Mapache
Beverly took in a racoon orphan
that lived with her as though she were his mother,
until he grew up and became man of the house.
He came and went as he saw fit,
ate from the table at meal times what pleased him,
and from the kitchen countertop
when and what pleased her not.
Worse, he took a fancy to her best wines,
so when she left an open bottle out,
he would pull the cork and get himself drunk
as a lord and spill what he didn’t drink
on her paisley couch and floral rug.
He cheated on her, too, in the woods
with a paramour he brought home
from the creek, and shacked up
with the hussy in the woodshed rafters.
On cold snowy nights he’d come home late
from his love trysts with cold wet feet and snow
stuck to his fur. He’d climb into her bed
and with his almost human hands, gently
pat her on the cheek, nuzzle her ear, kiss
her neck with his wet nose as if to play
her for the fool he always took her for.
He peed outdoors and only flushed
the toilet just to watch the water run.
Like most men, he’d never put the seat
down when he was done, so when in the dark
of night she stooped to sit herself
down upon her comfy padded throne,
she’d slip instead upon the porcelain rim
and couldn’t stop her naked bum from falling in.
He liked to bathe, so he would
turn the water on, stick the plug
in the bathtub drain, and squeeze out her best
shampoo, conditioner, bath salts,
her imported eau de toilette into
the tub and splash around like a teenage kid
in a water fight until he got bored
and got out smelling sweeter than a French tart.
But try as she might, Beverly never
could teach him to stay out of her fragrances
or even turn the water off when it
overflowed, flooding the entire house
behind him. It was then that the ranch hands
started to mock him and the pampered treatment
he received as Señor de la casa,
calling him El Mapache del Bache,
a name whose form they used ironically
to imply landed gentry, but domiciled
in a “bache”, meaning “pot hole”.
One day, after he had flooded the whole damned
house, I asked her why she put up
with this errant clown, this masked bandit
she doted on as if he was the crowned prince.
She just grinned while mopping up the mess.
“I’m not really sure,” she said. “I kicked out
the last man I kept for a whole lot less”.
Romance of the New Moon
The New Moon enfolds the Old Moon
like a shadow in her arms,
cradles and rocks him gently,
soothes him with her charms,
clothes him in skeins of moon fleece
that she has gathered from the clouds
and whispers softly in his ears
how she’s always loved him
for all these countless years.
“Old Moon I know you’re weary
from visiting the stars
and sifting out the starlight
that travels from afar.
I’ll hold you and I’ll kiss you
on both your shadow cheeks
and let you sleep the night away
while I your nightly vigil keep.”
“New Moon, my love, my honeymoon,
how sweet and kind to let me sleep,
while you do labor oh so hard
to climb into the sky so steep.
I know it’s not so easy
to lift me to the zenith high
and carry me to heaven
with its vaulted ceilings wide.
While you each night our vigil keep
I will again grow round and strong
and shine across the heavens
until the night declines toward dawn.
And when each night is over
and we descend the sky so steep,
you’ll take me in your silver arms
And bathe me in the sea so deep.”
Santa Cruz, 2/14/21
God’s Tears
When God looked down from Heaven
and saw how mankind had run amok
on land and sea and everywhere
upon the Earth that he had made
for us to dwell in loving peace,
He wept and the sea became salty.
So when you are at the shore or sailing
on the open sea and the salt spray stings
your eyes, it is God reminding
you of his tears for what we all have done,
are doing now, and will do again tomorrow.
Bend, 9/14/23
Waterfall
Standing naked on the splash-stone,
the water poured over us, drenched our hair,
our bodies tall, our heads bent forward,
foreheads touching, holding each other
tightly as the torrent of falling water washed
over us in relentless waves of rapture,
caressing our bodies with its wet fingers
and supple liquid hands, palpitating
the contours of our skin, our shoulders,
backs, massaging our buttocks and thighs.
We held each other tightly,
your breasts pressed against my chest,
the warm points of contact between us
made warmer by the enveloping coolness
of the water, so that every place where skin
touched skin felt like a prolonged kiss.
