narrow road? Were these just additions to the story to make them
more poetic? Was the story even true at all?

He looked out the window at the clear blue sky and into the sun. A
snowflake falling into the sea would pick up moisture resonating
before it hit. The properties would certainly change. Well it would
change almost certainly depending on the wind and moisture levels
in the higher regions of the upper atmosphere. But what Einstein was
asking was not science. He mentioned a gentle sea.

Why would a snowflake have to fall onto the dead to be a
snowflake? Was this a veteran of a war who had seen the atrocity?
What better metaphor than a snowflake he thought, no snowflake is
like another and no part of a raging or gentle sea is the same. A
disembodied snowflake falls and re-forms based on its surroundings,


perhaps numerous times becoming at last, perhaps only fleetingly, a
single image. What did Einstein see on the beach that day?


The Archivist

Settling into the life of someone else is for the lack of a better term,
unsettling. You try and collect all you can find, sometimes hunting for
years, decades even. Sometimes, often even, the subject isnt
available to aid in the process.

It was like walking through cobwebs he liked to think. One you wiped
off one from your face there was another, then another. But these
ghost-like streams of information you needed to collect and put
together the footprints or in this case the musical notations that led to
a life. Parading through the silence of a composers life is a shocking
and at the same time soothing experience but this was different. This
life had ended tragically with suicide.

The body had been found astride the piano with the face pressed


into the strings. The body had been undiscovered for some time so
the putrefaction process had begun. The composer had went into the
instrument you could say.

When he was admitted access into the home the piano was gone
but not the space in the room where it had set. He had seen
photographs over the years and had even in his youth taped one to
his wall. He had collected the recordings and listened intently. But
now it was strange to be inside the myth that became a nightmare. A
suicide, preceded by years of inactivity. There had been opinions for
this but it wasnt until he had spoken to his estranged daughter that
he got a better idea.

The composer had begun to lose feeling in the tips of his fingers and
his hearing. He would sit at the piano for hours in the very early
morning and read the his once handwritten notations and looking up
and then down follow them on the keys. Depression gripped him so
much he decided in the end that he could no longer endure it. What
had happened in the final days didnt come to light until the forensic
report came to light. He had high levels of poison in his system. His


stomach contents also revealing a rare vintage of red wine that
hadnt been bottled since before World War I.

After compiling all that he could from the composers house he
visited the local university where he had a chance encounter with a
Forensics professor who was also a fan of the composer. The
professor explained that when the body was eventually cleaned from
inside the piano before deciding to discard it, the strings made a
mournful sound when they were stroked by cleaning solvent and
cloth. He went on to explain that a recording had been made if he
would like to hear it.


The Movie Projectionist

There was a time when we would sit and watch the flicker of the light
on the opposite wall and it had a romantic feeling to it but now, now
the films have changed and it just doesnt have the same appeal. He
liked the darker films because the audience would sit quietly and pay
attention. There was more of a respect when he started but then the


prices started going up and a quality went out when the technology
increased. Or that was how he saw it.

He still had some of the old films he had rescued but he didnt tell
anyone that. But the one thing he was proud of was his collection of
every spliced frame of film he had ever cut. All those thousands of
images that he had to cut out to make the cut coherent he had saved
and he had for years worked on making a film privately that included
those images.

It was in his home in a special room he had set up to work that he
painstakingly spent hours and days sometimes. He was getting old
but his fingers were getting used to the cutting, splicing and taping.
The film began with an image of Cary Grant entering a room. There
were three seconds of footage but it was the first in his possession.
About once every two months he would set up the projector in his
living room and watch what he had done so far. He planned to add
narration when it was finished but now it was just silent reels of
disembodied images.



There were images of lovers, gangsters, murders, and images of
war all parading across the wall of his room. Sometimes it brought
him to tears when he thought of the time he had spent watching the
flicker against the wall. He knew that once the audience left the
theater they went on with their lives and out the theater out of their
lives until they returned again. There was nothing he could do about
anything he thought so he switched on his projector again.

The Filmmaker

He announces to the crew that is assembled on the street, its a four
man crew, that they will make a five minute film about the next car
that drives by. Every one on the crew looks both ways and see that
two cars are approaching at almost the same speed. The question is
whether or not either car will arrive before the other one. The cars
advance and the one on the right, a blue Toyota reaches them first.
The director says, Into the car!

Every one rushes into the car. The Director yells out, Are we rolling,
do we have sound? Get up close to the car immediately! The crew


works fast to his requests and in a few minutes they are alongside.
They begin filming and the driver looks over and notices first the
erratic driving of the car. Then she sees the camera pointed out the
window and microphone coming out through the window attempting
to meet her capture her voice through her closed window. She
becomes scared and drives faster.

The Director screams for the driver to catch up to her. The woman
begins darting in and out of lanes and trying to dial 911 on her cell
phone. The car catches up to her and the Director insists they get in
front of her car. The driver attempts to get ahead of her, cutting off
another car sending it into another lane and crashing into the side
rail. The woman slams on her brake and turns her car around and
heads back down the road in the opposite direction to get away. The
Director gestures and yells, Follow her!

Cars swerve and fail to react and crash into one another. The
woman swerves madly through the oncoming traffic looking back
over her shoulder. The car reaches her and she begins pointing
madly at them and screaming. She suddenly stops her car and gets


out. The car stops behind her and the crew gets out while filming her.
She rushes to the cameraman and begins kicking and spitting at him.
The director tells the cameraman to pan around her and get the
oncoming traffic into the shot.

The woman hears the director and stands still for a moment stunned.
She steps back for a moment and a truck hits her slamming her body
into the pavement. The Director tells the cameraman to get a close-
up of her and to get the truck driver when he exits the truck. When
the truck driver is standing over the womans body the Director yells,
Cut!


The Addict

In one of his stays in rehab someone told him that an addict should
always sleep in front of a mirror. The reason being youre always
confronting yourself. He remembers thinking the addict would be
better off chewing up the mirror and swallowing it. At a self-help
seminar a lady cornered him and explained how controlling his diet


could better his addiction. He listened until she was done and pulled
his spoon out of his pocket and showed her. She winced. He
explained that the blackened spoon he used to cook his heroin had
caused him to lose his taste for food. He didnt usually act this way
but once in a while it was good for the soul he thought.

Addiction was all about finding holes in the system, in society. Most
people throw away enough in a month to sustain them for a week.
Put that on a neighborhood level and youve got a perfect example of
sustainable living he liked to think to himself. Save the world rich
people, recycle.

Another helpful item he picked up from a helpful addict was going
through the neighborhood garbage and picking out the discarded pill
bottles. Working with someone who works half-way respectable you
can take the bottles to a different pharmacy and get the prescription
filled. Only sometimes does it not work but by the youre gone.
Security cameras? Thats free room and board.

He stands in an alley waiting for a friend to refill a prescription for a


painkiller they got out of the garbage that morning. They found it at 4
a.m. Everyone in the neighborhood put out their garbage can before
they went to bed so it was easy picking on a quiet street. Dogs bark
at all kinds of things.

But it was taking a few minutes longer than hed expected. A
unmarked car rolls up beside the store. You can always tell the
unmarked car by the frame. Its always thicker so it can house the
engine needed for pursuit. An officer exits the car and looks his way.
He doesnt enter the store he just waits. His friend exits and walks
right up to the officer without knowing it. He cuffs her and puts her
into the back of the car then turns back to him. He draws his pistol
and points it at him and fires.

The addict lies bleeding in the alley while the car pulls out into the
traffic. He doesnt flash on his life in a flurry of images. Death is the
ultimate drug, no more garbage cans and no more waking up sick.
He presses his finger into the bullet hole to feel that last burst of pain,
one last rush before it ends.




The Crime Scene Cleaner

He arrives at the house and is met by a family member who hasnt
been able to enter the house since the murder. A neighbor steps out
his front door and snaps a picture. The family member curses the
neighbor but apologizes to him. She explains what happen but its no
need to, it will become apparent once he examines the house.

Once inside he finds an arterial spray stretching across the living
room and into the kitchen. There were more than one victims. He will
have just enough materials to do the job. He goes back outside and
explains it will take quite a bit of time. The neighbor stands out in his
front yard and watches as he unpacks his supplies into the house.
The family member gets into her car and leaves. When he comes
back outside the neighbor is peeking into his van.

Hes run into this sort of thing before. He approaches the neighbor
and asks if he would like to help. The neighbor begs off but he
continues on. He explains the details of one of his worst jobs. It was


a job he did out of town. A triple homicide followed by a suicide. The
bodies werent discovered for several days so it was particularly
gruesome work. He goes into detail explaining and watches as the
neighbor begins to recoil. He slaps the neighbor on the back and
says, Here carry this one for me. He hands him a bucket he will use
and inside are brushes and scissors.

The neighbor stands still for a moment but his curiosity gets the
better of him and he follows into the house. Once inside he directs
the neighbor over to the worst of the scene. The neighbors mouth
falls open. He arranged his drop cloth so that the neighbor will slip
and fall. The neighbor does fall right into the biggest blood splatter
stain. He shrieks and tries to stand but his panic makes it difficult.
Once up he runs out of the house.

A detective arrives to go over the scene and pay him a visit. He
explains what happen with the neighbor and the detective tells him
that for a time he was a suspect. They both decide to go outside and
stand in the neighbors yard and look at his front door to see what he
will do. The neighbor comes outside after ten minutes and becomes


hysterical. After some questioning by the detective the neighbor
confesses.







The Mansel Report



This is a collection of writings featured on a blog entitled, The
Mansel Report that was written during a span of a year and a half of
the second Bush administration. They are placed here in no
discernable order.






The Iraqi Book of Living and Dying


O son of noble family
Burnt Iraqi children
Separated bone from skin
The American process of democracy moves slowly
As you move through the bardo
Hold close to your soul
As it may soon depart leaving your skin to endure
The acts of degenerates
And commissioned officers

O son of noble family


If you are re-born and are recruited by your children
To join the assault of the free world
Heed the teachings of the Buddha
And not the passions of your heart

O son of noble family
There is love for you on the soil of the United States
If you look for it




STIR IT UP!


Just a day after Memorial Day and the celebrating is over. A new
story breaks about the suspected deep throat and the news wires
and television erupt over his identity. Pundits get face time on
television and the required stand-up message from the family is read,
but in South Africa on Memorial Day over 6,000 people died of AIDS.
In Iraq a child was too terrified to tell his parents about the soldier he
saw poking a weapon into a car. In the streets of America a man sits
in a truck on the Arizona border and waits for a man to cross the
fence and illegally detain him at gunpoint until the authorities arrive. A
woman dies trying to give birth by herself. Where is the holiday from
suffering? If they could pick a day would it be observed? If a day off
from work is all the public wants from Memorial Day, Martin Luther
King Day, or New Years Day then give them a day off. Give them
every day they want off with pay and let an immigrant who doesnt
take a work day for granted do their work, this immigrant who came
to America to escape starvation, or to escape torture, who is now in
hiding in the same country that detained him in his home country.
The land of the free and the home of the brave are but a melting pot
stirred with someone else's hand.







RANDOM'S SOUND & FURY


The body of Jack Random is being exhumed for the second time in
this exhaustive trial, a trial that began with the demise of Jack
Random after he experienced the sickness of righteousness in the
Bush namesake. Jack Random started supporting the war in Iraq and
began soliciting his friends for donations to elect Bill Frist, the
scourge of Tennessee.

Jack Random was done away with in the simplest of ways and it is
that vivid night that brings the jury to this desert known as the Joshua
Tree monument. First the body was exhumed to see if the body was
in fact located in the grave. The second was for the carbon dating to
exact the time of death in concert with the phase of the moon. Both
times the body was unearthed the corpse of Jack Random had
managed to roll him self over and hide his face in shame.

Upon the exhumation of the body of Jack Random it was found that
Jack Random had obviously been forgiven by his demons and
reassumed his life's work known as the Jazz Chronicles. Jack
Random disappeared in the back of a red Cadillac being driven by a
mysterious figure from Alabama known only as that guy who writes
those reports. That night in the sunset several spectators swore they
saw Gram Parsons strumming a guitar and smoking a joint the size
of Texas.



Even The Dead Stand On End At The End Of The Day

Lock and load fellow citizens and let him have it with paint guns filled
with the same hate he has spewed at so many others.
- Chris Mansel

Karl Rove sits in front of several television sets taking notes on the
coverage of the attack on Fallujah. He counts how many times each
network mentions the number of dead, the number wounded. Like a
ghastly documentarian he organizes the numbers and leaks stories


to the press in ways that will change the story of Iraq so subtlety that
it would take constant attention to each newscast to tell the
difference. Staffers come and go and bring fresh wine coolers for
Rove to swill down and laugh a menacing uncontrollable laughter.

Karl Rove (on the phone): Yea, the latest report is that the citizens of
Iraq are offering meals to the soldiers as they enter their homes.
Many of the wounded Iraqi soldiers are asking about the prize on
Saddams head.

A Reporter from the Fox Network: Ok, well get it on the air. Any news
on any changes in the cabinet yet?

Karl Rove: I should know something in about two weeks tops.

A Reporter from the Fox Network: Is there any word on the
massacres in the Sudan?

With that comment the line goes dead.




Air Force One (The Sadistic Wagon With A Squeaky Wheel)
(for Jack Random)

Air Force One left London and as soon as it was in the air the flight
crew disrobed and the alcohol started to run in-between the aisles.
President Bush went into his secret office near the fuselage and put
in a DVD that contains a montage of Condi Rice strolling in front of
the camera. The creases in her pants suit moving in slow motion. The
President thrusts his groin into the television screen, aides gather
together intelligence on the bombings and begin to make secure
phone calls to Saudi Arabia to schedule another. When the President
gets all worked up to the point of climax he opens a door located
inside his closet to enter a small pool of oil so he can commit coitus
with himself. President Clinton kept vagina cigars in this secret room
and former President Reagan kept stag films of Hedy Lamar and
Clara Bow. Jelly Beans tied on gold string reeking of excrement.



In the Presidents office Karl Rove and Karen Hughes watch footage
of the attacks in London and sculpt data for Scott McClellan and the
White House press core, for speeches in the upcoming elections and
to use in the files that Rove keeps in his secured bunker of
misinformation. Rove laughs greedily and spits in his hand and grabs
Karen Hughes by the neck and bends her toward him. Karen Hughes
performs a sadomasochistic act on Roves person. The President
walks in and opens a beer.

President Bush: Now Karl, when I go sign this book at the embassy
what do I writea message of some sorts or what? Sorry you didnt
die Tony, something like that?

Karl Rove relieves himself into a bucket on the floor and Karen
Hughes hits a button and a Secret Service agent arrives instantly to
dispose of the waste. Karen Hughes arranges herself and the talk
continues.

Karl Rove: You just sign your name and express your sympathies.

President Bush looks at Karen Hughes and at Karl Rove with a
confused expression.

Karl Rove: Sympathies, how sorry you are(laughs) ok just write
whatever you want to.

Karen Hughes: Mr. President can we please turn off this tape of
Condi?

The President looks across the room at Condi and then returns his
gaze to the television screen.









Show Me The Worms, O Cries Of Despair


In the White House tonight they are dismantling the tree house once
occupied by Karl Rove through much turmoil. An insider says, "It's
like the last days of Hitler's Bunker in there." They're throwing fecal
matter at the walls and calling up old markers all the way from the
Orient to California. The President has handed out the doses and
has locked himself in a sealed chamber with a screaming Condi
Rice. Karen Hughes for the first time dressed entirely in military attire
stands at the door with a menacing stare.

Over at the Senate and the House the Republican members are
standing around 50 gallon oil drums tossing in the paper trail that
could end up convicting them if the top positions go down. Several of
the elected officials on up in years have to be reminded to take their
medication. One congressman starts raving about Bob Dole's
campaign running out of steam. Away from the cameras these men
become like children pulling at the pigtails of their sons, cursing the
drug culture while swigging scotch and puffing tobacco. The foul
smell of urine filling depends diapers cannot be avoided as this
legislative branch comes into its own.






The Leviathan Who Fought On His Knees


Ok, they have me now, they have worn me down and tied me to the
post and hurled their lies and betrayals, perjuries and their
lawbreaking has got me down.... How can anyone in some
resemblance of thought watch Scott McClellan and believe anything
he says? How can anyone watch our president utter anything at all
and watch him quiver, slither his own brand of ka ka and not be
flabbergasted? If anyone can honestly say they believe in this
administration, avoid them because they may have the bird flu you


have heard so much about.

Mine eyes have seen the coming of the fall of the house of Bush.
They'll be throwing bodies out the window as the car careens out of
control until the election of 2008. I predict sooner rather than later the
Saudi Royal family will summon Bush to their creepy lair and scold
him for his actions. Called on the carpet though they be on the walls,
Georgie Boy will hold hands and stagger cocaine bunches up under
his lips and call for a moratorium on cannibals in the U.N. He'll trace
the family tree of Dick Cheney back to the original declaration of
independence first composed on the Mayflower in blood from a
Haitian slave.

Condi Rice will appear in a sex tape with several volleyball players
with sand still in their toes. She'll be seen in the fetal position
humping a statue of Ronald Reagan and screaming about the troops
overlooking Little Big Horn.

Scooter Libby will consult and be visited by G. Gordon Libby and
develop contacts in the prison drug trade and be tattooed by the
Aryan gangs. Upon release he will start a foundation to study the
possibility of promoting commercial prison retreats for the wealthy.

The body of William McNamara upon his death will burst into flames
and a million North Vietnamese will run out and devour the body of
Henry Kissinger asleep in the front row of the memorial service.




Washingtons Blue Underground


Burn down the retinas and shave the ghost!

Those words came from the oval office as reporters stormed the
steps of the White House on Friday. Karl Rove was screaming and
swinging a fourteen-pound dumbbell on the desk of the president.



Rove screamed, I cant fucking take it anymore. Three hundred and
seventy five Iraqis ready for combat? What do we have to do go over
there and torture the cocksuckers myself? Shit!

Dick Cheney sat in silence mulling over the freckled face of a senate
page on loan from Rick Santorum. The page stood nervously, his feet
becoming clammy in anticipation and in fear of the result.

The President snorting lines of cocaine quickly answers the phone
and is informed of the reporters storming past the Roosevelt room.
The formerly retired Sam Donaldson loses his hairpiece in the
struggle. Helen Thomas aboard a motorized scooter whizzes past
Bob Woodard who was tripped up by a foaming Bill OReilly who
keeps exposing himself.

Meanwhile in the residence first lady Laura Bush is crouched above a
first century pamphlet on sobriety and tries to pick it up by using
neither of her hands.


Thundered On The Flesh: New York Stories

The steakhouse smells of shit and the waiters stand in the corners,
darkened by the smoke emitting from the kitchen. Donald Rumsfeld
is entertaining foreign heads of state, otherwise known as senate
pages, and going on and on about the breakdown in communications
since the capture of many members of the terror organizations, which
were helpful in the C.I.A. drug trade. Robert Novak arrives and
begins throwing peppercorns around the room. He stuffs chervil
down the V-neck sweaters of the waiters and kicks at the jukebox,
which only plays Carol Channing.

A waiter approaches Rumsfeld and explains he has a phone call.
Karl Rove is calling and screams about the press outside the
restaurant. Rove down the street in a dusty van pecks at the laptop
computer and watches surveillance footage of Judith Miller and Jean
Schmidt making out under a streetlight on the dark side of an
abandoned Maryland highway.



The Machiavellian silence of the press core, the lack of investigative
journalism, the reliability of the in-bedded reporters in Iraq twirl on the
little finger of the major corporations as they meet in seclusion in
New York City. Usually they will just sit around and try to remember
who owns what. But today they are discussing whether or not the
physical makeup of New Orleans and southern Mississippi will impact
their businesses. Business a coy term to explain the root of the term,
when you own major corporations and own shares in others your line
of influence extends in many directions. You might own the items that
fill up the shelves but not the store. You may own the company that
supplies the workers but not be responsible for their safety or
healthcare costs. It is a high finance way of hiding income out in the
open.

The heads of the major corporations who own shares in the three
corporations that are shadow companies that supply income and
money laundering for the government are in New York mainly to
celebrate finally taking the companies public, but soon the real
guests arrive. Politicians from both sides of the aisle and both sides
of the pond arrive and await information on the status of the new
IPO. Members of the current administration keep up to date by
phone.



Sympathy For The Devil

A curious biographer some day will force himself into the mens room
of the Bush library and find there amidst the vials of cocaine
postmarked from Panama once shredded documents that will reveal
a tattered game plan in the handwriting of the devil who had made a
deal with the late Prescott Bush to ensure for Bush a life of comfort
and the ability to swing death like a komodo with a native son. There
would be a few more floors to the library if Prescott had not gone
against the devil and decided he would through the descendants of
his family be the self-appointed killer of generations.





Illumination

"There is a room in the White House or more accurately beneath the
oval office..."

In this kind of room there is light but it is not really daylight you see or
nighttime. There is a constant flow of information but if you are deep
in thought you can block out the noise, the flutter of immediacy. Its a
room in the White House or more accurately beneath the oval office
and down a bit that carries the most weight in any national
emergency. Its not the situation room though that is where you
thought we were headed; no its the room that doesnt have a name.
There is no portrait of a past president. There is no colorful story that
passing administrations use. This is the kind of room where those
who are not elected by the people decide whether or not a situation
advances or suspends. Youll notice I didnt use the term end. No,
these situations never cease.

The most secret of government agencies have their own shroud of
intelligence. Their own cases for existence are based solely on past
performance and [the] committee [that] funds them. What goes on in
the room in question is far beyond a committee. This is the room
where the light looks in and the darkness breeds illumination.

How do I know that this room exists? I dont. But how did I know
everything else I have predicted? Look back over the history of the
Mansel Report and see just how wrong I have been.

Is this room where no dark or light is seen a metaphor for the
collective soul that inhabits the building? Can this room be the
direction from where the century of American politics started and
where it is now? But one thing I do know is that the fear of the
American people is bottled up inside that room and they dont even
know exactly why they are afraid or why they should or shouldnt be.

America is more than an abandoned district where no voters will
show up, its more than a tally of polls and it will never be anything
more than the conscience of a select few guiding the light of a future
that is already lit by the sun and challenged greatly by the stars in the


skies and the moment when all is lost and everything is to be gained.




Maggots For The Prosecution

At long last the bloody scarred hand of seething animal skin inhibition
has finally escaped the last or more current beast that is America.
Marchers of illegal aliens, the discussion to remove the all-seeing
eye of the live feed, the camera from the White House press room
and the first indecision and false start attempt to reap blood from the
tragedy of September 11 have all come into view.

Pennies over the eyes of trauma victims and the incoming
devastation in New Orleans this hurricane season, the requests for
former FEMA manager Michael Brown for interviews, face time, leads
the citizen of the world to strike back with words but not votes. It is no
longer enough to kill a mockingbird; today you must define that act of
violence by downed power lines and residue from discharging the
weapon.

Like the German army in the Russian snow we have become the
bodies thrown across ox carts like Napoleon except these bodies
travel in first class with unseen American flags falling from the skies,
the thread of fabric catching on every wire service radar. Bats hang in
desolation waiting for darkness to jump out like political consultants,
precinct captains in the mid-term elections to label the war as high
gas prices and not body bags. The winning of Iraqi hearts and minds
left to postmortem explanations.



How We Leave The Beaten In The Well

A vengeful act born out of necessity, a scholar's translation born of
prejudice and ending in legislation. The vengeful act originating from
the ancient text those that are parasitic and agitated who have
enjoyed and profited from these acts can and will suffer the growth of


this industry. No matter your belief system, the margin to discredit
has been abscessed. If you have grown to accept death in front of
you, on television, death by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the
millions then are you as guilty as the text, as guilty as the translator?
The act of killing was easy to learn and easy to teach and so history
has been translated into every language known to man and woman.
Now, every man and woman not only knows how to kill but accept it.

We leave the body in the well and wait for it to rain? We leave the
body in the well because we want someone to find it? The body was
already dead? Pre-destined? In terms of political reality it really
doesn't matter. How many wars have been started in your lifetime
and what was the body count?

But wait, you're not dead yet. So while you await your death you'll
have to keep a steady count, concentrate now.



FEAR & LOATHING IN CRAWFORD, TEXAS
(for Hunter and Jack Random)

We were somewhere near Crawford, Texas when the bullshit began
to take hold. I remember saying something like, Terror cells could
camp out in the brush by that ditch over there. Then what looked like
strange gothic entanglements of James Dobson started swooping
around the car! The radio was blasting the BBC and my friend Jack
Random was hanging out the window trying to shoot the Dobsons
with a shotgun we had bought at the truck stop before we left
Wyoming.

Between the two of us we had the severed heads of several Ohio
delegates, twenty-three photos from Abu Ghraib, four sheets of the
state of the union, a filing cabinet of the Mansel Report, and a entire
Gigabyte of Jack Randoms writings, two copies of Jake Berrys
Brambu Drezzi. Also, we had affidavits of testimony from Florida vote
counters, the depositions of detainees, and secret documents sent to
us anonymously from a Congressman from the hill proving the
existence of Karl Roves secret vault of Nazi memorabilia. It wasnt


as if we needed all this to make our case against the Bush regime,
but you never can tell when you are faced with a dozen drooling
Republicans.



Open Letter To Those On The Left

Let it be known that nothing we are doing on the left is thus far
working and we need a new plan of action. The House and the
Senate are in control of the wrong people and we still have people
that believe as we do not showing up to vote. We still have old men
serving in offices of power who still worry about what their voters in
their states think about issues unworthy of their time. Anyone who
has served over 6 consecutive terms in office can rest assured they
have their base and can afford to take a risk now and then even
though the issues at stake are not risky but vital. Anyone serving in
office whomever sweats their future in office in a financial mindset
can rest assure that a lobbyist on either side of the aisle will more
than likely pay for whatever ails them.

Let it be common knowledge to our elected officials on the left that
whatever they say, however they vote and whatever television show
they appear on will be seen more than likely by more voters on the
other side than ours. Let them also realize that debating and
debating the right on television but on the floor of the house or
senate from which they serve do not do the work on the left.

When you receive a call or an email or a piece of mail in your hand
that asks you to take part in convincing someone to see our point of
view and you do nothing that it like guaranteeing two points of view
for the other side. We on the left cannot outspend the right but we
can work harder because I am convinced the left converts more to
our side than the right does to theirs.







Sympathy For The Devil

A curious biographer some day will force himself into the mens room
of the Bush library and find there amidst the vials of cocaine
postmarked from Panama once shredded documents that will reveal
a tattered game plan in the handwriting of the devil who had made a
deal with the late Prescott Bush to ensure for Bush a life of comfort
and the ability to swing death like a komodo with a native son. There
would be a few more floors to the library if Prescott had not gone
against the devil and decided he would through the descendants of
his family be the self-appointed killer of generations.




The Rats Were Made Hungry
(A line from Joseph LeDouxs book, Synaptic Self: How Our
Brains Became Who We Are)


(The sheep have fled and the root of the tree is covered in mucus,
mucus from a severed limb addict who pledged to free the lost from
Iraqi prisons with force. He stumbled over the best of the brightest;
he kept copies notes and took all precautions, then)


Fox News and their embedded (read here for editorial reasons the
name of the individual who opposed any right to freedom by
interdicting his own racist hatred for the olive skin) Oliver North as he
pranced in front of the camera calling the troops out for yet another
interview. It was difficult to tell whether or not North would be the
target of friendly fire or just saddle sores on his non-dimpled chin
from trying to swallow too many belt buckles. One soldier withstood
the groping hand of North as he prodded the young Filipino like a
heroin addict at a sunrise job interview. The soldier immediately
attacked the cameraman once the satellite feed ended, kicking the
man in the face, he had to spit at North to keep him from staring up
his pants leg.



