‘Twas the night before I was to teach a yoga class in Central Park followed by a vegan potluck and so it was time to prepare the food I was going to bring. I had bought some organic red-tipped lettuce, organic tomatoes, a chemical drip avocado from one of the Hispanicos in my area and a partridge in a pear tree, as they wouldn’t just sell me the damn pear without that annoying bird stuffed in a plastic bag.

I washed the lettuce in a poison cocktail of fluoride, chlorine, some inorganic minerals bathing in water. I started to use my ceramic knife, which is supposedly less oxidizing although now half the knife he used to be after I dropped him on the floor, to cut up the lettuce but then switched over to the old “tear and toss” method, used for centuries in salad preparation and to get out of your clothes in a hurry when one is overcome by the sex urge. The lettuce was now in a big wooden bowl. This only took about three minutes but then involved another ten minutes as I fished out hairs that had fallen into the salad.

NOTE TO SELF: next time wear a hairnet over my balls, or at least put on some pants and don’t allow Abandon to lick the bowl while there is still food in it.

I then cut up an organic cucumber into thin half-slices that I picked up at a flower shop. It was only after I was fifty blocks away with a drooping lapel that I thought to myself, “This doesn’t look like a carnation!” I also threw in a bag of assorted nuts and raisins (the raisins weren’t really “assorted”) that I got from a client’s office after training him. Perhaps I should have asked before taking them—and his wallet.

I was going to cut in organic tomatoes as well but their skin was looking as pocked and discolored as Edward Olmos’ face and I didn’t think they would “Stand and Deliver.” So I decided to blend them into the avocado, lemon, dates, coconut milk, Himalayan sea salt and cayenne pepper dressing I was preparing in my VitaMix $400 blender.

As I dropped the nasty tomato in the blender the Band-Aid on my thumb from the aftermath of my umbrella accident that day at Bed, Bath & Beyond, where I had stopped in for a little “Beyond,” fell into the blender. I hadn’t turned on the power yet and the Band-Aid was sitting there like a dog waiting for a treat on top of the pile of ingredients, somewhat looking like a pile of Abandon’s poo after I feed her sprouted mung beans, beets, cucumbers, ground sunflower seeds and the partridge from the pear tree.

I didn’t really feel like risking getting my hands dirty and thought I heard the guy in the VitaMix demonstration say something like, “Blend the whole apple, core and seeds, to add a little Vitamin B-15 which is good to fight cancer. And if you happen to get blood in the blender—not to worry—the high-powered VitaMix destroys the AIDS virus as well.” So I just flipped the switch and watched my Band-Aid turn a slurry.

Is there anything a VitaMix can’t do? Actually, I wouldn’t recommend using it as a sex toy. Let’s just say, while blowing a load into the whirring blades may sound like a good idea, the half-horsepower engine will spit it right back at you with a force of that will nearly blind you! I suppose if you wear swimming goggles it can be done safely; I’ll report back in my next posting.

I also prepared concentrated natural lemonade that could be added to the attendees’ water, which I made from several coneflowers that I picked from nature. While I didn’t wash them, I can assure you there were no bugs on the flowers, as the park sprays something equivalent to DDT that hasn’t killed enough children yet to be banned. Sure, Abandon always pulls her leash in the other direction as we approach the park but after I drag her through she’s usually fine, aside from a few minor blood clots that she coughs out of her lungs. I blended the flowers with more of the poison cocktail water, as I wouldn’t waste my distilled then Roxtracted then vortexed on a quantum healing energy plate then flower essenced then prayed upon water on those losers in my meet-up group.

I put the Band-Aid Dressing in a plastic container that was manufactured with extra Bisphenol A (BPA) to sterilize not only the dressing but also anyone who would thereafter eat it. I put it in the fridge so I wouldn’t have to breathe any of the outgassing, as with Abandon and my gas, there really wasn’t room in my cluttered apartment for anymore noxious gas.

The day of the event I put the big salad bowl in a cheap keep-it-cool bag that didn’t really do shit besides make me look like a homo as I carried the “lime green” faggery. Since I filled the bowl so high, half its contents fell on the floor as I klutzily transported it to my fruity bag. I just grabbed it and chucked it back in the bowl, ignoring the multitude of dog hairs that accompanied the greens into the bowl.