Minute after minute the current poured
down upon us in excited swirls of ecstasy,
frolicking over our bodies in splashes,
pulsating against our skin, and then
exploding into empty space with branching
filigree fronds of spray, only to fall
again, splashing, churning away downstream
through rocks, crevices, the grass-covered
raceways and channels
that nourish the thin fertile skin
of this green earth in its
unremitting passion to reach the sea.
Bend, 9/24/21
As in Meditation
When I’m away and off at work, or just
running down my routine errands daily,
there’s a place inside I go to find you,
a peaceful sanctuary free from stress
where humdrum noise and shout are hushed,
today’s frantic frenzy for survival
and tomorrow’s hectic plans are pushed
aside. As in sacred meditation,
I conjure you seated at water’s edge
of some small tranquil mountain stream
that crosses wildflower fields full in bloom,
where grass gives way to ferns and trees along
its sculpted bank of ancient, weathered stones.
I wrap you in my arms and kiss your neck,
breathe the fragrance of your skin like budding
flowers coaxed open by the summer sun
climbing from the chill of dawn into heat of noon.
You dip your cupped hand in the cold clear stream
and dab its waters on your arms and chest,
behind your ears and on your neck
to refresh yourself from high noon’s burning.
To my lips your soft skin is hot and cool
like tasting sun that’s mixed with crystal water
or sipping iridescent drops
of morning dew from sundrenched flowers.
Your open kiss envelops all sensation,
transcending distances and separation,
until our souls and bodies merge and mesh
and we are joined in spirit and in flesh.
Bend, (9/14/21)
Body Memory
Now that you are gone, you still remain
with me as a body memory printed
on my skin, a nervous network of synapses
waiting to receive an intimately
coded secret message from you.
Downstairs a door opens and I hear
a distant woman’s voice echo
in the stairwell. It resonates with just
the slightest hint it might be you.
Triggered by instinctive expectation,
a cascade of feelings rushes
through my body like fingers running
piano scales up and then down the keys,
arpeggios of exotic sensations
that ripple over me like running water.
But of course it isn’t you I hear. It’s
just the neighbor down below in the atrium
talking the usual nonsense on her phone.
It’s been a week and I can’t change the sheets
for fear of losing your scent that lingers on
in tightly woven webs of linen threads,
the pillowcases where I lay my head
to inhale the fragrance of your body.
Every square inch of me desires you.
Undressing for bed, I find myself rubbing
my feet, stroking my arms, touching
the nerve endings of my flesh that still
lie open to receive you. I caress
my cheeks, my thighs, the hard angles
where my bones flex and bend at the joints,
and the soft creases nestled behind them.
With my fingertips I follow the countless
crisscross pathways your now absent hands have
blazed and seared across my skin, exploring
the outlines and contours of my body,
teaching me the mysteries of my own
flesh that I had never known before you.
With my own clumsy hands I rudely seek
the pleasure points that only you know where
to stroke, and how you press your fingertips
into the knotted muscles of my back
and neck, or when with wetted lips you kiss
the softness of my cheeks and chest,
caress the curves along my limbs and thighs,
as if I could be a substitute
for all the things that you would do
if only you were here to release me
from the tensions of all this pent-up
love and longing lock up so tight inside
the tissues of my soul and flesh.
Santa Cruz, 6/24/22
To my dearest love on getting old
You say that we are old and broken,
useless now that the kids are grown
and gone away to places we have never known,
places where they prefer to live and be
than here at home near you and me.
Even the family pets are dead and gone,
buried beside the old stump that used to be
a giant pine tree that blew down one winter
in a heavy storm that swept ashore from off the sea.
While they were young and growing up
that tree became a natural jungle gym.
It covered the whole back yard
with its big green branches spread so wide
it seemed to hold in its embrace
the entire painted vault of western sky
when sun would set in bands of crimson red
with a splash of gold upon the sea.
And even after the storm had blown it down
and it was but a barkless skeleton with a trunk
propped up at a sloping tilt by leafless limbs
stuck like crutches and walking sticks into the ground,
they still were overjoyed when school let out
and they came home to play and climb
across and up the deadwood branches,
laughing into the reaches of their childhood sky.