Back in New York Sean Hannity liquored up on a strange concoction
berated anyone in sight of a toy store even pimping out Salvation
Army children to donate the change from their pockets to throw in the
washing well located in the crotch of Bill OReilly. Rush Limbaugh
staggering noisily through Tavern on the Green announced a mistrial
in his case as he had buggered the prosecutor with fistfuls of pills he
acquired in Key West.





The Victim's Rebuttal

Where will you be when the next person suffers the indignity of
execution, a person who doesnt have celebrity status, the next
person who cannot speak for himself or herself in the public forum?
The next person more than likely will more than likely not be made a
spectacle of and will not be laughed at off camera on Fox News the
way Stanley Tookie Williams was, or did you miss that mainstream
bloggers? The next person will maybe not inspire a press conference
of those who watched the execution getting every bit of notoriety that
can by witnessing the carnage. To take fame from anothers death is
as old as this country but usually politicians and the military, not
journalists, do it.

Put to death in the court of public exhibition is shameful, it is wrong
and it is now accepted by a culture too depraved to notice the saliva
dripping from their cable remote.


In Memory

Stanley Tookie Williams, from all of us who have died in so many
ways, those of us who have taken our lives, those of us still suffering
we stand with you. To reach out from the hell you were incarcerated
in to heal, to teach and to prosper we thank you. You kept your word
of innocence until your death, and for that we do not admonish you
for your acts, we simply do not know the truth and therefore cannot


judge you. You refused your last meal and did not want your family to
see you executed, a compassionate soul could not do otherwise. A
life, any lives whether taken in hate or by governmental decree is a
life taken in haste.


Breaking News: King George III holds press conference

King George III has announced today that the insurgents will
dissuade him from his mission in the Americas. He also stated that
the good citizens of the Americas believe in Monarchy and they will
not allow these religious zealots to stop the march of totalitarianism.



Moon Over The Bush Family (for Jack Random)

A Secret Service agent raises up his sleeve and speaks into his fist,
Paisley Pete is on the move. A door opens and suddenly sunlight
fills the room and in walks the Reverend Sun Myung Moon flanked by
two bodyguards that resemble the morons that used to aid Howard
Hughes in Las Vegas. Actually they are campaign donors from
Dallas, Texas that openly support pedophilia and the right of a
woman to not choose.

The reverend walks grandly across the room and embraces Neil
Bush, brother of President George Bush. The two men mutter
something to one another and turn to face the crowd of fervent
Moonies. The Reverenced takes the microphone and speaks.

I was just telling Neil, honorable brother of panty fascist boy
president, that you could not make a pedophilia without an O and a
P. The room erupts in laughter. The fervent members slap their
hands on the head of those in front of them and gurgle and growl.

I am here, your savior, your messiah to tell you I have had a vision to
build a tunnel, a tunnel that will connect Alaska to Russia. No longer
will it be difficult to move currency offshore. No longer will baby
adoptions be difficult, you can traffic in both if you wish. At this


remark half of the judicial wing of the Republican burst to their feet
and applaud.

Neil Bush stands off to the side of the stage looking at photographs
an assistant of reverend Moon handed him of Asian hookers they
have flown into Marthas Vineyard for his pleasure. His cell phone
begins buzzing in his pocket and Neil Bush begins ramming the front
of the huge curtain behind him. After he passes out it is discovered
that he had a phone call from the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart,
it was an invitation to come to Marthas Vineyard to take part in a
party for the adoption of young Taiwanese boys to South Africa.

Burn down the retinas and shave the ghost!

Those words came from the oval office as reporters stormed the
steps of the White House on Friday. Karl Rove was screaming and
swinging a fourteen-pound dumbbell on the desk of the president.

Rove screamed, I cant fucking take it anymore. Three hundred and
seventy five Iraqis ready for combat? What do we have to do go over
there and torture the cocksuckers myself? Shit!

Dick Cheney sat in silence mulling over the freckled face of a senate
page on loan from Rick Santorum. The page stood nervously, his feet
becoming clammy in anticipation and in fear of the result.

The President snorting lines of cocaine quickly answers the phone
and is informed of the reporters storming past the Roosevelt room.
The formerly retired Sam Donaldson loses his hairpiece in the
struggle. Helen Thomas aboard a motorized scooter whizzes past
Bob Woodard who was tripped up by a foaming Bill OReilly who
keeps exposing himself.

Meanwhile in the residence first lady Laura Bush is crouched above a
first century pamphlet on sobriety and tries to pick it up by using
neither of her hands.





Why The Tug At Your Heart Is Never Organic

It is never a problem finding something to write about. The news is
almost always bad and there is plenty to be enraged about. There
are topics I havent even touched. The inhuman trafficking of children
for the sex trade, the effect of local politics on the poor, there are so
many items.

What about the sex trade? I made mention before about the
documentaries made by right-wing news sources who tape
Americans traveling to places like Bangkok to have sex with minors,
they get the footage and try to dissuade the transaction but just as
much goes by and they arrive back in this country and head to their
moral high ground to edit the footage of those dirty people and their
way of life. What they never seems to explain is the far-reaching
effect the local economy has on the people they filmed. You see an
ad on television to donate and help this child or that child all the while
knowing that you have read reports about how that charity has
pocketed the funds and not helped anyone. All you can do is tell
someone about it and hope they can see through the so-called
generosity and see the charity for what they are, pornographers.

What about the local politics that do more harm than good? You can
change a city ordinance to suit a few and end up hurting many, many
more. In a town like Florence, Alabama where I live the city council
has for years turned away major corporation and business that would
have provided several thousands of jobs, jobs that would have paid a
wage you could support a family on, and we are left with barely over
minimum wage with little hope of insurance. All of those jobs just
about drove about 45 minutes to an hour away and have prospered.
So now the workers have to drive all these miles everyday. The wear
and tear on their vehicles, the cost of gas rising, the possibility of out-
sourcing eats away the benefit of that hour drive. Why? Politics.



Bush Ghosts

In South America piranha are known as donkey castrators. The


donkey swims across the water or wades in to cool off and the
piranha swim up and gorges on the penis. If you really think about it,
if the piranha went for another orifice it could be described as Bush
ghosts. When the Bush ghosts swirls up your rectum they take from
you what they find and leave you emaciated body floating down the
river carried by the current to unemployment, lack of healthcare and
jobless. A piranha/Bush ghost rim job, but look at it this way, at least
you could finally have a scientific name for what the Bush
administration has done to you.



Thundered On The Flesh: New York Stories

The steakhouse smells of shit and the waiters stand in the corners,
darkened by the smoke emitting from the kitchen. Donald Rumsfeld
is entertaining foreign heads of state, otherwise known as senate
pages, and going on and on about the breakdown in communications
since the capture of many members of the terror organizations, which
were helpful in the C.I.A. drug trade. Robert Novak arrives and
begins throwing peppercorns around the room. He stuffs chervil
down the V-neck sweaters of the waiters and kicks at the jukebox,
which only plays Carol Channing.

A waiter approaches Rumsfeld and explains he has a phone call.
Karl Rove is calling and screams about the press outside the
restaurant. Rove down the street in a dusty van pecks at the laptop
computer and watches surveillance footage of Judith Miller and Jean
Schmidt make out under a streetlight on the dark side of an abandon
Maryland highway.

The Machiavellian silence of the press core, the lack of investigative
journalism, the reliability of the in-bedded reporters in Iraq twirl on the
little finger of the major corporations as they meet in seclusion in
New York city. Usually they will just sit around and try and remember
who owns what. But today they are discussing whether or not the
physical makeup of New Orleans and southern Mississippi will impact
their businesses. Business a coy term to explain the root of the term,
when you own major corporations and own shares in others your line


of influence extends in many directions. You might own the items that
fill up the shelves but no the store. You may own the company that
supplies the workers but not be responsible for their safety or the
healthcare costs. It is a high finance way of hiding income out in the
open.

The heads of the major corporations who own shares in the three
corporations that are shadow companies that supply income and
money laundering for the government are in New York mainly to
celebrate finally taking the companies public, but soon the real
guests arrive. Politicians from both sides of the aisle and both sides
of the pond arrive and await information on the status of the new
IPO. Members of the current administration keep up to date by
phone.




Lives Lost In The Cleanup of New Orleans

After speaking with someone who has been working in the cleanup of
New Orleans I have learned of the true conditions, not of the toxic
stew everyone speaks of but the danger and loss of life. There have
been several deaths that have not made the news.

One worker was accidentally run over by heavy equipment; another
worker was run over by a truck carrying debris. Worst of all a mother
and son were killed when a truck turned over and crushed them.
CNN and the other news agencies speak of reporters having
embedded status and collecting news alongside our troops but no
one is reporting of the loss of life after Katrina. Where are the war
grizzled journalists in their khaki shirts peering bravely into the
camera?








The Leviathan Who Fought On His Knees

Ok, they have me now, they have worn me down and tied me to the
post and hurled their lies and betrayals, perjuries and their
lawbreaking has got me down, how can anyone in some
resemblance of thought watch Scott McClellan and believe anything
he says. How can anyone watch our President utter anything at all
and watch him quiver, slither his own brand of ka ka and not be
flabbergasted? If anyone can honestly say they believe in this
administration avoid them because they may have the bird flu you
have heard so much about.

Mine eyes have seen the coming of the fall of the house of Bush.
Theyll be throwing bodies out the window as the car careens out of
control until the election of 2008. I predict sooner rather than later the
Saudi Royal family will summon Bush to their creepy lair and scold
him for his actions. Called on the carpet though they be on the walls
Georgie boy will hold hands and stagger cocaine bunches up under
his lips and call for a moratorium on cannibals in the U.N. Hell trace
the family tree of Dick Cheney back to the original declaration for
independence first composed on the Mayflower in blood from a
Haitian slave.

Condi Rice will appear in a sex tape with several volleyball players
with sand still stuck in their toes. Shell be seen in the fetal position
humping a statue of Ronald Reagan and screaming about the troops
overlooking Little Big Horn.

Scooter Libby will consult and be visited often by G. Gordon Libby
and develop contacts in the prison drug trade and be tattooed by the
Aryan gangs. Upon release he will start a foundation to study the
possibility of promoting commercial prison retreats for the wealthily.

The body of William McNamara upon his death will burst into flames
and a million North Vietnamese will run out and devour the body of
Henry Kissinger asleep in the front row of the memorial service.






A Blind Eye Over An Open Grave

Once again I am talking about the one item that belittles all others,
AIDS. I have written many articles about what is going on in Africa
and I have written about conditions in U.S. prisons, they both are
spiraling out of control and no amount of pontificating on talk shows,
no conferences or books written are going to alleviate the problem
any time soon. What it takes is funding and the ability to interpret
what must be done. As you read above prisons, very few of them
offer any way of combating AIDS to those in incarceration. Going to
jail for a minor felony should not be a death sentence.

Like those prisoners who were tricked into subjecting themselves to
drug trials in lieu of cash the prisoners in American jails are involved
in a total denial by the justice system as to what a hibernation of an
incurable illness can generate.

The Black Death, the influenza epidemic all forms of terrorizing
outbreaks eventually found cures but it is hard to imagine AIDS as
anything but a serious and earth cleansing epidemic. Some of the
worlds most dangerous viruses are kept and studied in labs safe
from infecting anyone. You can spin it in anyway you like but our
government it seems to turn a blind eye to those incarcerated.





HIV Positive and Hurricane Katrina

Ok, lets imagine you are a HIV patient in New Orleans and you could
not afford to leave before Katrina struck. Lets also imagine that you
are African-American. Lets further imagine that you were sitting out
in front of the cameras of CNN as they drove by never stopping. Now
politicians are calling you poor blacks, the former first lady Barbara
Bush says that you were poor anyway, and now you are not allowed
to gain entry to a shelter. You are weak because of your condition,
you are hungry and you are thirsty. You sit and watch people panic


and loot the buildings around you and you wonder how you will get
your medicine. You try to ask a national guardsman about getting
your medicine and he tells you to loot a pharmacy.
Now it is a week into the struggle and you are told you will be moved
to Houston, Texas. You board the bus shaky and sick. You get to the
shelter and you cannot make your way to the food they have for you
because there are news cameras and crews stringing their cords all
over the floor, the news people are looking for people to interview
and bumping into you. Youre still sick.

While you are still in Houston the landlord who discriminated against
you because of your condition has moved what possessions you had
out of your apartment so he can rent it to someone else. You finally
get some help from someone in the Red Cross but you still do not
have a place to stay and the shelter is closing because of a sports
event or convention. The workers in Houston at the shelter are
griping about the cleanup and you are so tired of it all you snap back
at them. All you know is that you are an American citizen and the
days of Civil Rights were a long time ago, then you hear that Rosa
Parks has died.




The Garden Without Any Soil

The only thing that is not inescapable is the balance that cannot hold.
Everything else can be accounted for by fear, grief and happiness.
When someone promises in a considering tone you must be aware
whether or not they can deliver on such a statement. The same goes
for the process of government. Government the old saying goes is
the compromise, where do the citizens of the United States fit
between that narrow area between your side and mine getting what
they both want by a process of give and take?
It doesnt take an entire breath to know that the air is poisoned.
News broadcasts like leaflets in another era come at you from every
side. Print media sandwiched between personal ads and the lost and
found are no different, the only difference is the quality of the ink in
the printer. It is time to recognize that the media has its clutch pulled


back so that the engine can pick up speed downhill where the
general public lives. If you ever feel helpless in a government office
do not worry its a familiar situation. It doesnt get any better when
you are employed in such an office. When every thing about you is
reduced to ones and zeros where can you hide but in the blackness
between the numbers?


Tribute to The Onion

The Vatican and its role in the mass-producing of Industrial
Defecates
The Vatican in order or attempt to quell the many confessions and
charges by parishioners, victims, and press about the many rapes,
touching and groupings have enlisted the giant pharmaceutical
company Merck to create a pill to be given to any person who speaks
out against the money making, golden calf inspiring, and rhetoric
spinning Catholic Church. The pill will deplete the conditions of the
human stomach in startling time. The person will instantly be
depleted of most of the vital fluids to operate properly and will
immediately require hospitalization. The Vatican in a joint press
conference with Sen. Frist calls the creation of such a pill necessary
to control the information that is and can be contrary to the religious
right.


Tipper Gore and her backroom deal with the late Frank Zappa

In his first major act since leaving the small cramped apartment
allowed for the Vice President and his family and the hate spewing
crowds of the Florida vote tallying services of Governor Jeb Bush
Tipper Gore former second lady secured an audience with the late
Frank Zappa who years earlier testified in front of members of the
Congress that Mrs. Gore and her compatriots were misguided and
just plain stupid, agreed today with Mrs. Gore that artists like Raffi
and Michael Jackson should be kept from the store shelves and out
of the hands of mature adults who cast paranoid glances at
passersby when shopping.






The Shores and Embankments of Pennsylvania Avenue

Upon receiving word that there would be no announcement of
indictments today Karen Hughes rushed home to retrieve her hunting
knife in case of a last stand. Patrick Buchanan paced around the
Washington Monument and wrote a mental letter to his old friend
Hunter S. Thompson. Robert Novak cursed his black maid and
started out the door in the nude before being pulled back in by the
ghost of George Wallace.

Meanwhile in the Oval office Laura Bush was calling up old
boyfriends and spitting across the room at the president who was
sitting in front of the fire swilling from a bottle of beer. Karl Rove
banned now from the inner sanctum berated staffers with his
infamous grab, squeeze and tickle routine all the while screaming
until he blacks out.

On the hill news crews pull up their socks and adjust themselves to
repeating the same talking point over and over again. Bill OReilly
spits into his hand and adjusts his make-up while dry humping the
back of his worn leather chair to the beat of an obscure German
ballad.

In the Situation Room an absent Jack Cafferty is on vacation so there
is no one in the studio to control the actions of Wolf Blitzer who
keeps referring to himself as Alice.




Show Me The Worms, O Cries of Despair

In the White House tonight they are dismantling the tree house once
occupied by Karl Rove through much turmoil. An insider says, Its
like the last days of Hitlers Bunker in theretheyre throwing fecal
matter at the walls and calling up old markers all the way from the


Orient to California. The President has handed out the doses and
has locked himself in a sealed chamber with a screaming Condi
Rice. Karen Hughes for the first time dressed entirely in military attire
stands at the door with a menacing stare.
Over at the Senate and the House the Republican members are
standing around 50 gallon oil drums tossing in the paper trail that
could end up convicting them if the top positions go down. Several of
the elected officials on up in years have to be reminded to take their
medication. One congressman starts raving about Bob Doles
campaign running out of steam. Away from the cameras these men
become like children pulling at the pigtails of their sons, cursing the
drug culture while swigging scotch and puffing tobacco. The foul
smell of urine filling depends diapers cannot be avoided as this
legislative branch comes into its own.




America's Chernobyl

After speaking to my brother in law this past weekend I understand
more about the cleanup of New Orleans. When he arrived he found a
endless sludge, a toxic stew as far as the eye could see, stretching
all the way out to the ocean were rotting animals, rotting vegetables,
oil and every kind of item you use in your everyday life stretched to
its extreme limits and bound together. They expect the work to go for
at the very least five years.

Families are trying to get back to their homes but have to be turned
away due to the environmental dangers. Of course there are those
cheating and scamming these poor people.

The workers cleaning this horrid mess have to wear protective suits,
masks, two sets of gloves, etc., If you can picture the men and
women who helped clean up the spillage of the Exxon Valdez, you
have a general view of their attire. They must buy their meals from
the Red Cross and a shower costs $5.00. They must sleep in tents
amid this environmental slaughter. I passionately believe that in many
ways this is Americas Chernobyl.







Gehenna On Pennsylvania Avenue

Gehenna, the clearest point in the oval office, the spot where you can
see the crowds murmuring on the tops of roofs where you can hear
the tires blowing out from their rims, where the crowd lingers in front
a television set in a store window tuned to white noise. Gehenna,
where the Bush administration accepts the secret service protective
service with a shopping list of congressional contacts. The tower of
Babel collapsed after a procession of noise, the Bush administration
collapsed from under its own weight. Lending to the credo of do not
build your house upon the sand, the earth beneath the White House
could become toxic just by the all of the wrong doings, the lies.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas about
the point where the wave finally broke and rolled back, Gehenna is
where the point where the devils in religious clothing finally turned on
one another and found that deep down they were just as savage as
the devils they crippled with their continuous rhetoric of hate and fear.




Why Delay Wallace

The press logged some more airtime in the Tom Delay case down to
Harris County Texas today. The smiling jackal that is Tom Delay, who
more than likely flew on taxpayers money to be arrested,
photographed, finger printed and allowed I understand to keep his
shoelaces. But somewhere hovering amidst the press, the clanking
of Tom Delays shoes in the corridor is the ghost of George Wallace.
Wallace who knew a spectacle when he saw one thrusts his hip into
the cameras of CNN and goes sight unseen through the walls of the
building.






White Collar Crimes

I heard a line on CNN this morning by John Schneider. He said that
you usually do not have to swear out a warrant on white-collar
crimes. That is the justice system in a nutshell. Let us now embrace
the differences in the haves and have not.

So what do we glean from this pompous and damning statement?
That if you have money you are above the law? No, if you have
enough money and social status you can subvert the law to suit you.
So if you commit a crime, someone like you or I, we wont be able to
issue a statement as to when we will turn ourselves in. The laws of
this country are not what they should be; they are what some wish
they were.




The Kissinger Dairies 1

Henry Kissinger: Mr. President, a few instant messages are nothing
to be concerned about. During Vietnam we didnt have personal
computers, the Vietnamese were there for the taking. But this was of
course a time when we had sandals on the ground. (laughs)

President Bush: Shit Henry, sandals. (laughs) Is that why McNamara
made so many trips over there back then?

Henry Kissinger: McNamara had a taste for the darker flesh of the
service help in the Carville Hotel Mr. President; it wasnt too far from
the embassy. A pages throw if you will.


The Kissinger Dairies 2

Henry Kissinger: As I told you on the phone Karl these are the glass


shards President Nixon used to threaten John Dean into going along
to get along.

Karl Rove: Is the price the same as before, two hundred thousand?

Henry Kissinger: Yes, the same as when I sold you the drunken
scrabbling of a man who contemplated selling weapon secrets to
Mao for a visit to a work camp in the north of China.
Kissinger Dairies 3


Henry Kissinger: Dick, I heard about your call with
Woodwardbullshit, was that the best you could do?

Dick Cheney: I simply dont want to discuss it Henry, this little lap dog
who we had on a leash has turned on us when he smelled the
change in power in the wind.

Henry Kissinger: You should know better than to tell anything to a lap
dog Dick. They rub it on their paw and rub it on their ass and pretty
soon every other dog in the neighborhood will come get a whiff. Why
do you think President Johnson kept such a tight rein on the media
coming out of Vietnam? Just because you have a handle on Fox,
ABC doesnt mean you are controlling the message.

Dick Cheney: The media is a thorn in the side of any administration.

Henry Kissinger: But bullshit? Have you been talking to Novak again?

Dick Cheney: He does help in coordinating the message.




Honesty In American Politics?

What would America do with an honest to god politician? One that
would admit in front of his or her voting public that they actually use
speech writers and would take them up on the platform with them.



My fellow citizens of (fill in state here) I am here today to talk to you
about the pressing problem of (fill in pressing problem here) that is
crippling our state. Now these speech writers of mine and with some
help from myself have come up with a speech I think you will find
helpful. Were going to present some ideas here today to try and
open a dialogue. What does that mean? Well, were going to give the
newspapers something to write about and the television news
something to fill their airtime with. What does this mean to you? Youll
vote whichever way you were going to already, oh maybe well
change a few minds but really most of you have made your minds up
already.

Now weve picked Roy here out of the speechwriters because Roy
looks the best on camera. I didnt write very much of this speech so I
am not going to stand up here and take the credit for these ideas. But
being an outside event Roy and I will take off our jackets, these
expensive suit jackets here and roll up our sleeves because we want
to look sympathetic to all of you hardworking voters out there.

Roy begins the speech but not one newspaper writes about the
speech or television station includes a sound bite of the speech just
the remarks of the candidate. Now, would this kind of candor make it
in American politics, probably not? You cant be completely honest in
politics, not and get away with it.



Supporting The Worker, Their Life Is Yours

I think this country is paying a desperate price to continually side with
Israel in every decision in the Middle East. To do so seems to
suggest that that the people of Palestine are second-class citizens,
and we know something about bigotry in this country. We didnt
invent it but we have done our best to export it in un-search
containers.

The fence built between Israel and Palestine mirrors the fence being
demanded on the floor of the Congress between the U.S. and


Mexico. Palestinians cross over into Israel to work everyday and
without that work force Israel would be desperate for help. Without
the help of illegal labor the U.S. would be crippled except the U.S. is
too ignorant to realize this.
To side with labor does not make you a Socialist or a Communist. To
side with labor makes you a realist and a realist more often than not
understands the importance of a living wage. Union jobs in this
country were torn from locked doors by blood and skin. Sweat is what
makes the grass grow not blood as the old saying goes. If Jesus was
a carpenter like the stories suggest I dont imagine he would let his
customers set the price. Jesus would have been a union carpenter,
he would have walked a picket line and he would have prayed for
those refusing to care for the worker.

Where is the union in the Holy land? A land so set upon its religious
belief, a land so rigid in its procedure, a land so stiff in its process of
retribution. Does a Palestinian receive the same pay of that of an
Israeli worker? Youll never hear any mention of that fact in the
American media, ever. Can you imagine a Palestinian Tom Joad
sleeping in the shadow of the fence separating these two lands as
rockets crisscross over head, his small fire to keep warm drawing
automatic fire, his companions using the fence as a wailing wall
because they cannot cross over until daylight. Sticking their prayers
into the barbed wire wondering if their scarred hands will become
infected, wondering if their job will become obsolete with tonights
bombing.

If you want to truly understand unemployment and what it is like to be
homeless try to do it in a war zone. Refugee status is sometimes
preferred to suddenly being awakened in your home and having to
run off into the darkness as in the case of a writer I heard from once
through a website I write for. The writer lived in Rwanda and one
night during the genocide that took place there he was awakened by
screams and he and his family got up and ran out of their house and
ran off literally into the darkness. I dont know if he survived or not. To
the best of my knowledge we never heard from him again. This would
have been different if he were in a refugee camp? No, not really? In
Darfur the y are firing into refugee camps. There are no jobs, there
are no unions, and there are barely any relief workers. Are refugees
illegal aliens? Should we build a fence around them?



To be on the side of the workers of the world is to support life itself it
is just that simple.



When Speculation Grows Hoarse

Screeching at the top of a hypodermic is where any decent writer
should be, in a hospital bed overlooking a battlefield where swans
have been de-flowered by Mexican mice. Where the august storms
have blown dust into the military tribunal parking spaces that have
just been crushed under the tracks of tanks. The body of three star
generals nailed in full uniform to gurneys awaiting cross-examination.




How We Leave The Beaten In The Well

A vengeful act born out of necessity, a scholars translation born of
prejudice and ending in legislation. The vengeful act originating from
the ancient text those that are parasitic and agitated who have
enjoyed and profited from these acts can and will suffer the growth of
this industry. No matter your belief system, the margin to discredit
has been abscessed. If you have grown to accept death in front of
you, on television, death by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the
millions then you are as guilty as the text, as guilty as the translator?
The act of killing was easy to learn and easy to teach and so history
has been translated into every language known to man and woman.
Now, every man and woman not only knows how to kill but accept it.

We leave the body in the well and wait for it to rain? We leave the
body in the well because we want someone to find it? The body was
already dead? Pre-destined? In terms of political reality it really
doesnt matter. How many wars have been started in your lifetime
and what was the body count? But wait, youre not dead yet. So while
you await your death youll have to keep a steady count, concentrate
now.





The Busted Windshield of American Politics

Paranoid behavior is the root of a collapsing ego. At one time all you
had to do was the word communist and everyone knew where the
conversation was going but then came the McCarthy hearings and
suddenly there was a line in the sand. But these days the native
response is to acquaint any conversation in terms of religious
doctrine. So as it says in the Koran, your lord is not heedless of
what you do. So as you drive whatever metal implement into whom
ever you are arguing with know that your actions have consequences
like legislation but karma for want of a better word can not be
amended.


Reports From The Bunker

Ive heard that Condi Rices per Diem includes a small plastic baggie
of salted fruit and a dispenser of face lotion easily allowed on Air
Force One.

The Secret Service agents say her thrust is all-wrong but she pays
for the room. They really cant keep the earpieces in when she is
going on the downbeat but its a good duty.

George Bush is upset that Cindy Sheehan bought some property
adjacent to his in Crawford, Texas. What he is upset about the most
is that she used the money from the insurance policy from her dead
son to buy something. Now the Washington press core is in shock
that the President now wants to enlist his daughters into military
service because he has his eye on some property in Havana.

The FBI has set up a scenario in case there is a problem with John
Mark Karr. A crime scene negotiator has been placed on call. The
negotiator is none other than Clay Aiken.