I decided to bring some of my fancy “disposable” bamboo plates that I bought as a compulsive purchase from Westerly Health Foods as they mesmerized me hanging by the door that only one strong enough not to grab a pack of Tic-Tacs at the supermarket check-out line could resist. I was not so strong. At about $10 for four plates, there was no way I was going to make these Rolls Royce paper plates landfill until they dissolved from overuse, no surprise from someone who wears single-use contact lenses for at least a month straight.

As I pulled the bamboo plates down from the cabinet, a clinging cockroach parachuted to the floor. Unlucky for him, his parachute didn’t open. Lucky for him, he survived the plunge and scurried off to crawl on and defecate over my kitchen countertop. I threw them into Faggy Lime the bag (featured as a recurring role on Sponge Bob Square Pants.)

Because I had only allotted 30-minutes to roll about 100 blocks while dragging Abandon on her leash, which would require me to have the gigantic glutes of an Olympic speed skater instead of the dimply, cottage cheese-looking, flat, dumpy ass I have and scratch often during food preparation, I raced out of the house and left the Band-Aid Dressing on the kitchen counter and forgot to put it into Faggy Lime!

The meet-up went well. I taught a kick-ass yoga class and no was too distracted by me constantly looking at my watch as I repeated my mantra, “When will this be over? When will this be over?” Master food preparer, Feast Full of Paul, was in attendance and made a variety of delicacies. I didn’t eat anyone else’s food, as I don’t really trust the sanitation of their preparation.

When I got home I noticed the Band-Aid Dressing had eaten through the container I had put it in and was surrounded by about fifteen dead cockroaches, which can apparently survive a nuclear holocaust but not Band-Aid Dressing.

With the tough economy, Swami X couldn't complain about his job as a mosquito researcher

I have been trying to go through 14 years of crap of which I have accumulated in part due to having Winona Ryder’s Disease, otherwise known as kleptomania, but mostly due to a vow of poverty I took when I was six because I was duped by stupid Christian missionaries who gave me wine to drink from a Coke can and then brainwashed me with the misinterpreted words of Jesus which they explained meant that poverty is the golden key to Heaven and that I should jerk them off. This has resulted in me spending any and all money that finds its way into my pocket on crap I don’t need, as well as being unable to listen to any music of Michael Jackson’s without bursting into tears. As I take my daily walks with Abandon, my broke ass comes across tons of the cross-wearing impoverished and all I can think is that my idea of Heaven is not having to see these bums every day—let alone for eternity!

For all you youngin’s out there, back before iPods and even CDs there was a technology called the audiotape. It played fine enough for the times but if you wanted get to the next song, you would have to hit FAST-FORWARD…then STOP…then PLAY…then FAST-FORWARD again… and keep doing this a multitude of times before you got to the blank space designating the few seconds of silence before the next track.

Between the iPod and smoke signals was the "audiotape"

Inevitably you would find the tape stopping in the middle of playback for no apparent reason and when you opened up the box radio or stereo you would pull the plastic case of the audiotape out and the tape which contained the music data would be attached to both the case and the stereo system like a world-class loogie that you still had in your mouth which was outstretched all the way to the floor and grabbing ants off the ground.

Not Guinness Book but still nasty!

This was also an era where when you made a “mix tape” for someone it involved hitting both PLAY and RECORD, as no one figured out back then how to invent the Superman button that could record in a single button. You also needed some serious math skills to figure out how to fit what you wanted onto the tape, because unlike a CD or MP3 where deleting a song can be accomplished with a single keystroke and rearranging song order is as easy as highlighting and dragging, if the mix tape ended when you had only recorded half the song, you would be forced to… REWIND…STOP…PLAY. That’s not it. REWIND…STOP…PLAY. No, not yet. REWIND…STOP…PLAY. Crap, I overshot! FAST-FORWARD…STOP…PLAY… You get the point.

The other day I played Sounds Of The Everglades produced in 1991 from Silver Bells Music, billed as “Nature’s relaxing sounds with music.” I appreciated that the word “Of” was capitalized, as I think it a crime against grammarity that the smaller words often get the shaft when it comes to capitalization. The description on the paper insert said it was an hour in length and that one should “Envision yourself in the Everglades as you hear the tropical animals and birds inhabit the Everglades. ‘With Music.’” And then it came back to me why I hadn’t played this tape in almost twenty years and I smiled, eagerly awaiting to hear again what I knew was to be coming. Why I saved the tape for that long did not come to me then and I worry it never will.