We picked up an old ship hawser from the docks,
hung it up from the very topmost tip,
And tied a big knot into the bottom end of it
where they could sit and swing
for hours at a time, sometimes so high
they reached the windows on the second floor.
What can I tell you after all these years
together, you and me my dearest love,
as we age and turn to sticks and bones
like tree limbs and branches stripped of leaves
and then the bark that once was skin,
laying bare the wood to weather in sun and wind?
I say that you remain inside each and every
one of them, the skeleton of love and joy
on which they grew strong and proud
of who they were and whence they came.
Even now you give sustenance, nourish them,
though out of sight and out of mind,
throughout their hurried lives and busy cares,
like the old pine tree that they took for granted
when they were young, climbing and swinging breathlessly
higher and higher into the wild and endless
reaches of painted sunset windblown sky.
Bend, 8/11/2022
The Judgement of Paris
Eris, goddess of discord, throws down among the Olympian goddesses a golden apple inscribed, “For the fairest one.” Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite vie for the prize. They ask Zeus to decide. Wisely, he avoids making the decision and has Hermes take the three contestants to the shepherd prince, Paris, on Mt. Ida, to make it instead. Unable to judge while they are clothed, he requires the goddesses to disrobe and stand nude before him. They promise him gifts. Hera says that if she is preferred in beauty over all women, she will give him kingdom over all men; Athena promises victory in battle; and laughter-loving Aphrodite offers him Helen, the beautiful mortal daughter of immortal Zeus. He decides in favor of Aphrodite and eagerly sails for Sparta to fetch Helen home to Troy, still unaware that the goddess’s precious gift comes with terrible hidden costs—the funeral dirges for his brother, Hector, breaker of horses, the death throes of kinsmen falling in battle, their enslaved wives and children led away weeping, the crackle and roar of towering flames, the great conflagration of Ilium. Apollodorus, Epitome 3.2
I
Azotea
Spellbound, from the rooftop’s shaded doorway
I watch old, dog-eared Maldonado’s beautiful
young bride, Helena, hanging out laundry
on clotheslines strung across the azotea
that overlooks the turquoise tropic sea below.
It’s a wash-day ritual of hers
to come here with her wicker baskets filled
to the brim with her most intimate linens
and lingerie, which her maids have freshly
washed and bleached to hang out in the sun to dry.
It’s a clever excuse of hers to break free
and escape her irascible husband
and stringent confines of his manor house
where she is both pampered mistress
and chattel prisoner at once.
Alone on the rooftop, in solitude
unrestrained by prying eyes and critical looks
from servant spies and quizzical cooks,
she sings snatches of her favorite songs
and dances in step, relishing the vibrance
of her voice upon her puckered lips
as if each vowel she sings were a lover’s kiss.
She reaches out and nimbly hooks a golden
sunbeam with an outstretched fingertip,
then spins in perfect cadence to a samba beat
on syncopated tip-toes of her sandaled feet.
Mockingly she holds a blouse or shirt
like a dance partner with both her hands,
streaming behind like a flag fluttering
upon the sultry tropic ocean winds.
Spinning in tight seductive swirls
she stoops down on her bended knees and picks
out a pair of linen pants from her wicker
laundry basket and holds them against her
like a fresh dancing partner who clings wet
and willing to her undulating thighs.
Coquettishly she twirls him in her arms,
scolds and cajoles him, pampers and consoles him,
before she deftly hangs him out to dry.
She laughs and plays, spreading her open arms
with radiant joy. Wrapped in the sensuous
audacity of youth and bathed in sunlight,
she opens the secret yearnings her soul
to the gentle undulations of the sultry
breeze that curls up from the turquoise tropic
sea below in thin wisps and swirls that dance
about her, ripple up her sleeves,
cup her breasts, lift her silken skirts,
caress her supple dancing thighs,
flutter through her long luxurious strands
of brown and gold sun-streaked hair,
fondle the nape of her neck, kiss her cheeks,
whisper in her ears fantastic
innuendos of love and youthful longing,
reveries and insatiable yearning
for what she knows not, but knows it amiss.