The armed suspect arrested yesterday at the University of Virginia


campus it has been discovered was asking passersby if they knew
the home address of Don Blankenship because he was running low
on ready cash.

After hearing of the dinner John Mark Karr enjoyed on his flight the
focus will now be off fava beans and will now be on Prawns?



More Rumors

When I recently saw Bill Clinton speaking on behalf of Joe Lieberman
it hit me, the only way Lieberman can win the nomination is if every
pedophile pollster in Connecticut starts driving a Hybrid.

Condi Rice is going to perform in Japan at the piano. The press
entourage has taken to calling this Condi trip the Bukkate Express.
Youll never see Madeline Albright pulling up her double hemmed
skirt up on a crowded bus for some drunken day laborers.

President Bush in his high school yearbook was voted most likely to
go down on something that might choke him, but no one had any
idea it would be a pretzel.



Rumors

There is a rumor going around Washington that Karen Hughes has
trained a miniature toy poodle to feed her raw liver. The story
suggests an elaborate process aboard Air Force One particularly
during campaign stops in rural areas.

Ann Coulter now shrugging off the plagiarism scandal has developed
a Nicole Brown Simpson fixation and is chasing around every ex-jock
politician she can find who can handle a knife despite crippling
arthritis.

George Bush it is said is dismissing the label of Cowboy Politics and


has set his sights on the exploits of John Voight in Midnight Cowboy
and is remaking himself into a stud with the help of Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy and several of Condi Rices chatty girlfriends. A cover
photo for Vanity Fair has been scheduled for the first of November.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert is in Bethesda Naval Hospital with
cellulites. Apparently all that intense research into stem cells has
taken their toll on Hastert. Reportedly the cellulites have been
located ironically in his navel and amongst the dellulitis there has
been found an embedded microphone with a serial number traced
back to Joe Lieberman.

George Bush Sr., the first lord of the skulls was present at the funeral
of Ken Lay. Recent reports have suggested that Ken Lay has faked
his death but that rumor was put to rest when Bush Sr. dove into the
coffin with lay for a photo opportunity as Barbara Bush while wearing
a pin that said you cant bury my beautiful mind took the flowers from
the casket and shoved what she could into her pockets.

Katie Couric has sent out a decree saying she will not go into war
zones. The head leaning, calf-exposing, morning after pill
saleswoman Couric has come under the radar of Internet candor.
Exposing her breasts to illegal Mexican workers who were mending
the catacombs at Blackrock, otherwise known as CBS headquarters,
the workers were inhabited by anecdotes Couric has yet to publish
under the ghostwritten book entitled, Let Your Thighs Be Your
Guide.




Tales More Sinister


The Inquisition was more than a hearing on the hill, more than an
evening beating pollsters stupid with fuel bills and credit card
receipts. No, it was the preset for the rule of law we now enjoy and
watch its prejudicial hearsay construct a means of governing that
could have leveled the Vatican back when the rape of young boys


was seen as a means to an end.

Brutality then and now is where we are, the glory of terrorizing
civilians on a par with the cardinals undressing in pools of smoldering
steel to garner the praise of attrition. Property or the names of those
willing to engage in the vilest of activities as to shame the Marquis
De Sade himself into retiring to Venice and taking up yachting.
Heretics they called those who sought the truth whether it be religion
or political truth. These days however we have the Patriot Act and we
have that gnarled up bunny rabbit of the Down Syndrome George W.
Bush. A man who would have donned a robe before the Yale society
even existed. He would have marched around more than the figure of
an owl set aflame among the likes of Ronald Reagan and Walter
Cronkite.

These days the Inquisition is carried out on the Internet where a
priest in Wisconsin can email a pedophile in the roofing business
about a certain public toilet on a local highway. The internet provider
complicit but not served papers under the right orderly law of freewill
and crude public scrutiny, the same kind of thinking that allows the
profit motive of corporations to disallow knowledge of information in
their own quarterly stock report if they have taken the time to lobby
and grovel in an office twice the size of your living room.
The Patriot Act owes as much to brief orders of martial law as it does
the Thousand Year Reich and its view of emblems in storefront
windows. Its a cruel and dumb world we live in they would have you
to believe but the same ignorance that will drive dedicated television
viewers to the polls will also draw and tenderize their hindquarters to
the fire and lose the ability to criticize the coals.




Ape Your Own Skin

Sad is the day when Ken Lay is laid away or so Vice President Dick
Cheney led reporters to believe. Once in the vice presidents
residence he began to crush his scrotum in a top desk drawer.
Screaming at the top of his lungs, Soft on crime, soft on crime! His


wife swigging from a bottle of rare moonshine sent to her by a man in
Malaysia who had sent a raving review of her soft-core porn novel in
old English text demurrers, Dick, slap that old cock all you want it
wont bring back your little bitch. Maybe if you screwed me once in a
while rather than humping the American dream with your whore
Rove. She turns to walk back up the stairs by the front entrance and
added, Karl called earlier and said Gitmo was going to turn into a
turkey shoot.




The Merciless Grenades of the Far Right

If anything you can give a bit of praise to the victor when they have
outfoxed the bloody smear on the nose of the hound that has been
treed by the fox. The far right has established a new and convenient
way of throwing the country off track as to enable them to out flank
democracy and goodness. You may not have noticed it but recently
the far right has announced that the only way to fix the mess that
they are in is to lose the house and allow the democrats to be in
charge. Oh how the charge of the light brigade has been inducted
into the Iraqi war tent of oil fires.
The tactic and it was a masterful one is this. Throw as many
scandals, wrong doings, and general law breaking as you can at the
press and general public and as the ramparts are cleaned and sorted
deposit in your war chest the scorn of your attackers and reap the
rewards when the attackers come to power. Misinformation has
reached the level of assassination, break-ins, and bloody war fronts
all rolled into one.

The evidence is clear. The architect of this horrific but successful ploy
is Karl Rove. His second in this duel is Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is
currently courting Sen. Hillary Clinton. Who does the far right enjoy
bashing more than the Clintons? Once Sen. Clinton is in office they
will begin the offensive. Their plan I am sure is for Hillary to be in
office for one term, after that term has expired they no doubt plan to
install a candidate for another eight-year stay in the oval office.



When fear comes in at you hard and swift, stand tall and grace
despair with strength and darkness. Now you know their ploy, so get
to work.



Ashes In A Pan

Dried and deposited the past holds a vacancy in any knowledgeable
portion of truth. If Ambrose Bierce were around today is revised
edition of The Devils Dictionary would have to include a special pop-
up section dedicated to the way the Bush administration processes
information. Maggots could pull bodies from burning wreckage better
than the truth can leak out of this gestalt collection of butchered body
parts lounging in the west wing.
Weapons of mass destruction, invasion of privacy, male penis envy
just pick a topic for this hinterland. The doors were hardly nailed
open from Scott McClellans exit before new Fox contributor Tony
Snow hoofed in on a sows ear to determine the cameras position in
the press briefing (outside if you are wondering.)



The Bizarre But True Love Between Lou Dobbs and Bill OReilly

The full figured, mainlined, arm banded, soft serve full fuck beast that
is television news has finally struck its final blow against censorship
and has allowed the likes of Lou Dobbs to rant away nightly on the
pleasure of racism, border control, and the right of every wealthy
American to own dogs worthy of gutting stock market analysts within
an inch of Rupert Murdochs door. Secretly its known that Dobbs
receives daily phone calls from the offices of Bill OReilly that are so
obscene as to riddle the minds of the inhabitants of Echelon listening
station the world over. Its said that OReilly spent his last raise in pay
on his own satellite to relay the calls to Dobbs. On the cover of Lou
Dobbs new book he is standing with his crotch in full view sources
say so as to enable OReilly to view the full cardboard standup while
he is on the air so he may manipulate him self in torrid ways.






Villagization in the Bush Era

Escalation or surge, look those words up in the dictionary and apply
them to the situation in Iraq, to the re-deployment of National Guard
troops, compare that fact to the complete avoidance of regular troops
stationed around the world in spots Germany and you begin to get a
picture of the terminology, you get an idea of the American economy
becoming more and more local as skilled technicians are re-located
to repeat tours in what could be certain death. Edmund Burke wrote,
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to
do nothing." But what is the opposite of that quote? For bad men to
do their worst? For good men to encourage or to only do what is
required by law? When is force required to stop the abhorrence of
evil? In Iraq it is whenever you are fired upon if it is humanly possible.
If you can run, you run. Held to a higher standard is one way we
describe our fighting men and women. That is one way we describe
our means of waging war. All of that ended more or less with the
waging of the current war in Iraq and the Bush administration. Still we
hold our troops to a higher standard but who will hold their superiors
to that same level of achievement? Quoting from The Nation
magazine, Senator Edward Kennedy said, "Says Kennedy, "It seems
to me that we are at a time of a major escalation into a civil war,
that's what the proposal of a surge is really about. This president is
going to escalate the American presence and escalate the whole
Iraqi war. This is a major mistake and a major blunder. If there's one
thing that the election was about last fall was sending a very clear
message to Congress and to the president that the American people
want accountability. They want a change in direction on Iraq, they
want accountability, and they want people to stand up and be
counted." I think all Americans no matter what their party or belief
want accountability, they want finally to be told the truth. Countless
times history has proven that if the man in office would have just told
the truth, if he would have just leveled with the nation things would
have been better. This is one of those times. This Gulf of Tonkin was
not an attack on the Twin Towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
This Gulf of Tonkin was created out of thin air not long after taking


office in the year 2000 or before, we may never know. Several U.S.
Presidents have stood by and watched as genocides have occurred,
atrocities, and wholesale slaughters. An escalation of 20,000 troops
into a nation as unstable as Iraq will undoubtly be a wholesale
slaughter and it will not occur fifty years down the road Mr. President
when we're all dead, but soon.




The Lords of Discipline and The Mothers of Invention

Imagine a multi-ethnic Green Zone, forces united in freedom, much
less fries all banded together in blood and torture cartoons, American
and Iraqi, all having to show their I.D. cards to prove their
Americanism.

Imagine a rash of wild fires now dying out in Florida and Georgia now
that Jerry Falwell has been put into the ground. Never mind the fact
that one of his own was armed with bombs. But that story went away
as fast as it arrived didn't it? Just how fast did the minor White House
spokesman hit the Interstate when the bombs were discovered? How
much ground can a post mortem on the truth cover? Imagine that
much fire following Falwell into the already sulfur stinking smell of
hell.

Imagine the photographs of the Democratic leadership backing off of
the Iraq plan so fast they fall head first into one another's asses so
far as to breed new dwarfs of entitlements. Just imagine.





Dance Band Adrift in The Heart of Darkness

Many Democrat and Republican candidates are out today
campaigning on the rise of the minimum wage and some are even
going on and on by reflecting on how it will benefit the middle class.


Someone please break through the rope line and please explain that
if you are working for minimum wage you are not middle class,
unless that is if you are working on a 72 hour day while they work a
four or even three day work week.

Hey congressman how many votes did you miss on the floor while
shoveling down that last rubber chicken?

Hey Joe Biden it is true that a full surrender is on the table in Iraq if
you promise not to make an 8th trip to the green zone? Is it true they
are calling you Baghdad Joey?

Hey Hillary is it true you promised a staffer in Iowa to erase a parking
ticket for the frequency the media is operating on so you can monitor
calls in or out of the press bus? Or was that Romney? Maybe it was
McCain, well you all voted for the war didn't you?

Is it true Lou Dobbs has a silencer he keeps in his metal boot just in
case he is called away to his shed in Arizona?



Chalk Marks In A Greasy Wind

Recently the President pounded his chest and demanded that he
was the president! This must have been a rude awakening for Vice
President Dick Cheney who immediately kicked off the maggot
covered quilt from his legs and stomped across his personal office to
the red line that connects him directly to the office of Karl Rove. They
briefly exchanged words while the maggots made their way to an 8
by 10 glossy photo of Fred Dalton Thompson applying sun tan lotion
to the bald head of the late Strom Thurmond.



The President and The Arab Strap

So before you get the idea that this is the normal John F. Kennedy or
Bill Clinton tag line. Marilyn Monroe or Monica, no. This isn't even


Karen Hughes and her paisley hooded tarantula swap spit weekend
O bliss, no this is the President letting his hair down with a little of the
old "let me see what an Arab woman truly goes through" and so it is
arranged away from the media as these things sometimes are.

The President is tied to a replica of a cruise missile in the middle of a
room in the basement of the White House while three Arab woman
are led in. The women are covered head to toe as is the traditional
style except they were trained in a bunker near Quantico and were
first tried out on former CIA director George Tenat.

While the President adjusts himself and remembers he can't spit
easily in his restraints and mask one of the women reads him the
Koran, another spits at him and the other stones him for having an
illicit affair with the aforementioned Karen Hughes and lusting after
Condi Rice. This goes on for one hour until the President is called
away to go to Arlington National cemetery. Soldiers armed with
bayonets are watched closely by Secret service as canons are fired
out of respect for the fallen. As The President begins to speak those
families who can't control their tears or their anger are lead off to the
waiting arms of unmarked vans, not unlike the three Arab women.


Gavels and The Echoes Down The Drain

If you are serving in our armed forces and are on a street sprayed
with bullets in New Orleans, Iraq or in Beirut, or if you have someone
who you care about who is essentially working to stand on a bread
line, i.e. minimum wage, this latest push in Washington should so
offend you as to suggest an uprising on the level that should dwarf
the sit-ins during the anti-war movement in the 1960's.

Kucinich says is true and horrifically so. What is the price of an
American life? You'll hear that question quite a bit in this debate until
you realize that illegal aliens can also serve in our armed forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan and then you reconsider tying it to Immigration
or maybe you don't. If you have seen anyone shot in front of you, if
you have ever seen anyone lying wounded you would have noticed
that the blood was red, it's all red for everyone so extinguish any


racist notion you may have and let's consider the question at hand.

As I said earlier in another post, the minimum wage is NOT a living
wage. It is no where in the ballpark, not on the same street. Hell it
doesn't even live in the same part of town usually unless the
employee is allowed to stay there in the back on a cot several nights
a week. In the past ten years or so the Democratic Party has
loosened its rein on reality, a few have slipped through and spoke
truth to power but on the whole it cannot be counted on. Check the
voting record and see who votes for this new agreement of "minimum
wage for maximum blood" and see who really is representing you
and then have the guts to do something about it.



The Glass Half-Broken or Half-Spilled

I'm not a red stator or a blue stator so I categorically deny your
attempt to place me in a category invented by the mainstream media.
When I watch the horrific news and slaughter of innocent lives
around the world I do not under any means interpret what I am
seeing by which state I am living in.

I'm not a flag waver unless you include waving the white flag upside
down in an unfailing symbol of protest for those who cannot speak for
themselves. I am unable to travel to every nation on earth where
indigenous people are being destroyed along with their homes by
forces more powerful than them so I write what I can and in doing so
I wave the white flag and in doing so it waves upside down in a
symbol of chaos, of protest and of peace.

I'm not someone who will only get my news from American nightly
news. I will not take the news I hear at its surface truth. I will read on
further. I will read the International press and I will discern what I
believe to be true. I will call a news photo into question if I see it more
than once over more than one byline as has happened more than
once.

I'm a dissenting opinion, a dissenting writer and a quoter of facts and


I stand by those who have fallen and those who stood up. I believe if
you take a history textbook in the United States and hold it up and
shake it the truth may come tumbling out but it will never find its way
into a classroom the way it needs to be. The truth begins at home.




Jeb & Joe

If you're under the hideous impression that national politics can get
no worse then contemplate a Jeb Bush/Joe Lieberman ticket
thrusting itself off from a Battle carrier parked just off Palm Beach
while its crew members are forced to carry out their duties amidst the
whims of the right wing press.

Navy Lt. - Sir, another reporter is crawling in and out of the missile
firing station naked and screaming about the undiscovered
amendments of the constitution hidden in Paris Hilton's cell phone.

Admiral - Jesus, not again. See if you can coax Hannity out with a
copy of the dead and dismembered in Iraq.

Imagine Joe Lieberman trying for at least a few hours to get into one
of those flight suits.

Imagine Jeb Bush beating or having beaten up every reporter who
covered his daughter arrested for drugs and having their bodies
buried at sea.



Graying The Grave

I've seen conviction end as much as occupation but then I grew up
reading the history I knew I would see repeated by my own
government. The decadence of human life is just another counter
clockwise down the drain and this comes from someone who recently
spent some time in New Orleans. As Joseph Conrad wrote, "This is


the worst of trying to tell..."

It's like a peasant confronting someone with a guilter's tan, his
account wouldn't be complete without the confrontation and assault
of the senses. The satellite rolls off the levee and smashes into
traffic, and while traffic refuses to move to allow the ambulance
through, the victim swelters in the New Orleans heat amid the
despair and suicides. Where are the buses now that the water has
receded?

During the Vietnam War Buddhist monks immolated themselves in
protest of the war, perhaps in this country such an action, perhaps
less extreme should be approached during a sanitary broadcast of a
morning show amid the unblinking, barking on cue crowd of
onlookers holding signs representing the names of hometowns. Just
how far is it from Bay New Orleans to the Tonkin Gulf anyway?



The Right Wing Colonoscopy (The Polyps, The Scars, The Gas,
Oh My)

While the right-wing immortalizes Fred Dalton Thompson and now
pisses on the mere distant memory of McCain and the ol' straw boys
round the bucket, they sight Thompson's height at 6'6 except for ol'
puppy blood himself Robert Novak who in his column cited
Thompson at 6'7. Now you can draw your own conclusion why Novak
cared to give Thompson that extra inch, but pardon the pun, I'll take a
stab at it.... Maybe Novak has a thing for sailors like Genet or Capote
and after seeing Thompson in that movie as an Admiral (rear
admiral?) he just got overwhelmed? Seriously, James Carville's bald
head wasn't enough for Novak, neither was Tucker Carlson's cute
little bow tie so who knows maybe Novak has been waiting for just
such an event since Fred Dalton Thompson kicked country rag-o-
muffin Lorrie Morgan to the curb.






On Account Of

Translate the Constitution into any language on earth and I am sure
more than a few laws would have to be re-written. Imagine the
section on liberty being translated into some of the little known
languages of the Amazon and suddenly life inside our borders
change dramatically. Imagine the right to free speech being changed
into the right to

listen. Imagine having to try and explain why you need amendments
in the first place.



Listening Posts

Iraq, the grim reminder of foreign policy based upon a racist ideal.
When in history has hate ever ended without overwhelming
bloodshed of innocent lives? The war in Iraq is based upon more
than oil, more than greed, read through the rhetoric and you'll find
despair. There is no Lombardiesque speech underlying the message.
When you see an interview with those in the Bush administration, the
true believers that are still in the employ, you can sense that even in
their cultish period of determination there is a craziness bleeding
through, an ominous aftermath you can see in the eyes of the true
believer. You can almost see how they will fall. You can almost hear
the screams at the Fox Network, "W is Great, W is Great!" The
voices echoing down into the street just before they dispense another
report of misinformation.



"Kick out the jams Kissinger Baby!" - George W. Bush

President appears to be boarding Air Force One until you realize the
blip reflecting against the metal building across the tarmac. Could it
be a GOP reunion of the Capricorn One landing or Weapons of Mass
Destruction anniversary of some sorts? No, its just another beer run
to the Crawford, Texas ranch and isn't it time for it? I mean seriously


citizens of the United States the man lost his watch that was given to
his grandfather by the great Karl Rove idol Nazi propaganda Minister
Himmler. So cut the guy a little slack.

So he is flying coach to Crawford, Texas and tasting those wonderful
nuts we all love on the great airline that is Southwest. He'll land in
Houston and have to take a range rover from there but it'll be stocked
with beer and the interior is done up in one of those pants suits Condi
wears so just draw your own mental picture ok?


American I.E.D.'s

Burn the wheel and roll it over the graves, exhaust the I.E.D.'s but
wait is this American soil? How far into the future can this be? How
far off? Would the N.R.A. arm themselves against their own? Would
they seek the resources of Mexico in a state of crisis? What brought
terror to our shores in 2001? As Noam Chomsky says, read the
public record. The public record is scary enough, like any theory built
on video evidence the rest isn't too difficult to amass. Sure you'll be
called a bunch of scary names and maybe even drive off to an
abandoned warehouse and shot full of something you couldn't even
pronounce even if you were a registered Republican (but wait some
of them don't believe the cover story) but it's ok, really it is, you're not
alone.

But like I asked at the beginning how far off are I.E.D.'s from the
American shores? When was the last time you read your Civil Rights
history? Seriously, know your history. IT MIGHT DO YOU SOME
GOOD.


Obituaries In The Passing Lane

How long have I been dead? You could theorize that I was never
born. I was born after the Tet offensive in Vietnam, during the
protests against the war in Vietnam, in a time of assassinations, and
in during this time we were supplying weapons and training the very
countries we would fight later in the so-called global war on terror.


Has my generation had a chance to grow in a time of peace? If you
think there has been any extended time of peace at all during the
time of the late sixties till present day war in Iraq then you are sadly
naive and it is that kind of naive voter who throws America into the
line of fire.

Turn your back on Afghanistan and you process the executions of
American soldiers in iraq at an alarming rate. To try and out last, to
try and kill off an idea, an idea based on religion has never worked
nor will it ever work. To surround yourself with the same kind of fervor
you are fighting against sends the signal of imminent disaster.



Don't You Ever Get Downtown

A sad day at the Gates of Hell; Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger
have died on the same day. The devil addresses the two men and
tells them the sad news. He only has enough space that day for one
more soul to torment. If they go up to heaven they will have to share
a bed with Bill Clinton and have breakfast served to them in bed each
morning for eternity by a scantily clad Gloria Steinman.

So it is left to Kissinger and Cheney to prove which of them is the
worst person. They are allowed to use props and if they are drawn
into a corner they can use the call a friend feature. In the end
Cheney's pictures of Iraqi children being burned alive are no match
for the twenty seven dump trucks of documents Kissinger has driven
in and the witness testimonies. He even offers to call several now
deceased dictators and one in particular, a small man named Uncle
Ho standing next to the gate with his arms folded against his chest
who works in the kitchen.

Cheney must return to earth for another life as Ann Coulter BDSM
partner without the use of his arms and legs and a liberal streak a
country mile wide.






Unclean

Computers hum and charts that were once three dimensional are
printed onto large graph paper and delivered to the office of the Vice
President. These charts bypass the office of the Secretary of
Defense and contain information about the movements of Bin Laden
and his body guards as they move across the border of Pakistan and
travel under the protection of private security forces to the shores of
Europe. A special meeting arranged to be spearheaded by former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will discuss possible
organized attacks of American soil in the next year to spark voter
turnout in the U.S. presidential election.

An independent force to be reckoned with, the office of the Vice
President has become the underlying exhausting line of demarcation
in all things military. The wars fought in this century aren't fought on a
standard front nor or they waged in a conventional way. The myth of
a situation room in the White House where a President waltzes in
and makes a decision and everyone snaps to are gone. War is not
conventional of course, and no longer shall the government be
allowed to rule outside the arm of corporations who can and do
negotiate their punishment when breaking the law so blatantly it
shames even their future generations.

Nigeria, the front of a war that officially doesn't exist like Afghanistan
has taken victims like a thunderstorm reaching down to the ground
with no notice. The winds pick up and debris is thrown around and
the rain is suddenly horizontal. Victims, people who will soon be
victims run for shelter and some do not run soon enough. In a war
they are called collateral damage but in a freak weather incident they
are categorized as victims. Ecology mixed with Meteorology and you
have the narrow margin to understand and evaluate the losses. In a
war, the type of war that goes under the radar, you must first
understand the singular force of violence and its seducing fear and
power and in those three vices is the world of politics.





Burn The Carcass At Half-Mast

As I. Scooter Libby's plane dips its wing in triumphant as it leaves
American waters and heads into the darkness towards Havana, the
nation can rest well and awake to celebrate its nation's holiday this
fourth of July and know that the stable environment once enjoyed in
the nations capitol has been wretched onto the floor of a DC-10 as
storm clouds gather at 5,000 feet.

Personal power unchecked in the Nixon administration and fueled by
the confusion and wrath of a bitter jungle battle in Vietnam sent
plumbers to jail and testimony to the floor of the house. Once
determined and clear headed journalists to the parking garages of
the collected unconscious of American public that now shriek at
staffers for more oily residue over their person as they await not a
better tee time but a better table at the hanging.

Libby now downing a few drinks and stroking the side of his laptop
and composing emails to the editor of the Washington Times shrugs
off a call from Fred Dalton Thompson who wants him to consult on
his campaign of dirty tricks before it has officially kicked in.
Thompson said, "Surely, Scooter, surely you gotta know a few Puerto
Ricans who slobbered over Bill in a steak house john somewhere in
Virginia." Scruples run deep for Scooter who enjoys connections
straight up the biker chain to Dick Cheney and down to Rupert
Murdoch.




The Libby Sanction

Scooter landed in Havana and was driven quickly to the Hotel Plaza
where a room goes for seventy dollars a night. The front of the Hotel
comes to a point and overlooks Neptuno and Zulueta streets, a good
place to take a shot at someone and that is why Libby is in Havana.
No, Libby hasn't got the balls to take the shot but he has the authority
to speak on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney. The plan is
simple. Find a witting accomplice to assassinate Castro and


cooperate with the incoming president Fred Dalton Thompson to
open trade and lift the embargo to Cuba and use the sudden influx of
cash to fund the new far right-wing agenda and use the country as a
storage depot for detainees.

Scooter immediately after arriving in his room summoned his security
team to find him as many young maids to service what will soon
become White House South as he sets up shop. Over the bathtub he
hangs a photo of Vince Foster to remind himself that like the Roman
legend tells us, "All glory is fleeting."




The Libby Sanction - Part Two

Scooter Libby turns around in his room and stops in front of his
window overlooking the two streets below. He strolled four steps
ahead to the window and looking down he noticed the three security
guards positioned on the corners in plain sight as to notify those who
would pass that an important man was top be protected. Later in the
day he would start interviewing men who would be involved in the
possible assassination of Castro. He dialed his satellite phone and
reached the answering service for Karl Rove. He had been instructed
to check in several times a day. The voice that answered instructed
Libby to hold a few moments. He turned back around and watched as
one of the young maids was bent over the toilet and as she cleaned it
Libby kicked at her heels and laughed to himself. He felt like a tyrant,
a drug lord secure in a mountaintop resort in a foreign land. Rove
came on the line.

Rove: Scooter?

Libby: First day and I'll meet with the first group later on this
afternoon.

Rove: Don't give any pertinent information away. Remember the plan.

Libby: What is this I see in the press online, I am still the goddamn


focus of the Democrats! Just how many car bombs does it take to get
attention away from this trial?

Rove: I don't think you understand your role in this Scooter. You slid
out under the door and like a rat you left the ship and you'll stay gone
until you're needed back.

Libby: So now I'm a rat? I could have been a rat you know?

Rove: Think about where you are Scooter, remember Fredo? The
Madam phone numbers came out today and Flynt is kicking at the
door so soon enough the shit will be flying in all directions. It'll be
quiet soon enough, now shut up and do your job.

With that the line went dead and Libby lowered the phone down to
his side. Suddenly the heat of Havana didn't seem so hellish but did
seem claustrophobic.