I hit PLAY on my stereo (still equipped with audiotape playback capacity) and I was instantly teleported to The Everglades where the crickets cricked and the tropical animals and birds were playing in nature’s philharmonic orchestra conducted by none other than Guido Cantelli himself! I found the synthesized chord that would shift etherically in the background very soothing. I could see the lush greens of the forest. I could smell the negative ions from the waterfall. I could—BZZZZZZZ. What the fu—? Suddenly the recorded sound of a mosquito was disturbing my relaxing envisionment as it buzzed my ears mercilessly! SLAP. SLAP. CLAP! I think I got him! And I was back to my envisioning.

Crickets chirping. Owls HOO-HOOing. Chimpanzees spanking it. The synthetic chord so pleasant it almost earned a label of “Organic” from the approval board. And then—another BZZZZZZZ! What the—? What kind of relaxation tape is this?? I would have liked to be a fly on the wall at the business meeting where one guy presented this brainchild:

“I’m envisioning a recording of nature sounds—crickets, birds, maybe an occasional frog ribbiting a love song for his betrothed. Suddenly the listener is attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes that don’t let up for an hour straight.”

“Do you think an hour is enough time to induce a total slap-happy experience?” asks his coworker.

“We’ll add a little synthesizer to help make the experience more complete, so that in just a single hour one can leave feeling totally irritated to their core. If not, they can get up, walk over to the stereo, hit EJECT, turn over the cassette tape. Close the carriage door, hit PLAY, go back to their seat or couch or bed and enjoy it for a second round,” he suggests, not even acknowledging that the listener would have to do this after a half-hour anyway in order to hear the second side of the audiotape—yes, audiotapes had two sides of recording pleasure!

“I THINK WE HAVE A WINNER HERE!” everyone chimes in unison and the circle-jerk begins.

At that point my fly ass would buzz all of their ears and request a starring role in their Grammy Award-Winning audio presentation. And by “Grammy,” I mean an award that a Grandmother would get for not pissing her diaper in the old age home for two straight hours.

Grammy, can you at least close your legs?

After listening to the tape for an hour, I must admit that once the stereo bellowed out the loud click of the tape ending and shutting off, I was feeling a lot more relaxed than when I first hit PLAY—oh wait, it’s not rewound—STOP…REWIND…CLICK… Ready to hit PLAY. I figured if I could endure an hour of hundreds of mosquitoes feeding ravagingly, creating newly-formed skin teats where their intravenous mouth needles withdrew my blood, what could my mundane life devoid of “envisioning” do that would be even remotely irritating to me?

"My feet itch. Do you think it might be Athlete's Foot?"

As I got ready for bed at 3:00 a.m. the blast of loud music broadcast through my window from the sidewalk below. Suddenly I craved the soothing sound of mosquitoes buzzing.

.

I was on my computer

And saw movement in the hall

Was it Abandon?

Or maybe a ball?

.

I looked over

And in my house

Was a furry little creature

Some would call it a mouse

.

I said, “Hey, what’s up?”

He said, “I was looking for some sup.”

I asked, “Did you succeed in your plight?”

He said, “Not even a bite.”

.

I asked, “Is there anything else I can do?” without any ‘tude

He said, “Well, I’d really like some cheese. I’m in the mood.”

I told him that this was a vegan house

It contains no cheese, as I wasn’t expecting a mouse

And that I have a dog, who might give him a roust

That he better move his tail if he doesn’t want to joust

.

He told me, “No need to get up, I’ll help myself out.

I’ll tell the others that coming here to eat is in doubt

That for food they should find another route

And that if they don’t, with a dog they may bout.”

.

And so he left

As quiet as a mouse

And no one was left

Except Abandon and me in the house

I didn’t even get up from my chair

Partly so I wouldn’t rustle my hair

But mostly because I didn’t really care

Every now and then when my parents come to visit, knowing that I’m a fruity guy, my Dad will come with two or three big bags of fruit. The last batch had great mangoes with deep orange flesh that tasted like syrup. And plums that once the teeth penetrated, the mouth had to work like a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the exploding juices.