She shakes her bed linens against the wind,
unfurls her blankets and her sheets that luff
like sails on a sleek schooner tacking windward,
its flaxen mainsail filled with fantasies,
its flying jibs and mizen with wistful dreams.
Down the fluttering rows of wind-blown laundry
and out across the turquoise tropic sea
she fondly navigates her ship of dreams
toward some imaginary destination,
shrouded in exotic mystery,
enveloped in erotic lore.
II
Wind Squall
Lost in the rows of hanging wet clothes,
she does not see the ominous gray clouds
of a wind squall approaching from the east
that darkens the surface of the turquoise
tropic sea. In anticipation I watch,
shrouded in the darkened doorway,
and eagerly await the outcome wondering
exactly how it will unfold and what
advantage there might be for me if I
can play a role that gains her sympathy,
but still hides the licentious desire
that burns me inside while I watch.
Should I warn her now, or sit and wait?
I can’t make up my mind, so I just sit
and watch her, waiting for an opening
to make an opportune approach.
Voluptuous yet svelte, graceful as a goddess,
she plays and weaves her elegant supple
way along each clothesline row,
an extra pin clenched between her puckered lips,
hanging out her cotton pillowcases,
the bath towels, her blouses, her skirts,
methodically moves on to hang her hose,
and then at last her most intimate lingerie
that in their wetness cling to her bare skin
as she takes them gently up from her basket.
She shakes, then stretches her garments
in the breeze and pins them to the clothesline.
Carefully she places a practiced hand
behind each damp transparent silken piece
and with the other, brushes the wrinkles
out with a loving slow soft sensuous
caress. At last, she comes toward me,
singing, dancing, spinning
in tight spirals down her last row,
a lace-hemmed, flesh-toned slip in hand,
unaware that I am there.
My skin tingles. I breathe in long and deep,
and with my index finger press
my dark glasses back to cover my eyes.
She looks up, startled to see me watching,
and so unexpectedly close to her
that I can hear her catch her breath.
She is momentarily embarrassed
and shyly hides behind the flesh-
toned slip she’s hanging up to dry.
Quickly she sticks the clothes pins in the shoulder
straps and peeks back out again to see if I’m
still there. I smile and touch my wide brimmed hat
to show her a courtesy of deference.
She smiles back, then lowers her eyes
in modesty and hides again behind
a long semi-transparent nylon robe
vertically striped in cream and white.
A strong puff comes in from off the sea and
takes her by surprise, ripples through her blouse
and gently caresses her breast till her
nipples harden and I see them outlined
beneath the diaphanous damp satin cloth
blown tight across her chest. Mischievously,
the playful wind billows out her flowing skirt,
ruffles its eager licentious fingers
errantly over her uncovered thighs.
With the wet wash held in her busy hands,
she struggles awkwardly to hold her skirt
down to cover her open knees
and press the wanton flirtations of the wind
from out the fabric of her gaping sleeves.
Then, to her instant horror and dismay,
the wind squall finally hits with a sudden
hard gust that blows aside the wet satin robe,
wraps it round her, leaves her exposed,
fills up the hanging pillowcases
and her nylon panty hose like windsocks.
The sudden onset breaks loose the clothespins,
overturns the empty laundry basket,
blows out the bed sheets like billowing clouds,
thunderheads towering upward
toward the sky, a flapping chaos
of wind-blown spinnakers jibing wildly
in a mad tempest. Frantically she
grabs a luffing corner that has broken
free and pulls down hard with all her might
to hold it back, but is overpowered
by the wild riot of wind in her clothes
and in her long, lush sun-steaked hair
blown streaming back in tangles around
her comely face, lashing her squinting eyes.
Then comes the horizontal rain
driving hard against her without restraint.
Instantly I am standing at her side
ready to help reef in these wayward sails.
I stretch both arms wide to hold two corners
of a sheet securely in place while she,
from th’ other side on tiptoes, reaches up,
her breasts pressing through the wet white linen
against my chest, to insert an extra
pin and fasten it tightly to the line.