The Exhumation of John Steinbeck

last night John Steinbeck told me in a dream
he would have made a movie of The Grapes of Wrath himself
if only he could have found a way to made blood
look gray in black and white

We talked about war and how it left the young
at the mercy of the old and how after a while
those that were younger couldn't tell the difference
between the two, then he talked about how his son
had covered the war in Vietnam

then I realized we were talking about all wars
and that blood is not in black and white






Tribal Sufferings on American Highways

Bleak understandings as the country spirals off camera. The sermon
hasn't been heard and the traffic camera that caught the beheading
transferred the image to the hovering news helicopter by mistake and
the family of the victim is now doing public service two mile markers
down for smashing the front door of the station. They found out by
changing the channel moments after the news crew burst into their
small apartment. Strange enough to be true, its horrific. Campaign
donors disguised as pederasts are moving through the lobbies of the
some of the finest hotels in our country. Their influence can be
utilized by both parties and the controlling interest is transferred
through newsprint and passable Spanish.

The kitchen staff of any Hilton Hotel on the east coast of America in
the sixties and seventies could name for you any underage starlet
who moved through the steam of vegetables and noodles to the arms
of donors and politicians. It would always be on a reserved floor, the
button you couldn't push because the elevator operator, a tired and
jaded African-American who had seen it and heard it wouldn't allow
you to under threat of subpoena or violence.

The largest expose of our times has still not been written. The dark
paths cut across the streets, highways and yards of New Hampshire
for the last fifty years in this time of information. One can imagine
databases on every resident of New Hampshire auctioned off every
four years for the price of first born. Places like Sugar Grove in West
Virginia who listens to every phone call in America and every email
and blog entry like this one house individuals that if they were to ever
truly speak on the record would certainly be admitting to highs crimes
against humanity.

The watch fiends of this new century are spoiled like jackals at a
Revelation book signing in the Cambodian jungle. Fear emanates
from these narrow passages and our childrens children will lie across
the ditches of hell to keep the peace while the jackals nip at their
heels. Our only hope is to move to the country and give them the
cities.






Terror In The Campaign's Heartland

Louder than the explosion in New York today from a steam pipe
bursting was the constant thundering of hooves, once described as
the hungry feet of the media thrusting themselves headlong into vast
jars of hair gel and full length mirrors. It could be terrorism they all
excitedly murmured, it could be, it could be! You could almost hear
them cry out in ecstasy, "This is how Paula Zahn got her start at
CNN!"

Wolf Blitzer on CNN stumbled over the words in his ear piece more
than usual as information zoomed into the Situation Room at a snails
pace as he quickened our pulse with a glorious wave of the papers in
his hand not yet before seen since Edward R. Murrow removed his
cigarette from his mouth at the beginning of each broadcast, and you
just knew that somewhere a comatose Larry King would have to be
shook awake and informed of his whereabouts and informed that no,
Regis was not harmed and yes, he would have to peer endlessly into
the camera and yes, Anderson Cooper would ask better questions.

But the only question anyone wanted to ask at Fox News was did the
Clintons cause this? Somewhere over Newport, Rhode Island Joe
Biden was informed and demanded the plane crash land near a
television studio. Mitt Romney clutched his wife and begged her not
to expose his early experiences with those zany Mormon hijinks and
exploding toilets. Obama knew that this could be tied to his admitted
drug abuse by the Fox Network and John Edwards wife refused to
halt an interview where she was bashing Hillary Clinton when
informed that people were in peril, but hey, it's a campaign and we
should all play along, after all, we're only voters and only so many of
us can live in New Hampshire and matter. So shut up and vote then
get out of the way, I think I saw that on a bumper sticker next to
Nixon's name once.





Dinner at the White House
Dinner at the White House is the usual fair these days, Tex-Mex per
the President's instructions instead when it comes to the Vice
President's plate. No, it's not a special diet for his bad heart. No you
are way off base. He feeds like a mongrel dog. He has been known
to get up on the table and kick over rare bottles of wine and urinate
on Kings and Queens, once biting the tear stricken face of a White
House photographer for snapping a quick snapshot of his slurping.

Hide the ring in the cake and whoever gets the ring has good luck?
Not at the White House. At the White House you hid a small bit of
microfilm that when held up to the light reveals the body of Bill
Clinton being burned alive in the killing fields of Cambodia. Six times
this year alone Vice President Dick Cheney has gotten it and six
times there have been large bombings in Iraq.

Last year on Vice president Cheney's birthday the entire menu came
from the first Nordic cookbook printed in 1616. It has been said that
the first time the President ate a meal prepared from this cookbook
was at his grandfather Prescott's house. After dinner everyone retired
to the White House screening room to watch The Boys From Brazil
starring Gregory Peck.



Gun Control, Campaign 2008
Have you heard anyone on the campaign trail say anything about
Gun Control? No, I am not talking about whether or not you can
control a gun long enough to kill someone so we are shipping you off
to Iraq and oh by the way, your wife who is pregnant we're going to
cut her benefits and call her a whore if she doesn't do everything we
say in front of the Fox cameras if they come calling. No, I mean
controlling the ownership and sale of dangerous guns. No?

Ok, just checking.






The John McCain Straight Talk Winnebago Express
Due to a constant lack of funds the Straight Talk Express has been
reduced to the Straight Talk Winnebago. John McCain can be seen
kicking the totally modern sofa attached to the completely life-like
modern kitchen at all hours of the night and going on and on about
the Trilateral Commission and why New Hampshire shouldn't be first
on the ballot in Atlanta and taking yet another whiff of a bottle he
keeps in his jacket pocket.

Staffers have taken to ducking their heads and looking out the small
but cramped opening used to drive the Straight Talk Express
Winnebago and sighing quietly and gazing on sunny days as John
Edwards staff drives by and moons them. Only last week Hillary
Clinton and Ron Paul armed with two 24 count roll packages of toilet
paper each were seen headed towards the Straight Talk Express
Winnebago and chuckling madly.

These are the times that try loyalty and cramped bathroom
conditions.



The Libby Sanction - Part Three
James Baker, a man even who if he was on a witness list wouldn't
have to appear, strolled into the White House through that mysterious
exit we all have heard of but have never seen and up an elevator to
Karl Rove's office and sat down in an overstuffed chair and waited for
Rove to finish a call to I. Scoter Libby in Havana.

Rove: Scooter, I am telling you food rations cans washing up on the
beach don't interest me. What I want to know about is the job you
were sent down there to do.

Libby: (Whose voice appears over the speaker phone) I have a
couple of guys here who say they can do the job but they want more
money and a few eccentric demands that will need attention.

Rove: How eccentric?



Libby: They say if Cuba is to be a walled off compound for detainees
they would like the right to arrest and torture the citizens of Cuba as
they see fit.

Rove: I don't see a problem with that.

Libby: Also, they would like the residents of Miami who continue to
stir up trouble against Cuba in the American media to be deported
back to Cuba, especially the singer from the Miami Sound Machine.

Rove: That is no problem either, she has strong Hollywood
connections. I think she can support the Gonzalez kid to stay here so
we can get Fox on that angle. Good work, I'll call you back in a little
bit.

Rove hangs up the phone and looks across his desk to Baker who is
smiling broadly. Rove smiles, "Don't say it James, just another
chance to get back at Hollywood, why not. You'd do it if you weren't
such a chicken shit."

Baker slaps his leg and returns back at Rove, "Well you know Karl,
chickens lay and shit and provide substance and all they require is a
little scratch, we negotiators have to settle for the spoils of the soil."



Chewing A Dull Blade or Ed Meese Advancing In Tripoli
Back in the 1980's when Ed Meese was put in charge of investigating
pornography and ended up escaping to the Virgin Islands with two
yachts of papers and reel to reel tapes to transfer to videotape, a
cache he still owns and controls but has since moved to his
compound for Better Boys in South Carolina. It's fruitless to mention
that Meese would show up at the office at odd hours and kick open a
container at random and get undressed and start hollering at the
cleaning staff to wash him. There have been rumors through the
beltway that say that Meese has in his possession footage of every
major porn star that has committed suicide since the late seventies.
So it's no shock to find out that on occasion that Meese will send
packages off to those countries considered in the Axis of Evil to earn


some extra cash.

Like the Ibogaine incident of the 1972 campaign, there is a rumor
that Meese will contribute in a rough way to the downfall of Mitt
Romney. The drug, Dioscorea which Romney has been abusing for
some years now has become well known through the inner world of
Conservative movers and shakers and to a degenerate like Meese it
is too good to be true. Meese in his drugged out mind has become
convinced that in the holiest of holy in the state of Utah the Mormon
Church has the completely mummified body of Margaret Mead and
he wants it.

Romney who began using Dioscorea to bulk up for his political life
and to sexualize his libido has become addicted. The problem is drug
use is frowned on by the Mormon Church and if he is found out the
religion he is supporting in a run for the White House will out him and
his political life will be over.

Meese who comes from a family that owned a surprising amount of
stock in Syntex a German pharmaceutical company during World
War II, and who secretly was an active participant in the research of
Masters and Johnson, along with other Congressional celebs, keeps
a leather bound copy of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 with him
at all times. Referring to it at campaign stops during his political
tenure he would amuse himself at the punishment listed for abuse of
the Act while he flaunted every known narcotics law he could.



Campaign 2008, AIDS IN AFRICA

When Africa has been removed from every campaign speech and the
statistics that were favored in front of the cameras, and a few million
more have died while a few thousand more have been fed and
transported to applaud and pat balloons around the room at two
major party conventions maybe a new photo-op will arise and a new
round of commercials with squinting eye celebs, ministers, and
politicans will grace our televisions.



When?

The numbers roll off the tongue like the bodies reduce to dust into
the ground. It's easy to write that sentence and hit the space bar and
go on but the horror in which it fills me with, the same strangeness
that escaped the American media recently when the nation of
Rwanda did away with the DEATH PENALTY and it got no mention
even in any of the so-called LIBERAL blogs who care oh so much
with their advertising rates in place next to their hearts and souls. The
bodies aren't placed in the ground along party lines.


National No Hire List

As we all know there is a No Fly List and a Terror Watch List, but is
there an Unofficial National No Hire List? Corporations who give to
largely Conservative causes could very well orchestrate such a list. A
quick Internet search of a listing made available by the same
government who illegally monitored phone calls of Americans could
very easily make this information available. Sound extreme, not
possible? When was the last time you dreamed up something that
would never happen and then saw it come true with amazing
accuracy?

Here is a simple theory of how it could work. The key corporations
that have not been caught red-handed by the Justice department for
corruption, the multi-National, Billion dollar conglomerates make a
call and ask for a better way to screen who they hire and just happen
to mention that their contributions could go the other way. Right away
someone in the Bush administration quickly decides to make that
personal information available without said company having to pay
for background checks. Sound like the kind of thing that would never
happen? Think again.








Personal and Political

The personal and the political, up to a few years ago I thought they
were separate but I see that now they are both as constant as life
itself. One chance at life? Well, one chance politically sure but for
reincarnation the textbooks change all the time.

The personal, your own space is invaded not only by terrorism and
your safety but by the necessary means of survival and if you don't
think that political is the load bearing wall of that despair then the
house you live in, your own skin is not your own.

The political is the air you breathe and the air you are breathing, like
the chemicals inside the body can kill. Not slowly over time but on
contact and in the cruelest of ways. Elections are to the working man
what the Atlantic voyage used to be to the wealthy. You set out with
the best hopes and intentions and half-way into it you realize that
something is terribly wrong and you never had any control in the
process to be begin with. The sharks will come calling in both
instances.




J.D. Salinger on the Campaign Trail

In a garden, somewhere in America, perhaps taking a break from a
private drive cross-country J. D. Salinger could accidentally pass by
cameras covering a political campaign and as the cameras turn to
catch workers leaving a plant to shake hands with a politician, they
will miss the solemn man in the passenger seat.

Imagine the fury of the television reporters who can actually
remember Catcher In The Rye, or the ones who read about the
shooting. Quick calls to confirm, but is it bigger than the O.J. story?
Who will play Salinger as he flees the camera crews and the
helicopters? Is Jason Robards still alive?






Flashing The Hash At The Watergate Parts 1-6
Part One:

Television news crews surround the steps of the courthouse as
Scooter Libby begins a slow walk to his car after another day of
testimony. Down the street looking like a moth eaten turtle in a
helmet of burnt hair sits Karl Rove slipping rounds into an eighteen
shot clip. Cursing quietly under his breath Rove ponders erratically
the choice of taking out the cause of the spotlight on him or empty
the clip into his face.

Jack Random and I were strolling by having recently relocated to
Virginia to research a book on terror warnings, bank defaults and
their ties to the white supremacist movement. I noticed Rove
slamming his weapon into the dash of the car and just as I leveled
the camera lens Rove hit the accelerator and sped down the street in
reverse. The press up the street hardly took notice having heard the
sounds of violence in the streets of Washington before.

Scooter Libby made his way out of the courthouse to his car, the
press following and asking questions but not expecting any
response. Like prison guards watching the monotony of inmates
coming and going they hardly notice when a guard is attacked and
the alarm doesnt sound but the alarm will sound for Rove soon
enough.

We tracked him to the Watergate Hotel and down the stairs into a
conference room. Jack stood by the door with a high-powered
microphone to eavesdrop on whatever was going on. I questioned
the hotel staff tipping those on the lowest rungs of the pay scale and
threatening with expulsion those who never got their hands dirty.
Jack captured the goods and came back out to the car to play back
the tape and as he hit rewind secret service agents surrounded the
car. We showed our hands and they drew their weapons. Exiting the
vehicle we were asked for identification. Some time ago we had
made two press I.D.s that showed we worked for the Washington
Times that is owned by the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, a name that would


open any door in the city of Washington, certainly the beltway. As we
were held against the car we noticed Libby driving by in a taxi and
exiting into the Watergate.


Part two

Fear looks like hope in the tall grass and thats where we were, two
inches of steel surrounded by a hard durable casing, the smell of
cordite, and the kind of smell you recognize that the weapon has
been recently fired. Secret Service agents who when they surround
someone begin chattering on their communication devices and
slamming themselves in place. They took a few minutes to analyze
the fake identifications we showed them and slowly there was a look
of recognition in the lead agents face. If I didnt know better I thought
the cocksucker was going to drop to the street and begin his
prostrations. I noticed a scar behind his right ear and Jack saw it too.
It was the mark of a true believer, a West Pointer. Somewhere along
the line he had been burned by something, he had known the smell
of human flesh being singed into an emblem.

A huge crowd had gathered around us, a crowd of civilians. The
agents knew he had to save face so he immediately started ordering
his agents to make way for us and reducing the citizenry to a mass of
insecurities. Their violent wand of intimidation about no cameras or
questions led those around us to believe we were important. I could
sense the onlookers squinting their eyes and trying to remember
what we looked like so as to be able to identify us if we ever showed
up on the news.

After the melee Jack retrieved the recorder from the car and we
quickly made our way into the Watergate. Slamming into a booth in
the bar we began to listen back to the tape.

We knew we had to try and hunt up Libby but first we wanted to hear
what we had managed to capture on tape. The following is what we
were able to transcribe.

Two or three agents will be enough.


The word is out on the limos and Duke (Cunningham) has fucked
that for us.

Hell we could get some pickup for that matter. If anyone can operate
a shifter on the column its a hooker.

How much you think it would take to get the old Arab to squat over
Durbin and piss?



Part three

In the bar we met up with a photographer who had been staying at
the Watergate at the behest of the manager of the hotel in order to
photograph the renovation. He was paid a flat fee and given a room
at the end of a hallway on the first floor. He explained to us that more
than once he had been accosted by the Secret Service for what they
describe as loitering with intent. He explained that he had
overheard some of the recording and with a smile added that maybe
we might be interested in some of the photographs he had taken
around the hotel. Something in the way he said this made us believe
that there was something more to these photos. He opened the
satchel in front of him and we joined him in his booth.

The photographs were amazing. Some were of the hotel staff in
compromising situations, photos of the restoration included the
construction workers smoking pot and generally laying around on the
job out of sight of the hotel surveillance system. As we looked Jack
asked if he had anything more official, and with that question he lit up
and turned towards the back of the collection to reveal covert photos
of the Secret Service removing stuff from hotel rooms. In one of the
photos a Secret Service agent carries a life-size sex doll made into
an exact replica of G. Gordon Liddy. In another, an agent was holding
a drunken Scooter Libby against the wall while he awaited the
elevator.

Jack leapt to his feet and stormed over to the bar and grabbed at the
phone to make a call. The bartender came down the bar and said


something to Jack that I didnt hear and Jack screamed, If youre
mother was in this kind of situation youd be on this side of the bar
asshole! The bartender who had seen many crazed looks like the
one in Jacks eyes (many from politicians) sulked back down to his
newspaper.

News desk! Hey. Mike! What would you do for a photograph of
Scooter Libby being sodomized by an agent?

The photographer looked at Jack and back down at the photograph
and then to me.

Well, you know the darkroom can do many things but these days a
fraud can be spotted right away.

I told him that it didnt matter if the story was true or the photograph
genuine. As long as it existed and was leaked in the right way it
would show up on the news and get picked up by the wires.

I added, If bullshit was the ration card of power the entirety of
Washington would be bent over backwards digging corn.




Part four

As we left the bar we saw a group of Secret Service agents running
to the salon located in the Watergate. We followed behind them to
see a drunken Scooter Libby rubbing mud on his face and screaming
about a free facial. Karl Rove was standing across the room talking
into his cell phone. The Secret Service stormed into the room and
Libby twirled the chair around at them and grabbing the terrified
makeup attendant he started spitting on her neck and rubbing it in
and screaming in a voice reminiscent of Truman Capote, Isnt it
pretty, isnt it pretty!

The agents tackled the lady and Libby and began kicking them both.
Rove sat down at the front desk and began flipping through the call


caddy and copying down the names. One agent turned to secure the
area and noticed us photographing the scene. The agent grimaced
and started toward us but he slipped in the blood pouring from the
womans forehead.

We ran down the hallway and were almost out of the hotel when Jack
suggested we head for the conference room Rove had just left. We
ran across the lobby and through the door. Down the stairs we met
by a cleaning crew. We flashed our identification and took the
garbage bag from them for inspection. They could have cared less
why we needed it.

Back in the car I eased into traffic as Jack fished through the bag. He
began laughing hysterically when he found a list of congressmen who
had participated in the Duke Cunningham hooker scandal. Rove had
the names circled and beside several of the names were amounts of
money and personal phone numbers. One name in particular hit us
more than others: Matt Drudge.

Part five:

Any member of the press core will tell you that if you shove the head
of a baby into an airsickness bag and pop the bag immediately you
will completely unsettle anyone near you. The mother will confess
immediately every cock she had ever sucked and whether or not she
saw what she had seen in a case against a politician. This has been
done in the case against the Bush administration. We saw the tale
and we were there to report it.

Jack Random and I armed with cameras, starkly open and brutal
honesty; we traveled to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier where we
had been told Karl Rove held private conversations as tourists
watched two guys in dress uniform flip around rifles in peace time
and during war. Rove would appear we had learned with a hat pulled
down over his misshapen ears. So there we sat waiting for Rove to
appear when we noticed a representative from the Fox network we
had photographed once on the balcony of a hotel in Maryland. He
watched as he exposed him self to a group of Catholic priests. The
Priests stood motionless in the tourist bus windows.



Waiting for Karl Rove had gotten to be a favorite pastime for Jack
and myself. We would sometimes pay someone to tip off the Secret
Service that we had seen a photograph of one of them transporting
illegal aliens into the streets of San Antonio and watch as the agent
shoved the tipster against the wall. We didnt do it too often as it
usually cost us a couple thousand dollars and once it took the
promise of an introduction to a certain celebrity who enjoyed urine in
more than a relieving manner.

As Jack listened again to the tape from the hotel I saw a couple of
tourists taking a few steps backwards. I watched closely as two
agents opened one of the mens shirts to reveal a listening device. I
grabbed the camera from around Jacks neck as he cussed me
loudly. The agent took notice of Rove arriving in a sedan flanked by
two women.

The man with the listening device made an attempt to punch the
agent in the face and the agent was beating him senseless
immediately. Every tourist eyes went right away to the noise. Rove
and the two women made their way past the tomb to section thirteen
of Arlington National Cemetery. As they walked we strolled quietly by
the violent outburst of several agents now subduing the individual. By
the time we were in the wet grass of the cemetery they had the man
down to his underwear.




Part six:

Once Karl Rove had hit a stopping point in his mind he shoved the
two women into the wet grass and began taking photographs of
them. As they writhed in some kind of illicit blessing of Ronald
Reagan, Rove began kicking at them in his sock feet. Agents had
circled the area and had re-directed tourists away. As we tried to inch
closer and closer we noticed a startled Juan Williams, the regular
Fox news contributor getting out of a SUV. One thing was unusual
however: the SUV had diplomatic plates.



Jack and I at seeing Juan Williams stood up and walked gingerly
towards the scene. We had had several conversations in secret with
Williams and whenever he saw us around town he would begin
trembling, as he had been a bit too honest for his parties good. He
had detailed one night how the party had during the 2000 election
attempted to impregnate several Gore staffers by force.

We knew that if we could get a photo of Williams alongside Karl Rove
kicking two half undressed women in Arlington National Cemetery we
could get Williams to open up about the tree house in the White
House as he has been long rumored to be the one with the apple in
his mouth.

Rove was in ecstasy. He didn't get the warning that Williams was
approaching as agents had told him. As the women were beginning
to scream now, the agents didn't notice us either. As we got closer we
could hear Rove's ranting, "We'll call this HR 666! Yea, take that Bay
Buchanan betrayer of the chair!" The harder Rove kicked the women
the louder they would chant, "Four more years, four more years."




Castigation Repetition

At a Denny's just outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. the now retired Donald
Rumsfeld sits scowling in his small glass of ice water and carving a
swastika into the table top with a large bowie knife. His security
personnel, now trained and used to dealing with such circumstances
peel off three one hundred dollar bills and push them into the hand of
the dumbfounded manager. Repeatedly cussing the Don't Ask, Don't
Tell Law and the media attacks on Blackwater, a company that
Rumsfeld supposedly owns a great deal of interest. After all,
someone like Rumsfeld would be well aware that death pays.






Burma
Watching a report tonight on Frontline's website, courtesy of PBS on
Burma: State of Fear was deeply troubling. A Father who lives deep
in the jungle talks of government troops coming to burn his village
and in the fire he sees a hand and realizes the hand belongs to his
son. He says, "I realize that my son has left me his palm." The palm
of his son's hand is all he has amid the terrible destruction. He
recounts his story for the camera and you get a deep gnawing in your
stomach that says I wish I could help.

Sanctions are the usual tactic used by governments and it is widely
known that these sort of plans usually end up hurting those they
should help. Forces that seek to hurt the innocent are hardly ever
living in bleak conditions when they carry out acts of genocide.

Pursue organizations like Human Rights Watch and write letters and
give if you can. Keep them in your prayers and thoughts. Short of
going to Burma you can go in your heart.


Candidate
That one unadulterated singular voice this country needs in political
office is not out there and it is certainly not running for presidential
office. It takes more than speaking truth to power. It takes more than
standing up for what you believe in. Who among us believes there is
one politician who thinks beyond the passing of the resolution or law
about the body count that will later ensue a month down the road, a
year? Who in office speaks of change and follows it, pursues it? A
sound bite does not a well thought out conversation make.

We need a President who believes in peace for the Palestinian
people and who believes that the Israelis do engage in acts of terror.
We need a President who believes in peace for the people of Tibet
and a return of His Holiness the Dalia lama to his homeland instead
of his stay in exile. We need a President who will finally pardon
Leonard Peltier. I don't see anyone on the campaign trail offering
anything close to this.




Blackwater
There are hammers in the wheel well this evening and as the road
passing by underneath at a high rate of speed the swinging goes on.
You don't have to be on the road to the airport in Baghdad to know
that the situation is out of control. These days the gangs of america
run through the day lit streets of another country heavily armed and
funded by the occupying force shooting indiscrimately.

My short story J. R. and I in Iraq (posted on this blog as well as
jazzmanchronicles.blogspot.com) tells the story of two
correspondents getting caught in the middle of a wave of gunfire on
unarmed civilians by a private armed security force who might as well
be named Blackwater. I wrote this story in December of 2006 and
currently there is strong debate over just such an event having taken
place. Who will handle the out of control gunmen of Blackwater?
Who will sop the U.S. government who obviously has no problem
with their tactics? The My Lai massacre didn't stop the Vietnam War,
and neither will the secret bombing of Iran/Cambodia.



End of the Bush Years
The expiration date for the cold hard truth of the Bush administration
will be in the form of a small bag of mushrooms that descend from a
cloud of well wishers in the press room. Whoever is the Press
spokesman at the time will peel off their clothes and start ramming
their hips into the C-SPAN cameras, champagne will flow into the
hoof-like boots custom made in Germany for the more elite of the
conservatives who wore through the Reagan years, their true blue
blood still intact as well their bigotry not dismayed with the previous
years of breakthroughs in the democratic racial divide.

Yes, the end of the Bush years will come suddenly and with great
flourish as some will be sacrificed as the Bush library will be
constructed no doubt somewhere in Dallas, Texas since the president
plans to move there after he leaves office so he can guard his official
papers with a team of lawyers not seen before since Ed Meese
protected his collection of pornography in Circuit Court.





This Poison Sun
a rural baptism, in a war zone
an I.V. of clear liquid will do
quarantining in a Sunni neighborhood
an Iraqi who is HIV positive
hooded and detained, white blood cells
retracting like concertina wire
the Marine charged to watch over the detainees
sits with a pistol in his mouth
repeatedly trying to kick off his boot
under a poison sun




For He So Loved The World
How broad a chapter is written when considering the suffering of the
Iraqi civilians? Troops returning from Iraq complain that too little is
being reported of the good they are doing in Iraq. The personal
contact they are affecting is lost in the horrific savagery of the war it
is true but the same was true in the Vietnam War. We need to do
more to aid these returning veterans as they spend there small
amount of time home before returning again and again to the war
zone.



Plague: Democracy?
It happens all over the world, a relief worker will work tirelessly, to the
point of exhaustion and those they are helping will become so
concerned with the health of the relief worker and forget about their
own suffering and offer their water or food. It is in moments like this
that the true beauty of existence shines through. I have read tireless
of aid workers in impossible situations, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan,
Darfur and it never ceases to amaze me just how much suffering
mankind can inflict upon it. It is almost like Osiris himself has crawled
out of the book of life, the lone child of the book of Revelation and


from the ribs of the beast spread suffering so thick in the form of a
plague called democracy.




Rendition
Attacked with a knife, stripped and hustled away. No, this isn't a
crime in Central Park; it's the U.S. government in action. Trail by
jury? Jury of your peers? Wiretapping? Defending the right to torture?
Those weren't campaign promises; they were carried out after taking
office. So who on the campaign trail will take the law into their hands
the worst in your opinion?



Buckets of Blood: Politics (the Old Fashion Way)

Two fisted anal implants on a Washington D.C. scale, adjusting the
level of discourse by kicking the glass out of a USA Today machine
and cutting the multi-colored graphs out of the paper and inserting
them violently into the mouths of Washington staffers and watching
as they swerve very fast down the marble steps of the House of
Representatives as CNN cameramen film it for their own private
home porn.