He also got some asparagus. Why oh why he swallowed a fly, I don’t know why. The only thing I really like about asparagus is that there is a chemical in it, I think it is called aspartic acid or something, that makes your pee stink like a hooker bathed in semen and puke. I like taking a piss after eating a vat of asparagus and then kneeling down in front of the toilet as if I just came back from a night of drinking and needed a purge and instead of opening my throat and expulsioning my stomach contents, I open my nostrils and breathe in as deeply as I can. I always have the same reaction, “Totally gross!” Come to think of it, I think I have this reaction whether I have eaten asparagus or not.

Whenever I would buy young coconuts, whose meat is soft and chewy and when added to a smoothie it tastes scrumptuliscious, my Dad would always ask, “What is that?” as the Filipino children who labor 20 hours a day risking broken necks from falling from coconut trees and loss of digits from chopping coconuts, cut off the outer part of the coconut and the remaining inner shell that is an off-white in color is foreign to those who identify a coconut as a hard brown ellipse with a tough white inner that tastes like sawdust. I always answer him the same way, “Is something seriously wrong with your short-term memory? I mean, didn’t you just ask me the same fuckin’ question last week? And what did I tell you?” “That I’m a moron?” “That’s right.” I guess in asparagus and in responding to my Dad’s queries about young coconuts I am pretty predictable.

So among the myriad of fruit my Dad would buy for me, he would always throw in at least one small coconut packaged in a netting of sorts. I think he got them for a good price, being they are purchased only when there is a “Coconut/Hairnet” sale.

.
The last time I chopped open one of his hairnet coconuts, there was a strong smell of blue cheese that I never smelled from anything that wasn’t either from a cow or from under a man’s balls. Being raised as a cheap Jew, I had the old Jewish dilemma going: FREE HAM. I nibbled a bit but then said, “I don’t know about this nasty thing,” and threw it out.

This time he got me two hairnet coconuts.  When I opened the first one by the scientific method of slamming the two of them together and seeing which one broke under the pressure, that distinct smell of blue cheese was wafting in the air. I decided to be creative. I blended it in my VitaMix and rubbed some of it under my balls and went down to the gay bar I frequent and laughed my ass off when from the other side of the glory hole I would hear, “OH, CHEESY!” The rest of the blend I put in a jar mixed with apple-cider vinegar and used it as a vegan blue cheese dressing on my salads for the next few days. I justified my stomach upset with, “I must have overeaten,” as even a rabbit can only eat so much lettuce before he explodes. Just a thought that came to mind now: I never saw Bugs Bunny eat anything but carrots. You would think that if that were his sole staple that his skin would turn a bit yellowish from the carotenoids.

By the third day of eating this Swami X Original, I realized that this belonged in the same 1950s catalogue that sold a tapeworm in a capsule as a diet program. I dumped the contents of the bottle into the toilet, said a prayer in Hebrew apologizing to God for the waste of resources, took an asparagus piss into the white chunky mess that floated on top of the toilet like a BP clam chowder spill, knelt down, took a deep inhale and blew chunks. Thank God the chunks were pieces of blue cheese coconut and not chunks of my liver like happened the last time I became addicted to swigging rubbing alcohol.

.

.

Transition drags on

Seems like it will never pass

Feels like permanence

.

.

Flowers that can’t die

A fragrance that fills the room

Breathe me in fully

.

I was taking the subway home from the whorehouse last night at 12:30 a.m. I was a little tired from all the fucking and was looking forward to a nice quiet 7-hour ride to Bumfuck Heights where I now live. Apparently the Universe was worried I would run out of ideas on which to write about and so she provided me with a doozy which was neither nice nor quiet.

In NYC there’s a lot more to do than have sex with prostitutes, although personally I haven’t explored outside of this pastime, and being a Friday night after midnight the first round of night activists were heading home for the evening and the subway was crowded, but not so crowded that I couldn’t get a seat. In my car there was a 350 lb. black woman with breasts as large as a Brontosaurus Rex shouting at the top of her lungs to a black man holding a Koran whose volume came a close second the Berthasaurus. She also had a couple of big fat black bookends that were her friends who periodically chimed in.