Upset and flustered by the task at hand,
she doesn’t seem to notice when we touch
or brush against each other as we go
to and fro, face to face, down each row,
working together, separated only
by thin fabrics that flutter and madly
flap between us just inches apart, wet-
slapping our faces and bare arms, stinging,
clinging cool to the warm skin of our arms.
Redolent sweet fragrances of perfume
from her gossamer lace and translucent
lingerie waft past me from the clothesline
next to my head that make my nostrils flare.
Working down every row in urgent haste,
our bodies incessantly bump and touch
and brush against each other again and
again through damp sheets as we pin
the billowing sails back in place again,
fasten down the luffing garments
lest they be blown down upon the dirty
surface of the rooftop and soiled, or swept away
across the turquoise tropic sea below.
Then just as we are done, the sun comes out
again and the squall is gone as quickly
as it had begun. With a hesitant
yet grateful smile, she glances up at me
and says, “Mil gracias,” putting her hand
to her luxurious disheveled hair
as if to brush and pat it back in place again.
And I respond, “Por nada, Doña Helena.
Ayudarle fue mi gran placer.”
I push my dark glasses back above my forehead
and stare down into her young, upturned face,
inviting her to read the desire in my eyes.
She blushes; starts to speak, but stifles what
she’s going to say by laying
two fingers askew across her open mouth.
The innocence of her gesture
surprises me; it catches me off guard.
I try to say something to break
the awkward silence that follows,
but I’m at a loss for words. I stammer,
then stutter. I blink; my eyes flutter.
Unwittingly, I give myself away.
Speechless, I stand back in deference,
as though dumbstruck before a goddess,
and let her pass, empty baskets in hand,
through the shaded rooftop doorway
and down the dark spiral stairwell below.
Watching her descend from sunlight into shadows,
with each downward stairstep I’m drawn
deeper into that forbidden dark pool
of fantasies where attraction, longing,
and lust do not resolve in nice demarcations
or trite clichés, but rather sink instead
into the quicksands of taboo desire,
reveries of wanton pleasure,
pulsating rapture, unquenchable passions
to make the sanest man go mad.
III
La Locura
At night I listen to sounds of waves changing
with the flux of winds, the ebb and flow
of darkened tides that rise and fall
along the sandy shore and rocky cliffs
that rim the shaded outlines of the bay.
The moorings of my mind weaken, give way,
wander into dangerous fantasy.
I dream of abducting her like Paris
when he stole Helen from the mighty king
and sailed away with her at night for Troy.
This fantastical imagination
spirals back in endless repetitions.
I hear the steady stroke of oars muffled
in their oarlocks as I row her to my
anchored ship, the soft hiss of water parting
beneath the prow with every surge
of oar-blades that dip and stroke
the still black phosphorescent sea
in luminous puddles of swirling light.
I feel the warm pressure of her hand in mine,
her fingers tightening in my grasp
as I help her up the boarding ladder
into the cockpit. The anchor clinks softly
on its steel chain as I pull it dripping
from the water and stow it in the V-berth
beneath the forward hatch. The halyard winch
clicks like ticking seconds on the clock
as I hoist the mainsail to the masthead.
Before us the huge Genoa jib unfurls
like a white dacron cloud hung out to dry
from the constellations of the starlit sky.
A night breeze fills the sails as I turn
the rudder of my sleek ghost ship homeward
across the phosphorescent tropic sea
toward Ilium at last. She stands beside me
at the helm, her fingers and palm
warmly cupped around my arm just above
the elbow. I feel as though I have been
touched by a goddess born in heaven, descended to earth.
Her presence fills me with such unreluctant
pleasure that I would sacrifice the world
to keep her. Is it madness to covet
the forbidden caress of divinity?
Would not any man give up everything
to receive the goddess’s gift of love?
Who could refuse this sweet and holy proffer?
If the flawless daughter of Zeus on high
took any man of flesh and blood
or even touched his mortal skin with love,
how could he not honor the shepherd prince of Ida
and sing in praise this mantra to his madness?
“Behold Paris! Judge of judges! Sage of sages!”
Santa Cruz, 7/14/23
Life’s a sexually transmitted disease
I
Life’s a sexually transmitted disease
without a cure; no remedy that you
can buy; no super drug to purge it out;
nor vaccination to stop it in its tracks.