Buying heroin for cameramen in Washington will get you footage that
will bend your hair back into your ear canal. My partner Jack Random
and I hadn't been to Washington in a while but it was on this trip that
we found that one bit of footage that would almost start a revolution
in the United States of America, almost.
Stakeout a coffee house in Washington D.C. and you'll catch some
go-getters, some lackeys, some wannabe's and some insiders who
just may have the answers to those questions you have the theory to
but have learned that if they talk they will indeed be killed or ruined
on a medical level.
Footage, any footage of any politician committing any violent sex act
in leather, fish guts or wrapped in moldy copies of the Washington
Post will get you unlimited means of cash. We got a message from


the doorman of a famous Washington Hotel bartender that a video of
Karen Hughes, the spinster and Deaths head brick chunking
mistress of the more right of the right wing of the Republican Party
was on tape, dispensing entire cans of mixed fruit at young Mexican
boys while Minutemen in the background on the Arizona border
watched in awe and sat naked loading and unloading foreign
manufactured weapons just like so many scenes in the A Team
series that was so popular in the 1980s. We had to get the tape and
we set out with a suitcase full of drugs, banned toys from China to
grease the more conservative lobbyists, and hard drives full of leaked
CIA papers on the four major networks coverage of the current
presidential campaign.





Documentary in a Campaign Year
Theres a church on the border
Between the proximity
Of rape and what we voted for
Where hooded holy men
And killers sleep standing up in freezing
Water they swallowed yesterday
Released out at sea, extradition
Rendition, and revolution under a flag
Freedom of speech in a body bag



The Wood Inside The Frame
The diesel was rotten and the stench coming out the back was soft
core for the Washington D.C. crowd hanging out around Dupont
Circle. Inside the trailer of the truck are computer screens and
printers spitting out the eavesdropping information on every politician
in the district. The information sits on shelves in Delaware malls while
prices are worked out and its no short order work. Once a case goes
to trial the information can be fed to the grand jury or not based on
the level of cash flowing into Delaware.



The inside story has it that the National review has a twenty-
thousand square foot former jewelry store set aside for its own bad
seeds that they have been paying on for years, but mind you the
shelves go all the way to the ceiling and are a tremendous fire
hazard.

Highway markers on the way to Delaware if translated into the trickle
down economics of Ronald Reagan will give you a guide to the
precise aisle and box to each transgression. For instance, a
particular mile marker taken with the name of a local town, the letters
taken together and re-arranged under the right frame of mind, not
counting the use of acronyms and terminal drug use will give you the
answers you need.



Branch In The Ice Glass Cube

Apprehended and controlled? Never in Washington and certainly not
in the guise of a political party. Arrested only happens back in your
home state. The only way you are arrested in the district is when you
go against, for any other lack of reference, when you go against the
establishment. The establishment for our point of reference here is
not any political party, its the machine.

Recounting in black and white works in the movies, but in the quick
motion world of sound bites of CNN and the Internet the worst thing
you can do is hire an image consultant, approach a reporter who is
image conscious, or whose track record you are unaware of. Take a
look at the Larry Craig situation.





Capricorn One Comes To Pakistan

With the current chaos in Pakistan the world is in an uproar and


rightly so. Aid is considered to be cut off in official press releases
while you can imagine phone tag s being played and jokes are being
made,

Bush Administration official: Oh yea, aid is being cut off, well rip off
real quick so itll only hurt for a minute and then give you another
one. (laughs) Hey, by the way, next time you bomb Bhutto, try putting
it inside the damn bus will ya?

CNN ran a slightly offensive infomercial this evening with the same
revolving 15 second bit of footage playing over and over with talking
heads going on and on What it all boils down to is the Bush
administration, like that of Nixon in the 1960s will support and aid
any acts of dirty pool or assassination, period. Take that to the bank,
Karl Rove or not.
Official press core were present to capture the arrests and beatings
of protestors, well dressed protestors and in a country where the
phone lines were reportedly down, Internet reports are still getting out
along with video and still photography. All that is missing is an official
Fox News banner flying over the crowd and war torn, grizzled Fox
security in their khaki vests keeping the truth victimized for us across
the border.


Last Chance for the Apostles to Order Out

The New York Times will report on November 1 that a security team
from Halliburton will have men with rifles on the roofs of every polling
place in the state of Florida. These desperate animals drunk and
hyped on the American dream, pleased to be back from the oil fields
of Kuwait will shoot anyone, even their own. Laser sights are a thing
of the past to these bastards.

Just fire into the crowd Dick Cheney demanded as he slammed his
fist into his desk on a live feed from the situation room. Illegal war be
damned, Lyndon Johnson was a stroke of dynamite away from
immortality. We discredited Nader and Jesse Jackson, now all we left
is the Hollywood left. Jackson was easy with a sex-fueled child out of
wedlock but Nader we had to find the right people to get him to run.
Get the Green party to refuse to name a candidate, thats all it took,


hell, even the Grateful Dead walked away from him.

The Christian Science Monitor will disclose the past of the woman
who tried to bleed a patriot like Bill OReilly, Sean Hannity claimed.
OReilly who was encouraged to settle the case on the advice of
William Bennett, stalked to the nearest boardroom window in the Fox
studios and masturbated in full view of a primary school just letting
out for the Halloween weekend.

Karl Rove took a driving tour of the New England coastline
accompanied by a laptop playing the new video of Bin Laden. While
on the phone to Vice President Cheney he discussed the benefits of
abandoning Afghanistan for North Korea.


Rove on Arafat and the Exodus of the Left

Karl Rove still drunk with power from the 2004 election placed a call
to Ariel Sharon today. Rove reportedly said, Its been a good week
Ariel, we won the election and Arafat is as good as dead. The
President is still sleeping so well handle this ourselves. Wherever
Arafat gets buried, it doesnt matter so dont kick up such a fuss over
it. You can always bomb the gravesite later; blow the little guy right
out of the ground. I imagine we could get Robert McNamara to say
some words over him. With that Rove slammed down the phone and
switched on CNN. CNN was reporting a story about thousands of
Americans contemplating the move to Canada after Bushs victory.
An aide to Mr. Rove said, Well, if they all move to Canada that will
end the shipments of antibiotics from Canada and get the lobby for
the AMA off our ass. Rove laughed and headed down to the Oval
office.





Chief Rehnquist at the OK Corral

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist with a fresh tracheotomy scar in


his neck, his meat cut on his plate for him, sits in a chair overlooking
the Potomac listening to Dick Cheney on the phone. His eyes are
misty.

Vice President Cheney: Now Will, you know the President has a
mandate to appoint a Justice while the Congress is in recess. We
both know youre unable to hardly sit up without help. Clarence
Thomas is going to replace you as Chief and the President would like
you to support him without question.

Chief Rehnquist: Listen Dick, in four years youll be out of a job and
back to Halliburton. President Reagan appointed me and I will step
down when I am good and damn ready. You didnt even stand up for
your daughter Dick, how can anyone trust you? So no one, you, the
President or that bastard Karl Rove is going to dismiss me in a thirst
for power. Ill stay around long enough to see the three of you before
me on treason.

Vice President Cheney: Hold the line a moment Will

Theres a long silence and the door to Chief Rehnquists study opens
and two men in dark suits walk into the room. One of the men takes
the phone from Chief Rehnquists hands and says, Yes sir.
Chief Rehnquist looks around the room and stares back at the phone
line the man lay down on the desk. One of the men produces a sheet
of paper and offers a pen to Chief Rehnquist.

Fallujah and the Coverage of the Networks

An American Marine officer compared the upcoming battle in Fallujah
as the biggest since Hue city in 1968. What they are not saying is
that Hue city was the Tet offensive, the offensive that marked the
beginning of the end in the War in Vietnam.

Karl Rove, a usual presence in the situation room at the White House
watches reports come in on Fallujah. The President and Vice
President Dick Cheney sit in the Oval office and ponder why CNN is
reporting on the life of Celine Dion and not the Bush plan of attack in
Iraq. A call is made to CNN studios in Atlanta. Karl Rove calls Dick


Cheney down to the situation room and the two discuss the count of
civilians dead in the attacks.

Vice President Cheney: Weve got the word on the networks that
Iraqi forces will be heading the attack and that we are little more than
advisors in the situation, but I tell you if any of them get in the way,
its easy to pick one off in the confusion. These attacks near the
police stations, the interim leaders homes are playing good on Fox.

Karl Rove: Murdoch is going to have to get jerked off for this one.

The President comes in the room. Everyone snaps to attention,
except for Karl Rove.

President Bush: Whats the score over there, we coming in hard and
low?

Vice President Cheney: Mr. President all reports show that we are
meeting some resistance and were controlling the media response.
Secretary Powell is on his way from his residence.

President Bush: Hell, I know that, CNN has got Celine Dion on, the
patriotism is damn low. Fifty-one percent of the vote and a war cant
get on television? Wheres Powell?

Vice president Cheney: He is on his way from home; he should be
here in a few moments Mr. President.

Karl Rove: Damn son of a bitch, he wont be here long anyway.

Vice President Cheney looks around the room and sees the look in
the eyes of those gathered and smirks a bit to himself.



The Center Of The Room Is A Long Ways Away

A MANSEL REPORT NEWSFLASH:



An unnamed source reports to me:
Shortly after Rove and W met, when they were young men, Rove
developed a crush on W. Rumor has it that W initially welcomed the
advances, but after a couple of trysts W cut it off. Being gay just
didn't figure into his future. But Rove fell hard and realized, after
several years of separation, that the only way to be near W was to
become his tireless promoter and make him the most powerful man
in the world. After a dreadful run for senate W realized he could use
Rove's passion for his own ends. The rest is history.


The proof of this being the fact that on Election night Karl Rove said
he was coming down from the White House tree house. This not so
fictional tree house is the scene for many a Roman orgy. With a 62-
inch plasma scene showing clips of Caligula (especially the scene
where Malcom McDowell shoves his hand up the ass of the man who
has just married his bride) and the film Gladiator, the room
sometimes filling with smoke as the circuit heats up from a designer
hot plate cooking up aromatherapy oils. Lines of cocaine are featured
at the entrance to the tree house. More than once the President has
had to be subdued from calling a press conference while under the
influence. Karl Rove staggers or crawls up to the leg of the President
and while being held on a leash by another unnamed individual offers
to do anything for the Presidents attention. The resignation of John
Ashcroft swings into action the most aggressive hunt for a cross-
dresser with impeccable Beltway credentials. If it was good enough
for the Democrats then it is more than good enough for a
conservative Texas oilman.




Burn The Town and Load The Supplies On The Train

Off the reservation, thats what they used to and perhaps still call an
agent or a soldier who has gone away from orders, away from the
plan. Karl Rove was a young man when he first learned about the
uses of intimidation. Its his personae to use whatever means he can
to get when he wants. The Presidents desire to drill for oil in the Artic


wilderness due to a Republican House and Senate is sending
companies like Philips Petroleum, Exxon, Texaco, Amoco, Shell, Ford
Motor Company, and Chevron into convulsions and Karl Rove has
put his blessing on the Bush family fortune to take the lions share,
not to mention the Saudi Royal Family.




Editorial: War Crimes

The flames of the fire crackle with a dull sensitivity to light and in that
quiet and eerie self-absorbing air is the cruelty of what modern man
has become. Mass graves around the world are like deposits one
would usually dig up from the earth, but these holes in the ground are
a poison that chars the earth from the inside out. War is a self-
enabling machine, which operates on the idea that the spilling of
blood, the taking of innocent life, and the re-birthing of the landscape
only wants more.

The eyes of the suffering fill with tears and exist far beyond the
camera lens, the image captured on film or video. No documentary
can capture the effects of war each and every day of a human life.
Not even the words of the survivors are accurate enough to portray
the suffering. Someone Im sure has suggested that war is toughest
on the survivors. The victims, for them the suffering is over.

Statistics of war are pornography. To equate a human life with a ratio
on any scale is to run the numbers through your head and blood
leaping off the cerebral page. How can one sit and contemplate the
skies when it has rained down ash upon their skin? In a crime scene
the bodies of the dead talk to the investigators and tell them stories
but war is not just a crime scene, war is a crime.








A Night of Television in Middle America

Karl Rove kicks back in his chair and laughs out loud. President Bush
turns away from the television and says, What is it Karl, you
remember something funny? Rove says, The Conservative Nader,
Arlen Specter is going down, he finally over shot his field. President
Bush replies, Yea Karl, I never did like Specter, I dont like any man
who wont have a drink with you or stands in the way of progress.
Why with Gonzales in office and Clarence heading up the court, Jeb
will have a damn easy go of it in a few years. You are gonna stand
behind Jeb arent you Karl? Rove replies the affirmative and walks
over to the window.

President Bush turns up the television. Hilary Shelton from the
NAACP is on C-Span talking what kind of America they want to see.
President Bush says, Karl, whos this guy Hillary Shelton with the
NAACP, havent met him have I? Karl Rove fixes his gaze on the
television, No, hes too far down the line to worry about. Lyndon
would have met with him but youre above that. President Bush has a
confused look on his face for a moment then replies, Yea, I am
arent I?

Outside the White House a reporter writes on his pad that the
President hasnt mentioned Osama Bin Laden in several days,
almost a week. Is the search in Afghanistan over?



The Lust To Rule

President Bush: I just saw on CBN that the new leader in the Ivory
Coast is a born again Christian. We should invite him to the White
House, hell; he won a 59 percent of the vote. They got to love him
there.

Vice President Dick Cheney: Mr. President, the Ivory Coast is in bed
with France and has been since 1960. The French are getting all the
type of contracts we are getting in Iraq now. There are rampant cases
of AIDS in the Ivory Coast also. To bring him here would open up the


AIDS discussion in a time where we are enjoying overwhelming
popularity, its too soon after the election.

President Bush: Well Dick, maybe youre right. I havent asked Karl
about this yet. How is Burns doing over in Cairo? Did you tell him
how to act, what not to say to the press?

Vice President Dick Cheney: Yes, Mr. President. As you remember
you didnt want to send Powell.

President Bush: No, we cant send the Secretary of State to a
Palestinian funeral, how would that look to Ariel and the people of
Israel? Karls already called Ariel about the funeral. Ill discuss it with
Tony tonight at dinner.

Burns is Assistant Secretary of State William Burns
Tony is British Prime Minister Tony Blair




Even The Dead Stand On End At The End Of The Day

Karl Rove sits in front of several television sets taking notes on the
coverage of the attack on Fallujah. He counts how many times each
network mentions the number of dead, the number wounded. Like a
ghastly documentarian he organizes the numbers and leaks stories
to the press in ways that will change the story of Iraq so subtlety that
it would take constant attention to each newscast to tell the
difference. Staffers come and go and bring fresh wine coolers for
Rove to swill down and laugh a menacing uncontrollable laughter.
On the phone:

Karl Rove: Yea, the latest report is that the citizens of Iraq are
offering meals to the soldiers as they enter their homes. Many of the
wounded Iraqi soldiers are asking about the prize on Saddams head.

A Reporter from the Fox Network: Ok, well get it on the air. Any news
on any changes in the cabinet yet?



Karl Rove: I should know something in about two weeks tops.

A Reporter from the Fox Network: Is there any word on the
massacres in the Sudan?

With that comment the line goes dead.



The Poodle, The Terrorist, and His War Lover

President Bush sits with a beer in his hand flipping through the Bible.
Looking into the book of Revelation he gazes up at Karl Rove lying
on the couch. You know Karl, never in my life did I think Id have a
black man working for me compare the National Education
Association to a terrorist organization and then decide to quit and
someone call Tony a poodle. Karl Rove laughs.

Karl Rove: Well, I wouldnt exactly call him a poodle but what I think
they mean is hes your bitch.

President Bush: You think so?

Karl Rove: What else could they mean?

President Bush: You know after all we have gotten away with, all the
back stabbing, the lying, the cheating and the just plain criminal
behavior, I never thought anyone, especially Rod Paige would have
the balls to call them terrorists.

Karl Rove gets serious for a moment.

Karl Rove: We seriously need to do something about these folks
calling you and Dick war criminals. Nobody called Lyndon Johnson a
war criminal when he lied about the Gulf of Tonkin and that has been
forty years ago this year. But they did call Kissinger a war criminal.

President Bush: My dad told me Henry is a war criminal.






Long Live The House of Closed Rule

Vice President Dick Cheney is taken to the hospital for shortness of
breath supposedly due to a cold.

Karl Rove: We have to start working on someone to appoint Vice
President. It cant be anyone who was voted in narrowly. Maybe not
even someone in office right now.

President Bush: Karl, Dicks not dead yet is he? I mean shouldnt we
wait till he is at least on a machine to breath or something?

Karl Rove: Three heart attacks, a pacemaker, and we should wait?
Think of all the kick backs he will miss out on with Halliburton.
Especially when we move troops into North Korea next year.

President Bush: You mean Iran dont you Karl? Well, No one lives
forever.




Controlled Hysteria In A Palace of Deceit

Sitting in chairs in the Oval office Karl Rove, President Bush, Grover
Norquist and Dick Cheney arriving late, meet to discuss strategy.

President Bush: I guess Porter is kicking some ass over there at the
CIA. McLaughlins running like a dog with his balls between his
cheeks.

Karl Rove: Well, you knew he would, hes been sliding off the bridge
for a while. Let him drown himself.

President Bush: Yea Karl, we need our people in all the key


positions.

Grover Norquist: Thirty-two years of McLaughlin, hell be writing a
book or two. Hell be on C-Span in no time or that Charlie Rose.
Karl Rove: Grover did you see that about Arafat? Skimming two
million a month, shit you got to admire that. We could tie him to Bin
Laden easy. Its not too hard to connect the dots whether they are
there or not. Weve done it before.

Grover Norquist: Such as?

President Bush looks nervously at Karl Rove. Rove just smiles like
the jackal he is.

Karl Rove: You remember that friend of yours whose daughter was
accused of rape? The DUI your son got?

Grover Norquist shifts in his chair and gets up suddenly for more ice
for his drink.

Grover Norquist: Shit. I didnt mean anything I already knew of.

Karl Rove: Need to know basis Grover, need to know.

At this point Vice President Dick Cheney comes into the Oval office.
The President gets up to greet him.

President Bush: Dick, how are you? Everything go ok?
The President looks deeply into the Vice presidents eyes looking for
a weakness.

President Bush: Dick I want you to go over to the CIA tomorrow and
see if you can help Porter kick some ass over there.

Karl Rove: Walk unannounced into some offices and see the
reaction. Let it be known that a general accounting may have to be
done. All special operations may be included.

Vice President Dick Cheney: I can do that.






When The Locust Come Theyll Be Drunk With Glory and Fear

In Washington it was a day that every citizen, every politician and
registered voter not counted in this or the last Presidential election
would have considered unusual. A man set himself on fire outside the
White House gates; one tried to jump the fence and was beaten
senseless. Five cabinet members turned in their resignation; it was a
full day in Washington politics. Condoleezza Rice will replace Colin
Powell. In the words of Karl Rove, Shes a damn sight better to look
at and a helluva lot more ruthless. Also, two high level members of
the CIA left in a flurry of strong words. Profanity, disgust and
treachery were the order of the day and like revenge were served
cold and lapped at by the White House press core like a Peterson
verdict or the death of the wounded Iraqi man who was executed by
an American marine on video today.

Inside the tree house located somewhere in the White House.

President Bush: Karl its been a day I wouldnt have missed for the
world.

Karl Rove: I guess Dicks ass kicking did some good after all, Porter
called and said he almost pissed himself when Kappes and Sulick
tore into him. He got it all on tape and will cash it in when the time is
right. But Porters got to be kept in his place.

President Bush: Of course he does, how you want to put the yolk on
him?

Karl Rove: We could slice off a bit of the Iraq oil money and hold it
out in front of him like a carrot to a rabbit. If he doesnt behave like a
rabbit well sick the dogs on him.






How White Is The Water When It Runs Like Coal

Karl Rove: Now all this with Delay, Christ, cant any of these bastards
in the press understand what were doing? Goddamn it. To achieve
our goals we have to bend the law, break it, trample it and damn it,
do what we please.

President Bush: But..

Karl Rove: I dont care what we have to change, we are going to turn
this country into what it has needed for the last 100 years, a fully
functioning police state without the guards. The inmates running the
aisles yelling fire.

Porter Goss: Its not like we dont know how to treat undesirables.
There are

Karl Rove: Who taught you to think Porter; youre nothing but a damn
lap dog anyway. Run out and get me some witnesses why dont you?

Porter Goss leaves the room. Several aides enter the room and are
waved away by President Bush. President Bush tells them to shut the
door behind them.

Karl Rove: Did you see the story in the Washington Post? It slants it
our way. They only quote Pelosi, you know shes no threat. If
Kennedy or some of the others get on us itll be picked up by CNN
and spit out everywhere. Control the subordinate thats the first rule
of everything progressive.
President Bush: Its happening in Texas, thats my biggest problem
with it all. Well they wont get away with it thats for damn sure.

Karl Rove: It could be our damn Whitewater you know.








Pardon A Turkey But Get Screwed By A Russian Bear

November 17, 2004 in the Tree House, a little frank discussion about
sex and power.

President Bush: I dont mind telling you when I kissed Condoleezza I
got a little woody. When was the last time you had a black woman
Karl?

Karl Rove: What day is it? (laughs)

President Bush: Whats with this ex-KGB son bitch coming out with a
nuclear missile nobody else has? All this in Iraq and we got to deal
with this?

Karl Rove: McClellan said that Putin and you had discussed it before.
We already know about it.

President Bush: The hell we did.

Karl Rove: Well you dont want to seem like you dont know what is
going on.

President Bush: Get Porter over here. If Putin is still humping little
boys like he has been for a while maybe we can get him there.

Karl Rove: Well not as bad as Hitler he liked to be pissed on. So you
got off on Condoleezza?

President Bush: Yea, you should smell her walk by on Air Force One.

Later that day in the situation room, Vice President Bush speaks to
Joint Chief of Staff General Richard Myers on a video hookup.

Vice President Cheney: General what do you hear from Abizaid and
Casey?

General Myers: Mr. Vice President the situation is just hellish. We got
wounded everywhere. We found a soldier duct taped with ordinance


in a house. Looks like he had been there for a few days.

Vice President Cheney: They didnt execute him did they? The
soldier who shot the wounded Iraqi is an African-American? It
sounded that way on the tape. Can you confirm this?

General Myers: No sir, I cant confirm that.



A Monkey In The Rain, A Tiger By The Tail

On Air Force One after the Clinton library dedication, President Bush
is on the phone to Karl Rove. Mrs. Bush is sitting in the office of Air
Force One relaxing.

President Bush: Damn wet day to honor an adulterer. Dad kept
hitting me in the side and asking if they had the dress there.

Mrs. Bush laughs a little and avoids eye contact with the President.

Karl Rove: I heard they had it in the FBI storage next to the tapes of
the phone calls to Jennifer Flowers. (laughs)

President Bush: Ill see when we get back to the House.

The President hangs up the phone and shifts around in his chair to
look directly at Mrs. Bush.

Mrs. Bush: George you shouldnt talk about Clinton that way. You
know youve had your time with some women and for all I know some
men.

President Bush: Laura!

Mrs. Bush: Well you sure laid one on Margaret in front of the whole
damn world. Just because you couldnt screw her when you were a
coke head doesnt mean shell screw you now. You kissed her on the
lips and Condoleeza on the cheek. Its obvious whom you prefer.



President Bush: I dont know what youre talking about.

The President goes to the front of the plane to backslap the pilots for
a little male bonding. The journalists on board vie for his attention but
are told to sit back down by the Secret Service.




The Mansel Report on location in Crawford, Texas

The population of Crawford, Texas, most of them shudder at each
visit by President Bush. An elderly man who has lived in Crawford for
years tells me, I rode in an elevator with Senator Joseph McCarthey
years ago. Man had a pistol tucked down in his belt and had the look
of an evangelical who just might handle snakes if so inclined. He had
a look in his eye I havent seen since I met the President. Jerry
Falwell has that same look on television. Another Crawford resident
explained the situation like this, Not waving to the President, not
supporting the carpetbagger farmer, whatever the hell he is, is to put
your life at risk. There are always cameras here and you are
expected to smile and praise him. The Secret Service can be
downright terrifying. Its like a rabid dog shaking a broken bottle in
your face.

A three to one vote for Bush has misled his mind to believe that you
can appeal to the fear and trust of the average American. The
residents of Crawford, Texas dont have that luxury.




The Mansel Report: The Fight For Right in Gehenna

W. H. Auden wrote, I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.
In Iran there is already a sense of North Vietnam. You can almost
feel the singe of the napalm melting the landscape, the ghost of
Richard Nixon, ghost of Lyndon Johnson escalating the beast.


Terrorists are surging into Iraq to fight American forces and like the
Ho Chi Minh trail of Vietnam, the borders of Iraq and Iran which have
seen war, these two countries were at war from 1980 to 1988, have
united under a goal of a religious uprising. Basing the hatred they
feel for the American military and the few countries that still have
troops fighting in Iraq they have like the Republican agenda, based
their presence and belief on religious tolerance. The overwhelming
victory enjoyed by President Bush in 2004 was won by playing on the
religious and social ignorance of the very same enemy we are
fighting in the war on terror. The religions they choose may be
different, their gods may wear different clothes of armor, but the
message is the same, We are on the side of right, all others against
us shall be destroyed.




If I Had A Hammer

President Bush: So we finally got that prick Kofi. This should type of
any business about weapons inspectors and Iraq.

Karl Rove: Absolutely, show he was in bed with Saddam and they
were both on the take and we can write our own ticket. First we stole
an election, started a war right out of LBJs playbook, got the rights to
billions in oil and now we have discredited our enemy. To the victor
go the spoils!

President Bush: While were ahead I dont want any of the new
people getting distracted away from the message. Damn it were
almost invincible.
At this point Condoleeza Rice comes into the oval office.

Condoleeza Rice: Mr. President I need to talk to you about a few
matters.
President Bush smiles a wicked smile at Karl Rove and rubs his
crotch below the desk.

President Bush: Sure, Condi. Karl would you excuse us.



Karl Rove exits the oval office with a chuckle, as he passes he
checks out Condoleezas ass. For the next ten minutes Condoleeza
Rice rambles on about pressing matters as President Bush presses
his crotch against the edge of his desk and hums lowly.
Chile In A Bowl

President Bush: I tell you Karl they pulled him right out of it. They
wouldnt let the secret service guy through, hell I told him to pull his
weapon. Shoot some of them fuckers. The leader of the free world
and I got to mess with some Chilean punks.

Karl Rove: How was the food?

President Bush: Well it wasnt chili I can tell you that. (laughs)
Protestors tear gas, and damn Putin with his nuclear bomb what a
damn thanksgiving trip.

Karl Rove: How do you think I feel staying in Washington and getting
drunk and making prank calls to the Kerry household. (laughs) But
seriously, let it be known that if North Korea keeps swinging their
balls around well cut them right off.

President Bush: Yes Karl.




Another Mule Kicking In Your Stall

The setting: long distance secure call from the United States to Chile.

Vice President Cheney: Mr. President, they found the item in the tax
bill and it is all over the news.

President Bush: What does Karl say?

Vice President Cheney: Mr. Rove didnt come into work today; he
says he is taking some lost time while you are out of the country.



President Bush: Who is kicking up such a fuss about it?

Vice President Cheney: McCain is all over the Sunday talk shows
about it, he compared it to the days of J. Edgar Hoover.

President Bush: Hoover? Jesus Dick is it that bad?

Vice President Bush: Mr. President it will blow over, I have
experienced worse when trying to route Halliburton business around
U.N. sanctions.

President Bush: I guess you have Dick. When you find Karl ask him
to give me a call.