At first I didn’t think anything of it, figuring it was just like being in a black movie theater where in between dropping chicken bones and spitting watermelon seeds on the floor, everyone shouts their comments at the screen.

“DON’T GO INTO THE HOUSE, BITCH! HE’S WAITING FOR YOU WITH A KNIFE!”

“YOU DROPPED YOUR GUN, DUMMY! NOW WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?”

But soon I saw the conversation was anything but pleasant and the fingers weren’t open and filled with chicken parts but instead clenched in fists.

My assessment was that they had been discussing religion in the way most people do: “You’re going to burn in Hell for eternity!” “Screw you and your God!” and things had escalated to the boiling point, once again not a reference to chicken which, as we all know, in the black community is only prepared fried.

Jesus, the prophet of peace and forgiveness and Islam, which literally translates as “Peace” seem to lead more people to anger and violence than inner serenity. The reason it leads them there is because they are not following the prophets but their own inner anger at their mother or father or last boyfriend or girlfriend or boss or the world and all they are doing is cutting and pasting words of prophets to justify their anger as a holy crusade. A Christian may lack money and because they are angry and jealous of someone who has money they will quote Jesus and say, “A camel has an easier chance of going through the eye of a needle than a rich man has of getting into Heaven.” A Muslim will have a constant raging hard-on and want to stare down every piece of ass that passes by, but because he has been conditioned into guilt for having a dick, he will quote the Koran and say, “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that women have to cover themselves up.” It would almost be comical how people cut and paste the words of inspired people and texts to justify their bad behavior if it weren’t so destructive to them and everyone around them.

Despite finding the whole scene a bit pathetic, Berthasaurus had a few funny lines that even made me laugh. At one time she grabbed her gargantuan breasts and said, “THESE GIRLS ARE MORE MAN THAN YOU EVER WILL BE!” This cracked the entire studio audience, including me.

In another incident of tragic comedy, Koran Carrier might have gotten to the deterioration of argumentation where he resorted to the, “Forget words, let’s duel with swords!” stratagem and called Berthasaurus a bitch. Louder than it would be if you were sitting in the front row of a Megadeth concert and stuck your head flush to the speaker, she shouted,“YOU’RE THE BITCH! YOU’RE NOT A MAN, YOU’RE A BITCH! EVERYONE SEES THAT YOU’RE THE BITCH ON THIS TRAIN!”

Now I grew up with the understanding that if a woman calls you a bitch then it’s fair game to backhand her offering-her-unwanted-opinion ass. But I guess the rules of engagement were created before there was a fast food restaurant on every street corner and some women grew in girth to the size where they now had their own zip code and men got wise that if they placed a hand on one of these triple-sized honeys, those crazy dames would eat you up—if not metaphorically than literally!

To add to the bizarrity of the event, there was a black man with a beard in a dirty light blue jumpsuit with the zipper opened to his belly and a rhinestone-studded belt wrapped around his waist. He looked like he could have been one of the Village People playing the part of the Flaming Garage Mechanic, which was short-lived and soon replaced by another icon of gay life in the West Village—an Indian Chief. Regardless of looking like he worked out at the “YMCA”and was getting ready to enlist “In The Navy” because he was a “Macho Man,” the words he spoke were the only ones that made sense to me.

Berthasaurus was bellowing out, “IS THERE ANY MAN HERE WHO WILL KNOCK THIS BITCH’S ASS TO THE GROUND?” The Village People Mechanic told the Koran Carrier to remain calm and disengage. He cautioned her that she was inciting violence. This didn’t stop the melee, which would continue as long as it took Moses and his peeps to cross the desert. I had grown tired of it and prayed to a god not of the Koran or the New Testament to make it end, seeing how useless those gods were in creating peace among their worshipers.

One passenger on the subway pulled out his little camera and started filming, for as we all know the world doesn’t need anymore messiahs or holy books but instead a few more well-crafted YouTube videos of people making asses of themselves. I actually started to pull out my new pocket camera and finally conceded that while I can be a douchebag, I didn’t want any physical proof that this was a real event and not a figment of my imagination. A 350 lb. black woman…a man in a light blue jumpsuit with a rhinestone-studded belt…a man who wasn’t a man but a bitch holding a Koran—I still can’t be certain that I didn’t dream the whole thing up like those pervert priests who wrote The Book of Revelations.