There ain’t no all-nite happy pill
that works well enough to cure this ill.
You’re simply born with it,
and that’s the simple fact without a fix.
There is no tale of joy and cheer
that can disguise the visceral void of fear
that we all feel as night draws near
and we are left alone in bed
to worry darkness into dawn.
This life of woe is all so sad and dreary,
but don’t you fret, do not cry or get all
teary-eyed about the mess we’re in.
Better to not care how bad things are,
how messed up it’s gotten.
So swill some beer, put up your feet
upon the tabletop and take your ease.
There ain’t no rules; you can do as you please,
cuz life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
II
Just look around you and consider well
what the sages knew of man and womenkind
and how we’re all a universal laughingstock.
Listen up to what the great Epictetus
says upon this matter: “He who can laugh
about himself, never runs out of things
to laugh about.” So laugh we must. Just poke
good fun at everything you hear and see.
What else is there to do?
You know our life’s a cosmic joke,
so kick back, relax, and take a toke,
cuz after everything is said and done
and you have argued well the pros and cons,
you must conclude, surely you must agree,
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
III
Back in the Golden Age of former times
when our righteous founding fathers lived
in virtue pure and noble in every way,
you know, back in the good old days
when they “brought forth upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in Liberty
and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.”
Now I ask you, where are those men today?
Where are the heroes of yester yore?
Do you see them amongst us in the public square?
Or seated at the desk in Lincoln’s chair?
When you go to vote, do you not want to puke
inside the voting booth when forced to choose
among the sordid candidates listed
down your ballot? How do you feel when
you check the box for some corrupted dolt
to represent you in our commonwealth?
The ancient poet, Horace, explains the gaping
differences between our illustrious
ancestors of yesteryear and what we have
become today, when in his odes he sings:
“Our fathers, viler than our grandfathers,
begat us who are more vile than our fathers.
And we shall bring forth a progeny
even viler still.” How could this be
expressed more succinctly or to the point?
Surely you must agree with him and me
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
IV
What, then, is the human condition when
and where our happiness is concerned?
Let us look at what the great Sigmund Freud
has to say about this pressing matter.
He says that human happiness is not
a part of God’s intended plan for man on earth:
“That man should be ‘happy’ is not included in
Creation’s plan.” What?! you ask. Happiness
is not a birthright God has given us?
Nope!
All that you can hope for is normality,
because “the aim of psychoanalysis
is simply to relieve people of their
neurotic unhappiness so that they
can then become normally unhappy.”
In his own words he tells us the painful
truth about humanity: “I have found
little good about human beings.
In my experience, most of them are trash.”
So in his view we’re just a witches brew,
a psychopathic sour mash,
a sick and sorry psychiatric stew.
Surely now, you shall concede to me
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
V
We say that intelligence is what
makes man superior to animals and brutes
who cannot think the way we do about
the world or introspect into the dark
and cloistered confines of our troubled minds.
But look at what the great philosophers
say they find when they engage in mental
introspection and think about the things
they see inside the muddle of their heads.
You know, the ones we thought were so damned smart.
“I think, therefore I am.” What poppy cock!
Is this not a circular tautology?
The “ego” “I” is what we use to state identity.
So why not say “I am, therefore I think.”
Or better yet, “I love, therefore I am.”
Or put more bluntly and to the point, we
should simply say, “I fuck and therefore I am.”
So let’s get down to what homo erectus
really thinks, and why he thinks the way he does.
Mostly, he thinks of getting laid
not only long and hard or now and then,
but almost every second of the day.
If no woman or man engaged in that
essential act, then who would beget
or get begot? And who’d be left
but the birds and the bees
to transmit life as a sexual disease?
VI
Who can argue with the logic of that?
Ask any healthy, red-blooded man
what really makes him ejaculate, “I am!”
Does he cry out in bed at night because
he’s thinking some abstruse rational thought,
or holding his lover tight in ecstasy?
You tell me which of them you think it is!
And this is just his conscious state of mind.