A Hen In The Fox House

President Bush: Karl, it looks like Putin is going to play right into our
hands and well get our invasion into Iran after all. Hell, maybe we
could send Jimmy Carter to negotiate withem. (laughs)

Karl Rove: Yea, maybe we could get him to take some peanuts toem
if he can get that hammer out of his hand with his Habitat for the
Poor house building. (laughs)

President Bush: You saw the election same as me Karl, they dont
seem to mind if we kill a couple thousand men and women, we got a
mandate Karl! A mandate!

At this point Laura Bush comes into the room and the President cuts
the call short.

President Bush: Laura, what are you up to?

Laura Bush: George did you tell Porter to threaten everyone at the
FBI into supporting you?



President Bush: Of course not, Porter just wants everyone on the
same page. Why you asking me something like that?

Laura Bush: I dont want to end up like Hillary having to defend your
every move.




The Trouble With The Ukraine Is The Trouble With The U.S.


In the Oval office, sometimes a translator would be helpful.

Secretary of State Colin Powell: Mr. President there is a serious
situation in the Ukraine.

President Bush: The Ukraine did you say? Where is that again, I
mean on the map, you know.

Secretary of State Colin Powell looks amused and tries not to laugh.
He walks over to the globe and points. The President walks over and
bends over and peers at the globe.

President Bush: Oh ok, thats Putins part of the world huh?

Secretary of State Colin Powell: Yes sir.

President Bush: Well how serious is it?

Secretary of State Colin Powell: Their new leader has been kicked
out and another has taken his place in a coup.

President Bush: A coup?

Secretary of State Colin Powell: Yes sir, a military..

President Bush: Ok, I think I got what youre saying. Do we send in


troops? We can transfer some from Korea cant we?

Secretary of State Colin Powell: No sir I dont believe troops are
necessary at this time. We could make a comment on the floor of the
United Nations.

President Bush: With Kofi there? Hell no.

Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks to him self how he wishes his
time was up. President Bush thinks how can I get out of this
conversation that I dont understand. President Bush steps on a
special button that President Ronald Reagen had installed which
signaled to the secretary outside of the oval office to come in and tell
the President Bush about a personal phone call.

The secretary comes in and tells the President about a phone call
from one of his daughters and Secretary of State Colin Powell
excuses himself. Just outside the oval office, in a secret room, Karl
Rove listens on a headset. As Powell leaves Karl Rove picks up the
extension and reassures the President.



The Mansel Report

What can actions provide to the listener that words cannot? If you
see it before you then you know its real and you can believe it. What
would every American believe if he saw into the corridors of power?
Would he see the administration totally going against what is good
and gracious in our society?

You hear words like, fair and balanced or equal coverage and you
think that an editorial on a newscast is news and suddenly you
realize that like in a courtroom the lawyers representing their case
will try and turn you against the evidence you just heard with a
closing argument. We are living in a time when the courts, the
government, the entertainment world is operating on a level
previously not seen. In a time when a rumor or a biased voice on
television can become fact and later be entered into evidence and
realized into law the faith of a non-believer, a liberal thinking man or


woman is at risk of becoming quiet, forever.

That is why I have been writing these pieces that are funny I guess
but remind me of the words from Shakespeare, In time we will
provide our darker purpose. I wish I knew what the next four years
would bring us, I have a pretty good idea and I think so do you. Will
the Democrats or the liberal thinker someday become like the
American Indian, the southern black man, or a child in the Jewish
ghetto in Poland or Germany? If life has proved one point it is that
poverty knows no color. Politicians always campaign on the basis of
speaking to the middle class. Just how many people do you know
that are truly in the middle class? The majority of this country is not
middle class and thus the politicians, Democrat or Republican, are
not speaking to the entire country, just the ones that can afford to
hear it. Satire is all I have.




Back On The Ukraine Gang

On the ranch in Crawford, Texas the situation room at the ranch has
a fully stocked bar but sadly no pretzels.
President Bush: What is this Powell is saying that we dont want to
get into a pissing contest with Russia?

Vice President Dick Cheney: I think Colin was just trying to establish
a strategy.
President Bush: When is he leaving? Damn. Putin is trying to bring
back the cold war or what?

Karl Rove: Well if he wants a war he can get it.

Vice President Dick Cheney: General Myers has inquired about what
action we are to take.

President Bush: Well its a damn revolution so thats fighting aint it?
Theres no damn oil over there Dick so Halliburton cant get in there
that way. But if we do find a way into the Ukraine you damn well


better cut the pie a little better this time. That damn slice at a time
aint cutting it.

Karl Rove: Its yet another thing to come up and take the focus off of
Bin Laden. Thats what we need.




The Continuing Legend of King Karls Court

Karl Rove: We have to get the focus off of the Supreme Court until
we can get Rehnquist out and put Thomas as the head of the court.

President Bush: Clement just isnt keeping back the press any damn
good. Did you see what he said Karl, he dont thinkhe dont think!
Who the hell told him to think? Hes just a damn lawyer what the hell
does he know about thinking? He shouldnt ever say a word on the
matter unless we put those words in his mouth.

Karl Rove: Anything can get spun any way you like it. You just have
to know the right words not to say, thats what your dad never figured
out.

President Bush: He didnt get a second term did he?

Karl Rove: No, and the reason why is those years he spent in the
CIA, he crossed and burned the wrong bridges, turned back around
and tread through the same water that held the debris. That debris
was the press, and you cant even cheat this country responsibly
without the press on your side.



The Duality of Seminal Nitrate

President Bush: Can you believe were still getting asked about the
Iraqi elections?



Prime Minister Tony Blair: As I told you before Mr. President I thought
we would all along.

President Bush: Well I know that Tony but I figured it would die out
after a while after we whipped a couple of towns over there.

Prime Minister Tony Blair: If you remember Saddam warned before
we invaded that when it came to street to street, house to house
fighting we would lose men by the thousands

President Bush: (interrupting) Weve only lost about a little over a
thousand men so far, hell we found him in a damn hole. If I was him I
would have used the gun.

Prime Minister Tony Blair: What do you think about an AIDS summit
sometime next year in the United States?

President Bush: An AIDS summit? No, I dont think so Tony, we cant
draw too much attention to that right now Karl said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair: Well you must admit Mr. President that it
wouldnt hurt too appear sympathetic

President Bush: I dont see why Tony, Im not running for re-election,
you may be but Im not.

Prime Minister Tony Blair: It was just an idea.




The Birth of the Ukraine Wall?

Karl Rove: The international press has picked up on the beating at
the polling stations in the Ukraine. It looks like they havent as yet
discovered that Porters guys were there to help.

President Bush: What they dont know is that our guys started all
this? Is that what youre saying?



Karl Rove: Yea, a regime change. The United States has been doing
it for years and years. We did in Iraq, Mexico. We tried it in Cuba but
Kennedy didnt have the fucking balls to do it.

President Bush: Well as long as it goes along with our vision Karl Im
all for it. What else?

Karl Rove shows the President a picture of the face of Viktor
Yushchenko. He sees the mysterious ailment that has befallen the
leader.

President Bush: Jesus, damn Christ Karl, what the hell is that
leprosy?

Karl Rove: Well not exactly. Its a strain that is similar that has been
produced in one of our labs in the North Dakota mountains, one of
our secret labs.

President Bush: Secret lab? Can I go there and see it, kind of pep up
the folks there?

Karl Rove: I dont think that would be such a good idea, it would draw
attention to something that doesnt exist officially.

President Bush: How do you know about it Karl if it doesnt exist
actually?

Karl Rove: We kidnapped some Russian former KGB scientists a few
years ago and tortured them until they gave us the beginnings of the
formula. Everyone that has worked on this project has been
disappeared as the Russians put it or secured away.

President Bush: Damn Karl.







Consigliore

Vice President Dick Cheney: Mr. President it looks like we are
constantly one step behind the guys who are doing the beheadings
and the torture in Iraq.

President Bush: Well why cant we speed up and get them with that
one more step? Cant we get our guys to do as they were trained?

Vice President Dick Cheney: Its not always so clear in the field.

Karl Rove: Now you know Dick everything is gray when you look at it,
there is no black and white, theres just the gray that appears before
your eyes, thats all there is.

Vice President Dick Cheney: Well thats not how the Washington
Times sees it.

Karl Rove: Dick weve known each other a while now and you should
know that the Washington Times is about as reliable and listened to
as the liberals on the California coast. Its been clear that there are
no responsible news organizations west of Maryland in this country,
at least none that we own outright.

At that point Vice President Dick Cheney excuses himself from the
oval office. The President looks at Karl Rove with a deceitful smile
and places his hands on his desk and clasps them together like a
schoolboy waiting for the lesson.

Karl Rove: What Dick doesnt know and what he cannot know since
he wont run for the office when your time is up is that we need the
war in Iraq to continue for another six or seven years.

President Bush: Six or seven years?

Karl Rove: Yea, just in case we dont win the office with one of our
guys the continuance of the war can be blamed on whoever comes
next. However, if our guy wins in 2008 we can quicken the pace a bit.
Its already been in danger of stopping a few times. Thats why we
had to create so much distress in Fallujah. Its not like we cant wipe


out these bastards anytime we want. If we can put a missile through
a doorway we can put one in a training camp on the other side of the
world. (laughs)


The Fine Print Has Never Been So Bold

President Bush: What do we have to do to get Rehnquist out,
shootem?

Karl Rove: Not that its not a good idea but it would be a bit difficult
under the circumstances.

President Bush: Come on Karl, you remember that scene in
Godfather II, they said there was no one you couldnt get to. Theres
got to be a way.

Karl Rove: Hell resign in January then we can appoint Thomas to the
head of the bench then get to work on doing away with Roe v. Wade
and several others.

President Bush: How about doing away with the minimum wage Karl?

Karl Rove: Theyd shoot your ass for that one.

President Bush: Well then we should be able to get the artic drilling
passed and get rid of a bunch of this bullshit agenda on the
environment. If nothing else we could turn Iraq into another Rwanda
and let the sympathy from that propel us into the death of the
Democratic Party.

Karl Rove: Yea that should be no problem. The one thing we have to
worry about is who will run in 2008. The polls say Hillary will run but
does she stand a chance? If she does then we had better begin a
case against her for something. The only problem is she is being
damn careful since she knows she is going to run.

President Bush: We should be able to kick up enough shit about Bill
to sink Hillary, shouldnt we?



Karl Rove: I dont know his approval rating is pretty high. But on the
other hand we have got the country shifted toward religion again and
with that we can prey on them like guard dogs. If they support Hillary
and Bill they are supporting the devil. They are against God. It all
comes to the point of getting rid of Rehnquist and overturning Roe v.
Wade. Get abortion on their minds, the killing of babies, like the
peace movement did against the war in Vietnam. It worked then; it
knocked Lyndon out of running again and fueled the fear that sent
Nixon into a spiral.

President Bush: I think youre right Karl, but if that doesnt work well
just shootem. They know how to do that in Texas you know.





Beginning Of The End Of The End Of The United Nations

President Bush: Dick Im going to Canada as you know, so I want
you to stick around and kick some ass in the senate. Get the fires
burning for the Alaska drilling. Youre gonna make millions with
Halliburton so its in your best interest.

Vice President Dick Cheney: Yes sir, theyll be no problem in getting
contracts, the land will have to be prepped before drilling. You know
that sir.

President Bush: Uh, yea, I sure do Dick.

Karl Rove: Well see you later Dick.

Vice President Dick Cheney once again is dismissed from the room.

Karl Rove: Now remember, these damn Canadians havent
supported us a damn day in this war and now they are at least gonna
talk to us about it, shit, who the hell do they think they are?



President Bush: I dont know Karl, it smells of Putin and his men to
tell you the truth. First he tells the world about a nuclear weapon no
one else will have and now he lets the Dalia Lama into Russia to
bless a Buddhist temple that they destroyed.

Karl Rove: Its like an asteroid worshipping the point of impact.
Where does Canada think they would be without our help? Hell,
where would half the world be without coming and begging us for
money? Putin is engaging in triangular logic, hell succeed as long as
we keep paying attention to him.


Hysteria Boils Over Into Sedition

While the L.A. Times is reporting a battle being waged with
deliberately misleading information to throw off the enemy, President
Bush is in Canada enjoying the hospitality of those who do not want
him there. The Canadian people it is said side with the French when
it comes to President Bush. The lack of gun related crimes in Canada
shocks President Bush who is a card- carrying member of the
National Rifle Association.

But meanwhile, in a crumbling building just outside Fallujah a small
patrol of Marines have dug into what will become a long night that will
last two days. Low on ammunition they are encircled and taking fire.
They radio for assistance and the bombing comes, hitting a house
nearby and killing what turns out to be a family held against their will
by armed terrorists. On this patrol is a young man who read a
columnist back home where he is from says that he defends the
soldier who shot the unarmed Iraqi militant. Up until that point the
young man hadnt even heard of the incident. The bombing meant to
draw the fire away from the Marines draws other terrorists loyal to the
Iraq militia into the fight.

Yet, in Canada President Bush is on the phone to his mentor Karl
Rove while resting in a chair in the very same sitting room that
Winston Churchill once sat to edit his memoirs after a long talk with
journalists.



President Bush: Karl any news from Iraq?

Karl Rove: No nothing new today, just a few dead on both sides.
Myers came out against our program of misinformation. Just like
Ridge we may have to can his ass too.

President Bush: Yea well I was sorry to see Tom go actually Karl.
Weve known each other a while.

Karl Rove: What does Prime Minister Martin have to say about it all?

President Bush: He just wanted me to come all the way up here to
get an introduction to the Saudi Royal family, can you believe that? I
told him to make his own damn introductions. If he wont support us
in Iraq how can I trust him in introducing him to my extended family?

The Marines have taken two wounded by the time President Bush
gets off the phone and flips on the television. He channel surfs for a
little while and then heads over to the bed to do some reading, the
sports page.





Escalation and Resignation

President Bush: You know Karl it was a great idea to up the troop
deployment to 150,000 on the day Brokaw retires. Everyone will be
so focused on that and not even notice we are escalating this war.

Karl Rove: Listen, I know what Im doing. Just think of all those
families losing health care because the breadwinner is over in Iraq.
Theres more we can get credit for with just a few adjustments. Their
all pawns in our game you know?

President Bush: Damn it Karl, youre just an evil bastard arent you?

Karl Rove: Just dont ever get on my bad side. (laughs)



President Bush: Should I make a call to Brokaw and wish him well or
something?

Karl Rove: Hell no he was on Hardball last night talking down your
administration.

President Bush: Thanks for keeping up with things Karl.



On Dangerous Ground In The Emperors New Clothes

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card: Mr. President we have to be
sure that when we make a statement about the Ukraine we dont
upset Putin, you know how his temper is.

President Bush: His temper? Well Andrew what about my temper?
We cant let someone get in on something that we have already
taken a position on.

White House Chief of Staff: But I do think what you said about the
United Nations was a good choice. I think we should stay out of it
now and let Kofi crumble under the weight of the investigation and
public opinion.

President Bush: Yea, hes not long for this worldI mean hell be out
of office in no time.

Karl Rove: Sort of makes you miss the Presidential campaign dont
it? (laughs)



The Tortoise Knows The Hare Is Blind
(Inspired by Robinson Jeffers poem, Be Angry At The Sun)


Its enraging to see day after day the constant barrage of dishonesty
and lack of caring for the suffering by the Bush administration. The


very idea of not delaying the Iraqi elections ensures there will be
many, many deaths of innocent Iraqi, yes they do exist, you know,
children and mothers, innocent people who just want to feed and
educate their children, mostly American forces and the few
international forces that remain in the country. Bush has shied away
from the idea of using National Guard troops in overseas location
where regular American troops are placed and using non-
professional soldiers in harms way.

A new puppet in place of the Homeland Security leader brings to
mind the early works of the CIA. A new leader in a country, or in this
case Homeland Security, can lower or raise the value of stock,
namely military stock. The impending invasion into Iran, or what I am
sure will be clarified, as expansion into Iran, will bring the call-up of
more and more troops.

Almost every invasion of any country throughout history has meant
intense casualties in the opening days, casualties that we cannot
afford. The slaughter in the Ivory Coast today by the French is just a
foreshadowing of what is to come. The number of dead is 65 though
the official report says only 20, and many more wounded. Its easy to
see the reports on television or read about them in the press and just
shrug it off as, What can I do about it. However, it seems to me that
we thought the same thing during the protests of Vietnam at Kent
State when the military fired into a group of unarmed protestors. In a
land where it is a legal right to protest and question the governments
position it seems that internationally as well as in this country can be
deadly. How many suicide bombers will it take in the United States for
us to realize that yes, we have started a war overseas?


If the Internet, namely email cant be trusted and should be given
over to government control, then where will the first amendment be?
The very suggestion that the Internet should be under government
control is laughable when you consider the far-reaching hand of the
Patriot Act. When the trail of a murder takes away from coverage of
the escalation of a war, the innocent dying and wounded, the illegal
gathering of information both here and abroad, when the regime
change in the Ukraine could possibly, just possibly be a broad step
towards beginning another Cold War, then what kind of democracy


do we enjoy?

Hear me, people: We have now to deal with another racesmall
and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and
overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and
the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have
made many rules that the rich break but the poor and weak but the
poor many not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to
support the rich and those who rule
- Chief Sitting Bull, speaking at the Powder River Conference in 1877

One last thing to consider as we look at the forced attrition going on
today around the world in the name of democracy is that Hitler
admired the Americans treatment and extermination of an inferior
race, the American Indian.






Its Like The Dead Dont Exist

How many Americans have died in wars? Would you say they were
all heroes? I just dont know if they all were heroes by definition, but
they were all there in harms way, this I know for sure. The dead have
traditionally been sent home with an American flag draped over their
coffins, that is if there was enough of them found and they were not
buried on the field of battle or lost at sea. The image of the body
returning to be buried on American soil is symbolic of the
appreciation we have as a country for their effort and their sacrifice.
But today, when bodies return home from the war in Iraq it is decided
that we do not owe them a debt of gratitude. We do not need to thank
them for their effort, their sacrifice. The dead from the attack on
September 11, 2001 graced our television screens for many weeks,
those that we could find enough to bury unless they were burned to
death or crushed under the weight of steel and concrete or blown up
from the point of impact. The men and women that died on
September 11, 2001 died from the result of a terrorist attack. The
men and women returning home from Iraq died from an act of war.


How can this administration explain to us that their losses or more
important or far greater than the other? The dead returning from Iraq
return home silently and without being photographed. I dont know if
the families are even allowed to be present when the body of their
son, or father, or wife, or sister or brother returns home. I guess it is
like the new official policy of torture being accepted practice. Just as
long as it doesnt happen on American soil, its okay.



An Oil Man Sees Not Blood But Rather Sees A Velvety Blackness

President Bush: Karl you saw what I said, hell we did away with
slavery we can do away with anything.

Karl Rove: Well, you left out one thing but its not that important since
none of the press has picked up on it yet. Slavery has been around in
this country a bit longer than 100 years. The elections will go on in
Iraq and theyll be a high body count, we already have in place the
means to have the election fixed no matter who shows up to vote.
What does the liberal media think, that we went over there and
invaded a damn country and not put our own government in?

President Bush: Yea, to the victor go the spoils.

Karl Rove: And in this case the spoils pump right out of the ground.
(laughs)



Dantes Pennsylvania Avenue Address

Somewhere in a dingy basement level of the White House is Richard
Nixons copy of Dantes Inferno. Its very threadbare and has only
been picked up and read twice in all these years. There was some
rumbling about featuring it in the Nixon library but it was quickly
diminished when the Nixon kids failed to realize the importance. The
two times it has been picked up from the stack of memorabilia was
firstly by George Bush Sr. He was compared to a certain level of hell


and he needed to be sure just which level it was. He is said to have
flipped through the book puzzling at the Italian translation. The
second time was when Karl Rove found it in a drunken midnight
stupor in 2000. Rove reached down to retrieve it from the pile and fell
down hitting the Braille version of the Gutenberg Bible left by William
Taft. Rove picked up the copy of Dante and in a loud and crude way
tried to raise the ghost of Nixon with many chants of four more years
until he began to vomit up blood. One has to wonder what Dante
would say about this administration. Would he compose a special
volume of the Purgatory to include a daily snapshot in hell? We may
never know.





Bohemia Bulimia

Oh, dear friends of the Mansel Report, those that had to suffer
through a campaign featuring the old moral religious right. The fire
and brimstone cancer that could resemble a monarchy of belief if
only the evangelical Christians could manage to join ranks under one
roof. What would the voting public, yes, all those red states think if
they knew their precious right-wing devotees where carrying on
rituals like the Bohemian Club? The worship of an owl is confusing
when you bear in mind the Republican agenda against the
environment. Its just puzzling. This Mansel Report is very brief
because I just wanted to get this information to the readers.




These Waters Run, These Waters Go Slow

President Bush: Who the hell is this reporter think he is? Asking
Rumsfeld that question?

Vice President Dick Cheney: The reporter didnt actually ask the
question he got the soldier to ask it.



President Bush: Damn it I know that Dick. Is it true what the soldiers
are saying, do they really have to dig through the damn garbage?

Vice President Dick Cheney: Yes sir, they call it hillbilly armor.

President Bush: Well if they got time to dig around in the garbage
then they got time for extra duty. Tell General Myers that every soldier
he finds digging in the garbage is to be assigned extra duty.

Vice President Dick Cheney: Yes sir. The press is saying that
Secretary was uncaring in his response.

President Bush: Well you can tell them

Karl Rove: Itll die out and in a week it will be dismissed. Its not the
first time the Secretary has been singled out. Its important for these
matters to be brought out into the open, its not like anything will ever
be done about it. Let the left have their say and be done with it. We
are in control of this country and they know it.





Bandar Bush To The Rescue

President Bush: Karl did you know they paid Al Sharpton to campaign
for Kerry? Hell no wonder they lost.

Karl Rove: Well we paid people in almost fifty states to help us.

President Bush: Youre kidding me?

Karl Rove: No, Bandar helped out with the cash flow through August.

President Bush: He always said hed do anything for me. But you had
to pay people to help campaign for us?



Karl Rove: No, we had to pay people to stand next to you while you
campaigned.

President Bush: Well what if this ever gets out?

Karl Rove: It wont, believe me Bandar paid them well.

President Bush: What are we going to do now since Kerik got found
out?

Karl Rove: Yea imagine that, a crooked politician.




A Mansel Report Exclusive: Jeb Bush Will Not Run In 2008

It has been decided in the highest ranks of the Republican Party that
Jeb Bush should not run for President in 2008. When Jeb Bush
asked his brother, the President of the United States, the President
responded with a typed answer direct from Karl Rove. Jeb, you
helped us with the count in 2000 and put me where I am, you need to
stay where you are and do the same in 2008. What the President
didnt say was that Jeb Bushs daughter, who was caught with
possession of drugs in a Rehab facility would hurt his chances and
any candidacy outside of Florida, it would be nearly impossible.

Also, the Republican Party already has accepted that Howard Dean
will be the new head of the Democratic Party and has set up a war
room to combat the onslaught of positive media attention to the
Democratic Party. Files used in the 2004 campaign are being
updated and will be used in leaked internal memoranda on
Democratic Party stationary as it was done before in the 2000
election. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has announced
his desire to run for President in 2008 and all one has to do is look at
his recent statements to the press and his hard line approach that
mirrors the views of Karl Rove and the Republican Party elite to know
that he will be a front runner. Frist is from Tennessee, a section of the
country that constantly goes to the red states, the Republican


agenda. All you have to do is analyze the fact that neither major party
Presidential candidate came to the state of Alabama during the 2004
campaign because it was understood that Alabama would go
Republican as it always does. Only Ralph Nader came to Alabama to
speak. I myself received an ominous call asking me if I wanted to
participate in a protest in nearby Huntsville, Alabama, about an hour
away from me. The call said this is so and so and there was a long
silence and then the voice said I am calling from Washington. The
voice then asked me if I wanted to participate in a protest the next
day. I watched very closely the three news channels in Huntsville the
next day and there was not a report of a protest. It just makes me
wonder who made the call and why. Was it because I had signed
online my support for Ralph Naders opportunity to run for President?
Was it because someone who I dont know used that list to get the
information of Nader supporters? Or was it the Nader campaign
actually calling me? I started writing about the Bush administration of
November 2, 2004, the day of the election. I believe in what I am
doing and will continue hopefully to write these reports at least until
Bush is out of office.



Inauguration of the Doomed

It is reported in the Las Vegas Sun that Bushs Inauguration will cost
between 30 and 40 million dollars. Thats quite a bit of money to
inaugurate a man that wasnt elected for his first term. But how about
we take half of that 30 to 40 million dollars and put some armor on
some of our military Hummers? Or we could take just a meager 10
million and assure that for a fact no student would be left behind. We
could buy some therapy for Kerik. Because remember, if you are a
conservative you have real problems that need real answers, you
deserve the publics sympathy and trust. You deserve their prayers.
But if you are a liberal, a democrat, then you are just a low down
filthy scum and should be treated as such. At the very least your
family should be taken from their home and photographed and
dismissed orally by Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly. These beliefs
are like the Old Testament belief. What, you dont believe in me? Go
and kill every living thing in their land for they will not worship me.


The Old Testament would have dissolved the ACLU before it was
even created, unions for workers that didnt tow the company line? I
dont think so. I guess the CIAs new reign is based on the Old
Testament.




The Trent, McCain Express

President Bush: Kofi is getting heat from Trent Lott and McCain.

Karl Rove: Yea, Trent will hitem with the bigot vote. (laughs)

President Bush: Yea, Karl. But nobody can take McCain seriously
anymore.

Karl Rove: As it gets closer to the election in 2008 well release some
obscure and crazy positions and watch as McCain rushes to state his
opposition to each of them.

President Bush: You going to set him up Karl?

Karl Rove: Well get Brent Scowcroft or someone to invite him to
dinner and leak some information about the Frist campaign and
watch ol McCain go nuts.

President Bush: Yea but dont you think Hillary will be laughing at this
stuff too?

Karl Rove: It wont matter, weve got a mole.


The Blood Of The Many, Advance The Few

We can certainly appreciate the fact that this administration
constantly assures us that the violence in Iraq will escalate. This half-
hearted guarantee is to provide an answer when the country truly
erupts and we begin to lose perhaps a hundred men and women a


week rather than eight or nine a day. Focusing now on the trial of
Chemical Ali draws the attention away from our own terrified troops
as they begin to sense the blood in the air. I imagine that no one is
more scared than the Iraqi citizens. I have read reports that suggest
that they are indeed terrified and would welcome more help as long
as it would last longer than an afternoon.

Elsewhere in the world, in Rwanda, the Sudan, the Ivory Coast where
people of color, people with no quickly identifiable resources that can
be utilized by the U.S., Great Britain or the U.N., continue to die,
continue to be beaten, continue to be raped and thrown daily into
either fleeing or facing the struggle head on, whether against a wall
or out in the open. Not unlike in history when a government wanted to
sneak in changes in policy by escalating a situation into even more
violence, the Bush administration has attacked and invaded Iraq,
which featured no direct threat to the U.S. and thus have instituted
changes that before 9/11 would never have been approved by the
congress. The real threat being in Afghanistan and now the border of
Pakistan being all but ignored we continue to lose troops every day.
When U.S. troops were only in Afghanistan the losses were about
one or two a week. So this suggests that the blood of the many only
serve to advance the thirst of the few.