At one point Berthasaurus started bellowing a new mantra: “FUCK ALLAH! FUCK ALLAH! FUCK ALLAH!” I would have considered hiring her as a contract writer for my un-blog as she had started speaking my language but I knew her “Fuck Allah” was incomplete. If she shouted, “FUCK ALLAH! FUCK YAHWEH! FUCK JEHOVAH! FUCK ZEUS!” I would have hired her on the spot. But she was too unconscious to see that they were all just different names for the same thing. She was cursing the other guy’s Red Delicious apple while eating the same apple while calling it a Granny Smith.

Finally Berthasaurus stood up and charged the Koran Carrier, well, as fast as a fat cow like her could charge. She raised her hand and while most people just bark—that dog bit. She slapped Koran Carrier across the face. She then raised her bottle of Snapple in a threatening manner, indicating that if the solid glass didn’t kill him surely the sugar and artificial colors would.

I sat dumbfounded for a little but then jumped up and told that fat bitch to sit the fuck down. “That’s enough!” I said. She looked at me and again I said, “That’s enough.” She knew better than to talk back to me because I wasn’t a pussy like the Koran Carrier and I would have flattened her fat ass if she so much as opened her mouth to me and even a small whiff of her supersized fries and shakes and Quadruple Big Mac with the works had infiltrated my nostrils.

I assured Koran Carrier that I would see that no more violence would be directed at him. He said to me, “Then call the police.” I told him that I’m not getting any reception on my cel phone down here and if he keeps it up, I’ll be the one to knock his bitch ass to the ground. At this point the other two fat black card-carrying members of the Nation of Fast Food were chiming in their decibels. I was thinking of saying, “Can you fat bitches change the song to some ‘Praise Jesus’ choir piece?” Either that or, “I miss the days of slavery when we could just whip a nigger to death if she so much as cried out when we raped her.” I kept my mouth shut, for throwing blood to sharks only makes them more crazy.

Just like how one’s whole life supposedly flashes in front of his eyes before the hooker pulls out a blade and tells him,“How about I fuck YOU up the ass?” a scene played out in my mind in milliseconds that I wondered if enacted if it would turn this horror show into an educational film, or just an even more pathetic comedy.

I saw myself standing up and shouting, “ENOUGH OF THIS ALREADY! What is going on here? All you self-professed ‘religious’ people are showing the ugliest parts of humanity in the name of your so-called religions. I don’t care whether it is Jesus or Muhammad—does anyone really think that either one of these men, or prophets or gods or whatever you want to consider them, would condone this behavior as the highest expression of mankind? The Book of Genesis says God created Man in his own image. Is THIS the image of God? Jesus said that everything he did we could do and more. Is THIS the ‘more’ he was talking about?

I’m sorry, brother, I can’t quote the Koran. But even if I didn’t judge all the terrorist action and cries for bloodshed I see around the world as exemplary of Islam, is your behavior tonight any better an more representative? If these pieces of poisonous fruit offered from your mouths are the gifts of Jesus and Muhammad, I’d prefer to bite an apple from Eve before I accept anything from their hands.

“And you people sitting there and enjoying the show, do you feel proud of yourselves for being audience members to ‘Jerry Springer Live’? You read in your history books about the Roman Coliseum and how barbaric they were to making battles to the death entertainment and yet you sit back and watch a brother and a sister go at each other’s throats and cheer for more carnage. You are even more pathetic than these two, for violence leads to bloodshed but apathy leads to enslavement.

“Think, people. This is not a sit-com or a Shakespeare tragedy. This is real life with real humans. And real humans don’t bite into blood capsules; their blood comes from their veins. And real people don’t have make-up artists and catering and fan mail; they take care of their own blemishes, struggle to find their own food and if they have a spouse and kids who think them special they are considered lucky.

Why can’t we stop being entertainment for a second and start being authentic human beings? Why can’t we stop laughing at another’s distress and actually see if we could do something to lessen it? That requires caring. And no one really cares about a fiction. Because at the end of the day, the television set goes off and you are back to face your own life of the ‘Not So Rich And Famous.’ And then all we have is each other. And love is the force that makes us all equal in the ability to share our riches.