In his unconscious state, he lies asleep
like Superman, hard as steel more than half
the night, dreaming the irrepressible dream,
of transmitting life as a sexual disease.
VII
Does our intelligence really improve
the living lot of folks who dwell upon
this earth? Just look at what the eggheads
say about the cosmos of stars above us
in the sky at night and how space time works.
They have concluded that the cosmos is flat
but space-time is round. What are they talking
about? Isn’t it nonsense, completely absurd
to claim that one is flat, the other curved?
And then there’s dark matter and energy,
blacker than night, which no one’s even seen.
It’s all a mumbo jumbo, quantum-foam fantasy
of so-called axions that probably
don’t exist. And Albert Einstein? What good was he?
You say he proved that E = MC squared?
Maybe so. But you must remember too,
his formulas produced the atom bomb
to blow apart the living world
and leave behind a wasteland of weeping woe.
Have not the breakthroughs of science
and technology become enslaved to arms
and lethal weaponry for wanton war?
Even the internet was funded by Defense.
How can you sit and waver on the fence?
Look around and you shall see
that thinking ‘s the source of our depravity.
There is nothing in it for you or me.
If you think objectively, you must concede
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
VIII
And now the geniuses of cyber space
are hard at work inventing something new,
which they have named “virtual reality,”
as if the real world weren’t bad enough,
without some doppelganger mirror twin
where you can go to shoot and kill and sin
in any way your fantasies direct you to.
It’s all OK, cuz you’re in a feedback loop
that’ll hook you up with a friendly group
to curate every dark desire hidden
deep inside your human heart of darkness.
Virtual facts and fiction are all the same
and nothing’s true that isn’t also false.
Welcome to our magic virtual world!
Suffer no consequence! Nor feel remorse!
So how can you still refuse to believe
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease?
IX
And just you wait and see
what’s coming down the tracks at you and me!
The cyber geeks have just unleased
a pixilated cyber genie
from deep inside his digitized bottle.
They’ve let him loose upon us all with no
constraints, without controls. I am talking
about artificial intelligence,
that cybernetic djinn that all to soon
will fall upon us like a cyborg plague
and join AI to both the ego
and the human Id
just like they wired Elon’s pig.
What madness is this? Better we call it
AS for Artificial Stupidity.
In the end, so-called AI intelligence
will be the means for our insanity
to breed and procreate a cyborg progeny,
spawned by web-crawlers on the internet
to transmit life as a cybernetic disease.
X
Come on! Let’s get real! We’ve all let
the monster in, enter our homes and work.
It even has a voice that talks to you,
speaks out, tells you how to drive your car,
where you are and when to turn and park,
as if you were some senseless dingbat jerk
who can’t find home from his place of work.
Not only does it condescend to you,
it follows everywhere you go,
sees what you do, and records what you say.
It’s a paranoid fantasy come true
that you brought home to live with you.
It tracks your income, your spending too.
Your car is tracked, your voice, your face,
the secret data you’ve hidden in disgrace
upon your laptop or PC at work.
It’s got your DNA, your fingerprints,
even your smart phone, the Fitbit watch you wear
are tailor made to join you to the web
and monitor your emotional pulse
with every tick-tock of your beating heart.
It’s all recorded in hi-fi,
transmitted in wi-fi,
and electronically wired
to some weird dystopian sci-fi
hallucination that we now call everyday life.
And who keeps track of all that’s tracked?
Please rest assured, there’s not a single piece
of you that isn’t well preserved,
sanitized, packed into a pickle jar,
then stored and labeled on a data shelf.
Forget about ascending in holy bliss
to seventh heaven when you die.
We’ve given Paradise a brand new portal,
a space age way to become immortal.
Really, it is not so bad as you might think.
Nothing of you is lost; it’s all downloaded,
decoded, and digitally transported
in bits and bytes to your final place of rest.
So sleep tight tonight. It shall all be there
entombed with you; your DNA,
every image or video you ever made.
It’s better than a tombstone to mark your grave.
Don’t worry, there’s no problem here.
No part of you will ever disappear
or die and be forgotten, simply because
what corporations don’t keep, the government does.