Inauguration of the Doomed

It is reported in the Las Vegas Sun that Bushs Inauguration will cost
between 30 and 40 million dollars. Thats quite a bit of money to
inaugurate a man that wasnt elected for his first term. But how about
we take half of that 30 to 40 million dollars and put some armor on
some of our military Hummers? Or we could take just a meager 10
million and assure that for a fact no student would be left behind. We
could buy some therapy for Kerik. Because remember, if you are a
conservative you have real problems that need real answers, you
deserve the publics sympathy and trust. You deserve their prayers.
But if you are a liberal, a democrat, then you are just a low down
filthy scum and should be treated as such. At the very least your


family should be taken from their home and photographed and
dismissed orally by Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly. These beliefs
are like the Old Testament belief. What, you dont believe in me? Go
and kill every living thing in their land for they will not worship me.
The Old Testament would have dissolved the ACLU before it was
even created, unions for workers that didnt tow the company line? I
dont think so. I guess the CIAs new reign is based on the Old
Testament.



Try Again Mr. President

In Crawford, Texas there is a small building on the property that is
filled with television monitors and cameras. Tape recorders and
everything you would find in a small television studio. The building is
used for an editor to re-edit all of the footage where President Bush
has stumbled on his words in an interview, press conference, state of
the union, etc., Every time President Bush comes to the Crawford
ranch he must submit to several hours of voice over work and stand-
ups in front of a blue screen to fix what he has not gotten correct in
the first place.

In the studio sitting next to the editor and soundboard is Karl Rove.
The master formulator of Bushs presidency and in fact the last
several years of his life tweaks the EQ and does his best to preserve
his legacy most of all since it is known that it is his candidate that is
at stake. The idea of this whole process was Roves idea in attempt
to not make the George W. Bush Jr. Presidential library out to be a
joke.



Richard Armitage For Czar

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage its said will resign
his position in about a month. That will be enough time for him to be
the perfect candidate for the Homeland Security position made very
controversial by Kerik in his less than honest discussions with the


President. There is to a new czar of Intelligence soon and
Armitages name has been kicked around for that position also. Now
that the Intelligence Bill has been signed Porter Goss wouldnt trade
his position as the head of the CIA for no amount of money. The new
Intelligence czar will be under the direct light of the media while the
head of the CIA can operate in the gray areas of the world.
Meanwhile, President Bush it is said has tore out one of those
subscription cards from Time magazine and signed up again to
subscribe to the magazine.



Bad Grades Since Abu Ghraib

Rumsfeld, the name brings up quite a few images. The only question
about Rumsfeld is when he will be made the scapegoat of the
violence in Iraq and when he will unofficially decide to resign. The
approval of torture in Abu Ghraib (did you notice those that were
accused of abusing detainees were not able to subpoena any of the
higher ranking officers who more than likely issued the orders?), now
the controversy over the Secretarys inability or lack of desire to sign
form letters of thanks and sorrow to the families of those who lost
family members in this war in Iraq, the answering of the question
about armor for the military and several other instances all lead to
Rumsfelds departure being imminent. There is one thing you cant
do in a Republican administration and that is attracting bad attention
on the President. If things go in Iraq as they are expected and the
election turns out to be a bloodbath look for Rumsfeld to resign in
February or March.
Today the President admitted the bombers have made a difference.
This is part, an early part however to slowly admit that the violence in
Iraq, the violence leading up to the election was referred to by the
President before it happens. Each day before the election this
administration will start letting it slip that the violence could be bad,
that we may lose more soldiers on the ground. In short, Bush is now
doing preemptive damage control.






Just Another Mosul Mr. President, Thats All

With todays bombing in Mosul comes perhaps, just the beginning of
the worst. Our soldiers, the international soldiers, the civilians,
everyone is going to have to try and survive the worst of the war in
the next month or so. Attacks will continue as they have recently until
the election in Iraq can itself sift through the rubble of a country under
the thumb of a President who would not be denied and a band of
terrorists hell bent on disrupting what could have easily not occurred.

I can just see Secretary Rumsfeld begrudgingly signing several
letters and rushing out of his office for the situation room to organize
more attacks. I can see the President kicking back with a beer with
Karl Rove, taking sips and looking out for Laura and getting a kick
out of a secret remote camera that shows the cell of Saddam
Hussein.

One can only guess at where the month of January will lead us as
the election in Iraq grows closer, or the lives that will be lost on both
sides; the lives of the unarmed and innocent civilians. Once again,
when these latest dead arrive back on American soil they will arrive
under the cloak of darkness, darkness the size of America.



Democracy: Earths Sliding Door
(for Jake Berry)

The decade rushes to its middle point and the earth shudders at its
new deeply red pigment it has encountered on its sandy soil. The
earth wanders at the many cries of pain mixed with the declarations
of joy. The earth will not always heal itself, we know this to be fact.
So at the solstice we gather our eyes together and gaze up and away
from the earth to the heavens and wonder. But the world is the one in
need of healing, nor our souls, not the heavens. An act of genocide
can set the earth back millions of years and its inhabitants turn away
from the solstice and again after each occurrence of genocide turn to
revenge and helplessness. From the biblical mythology of King


James to the encryptions found around the world we learn that time
has always gone on afterwards. We are like the earth, too accepting
of genocide. We are partly to blame and sorely loss in the pity. The
annihilation of a race of people, the destruction of a way of life, these
are both carried out in the name of power and greed. If the earth had
a soul it wouldnt allow these things to occur. No one, not even the
earth wants to lie down crying and to awake choking back tears. The
regimes of the world, through history that have sided with evil and
sided with the power of greed have always fallen, sooner or later. Will
democracy turn out to be just another regime? Can we go on as a
civilization without it? Can we survive it?




Halliburton, Man of the Year in 2005?

President Bush plans to send the same 20 judges for nomination that
didnt even get a yea or nay the first time. The gall if you can call it
that in this season, is that the Bush administration refuses to believe
that their plans can ever be turned away. One thing about this
administration is that they know exactly how to get back those that
dont support them. It wouldnt surprise me that Karl Roves motto is,
Payback is hell.

The New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department
who have been under the rule of former Mayor of New York Rudy
Giuliani and Kerik must come under some kind of suspicion. How
high does the graft go? Remember Serpico? Investing the New York
Firemans Fund in Halliburton? Knowing the past of Vice President
Dick Cheney, knowing the suspicions of Kerik being tied to the mob,
the past of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, I wonder what you
might find if you dug into this subject half as hard as they did for
Whitewater and the Clintons? Giuliani, Times Man of the Year in
2001, President Bush Times Man of the Year in 2004, where is the
respect this year for Times Man of the Year of 2003, the American
soldier? I guess if you start a war you win, but if you serve in that war,
well, you won last year didnt you?






Christmas Eve in Crawford, Texas

Its Christmas Eve in Crawford, Texas at the Bush ranch. However in
Iraq Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was dragged kicking and
screaming on a plane to visit the troops. While in Iraq Rumsfeld did
not travel in a hummer with hillbilly armor, preferring to ride in a
triple welded shut hummer usually used by General Myers when he
visits the country. Condoleeza Rice celebrated Christmas Eve by
playing a recital for the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose hands were all
hidden mysteriously in their laps. But in Crawford Texas the President
had to be restrained from calling out to the pres core after half-dozen
eggnogs. Stripped down to his cowboy boots and a skull and bones
pin around his neck, the President began calling up old girlfriends
and betting on Green Bay. Its a very merry Christmas for those
wounded and dying citizens of Iraq, and for the American troops who
have given up the light at the end of the tunnel for the next sunrise,
and the next, and the next.




Translation

Today on the Mansel Report we offer a translation of the opening of
President Bushs Christmas radio address. The President said:

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. On this Christmas day, as families
across the nation gather in our homes to celebrate, Laura and I
extend to all Americans our best wishes for the holidays. We hope
this Christmas is a time of joy and peace for each of you, and we
hope it offers you a chance for rest and reflection as you look forward
to the new year ahead.

The Mansel Report translates:

Ok, lets get this over with. Today its Christmas, a day I dont have to


work except for this piece of paper they told me to read, as families
gather in their homes, some dying of hunger, others bleeding from
the beatings of police who wrongly accused them of being protestors
on a peaceful street, others crying and watching CNN for a glimpse
of a loved one in Iraq, Laura and I, well, Laura anyway, extends, or
sends out like an anonymous email, our best wishes or at least
enough to not get us both shot or impeached, for the holidays. We
know that this isnt a time of joy or peace so we wont even pretend
that it is. We know that this isnt a time for you to rest because many
of you either have to panhandle to feed your family or habit, or the
only reflection you can hope for is the ice that froze your electric or
gas meter, or the ice that froze to the windshield of your car. The
New Year ahead will be filled with more of the same so like it or move
to Canada.

Best wishes from the White House (not really) and the Mansel
Report.



Halliburton, The Grim Reaper on Retainer


President Bush: 14, 425 dead and Halliburton cant get any of the
repair work?

Vice President Dick Cheney: Well, its still early. We have friends in
that part of the world. I thought Mr. President if you could make a few
calls on our, I mean Halliburtons behalf then we could get some of
the work or all of it.

President Bush: Some of that no bid shit huh? (laughing) Goddamn,
Dick youre a ruthless bastard. Hell, I dont blame you. I suppose
theyll be requests for aid and Ill have to sit and pose next to some
damn body in a chair and say blah blah blah.

Karl Rove: You have to look at a wide view of these things. It can
take attention away from what we are doing on the world stage. If we
come out and say, Oh yes, we support the cleanup and


humanitarian need. They will, the international press, especially our
networks here in America, will take the focus off the elections in Iraq
and what we are doing in Iran.



K Street Babylon

Something has to be done was the cry through the many biased
rooms of K Street. An onlooker, one that might could be paid
attention to, Michael Moore was walking down K Street not with a
camera crew in tow, not with a reporter doing a walking interview, but
just Michael Moore himself on a stroll in the nations capitol. The
word was pressed into cell phones and spread like the HIV virus in
an African village. Doors were slammed and faces were pressed into
windows. The White House lines opened up on the switchboard,
John McCain was alerted and prepared a speech to the press.
Television stations dispatched their crews to K Street and the
Homeland Security section organized crowd control. When all of
these crews, officials and police converged on the scene Michael
Moore stepped into a taxicab unaware of the crazed actions of
everyone else. Passersby who were innocent were subpoenaed and
cried and kicked and were arrested. It was just another grief-stricken
day in the White House territory normally known as the nations
capitol.



Its Only Screams If You Listen

The Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the two major political
parties in the United States have created and established nothing
short of a class war in this country. Politicians in this country upon
first term in Washington may not be a millionaire but by second term
you can be sure that by the second term, thanks to the lack of
campaign finance reform, lobbyists, you can be sure they are
swimming in money by then. Have you ever met a millionaire in
Washington that can remember what it is like to be poor in this
country? Speaking to the middle class on the campaign trail, as they


step over the lower class, those far below the poverty level, the
unacquainted few, the left behind who didnt even have a chance to
begin with, can only read over the agenda meant for those for who
many of the poor serve everyday, can pick which poison they prefer.

Just a few years ago it was mentioned on the news that many in the
U.S. Army were living on food stamps, you dont hear this anymore. I
guess they are all living well and eating well-balanced meals in Iraq,
if they are alive still. One question that needs to be answered is this,
if the dead are brought in the country where the press or the families
of the victims can see them, are we sure that the amount of dead is
correct? If we cant count them ourselves are we sure the count is
correct? Can we trust the army?

Tens of thousands died in a Tsunami and as Americans switched to
another channel they found other subjects to occupy their minds a
few seconds at a time. So anesthetized are we that we can flip
channels and pass by 20,000 to 40,000 dead and not be moved
makes you wonder about those that lived near the concentration
camps in Poland and Germany. In the very moving documentary
Shoah about the holocaust there are several Germans who lived just
a few hundred feet away from the camps at Treblinka that said,
Once you got used to the screams it wasnt that bad. I guess when
it is you and I screaming, when it is America screaming those that
live near us will get used to the noise.



Two Tenths of One Percent

Two tenths of one percent, two tenths of one percent is what the
United States gives to relief efforts around the world. Ladies and
gentlemen we can only offer you this month two tenths of one
percent of the required oxygen you will need for the month of
January. Think it will be enough? The Conservatives in the United
States say that is too much to give away. With the death count of the
Tsunami growing to 60,000, the threat of disease could double that
amount, maybe even triple it. The billions spent on the war in Iraq is
staggering but when you think about the 35 million given for the relief


effort its indecent. Its sickening and it is embarrassing.

Helen Wachs speaking of her daughter Faye Wachs on CNN said
that when her daughter got to the Bangkok Airport there were
representatives of every government greeting everyone and the
American representatives were in the VIP lounge. They were then
charged for passport photos and her daughter used her ATM card to
help pay for some of the people in line and helped give them some
money for food. This is not surprising. I suppose those from the
United States in the VIP lounge were feeling put out and wished
those that were on their way to Bangkok would hurry up. The United
States couldnt afford to pay for the passport photos for the
Americans who were possibly in shock and stressed over the
carnage they had just seen? But I guess its better those we as a
country focus on the footage taken by civilians so we as ghouls can
see the suffering of those dying and dead. Remember how everyone
in this country was left shocked and how the tears poured over a few
thousand dead? How would we feel if 40,000 or 60,000 had died in
New York that day? America, as bad as you think you have it there is
someone else who has it worse than you. America, can you even
conceive of that?


What Becomes A President Most

What becomes a President most? That he is on vacation when a
disaster occurs, no that is not his fault. That he stays on vacation and
spends the day bicycling and clearing brush? Yes, a photo
opportunity in the place of a sincere statement? Former President Bill
Clinton made a comment to the BBC radio 4s network and urged a
concentrated effort in giving out aid to the victims. The White House
quickly added that it didnt like that the former President rushed to
cameras to make a statement. Perhaps they didnt understand that it
was the BBC radio and not television.

The death toll is presently 100,000. The United States has as I have
said earlier pledged 35 million to the relief effort and has spent in the
100s of billions on the war in Iraq. I guess murder is a better
investment than the deaths of a natural disaster.





U.N.? We Dont Need No Stinking U.N.

President Bush has decided along with Japan, India, and Australia
that the U.S. would control the response of aid to the victims of the
Tsunami. By bypassing the U.N. this sets a precedent that could
undermine any help the U.S. could use in the future if such an event
were to take place on our shores. In Iraq President Bush has a
coalition of the willing and I suppose now we have a coalition of
those worthy enough to care. If the Bush administration does not
care to utilize the U.N. then why doesnt President Bush expel all
representatives from the U.N. and close its doors. Install the
Homeland Security offices there not too far from ground zero and
immediately destroy all of our relations with every government in the
world. The Bush administration seems to think of itself as above all
others and this could be our downfall within the next four years of the
Presidents second term.


2004: A Year In Passing

The ghost of Yasser Arafat closes in on Israeli territory. He smiles a
defiant smile and wanders the grounds of the holy land previously
refused him. The shadow of Emma Goldman attends the conventions
of the Republican and Democratic party, the words of Martin Luther
King Jr. are read by a class of third graders and the ocean erupts and
lashes onto a land rich in beauty but poor in defenses. 2004 was and
still is for a few more hours the turbulent kind of year that will find its
home in the history book of many generations with a black halo over
the graves of individuals of history and the dark cold shoulder of the
mass graves of the world. The political climate in 2004 was like a
cancer patient refusing both blindfold and cigarette, removing the I.V.
from its arm and wandering out into the abandoned field next to the
hospital and setting out to see for it if the pundits were telling the
truth. No cameras captured it and there was no transcript, no airtime
was gleaned for any reporter who has to sit for a make up artist
before delivering the news. So while the world focuses on the parties


and celebrations of the new year thousands are homeless in India,
the death toll has reached 124,000, and the powers to be are
basking in the radiating light of a starry sky that is so relentless as to
suggest there is hope in the new year.


Give Till It Hurts Mr. President

President Bush: 35 to 350 million in aid, hell, thats good political
capital.

Karl Rove: Yea especially when you consider the government allows
you so much for charity, ten percent I think. Stacked up against the
gross national product of the U.S.

President Bush: You mean Karl we could write this off?

Karl Rove: Well anything is possible when youre in control.

President Bush: I guess so Karl.



The Daily Death Toll

The United States have lost 1,329 from our military in Iraq according
to the Associated Press. We are at present date scheduled to have
troops in Iraq until 2006, you can almost imagine how many more we
lose in the years to come. The Associated Press actually has a
section on their wire service reports each day that is entitled, A Daily
Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq. It shouldnt surprise us too
much that we as a country are in yet another war that we had no
business being in. Perhaps the A.P. should begin a new section of
their reports that feature the daily count of civilians that have been
killed each day out of hate, over which regime is in charge, or
through acts of greed. If all people on this earth are inherently good
then why does so much evil persist?






Axis of Evil: Three Is No Longer A Crowd

Its sad to say but we may be on the verge of another war fought on
two fronts. The war in Iraq is spiraling out of control and leaving a
bloody and sandy trail you could follow from the International Space
Station, and now it looks with the threatening talk from North Korea
we could end up in another Korean War. You can guess correctly that
the defense department would dearly love this. Poorly armored
Hummers and all we could send our thinned out troops already to
another disastrous war. If in fact we do end up back in South Korea a
draft would have to certainly be to be used to supply both fronts. With
troops almost certainly to expand into Iran after the January election
in Iraq, and the possible impending war in North Korea all three of
President Bushs axis of evil would be accounted for. It may not be
worth it anymore to duck and cover, it may be necessary to settle
your estate and sit out in your front yard and wait.



Tsunami, An Opportunity For CNN, NBC, CBS?

The media has determined its main coverage of the Tsunami should
be the precise amount given by individuals, or corporations or even
governments. It reminds me of Keith Richards analysis of the concert
for hunger, Live Aid. He said basically that it was great that all these
people gave money for famine relief but it was like, putting a band
aid on a rash. The amount of money given in first few days, the first
couple of years is important and everyone knows that but the turning
point in this disaster will be stability, the focus of the relief
organizations staying on the ground and helping until the countries
are back on their feet again.

Footage of the suffering played over and over again serves only the
media outlet that shows it. Do you think that the people they are
showing in tears or dying, the people moving the dead bodies into
body bags are going to go home and watch the coverage? I dont see
that by covering all of the despair in full 24 hour coverage helps the


suffering. I dont see that media outlets and press organizations
asking each person returning from these places if they have any
photos or video of the disaster.




A Blessing and A Curse

Pat Robertson has released the hounds of goodness at
www.operationblessing.org. He spoke at length tonight on the Fox
network show Hannity and Colmes. At the same time we hear on
CNN on Paula Zahns show that many defenseless children are
being kidnapped and raped by predators. At the same time on Fox
Pat Robertson is comparing the Tsunami to the end of days. Next on
the Hannity and Colmess the topic is attacking the Hollywood left is
not giving to Tsunami relief. I heard today that multi-millionaire
President Bush gave poultry 10,000.
How many times have you seen the seedy shows on at sweeps week
showing Americans in Bangkok or Singapore buying sex with children
through their special hidden camera? If a clumsily news network can
hunt out and film these sexual predators why cant they alert the
authorities and then on camera say this is the guy who paid to had
sex with this kid, here we have it all on camera? Children in these
Asian countries have been kidnapped and sold into prostitution for
years. Now is the age of the Tsunami it suddenly becomes a hot
issue in the Bush administration control of the networks. It always
seem to go that the religious right seem to accompany sexual
predators or the conversation of this epidemic. I heard in 1995 on a
short wave broadcast about a Navy sailor called the blond Angel
who was an American and had raped up to 25 women. Before the
authorities could get to him he was taken out of the country by the
American forces. Strangely, there was no mention of this incident in
the American media. In the city of Florence, Alabama where I live
there were reports rumors really, of rapes at the University here for a
long time but you never heard anything of it in the local media. Many
priests in this country and around the world have molested children
for years and the Catholic Church simply relocates them to another
Parrish. Whether or not they warn those in that parish of the priests


previous behavior I do not know. So what it all boils down to is
convince I guess. If you commit this sort of heinous crime in a
disaster zone, a zone where the Republican candidate has given
generously of money that isnt even his to give since he wasnt
actually elected in the first election, you can expect full coverage of it,
especially since there is a bloody election upcoming in Iraq.



Emma Goldman and The Times They Are A Changin'

In these days of the Bush administration you have to look back for
inspiration in dealing professionally and personally with the actions
being taken against you. Read a newspaper, watch the news and the
unflappability, the refusal to admit wrong and the dire need to find a
place where you can stand drives the liberal mind on. Do what you
can.



A Lot Of Water Under The Old Watergate

In the days of Nixon we can remember John Dean testifying before
the committee and calmly jabbing at the panel, especially Fred
Dalton Thompson. Alberto Gonzales however is a much different
story. He sits calmly and agrees often and offers no attacks on
anyone and hopes and prays to that Old Testament God Elohim that
this process will be over soon. Chief Justice Rehnquist sits at home
watching with avid interest, placing calls to the committee room and
offering his services as an inquisitor. President Bush and Karl Rove
watch while sharing a bottle of Gibleys Gin and corresponding over
the Internet to the victims of the Tsunami and posing as concerned
members of the Hollywood left.








The Mansel Report True/False or I Wouldnt Be Surprised Quiz

1. Is it true that if President Bushs brain was to be removed it could
actually be weighed?

2. Is it true that Ann Coulters dildo is emblazoned with a swastika at
the base?

3. Is it true that Vice President Dick Cheney actually died three years
ago and is being kept alive by bailing wire, silly putty and removable
anal probes?

4. Is it true that if faced with feast or famine President Bush would
choose famine because it sounds like the name of a resort?

5. Is it true that President Bush changed the Secret Service code for
Condoleeza Rice to Foxy Brown?

6. Is it true that Karl Rove has mailed out a hit list for several men
and women in the Congress and the only person to take the contract
is Gary Condit?

7. Is it true that Richard Nixon was buried face down amidst a
struggle for ownership?

8. Is it true that if you combine Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and
Oliver North you get the bloated corpse of Lee Atwater?

9. Is it true that John McCain secretly has pined for the affections of
Karl Rove?

10. Finally, is it possible that the reason Armstrong Williams was paid
was not to promote the No Child Left Behind campaign but to appear
as if the President actually knew a third black person?







Half Mass Full Shoulder
(for the ghost of Woody Guthrie)

Prisons are in production
Out in the fields
Our dear sweet children
Is their potential yield
In fallujah and gitmo
Open sores open cells
Muslims and Christians
Serving time in hell

They were rounded up
To applaud inauguration day
Then loaded and shoved
And sent on their way
I watched it on TV
I heard a sound bite
Where will our children
Be sleeping tonight

We should have known sooner
We should have organized
Now our children are strapped down
With electrodes to their eyes
How will you save for college
Public service is the best
If you can just get
Other children off your chest

Chorus:

Hail to the chief forty days a week
Hung from the flagpole are the weak
Half mass full shoulder
Half mass full shoulder





Suicide Solution

It now seems that the Iraqis are torturing detainees according to
reports. What do you expect a dog to do when everyday you kick in
the throat and dont explain why? Pretty soon that dog is going to
believe that a kick in the throat is normal and go on from there. If the
owner says it is ok, it must be.
A request has been made for more American advisors to supervise
the Iraqis. Do you see where I am going with this? No longer can we
back them into a box canyon and shoot the Indians like fish in a
barrel. Today we simply prefer to imprison the enemy and set upon
them with dogs and electrodes. Calling the kettle black will leave you
scalded. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind if you
actually care to see. What that line from Thoreau? That government
is best which governs least.
Were breeding a new brand of suicide bombers in Iraq and around
the world. Die in battle or be captured and tortured by the Americans.
What would you do?


Sudan

In that land you only hear about once in a while on the American
news, more often in the newspapers, Sudan is suffering even more
violence by pro-government forces. This is the same government that
escorted former Secretary of State Colin Powell through its region
and fought to dispel any rumors of atrocities or violence. According to
AllAfrica.com the killings have misplaced 1.45 million people and
sent another 200,000 flooding across the border into Chad since
2003. Its difficult to tell if the U.N. is fueling this violence since they
have the jurisdiction in the area and recently they reported that the
violence is on the decline, but never to worry because as soon as oil
is discovered in the Sudan and Rwanda all of these atrocities will
end. Stealth bombers will arrive along with embedded reporters in
their tan flak jackets grimacing into the camera with a twinkle in their
eyes.





The Political Discourse To Coarse To Hewn

Good evening Mr and Mrs America, from Abu Ghraid to Guantanamo
and Congress to Senate and all the troops in harms way. Let's go to
press. ...
Russia wants to ban all Jewish groups in their country. This is on the
anniversary of the genocide at Auschwitz. Some things never change
is a familiar line we all hear and seem to ignore as it circles its
charms slowly around our necks. The ever-reluctant arm of nostalgia
can be trusted to lead us astray as we change the channel to a major
network. What is more important, the fact that seven American troops
were killed in Iraq yesterday or the fact that an actress wore this
gown made by this designer at that event?

A U.S. hostage is pleading for his life on a newly surfaced video.
Honestly, what did you think when you first heard about this? Did you
see his face on the television news and think, Hes probably already
dead. A Roman Catholic priest is taken and the terrorists listened to
their disapproval and released him. So we gain from this fact that the
terrorists are not afraid of bombs, of boots on the ground, of the
capture and torture of Abu Ghraib, but they are horrified by the long
arm of the Vatican. Maybe they are terrified of the Vatican sending
thousands of priests, the ones that need to be relocated after the fact
that they had been molesting children had been made public, these
priests roaming the country and spending a little time with Iraqi
children. Im sure the Vatican could help World Vision get those
children out of the country as they originally planned but were
stopped by the Indonesian government.

1,368 troops have been killed to date in Iraq and the world press
turns to the nominations for the Academy Awards. Perhaps when the
celebrity red carpet is paved with the blood of our children and wives,
husbands and sons in the armed forces well tune in and watch the
commercials.







36 Dead, Afghanistan Unaccounted For

Thirty-six troops died today in Iraq. Closer and closer to the election
we have to wonder how many will die tomorrow or the next day. As
the dust settles on the pomp and circumstance of the Inauguration of
President Bush, medics are working feverishly in the desert heat to
rescue and save the lives of our wounded. When they can they help
the innocent Iraqis who are shot, hit by ricochet, or do not have
enough to eat or drink. On the ground its a mission of mercy, both for
the troops and the aid workers. Its life and death even as our troops
lie in their bunks, as they go to eat every morning. It doesnt seem
that any piece of technology the American taxpayer has paid so
dearly for can help in our struggle against terrorists who are fighting
and killing our troops with weapons we either sold to them or left
behind and enabled them to take possession of.

As the dust settled from the attacks of 9/11 plans were already made
to invade Iraq. Afghanistan it seems was just icing on the cake. And
what of our troops in Afghanistan? How often do we hear about these
brave souls? Usually the only time we hear about them is when the
press covers a USO visit from celebrities. The forgotten troops of
Afghanistan need our respect and attention as well. In a living room
somewhere in America a wife or a mother watches the coverage
everyday, every minute she can to see if there is any news. She
searches the Internet and receives no word. Imagine you are that
wife or mother and imagine how you would feel. Now. While
concentrating on that feeling take a moment and imagine how
unfeeling the Bush administration is.