I will call you my brothers and sisters regardless of your behavior. But I much rather boast about you than laugh at you. Or scorn you. Jesus said that if you hurt the least among you, you hurt him just the same. Can’t you see how your behavior directed toward a single individual hurts us all? Is the pain inside so great that you need to witness human suffering in order to purge yourself of your own? Or rather mask it. Well you have to look no further for an example of suffering than me, for I am hurting here. I am saddened to be a part of this. And I seem to be standing alone. You people can’t even stand up to stop this garbage, how the hell are you going to stand up to take out your own trash?

I don’t want words from your so-called ‘holy books’ or your dead prophets. I want living humans saying simple words to express the simple idea that they care about their brothers and sisters more than they do a friggin’ book or twenty-minutes of entertainment in the form of suffering to distract them from their unhappy lives.”

The train ended up being held at a stop while the Koran Carrier asked someone to call the police like a little pussy. The cops ended up arriving and I told one of them that the woman did strike him. One of the two circus fat ladies said that the man was lying about Berthasaurus hitting him. I told the cop that she was the liar—and a fat and ugly one at that. The cop seemed nice enough but useless, acknowledging later in his own words that the whole situation was a “clusterfuck.” I told him that as a Mormon I didn’t appreciate his language and I would pray to Joseph Smith to save his Hell-bound ass.

When a train across the tracks came, the hoards of cockroaches rushed out of the stopped train and onto the other train; they liked to be entertained but it was late and if seeing justice done required missing a train, then they were out. I let the train go and talked to the other cops about what I witnessed.

They seemed dismissive of what I had to say and finally let the train with Berthasaurus and the two Fatasaurus sisters go without so much as a note in his prescription pad. I questioned this. “I don’t understand. She assaulted him and you just let her go without taking down her information?” They then proceeded to school me in cop philosophy that was a Bizarrro World version of a Zen koan. They told me that if a man is slapped in the forest and there is no cop to witness it, then it is not assault. I was like, “What the fu—?” My understanding of the law was that it was even considered Assault if you put your hands on someone against his will. The cops told me that if they didn’t witness it, it wasn’t, that at best it was Harassment.

Looking online, I found this as a Common Law definition of Assault, where they said that the Criminal Law definition is pretty much the same:

An intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact.

[http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/assault]

Seems like what I saw was Assault. The cops told me that people complain about a million things and if they didn’t witness it, they can’t just arrest someone for the crime. They told me that unless the supposed victim was injured, as far as they concerned nothing illegal had occurred. I said, “So what happens if his cheek shows bruising tomorrow?” They said that then it might be considered assault—which was totally useless, as they had let the Jabba The Fatso Girls leave without any way to get in contact with them.

I can understand their dilemma—but I was a witness! I saw my arguments were falling on deaf ears and so I gave my business card to the Koran Carrier and told him to contact me if he needed my testimony and took the next train out of there.

Every time I want to let the world do whatever it will and just stay on the sidelines and watch it build or burn, it seems I am pulled back into the game. It is hard for me to see how far we have fallen and sit idly by, as hard as I try. God keeps asking me like he did Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah, “Why shouldn’t I just destroy these entire cities of sin?” I don’t really have a good answer to give the Big Guy. All I can say is, “They are still my brothers and sisters and if you fuck with my family, you fuck with me.”

But I’d rather be able to boast about my family than try to save them from destroying themselves—which I can’t, as I am no savior, as in “save-your ass.” And even if I were, when you are unwilling to sacrifice the old patterns of behavior that no longer serve you or humanity, the only thing left to sacrifice is a savior and I’m not really down with that aspect of the job.

When I have more confidence in my family that they are willing to put away the scissors and glue for cutting and pasting other people’s words and take up the pen and paper for creating their own holy words, then I will step up and fight the good fight—no matter what the odds. Until then, I can only observe silently and periodically make sure they don’t play in traffic.

.

I got out of bed one day

And saw a “normal” life in flames

A jug of water within reach

I watched it char to ash

For what is the point of waking up

Only to live a nightmare?

.

Through progress and setbacks

I still imagined that I was moving forward

Despite feeling like my feet were cast for a Hollywood star

And I forgot to step out before the cement dried

.