But we don’t complain that our privacy ‘s lost.
We prefer the convenience and just shrug it off.
How can you seriously deny that life’s
a sexually transmitted disease?
XI
What does the Spanish poet say about life?
He says it’s all a dream. To be exact:
“La vida es sueño, y los sueños sueños son.”
What could be better proof than the simple
fact that dreams are jumbled nightmares
without release, a witch’s brew of terror
that defiles our sleep and keeps us torn
and twisted in the grip of awful fright,
when all we want is blesséd rest at night.
So bad enough that our daytime life is hell.
When we sleep it’s even worse, you must admit.
The poet’s meaning, then, is simply this:
“La vida es una pesadilla.”
Which is to say that “life is just a living nightmare.”
And who would wish their nightmares real?
Listen here to what the sage and seer says
of how awfully we confound our lives
with dreams: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one
morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in bed into a giant insect.”
So, we are cursed with an inborn defect.
In our somnambulistic intercourse
between the waking Ego and sleeping Id,
we confound our lives with the dreams we keep,
so that whether awake or in bed sound asleep,
our life’s a malady without any reprieve
from transmitting life as a sexual disease.
What does the famous poet say? He says
our very “life’s but a walking shadow,
a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.”
Ask yourself an honest question!
Who was it who told your story? Was it God?
If so, then who’s the idiot? Is it He
who told it so? Or you for worshiping
the one who made your life an idiot’s tale?
But what of life hereafter you may ask?
This idiotic world of suffering
is just a prelude to everlasting
blissful peace in Paradise
with the living god we sacrificed.
We killed him, mind you, nailed him up
upon the cross and hung him out to die
between two thieves we also crucified.
Haven’t you heard the philosopher ask:
“Do you not hear the gravediggers
who are burying God? God is dead. And we
have killed Him.” What consolation find you
on his deathbed? Better to not be born
saith the Holy Preacher in the Good Book:
“And I thought the dead who are already dead
more fortunate than the living who are
still alive; but better than both is he
who has not yet been born.
All is vanity and grasping for wind.”
Who can argue with the holy word of God?
It’s clear to everyone who thinks and reads,
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease.
XII
And what about God himself? Who is He?
Angry god of wrath or father of love?
This question has wracked the rational human
mind for eons past, and will so for ages
yet to come. It was old Epicurus,
the ancient sage of Hellenistic times,
who asked, “Is God willing to prevent evil,
but not able? Then he is impotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he’s malevolent.
Whence, then, comes evil?”
From the Calvinists we know the answer.
Evil comes from postlapsarian fallen man
and woman who ate the apple and fell from grace.
And it is God himself in his distemper
over tasting that forbidden fruit, who
“brings us into existence wholly depraved,
so that under the innocent features
of our childhood, is hidden a nature
adverse to all good, and propense to all evil.”
How can the world abide such a creature?
No wonder wise Nietzsche told us that
“there’s a virus upon the face of Earth.
And it is called humanity.”
What further proof is needed, if you please,
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease?
XIII
What about our Holy Mother, the Good
Earth who gives us life, nurture, and sustenance?
Without her, where would we be and what kind
of existence would we lead, if not doomsday
and the kiss of death? We owe her so much.
Just her infinite beauty should command
our love and worship. And her infinite
bounty should command our devotion
even more. Yet how do we repay our
Mother dear the filial debt we owe to her?
With neglect and pollution, the excrement
of our careless lifestyles that daily churns
the waters of life into a putrid cesspool.
Yet we who whimper loudest about this
do nothing to change our wasteful ways.
Instead, we still persist in laying the sacred
wilderness wild in waste, the earth mined,
the forests burned, blue skies smudged black
with smog and soot, the pestilent sludge
from cavernous machines that disgorge
their efflorescent toxic mash upon the land
and defecate into the rivers and the sea.
In all our daily lives we constantly strive
to defile the earth, the wind, the water.
In our shameful sloth, we do nothing other
than violate our blesséd holy Mother.
Who then can gainsay our proven decree
that life’s a sexually transmitted disease?
Santa Cruz, 10/22/23
©Dana Stone
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