Autopsy on the American System of Democracy Ruled
Incomplete

I read a headline today in the newspaper machine. It read, A Very
Discouraging Day. Under this line was a picture of President Bush.
Just what is so discouraging President Bush? Could it be the lives
lost in Iraq, no that couldnt be it? Could it be that his other woman
Condoleeza was beat up by that evil Senator Barbara Boxer or that


Senator Robert Byrd? Could be. Or maybe it is the fact that all these
soldiers who just insist on dying is ruining the legacy of President
Bush? Hmmm, could be.
It now being said, that President Bush will declare at the very least a
counting of the votes around the world, and whatever gets obtained
in Iraq will be a victory no matter the body count. I wonder if its true
that when this President Bush opens his Presidential library that
there will be doors that lead to nowhere, that the booths in all the
bathrooms will be big enough to seat two.

The Mansel Report strongly recommends the new book Losing
America by Sen. Robert Byrd.

Dont Look In The Mirror, It Dont See You Anymore
(for Betty Jo Tucker)

The deepening wound of what is going on in Iraq is that now, right
now, we know it is wrong. We know it is wrong now and in fifty years
it will still be wrong. Time will show that this was a war fought for the
sole purpose of greed. For our troops, for the civilians in Iraq who
must try to live day-to-day it is a horror, a true horror. Remember the
footage of the women and men in Kosovo running in the streets after
doing their shopping hoping the snipers would not get them? What
the snipers didnt get the onslaught of ethnic cleansing did.

From the Oklahoma City bombing to the elections in Iraq we have
watched as our eyes glazed over with panic and ignored that shaking
in our body so that we have become accustomed to the sight of
bodies lined up on the street or parking lot. Mourners gather and
placed flowers in Oklahoma City, in New York at the site of the World
Trade Center. America was moved and the media exploited even
that. We saw daily photographs of the notes, the cards, the flowers
etc. In Iraq it is a different story. I can imagine Iraqis lining up to
place the flowers they dont have on the site of a bombing and being
hit by the shrapnel of another bombing just a few feet away, those
that manage to make it home are bombed accidentally by an
American plane that had mechanical trouble. I heard on the news
today that gunmen took over a school that was to be used for a
voting place and drove everybody out of the building and then blew it


up. Where exactly does this fit into the budget of re-building Iraq and
its allotment for education? An estimate of three hundred billion
dollars has been spent on a war that could not wait for diplomacy.

President Bush dig enough graves on this earth and that aftershock
you feel is not an earthquake but the earth trembling not only in fear,
but also in sorrow. That shaking is the center of our only planets
heart breaking.



Apologies and Grievances

I humbly want to ask the forgiveness of everyone that reads the
Mansel Report for having to send a corrected Version once in a
while. When I sit down to write the Mansel Report I am so caught up
in the emotion of what I am writing that my eyes seem to glaze over
when I look for errors. Last night as I watched a special program on
CNN I learned that the chopper that went down the other day was full
of troops based out of Hawaii. I have a cousin I love a great deal who
is based out of Hawaii. I dont think he was one of them because we
would have heard something by now. It brought tears to my eyes at
the mere thought that it could be him.

Another reason for my mistakes is that I have a learning disability,
which hinders me; also my eye tends to run down the page when I
read any collection of writings so I have to concentrate a great deal.
So imagine my anguish when reading philosophy or some of the
writers like Heidegger or reading medical journals, which I enjoy. I am
also dyslexic so this causes yet another perplexing set of problems.
You should see me write a check. All in all I have hindrances but it
could be much worse. I could be a soldier in our army and put in
harms way in Iraq or Afghanistan. Thanks for your indulgences. Lets
hope we can change this world a little by our trust in the truth.







Bring Me The Head of Henry Kissinger

Henry Kissinger: Mistah Prez-uh-dent you kan be shure that the
Iraqis will show up at the voting booths armed with overwhelming
force. My suggestion to you is to establish a shadow organization
where you can utill-ilize the election in your favor.

President Bush: Well shit Henry, we never planned anything else.

Henry Kissinger: My sources in the Taliban through Egypt tell me that
you will have to agree to lose considerable forces to maintain or-dur
in the region.

President Bush: How many men we talking about here Henry?

Henry Kissinger: At least a few hundred Mr. Prez-uh-dent.

President Bush: What do you think Karl?

Karl Rove: I think Henry would throw his goddamn mother under the
wheels of a truck in order to get the kind of information he could use.

Henry Kissinger: Karl, my mother is dead but dont think I wouldnt try
it. (laughs)




A Dark Iraqi/American Dream State

In a brief exchange an American soldier walks by a child in the street
of Iraq. As he turns to watch the young boy walk away, he notices a
rifle poke out of a window. He sees the blast of gunfire almost as
soon as it leaves. He runs toward the child to shield him from the
gunfire. And the child turns to reveal. Under his shirt is dynamite. The
sniper shoots the child igniting the dynamite.

Down the street a reporter who survived cancer, who reported the
day before of the tactics used by reporters in the region, watches as


shrapnel flies past his head. He crawls along the street to the
humvee. Two hours later he is on his way back to his hotel to shower
and shave before dinner.

In a voting station an Iraqi a man aided by U.S. troops, picks up the
ballot box to take it to be officially counted. The ballot box is rigged to
explode upon being lifted up. The Iraqi man and the U.S. troops are
killed. The votes are extinguished. And still the Iraqi vote would be
considered a victory if this did happen.



Vote Your Conscience, Run In Fear

How would you feel if you were to figure out that as an Iraqi you
risked your life to vote for an election that was probably decided
before a single vote was cast? The press tells us today that the
turnout in the Sunni Triangle is low. Could it be that the American
military presence was lower in the Sunni Triangle than in the more or
less troubled regions? The Sunni Triangle does sit almost in the
center of the country and most of the inhabitants there have either
been killed in attacks or are too damn scared to venture out.

Today in a three minute statement President Bush called the vote in
Iraq a success. He however, did not mention the almost 9 billion
dollars unaccounted for. Taxpayer money, American money, sent to
the region has gone missing, and cannot be accounted for. Now I
realize that Iraq is not the United States, and in a region such as Iraq
in a broad transition it is a little like frontier justice, but even in a land
such as Iraq there must be SOME KIND OF GODDAMN LAW
AGAINST INFLUENCE PEDDLING AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE
REFORM! Where did the money gowe dont know? Where did the
weapons we photographed and came back later to find they were
gone. we dont know. A reporter on television said today that
despite a loss of life totaling twenty-five, the election went well.
Twenty-five lives.






Top Ten Reasons Almost 9 Billion Dollars Disappeared In Iraq

The money was needed to suffice Prince Bandar for him to keep his
terrorists on retainer out of Iraq.

The money was needed to do research into kidney dialysis in a war
zone.
Hush money for the civilians working in or near the Abu Ghraib prison
The money is utilized as a political pundit slush fund.

The money was needed to produce professional video quality training
videos for the torture being done at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
The money was needed to keep the press from mentioning
Afghanistan.
The money went to establish a consortium of Robert McNamara and
former General Tommy Franks to do a book tour through the world
debating the Bush agenda.

The money is used to fly Ann Coulter to Abu Ghraib to undress and
tease the detainees.

The money was actually needed in the U.S. to station individuals in
public places throughout the country to stand and applaud whenever
the Republicans do during President Bushs state of the union
address.
The money was acquired by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
to supply Kevlar to the Iraqi terrorists.




A Return to the Manifesto of Liberalism, The Dictionary

(This title harkens back to a time when only the priests knew how to
read and kept from the masses what the Bible really said)

Thanks to the Bush administration we can now abandon some
everyday terms for others, same meaning, different wording. Well


almost. Instead of saying down the rabbit hole we can now use
snake hole. The snake hole is dark, its shallow, and it contains
death. Now that seems a better way of saying it. It certainly sums up
this administrations feelings on the wounded and dying and those
pesky families of the victims.

Another would be gender specific. Since the Bush administration
doesnt mind screwing you, whoever you are or how you pee, we can
be assured that the religious right could care less which gender you
are, male or female they wouldnt want you to have the right choose
either way. A definition you might have never heard of for specific is,
according to Dictionary.com, A remedy intended for a particular
ailment or disorder. So instead of gender specific we can now use
neutral applicant or explicit embodiment.




YOU BET YOUR BUSH!

I have come up with a new game you can play at home. Its called,
You Bet Your Bush! In this game you read aloud a bit of what
President Bush has said and you have to translate what he was
really saying. For example, a passage from the state of the union,
You and I share a responsibility. We must pass reforms that solve
the financial problems of Social Security once and for all.

Now, in You Bet Your Bush! You might translate this line as,

We must guarantee that every financial institution that gives
overwhelmingly to the Republican Party will get the lion share of the
money that will be invested. Just like the junk bonds of the eighties
we will rape and pillage.

Or if you are playing the adult version you might answer,

You can damn well bet your Texas ass that well fuck everyone and
damn well anyone we have to get what the fuck we want! Wont we
Karl?



Either way this could be learning and often a very amusing game to
share with friends and love ones, especially if they vote conservative.




Let Freedom Cling

aid workers pass in airports
commenting blurrily of the previous wars inferno
the remains of bloodied and shattered car windows
have replaced the oil fires

the numbers of civilian dead rarely detail the number of children
their little faces twisted into metal, gored by dust
where will you find a mass grave in the sand of Iraq?

through an interpreter that we dont need
we can understand the anguish of the mothers
just like we understood them in Rawanda, and Kosovo
we knew what they were saying in Vietnam, in Poland
but we ignored their cries and brandished their lives
with democracy and freedom
just like the Christian missionaries that ventured into the rainforest
we brought sickness and death in order to save their souls

How much has changed?




Betrayal On Both Sides Of The Aisle

The President has sent Condoleezza traveling all over the world it
seems to promote and gain support for an invasion of Iran. Its
obvious we will be heading their next since we have already built
bases in Iraq to work from. The planes can be re-fueled and there is
space for the troops to stay. Its funny that talk of lifting sanctions


against a country you are going to invade is even being discussed.

The announcement of a troop withdrawal of 15,000 is merely a
smoke screen and we know this administration is so good at this. We
see what is happening but the voting public obviously doesnt seem
to mind. Stay the course, a thousand points of light, axis of evil and a
vote for Bush is a vote for God, and a vote for Kerry is a vote for the
devil.

Watch closely as our Democrats in Congress and the Senate seem
to be casually moving towards the center. What do they want a night
in the Lincoln bedroom or what? They should be made to read Sen.
Robert Byrds new book Losing America and prepare a twenty-page
report on it. When your party betrays you where do you vote?




The Henchmen Were Boiled In Their Tanks


The subway under the capitol building is full of psychopaths sniffing
the fresh newsprint of a scandal, which will never see the light of day.
Republicans are humping turnstiles where there are none and
screeching of transvestite pages loosening their ties and pouring hot
whiskey over the body of Tom Delay.

On the surface the ranch in Crawford Texas looks like a sanctuary of
mules hollering into the skies and the bodies of Mexican ranchers
bloating in the bright sunshine. Satellite photos reveal a basement
camp for delegates of the 2008 election.

Enlarged photos of torture in Iraq are etched into the hallway ceiling
of the inner sanctum of the Pentagon. The smoking lamp is lit. The
Joint Chiefs of Staff cavort with captured Iraqi women and blast tapes
of the recent state of the union.

In America today the television networks prepare for their coverage of
the Super Bowl. The line in Vegas feels abandoned as military men,


retired and presently serving have concocted a way to bet utilizing
the list of dead and wounded as a points system. State by state they
assign positions; the guards on defense are assigned to the state of
Mississippi. The number of dead and wounded from Mississippi will
serve as the number of first downs gained by each team and so on.
From the White House situation room is a tally board to keep up with
changes in each state in a live feed.




Barricading the Malls Without Walls


When you look at the society we live in this country reflect on this
quote from Shakespeare,

Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map
there. Know we have divided in three our kingdom

There is the wealthy kingdom, the middle class domain, and the
wasteland that is for those below the poverty line. Now dont get me
wrong, the domain of the middle class is right across the street from
the wasteland. The wealthy kingdom isnt located anywhere near the
domain or the wasteland, however, it is close to enough for those in
the domain to work for the wealthy and those in the wasteland to
serve the wealthy when they eat, or need their yards mowed, or their
children to be baby-sit.
Again lets turn to Shakespeare, also from King Lear,

Only we still retain
The name, and all th additions to a king. The sway,
Revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,
This concept part betwixt you.

Whatever you do dont follow too close because subjects ahead of
you may seem much, much larger than they appear.






Fireside Chat in Gehenna

President Bush: Alberto, I want you to keep up the leaning on the
Iraqis.

Alberto Gonzales: Yes, Mr. President. Mr. President I got a joke for
you.

President Bush: Ok, lets hear it.

Alberto Gonzales: How do you question a man who has his face
forced down in a toilet?

President Bush: I dont know, how?

Alberto Gonzales: You flush the toilet next to him and as the water
twirls down the bowl you scream into the toilet and it carries your
voice and the shit into the toilet where his head is. (laughs)

President Bush: Does that really work?

Alberto Gonzales: Well, weve only tried a few hundred times but
were working on it! (laughs)





The Old Speechwriters Home

In a suburb of Virginia or Maryland, somewhere near the site of a
power plant atrocity sit several ashen-faced old speechwriters now
retired. They sit each day staring out at a dumpster and a employee
parking lot and reflect.

Sound bite, Jesus, remember when we had to struggle to cut a


speech down? One says.

I tell you, if I ever had to change a word today because he couldnt
pronounce it I think
Id just quit. One stammers.

Hell, you did quit but you went back. One laughs and coughs black
bile into his hand.

Choose or lose, what goddamn little duck butter eating neophyte
thought that one up? When havent we lost with a choice? I read
somewhere where George Washington himself used to sit and drink
himself into a stupor over John Adams following him. What was that
Adams said, "People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity.
Shit, where would politics as we know it be without adversity.

Didnt you hear, they changed the spelling from adversity to
controversy? Laughs all around. But it dont matter anyway, one day
theyll be an old bloggers home in somebodys basement emailing
out re-writes of the State of the Union transcripts.




Fear and Loathing in Crawford, Texas (for Hunter and Jack
Random)

We were somewhere near Crawford, Texas when the bullshit began
to take hold. I remember saying something like, Terror cells could
camp out in the brush by that ditch over there. Then what looked like
strange gothic entanglements of James Dobson started swooping
around the car! The radio was blasting the BBC and my friend Jack
Random was hanging out the window trying to shoot the Dobsons
with a shotgun we had bought at the truck stop before we left
Wyoming.

Between the two of us we had the severed heads of several Ohio
delegates, twenty-three photos from Abu Grahaid, four sheets of the
state of the union, a filing cabinet of the Mansel Report, and an entire


Gigabyte of Jack Randoms writings, two copies of Jake Berrys
Brambu Drezzi. Also, we had affidavits of testimony from Florida vote
counters, the depositions of detainees, and secret documents sent to
us anonymously from a Congressman from the hill proving the
existence of Karl Roves secret vault of Nazi memorabilia. It wasnt
as if we needed all this to make our case against the Bush regime,
but you never can tell when you are faced with a dozen drooling
Republicans.




The Pre-Iranian Blues

a prophet of crisis
typing with one hand
street level negotiations
with a praying man
faces in the clouds
gorillas in the mist
armed and smiling
felonies enlist




Gurus and Conventions, Rhode Island Be Damned

Political Gurus have no downtime, not even in the frosted morning
during the Thanksgiving holidays. Even in the conservative Think
Tanks with President Bush throwing caution to the wind and green
lighting unrest in Pakistan, the campaign trail, while the Anti-Hillary
machine throws oil into freshly minted hundred dollar bills which
makes it easier to slog into the hands of delegates from Pittsburgh
before the campaign hits that sudden stop and erupts into the thumb
hopping orgy of the Republican convention.
If youve never seen a poor undeveloped country trying to vie for the
billions of dollars that will come from hosting the Olympics then you
have never seen the true glee of someone like Robert Novak sitting


cross legged in the floor in a meeting as the governor of Rhode
Island scoots across the floor in the headquarters of the Republican
Party and performs every act of depravity you can possibly imagine
only to be told there is no way in hell his piece of shit state will stand
a chance, no way possible in getting the convention. Novak steps
outside and calls up the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover and twirls about in
his famous Nazi swivel and laughs maniacally.




Clearing Away Brush and Bodies in Crawford, Texas

If you want to get a good quote, a possibly honest quote from
President Bush then ask him while he is clearing brush away on his
farm in Crawford, Texas. More than one this terrible scenario has
played out.
Reporter: How do you plan to spend your time after leaving
officedo you play golf?

President Bush: Yea, I play golf, why?
Reporter: What is your handicap?
President: I played with a handicap one time. Guy was in a
wheelchair, couldnt hit the ball for shit.
At the point the Secret Service moved in and took hold of the reporter
and slid his body down the hill and beat him bloody and disposed of
him on the neighboring property.




Debates, Distilled At Random

I avoided the latest Democratic debate tonight. You want to know
why? Im not getting pad to watch, write about it, and follow the
campaign day to day. But what I will do is what I have been doing.
Anyway, back to why I didnt watch, its so high school, but on a more
gaudy and hateful way. Anyway, my health is not the best in the world
and Ive been trying to have a seizure for the last couple of days and


health care the state its in these days well, its a wonder Im not dead.

The candidates and their handlers, the press and their editors over a
few whiskeys, the over greedy public and the minute to minute
garbled intestinal bloggers who have advertisers and those who do
not all get together and they do have a time at the citizens of this
countries expense.

Now my friend Jack Random watches the debates and I rely on his
expertise in these matters. Jack doesnt get paid to do this, Jack
doesnt care if he gets paid to do this and that is something that all of
those I mentioned above could never, ever understand. At the end of
every piece he writes he adds that you should disseminate it freely.
An honest writer who will give you his opinion that is not bought and
paid for, without advertising? And he works at it all the time? He gets
paid nothing for it? Another reason you should appreciate Jack for
doing this? Jack is the real thing.
Sounds scary to those editors with the whiskey huh? Well not as
scary as the candidates if they had some of that same whiskey and
started being honest for once.



Karl Rove in Pakistan

Karl Rove relaxing in the Eichmann suite of the Pakistani Hilton reads
the International Herald Tribune and laughs over the treatment and
the house arrests of Bhutto. His hand in the violent wave of politics
rushing over that area of the world, yet again, is pleasing to him as
his little bald head swivels out of control every time a lawyer is
imprisoned and the video re-runs on CNN.



Psychology for the Herd

The New Liberty will run the gauntlet of chemical weapons fire and
the term jihad will re-appear across the screens of CNN as a moralist
term.


Defend violence and you become more than part of the problem, you
become the act itself, a preemptive strike against the reader. Civil
disobedience is not violence and it takes a disruptive mind to take the
conversation in that direction.

I wonder how many times in this country the authorities have
discovered a body that has starved to death in a warm room?


Backstage at the Book of Revelation

Spill blood on the Old Testament and it will come to life and illustrate
the room. Throw it off the roof of any building in Washington D. C.
and the separation of church and state will scream all the way down,
the ghost of Jerry Falwell, his bloated corpse screeching and setting
off car alarms all the way to Maryland parking lots.

Moses came to life in a classic ink drawing in the Supreme Court
decision room the last time they tried to overturn Roe V Wade.
Moses kept spitting out about his love for animals two at a time at
such a high decibel that they gave up and set the right to lifers loose
in the offices of junior congressman with the scent of blood wavering
out of locked grins.

Airport runways are to modern politics what bathroom floors were to
the ancient Romans. Exiting an airplane in the arms of staffers but
knowing that that young boy or girl or lady of the evening is waiting in
the limo or hotel room makes it easy to smile for the cameras when
you are dangerous lose in the polls. The angelic touch of the latest
Cause, the latest bumper sticker colored ribbon or button, lapel pin
celeb backed luncheon will press any flesh for any non-contribution
giving voting or non-voting public if the little known Political rider is
honored. They first came to the mind of the public through demands
of rock stars or greedy performers but its not known that politicians
have been demanding their sordid desires for years.
The most legendary rider of any politician was that of Mayor Daley of
Chicago. He demanded that every time he traveled for an
appearance after the violence of the Democratic that there be in his
room four shabbily dressed young people stripped naked and


chained in the shower of his hotel room and two angry Black
Panthers to beat them senseless while dressed as F.B.I. informants.
Also he wanted the entire room to be perfumed with the sickening
smell of Mace. Daley who had built up a love for the smell could only
execute his darker sexual desires while witnessing violence.
Thick Columns of White Smoke

A good tribal blow gun, press clippings of any overthrow of any Third
World nation not organized by a Republican administration, and a
pearl handle shovel are all handy to have when organizing pollsters
on the eve of a State of the Union speech.

First thing you will need is a used car dealer who has recently been
arrested anything other than drugs in the state of Maryland and is
willing to make a deal. You make him a deal that includes no jail time,
wearing a wire to a basement viewing of pornography at the local
municipal building and you raid his car lot for sedans. Neutral colors
are the best. One flaming red Taurus and an entire county could be
lost.

Second and this is critical. Out of every twenty callers you need at
least one lawyer manning the phones. One off the cup remark about
the administration being the next way to guarantee yield signs on off
shore oil rigs to slow the out sourcing of American jobs and the virus
of reality will spread like wildfire in a grass roots, seat off your pants,
Proverbs kind of way.

And finally, and this is as common as criminal background checks in
FBI waiting rooms, you will need to have at your side of those people
who can keep you updated on the constantly changing insensitive
needs of Wolf Blitzer and the entire bevy of Fox News. Blitzer who
formerly covered the White House and now stutters through several
hours until he surges like an immoral train wreck into the hellish
abyss of the right wing agenda.







Hughes, Not The Rudd

Speculation begins around Dupont Circle whether or not the beast
known as Karen Hughes will in fact become just another political
causality when the Bush administration leaves office or if she will like
Henry Kissinger re-surface on the arm of other administrations,
wailing her fetishes, hooded and leathered, beating human flesh like
a riveter on the good ship death.

Eat My Slug, This Is The Highway

Tracking legislation in Washington is not unlike watching a snail as it
inches slowly across the interstate. The silent whine of the yellow
divider youd expect from the center line is unheard. Cars whiz by as
deals are made inside closets supplied readily with glory holes,
oxygen tanks and cameras, the kind you use in most surgeries that
have revolutionized the term day surgery. Yes, the American Medical
Association has a say in illicit sex in enclosed places as well.



John McCain and the Return of Dick Nixon

Action in close quarters thats how best to describe the behind the
scenes wet works in the door to door political band wagon spirit de
corps of the 2008 election voter intimidation. The state of New
Hampshire, once proud they went first now dread the every four year
quarrel that is the inevitable John McCain ticket. Close the door on a
McCain knocker and youll get a 4 am visit from McCain himself
cussing and squinting into the peephole of your door.

Crossing paths with McCain on the campaign trail is like trying to
catch a bowie knife with your teeth and throw it back. John McCain or
Rectal Randy as he is referred to by the press is an embarrassment
to the Republican Party. McCain was seen in a Kinkos demanding
leaflets be printed depicting photos of Hillary Clinton and Obama,
alongside Chairman Mao. When the high school student on duty that
night refused McCain began to urinate on every car in the parking lot
and ran back inside and demanded to know if he had gotten the tires


of the car of the young man. When the young man tried to explain he
did not drive McCain went into frenzy and started barking like a dog
and had to be drug away into alley by a staffer.





The Year of 2008

In position to stroll across the book of horrors once again, the
Republican Party dreams of placing another beast of loyal stride atop
the wavering blood flag. The White House fills with a stench not yet
experienced since William Howard Tafts corpse was paraded
through across the Senate floor by a few drunken representatives
with ties to organized crime.

Bandar Bush, his defense stock gaining in blood certificate
guarantee, sits atop a fortune large enough to purchase the
publishing rights of the Koran in virginal blood, flies in and out of the
U.S. smuggling plans for more terrorists attacks on U.S. soil in lieu of
a Democratic win in the 2008 presidential run.

Sooner than later it will come to the surface that Think Tanks are
covert and are nothing more than shadow operations that enable
U.S. citizens to retire from public office and advise and funnel funds
to governments that occupy positions in the so-called axis of evil. If
conservatives resign from these organizations with any kind of
regularity the axe will drop, especially if the Democrats have
possession of the White House and the House and Senate.
Perhaps in 2008 it will be necessary to obtain a background check on
your local elected official to decide whether or not to cast your vote.
With that information in hand you will be in the interesting position of
whether or not to share.

Could it be that the Vietcong are dressed as Islamic
Fundamentalists? General Westmoreland constantly observed in
1968 that we had the enemy on the run; compare that staggering
miscommunication with, Mission Accomplished. Saddam warned


that when the fight went door to door and street to street. The Tet
offensive in Iraq will be coordinated with attacks in Iran and Syria as
well as bombings in the United States.



Power Behind The Evil

Somewhere in Virginia, just across the State line, where they wont
even let Tom Clancy blink or turn his engine off and park, they are
deciding whether or not to allow Hillary Clinton to finish the race or to
leak the photos of Rudy Guliliani wearing Rosie ODonnells clothes
and spitting goats blood.
But soon one of Henry Kissingers four illegitimate children stands
up, the one who was actually born with a scalp, and says, If we let
Romney in the White House then the Foreign Aid budget will come
into the same coffers that bankrupt the likes of Howard Hughes!



McCain: Let The Fires Burn Cold

There is evidence that McCain has been on the campaign trail too
long. He showed up at a Mexican wedding in Polk, Arkansas with a
Ukulele stuck in his belt and asked if he could sit in with the band.

He next offered to round up several dogs in the neighborhood and
tried to jump start a gas grill with an old Zippo lighter General George
Marshall had once given him in a drunken stupor as McCain had
harassed the General over an embarrassing incident in the cloak of a
Washington watering hole. Buying silence with fire is how they used
to do it in the old days.

McCain in order to prove his barbecuing skills stripped off his shirt to
reveal a tattoo of a pyramid of cord wood being lit by a chimpanzee
while two Huey helicopters hovered overhead, the caption read,
Those of us who kill, also cook, skin, and die. At one time the words
were more legible but McCain is beginning to show his age and the
injections to heighten his biceps didnt help either.






Official, handful, Disorganized

Disposed under distress, the reason for being involved in the The
rest of the words on the page were blacked out. You could make any
excuse for this you wanted but the C.I.A. would do anything to
protect its secrets and would kill any number of random citizens to
overturn the Freedom of Information Act.

The following statement was uncovered in the garbage bin outside
the Oval office during a past administration, Quotas must be
maintained and enumerated. Belching a surplus will only go to obtain
a derivative of the kind of justice that is self-defeating. What would
the C.I.A. do what such a statement if it actually existed? And could
you convince them it actually did exist?

The numbers according to the South America Report on Malnutrition
has yet to pass the censor and needs to be reviewed before being
passed on to other governmental bodies as well as the Washington
Times. Okay, I confess that one is a little too easy to pick out but the
more ridiculous the more believable?



Mirror Image, Unseen

He moves like an apparition through the streets of Washington but in
the thousands of offices and inner offices you would have barely
seen him. The lie that is remembered long after the truth, he likes to
say, is the truth.
Never elected, pursued, arrested or vetted he has survived the
annals of the fourth estate. Its as if a curfew were put upon the eyes
of the media and the three branches of government quarantined.

More sadistic than Henry Kissinger, crueler than the tactics of Karl
Rove, an image of this individual will never grace the currency or a


postage stamp. He is the ignorance of the American people and he
cannot be stopped.