Now despite periodic inspiration

And visualization

And manifestation

It all feels like infestation

An intrusion

Of illusion

With delusion

And NOTHING holds my attention

Be it saving the world…or burning it down

.

Once I desired

To bed 10,000 women

Wilt Chamberlain, Warren Beatty and myself

The residing Prophets of Penetration

But while my hammer still works

Banging nails into boards now seems meaningless

Except to hang up a sign that reads:

“OUT OF BUSINESS”

.

There was a time I thought I was helping people with their health

But as my prices climbed

The only people who could afford me

Became the rich and entitled

Whose mark of success

Was measured in dollars and number of people on their payroll

Fitness was only ancillary

And soon I was just another whore

Collecting a paycheck

Wondering how much longer before all the loveless trysts

Would ejaculate the last piece of my heart out through my genitals

.

I went through many classes, workshops, certifications, diplomas, degrees and intensives

Which added more letters to the end of my nametag

But nothing of value

Impressive only to those whose eyes can’t see the cry of my tears unwept

Whose ears can’t hear the melody of my song unsung

.

And so I find myself born again

But unlike an infant with eyes wide open

Marveling at the colorful playground without boundaries

Within which it has been miraculously placed

My eyes see only in black and white

No seesaws and merry-go-rounds

Only fences

.

My whole life

Has been nothing but taking a few practice rolls

Down the alleyway

Where strikes and gutter balls

Are equally not recorded

And now the announcement has come over the speaker:

“IT IS TIME TO START THE GAME!”

But the game isn’t bowling—

But badminton

And suddenly a lifetime of shoving my fingers into heavy balls

And timing my steps and release just right

Prepared me in no way for rackets and shuttlecocks

And I am just as pathetic as the newest newbie

Who never played any sport

Or sported any idea of Self-realization

.

Perhaps the cup half-full people would say,

“What a humbling experience—

And only the humble will get into Heaven!”

I wish I could drink in their half-full elixir

Not to quench any thirst

But so I could smash the empty glass

Across their fuckin’ heads

And release their Pollyanna politics

That sees God as a business

And Heaven as a job opportunity

Whose only value is that it is better than the Joneses

Who are working without air conditioning in Hell

I don’t care for Humble Pie

And Arrogant Pie makes my ass just as fat

.

They say misery enjoys company

But I prefer to anguish alone

To watching cheerleaders wave their pom-poms

And kick their legs

In admiration of all my “gifts”

For they don’t realize that if they untied the bow

And opened the box

They would find it empty inside

.

The wrapping is pleasant enough to look at

But when I shake the box

It is light and hollow

And no “good deeds”

Or “mission”

Or “saving the world”

Can fill up this sealed package

.

And when you stop looking forward to birthdays

You might as well welcome a deathday

.

Slept with the full moon as my blanket

Crickets providing the soundtrack

Even with closed eyes

I could feel it’s light penetrating my being

And their lullaby rocking me gently

Knowing that whether sleep overcame me

Or I stayed fully awake

I was receiving a rest

That no store-bought bed could provide

.

Curled in a ball in my spoon

My dog as my bed companion

To her nothing special about tonight

Not inspiration for poeticism

For anywhere she lays her head

Is bed

And whenever she is by my side

It’s poetry

.

While the stony dry grass beneath my body

Was not bought from 1-800-Matres

And the bugs that shared my bed

Made it not as restful

As a sterile sleep in the comfort of a walled home

There was a silence beyond the itch of bugs crawling on skin

Beyond the sound of crickets rubbing wings

That held me

Like a lover

.

And when I woke up

To the growl of my four-legged protector

Keeping intruders from entering our expansive bed

With orange clouds of sunrise on the horizon

And the full moon still in the sky

Even the Backstreet Boys tune in my head

Couldn’t destroy nature’s orchestration

.

My dog’s stretch

Told me it was time to wake from our slumber

Listen for a moment to the virgin sounds of birdcalls

A private concert that the morning seemed to bring for us alone

Watch them take flight from their invisible perches

Appearing suddenly like phantoms

And take with us the moon’s blanket

Mother tucking us in with nurture at night

And Father cuddling us in awe for the day

.

Under moon blanket

Cuddled with you and silence

One mind, heart, spirit

.