Stuff from July & August 2017

               To Express Dissatisfaction

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘How yuh doin’?’

‘Not too bad. You?’

‘Can’t complain.’

‘Oh, yes you can.

Everybody has plenty to complain about.

You just gotta have some gripes; You know you do.

Go ahead! Don’t suffer in silence. Let it out.

Grizzle till you run out of gas. You’ll feel so much better.

Think of the catharsis! Think of the release!

Your job sucks and your boss is a shitnozzle?

Fuckwit drivers don’t know how to use their turn signals?

Bitch about it.

Your fucken car?

Burglers?

Cops?

The opposite sex?

Your power bill?

Assholes on the internet?

Your landlord?

Your family?

Bank fees?

Predatory corporations?

Food fads?

Neoliberalism?

The government?

Young people nowadays?

How about human greed and cruelty?

Money?

C’mon! Indulge yourself in a bit of a whinge!’

‘Well, it has been raining a lot the past few days.’

‘Well done! The weather’s always good for a grumble.’

  

             Consequences Last

My mother’s abusive behaviour toward me,

starting from the dawn of my memory in the 1940s,

still fucks me up in 2017,

and nothing seems to have much effect on that.

Because consequences last,

and last,

and last,

in my mind I always come in last.

Anything else feels unnatural.

Other people seem to be able to sense this

and exploit it when the occasion arises,

like carrion crows,

if I’m not already less than shit to them

and not worth the trouble

of even considering last.

I don’t cast aspersions on them for this.

I realise that’s just the way it is.

Their behaviour toward me is only natural and right.

I accept it.

Of course I don’t like it,

but nobody has any cause to give a shit

about what I like or don’t like

except for me, naturally,

and I don’t count.

And to all the smug, smirking

evangelists of positive thinking

who tell me that I can shed this baggage

if I only want to do so and Just Do It,

I can only explain my failure to assert myself

by agreeing with them that I’m their inferior,

and will they please just shut the fuck up.

Consequences last.

            Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Ringo just claimed in an interview

that Paul had died in 1966

and that an imposter named Billy Shears

has been impersonating him

for the past half-century or so.

Paul replied publicly that Ringo is senile

adding a few other dismissive adjectives.

Social media took up the debate.

Now, back in 63 when the Beatles first hit

I danced with clumsy white-boy enthusiasm

and sang, ‘I wanna hold your gland!’

loudly off-key over the record,

just like so many others did,

and in 67 I got stoned and lost myself in Sgt Pepper,

just like so many others did,

but when I saw this public stoush

and considered some of its potential consequences,

I realised that, in 2017,

which person was telling the truth there

had no effect whatsoever on my life

one way or the other,

even though the truth is always important,

and decided it was time to take my old dog for a walk,

and then make myself a cheese and tomato sammie

for supper when we made it back home.

I don’t eat as much at one sitting as I used to do.

I wonder if this goes for other old people,

like Ringo and Paul-Or-Not-Paul, too.

 

       It’s The Jews, He Told Me

Conspiracy theorists say that they think,

and furthermore say that they think

that they’re bucking the establishment

and battling against those who oppress the rest of us

by suppressing information.

One problem with this, for me at least,

is that it serves the purposes of the oppressors

by diverting energy and outrage and media exposure

from the way that they, the plutocracy,

are actually ruining billions of lives

by focusing on trivialities.

I mean, it makes no difference to me

if NASA faked the moon landing

and has spent a large chunk of its budget since then

paying hush money to everyone on the film crew

who did their dirty work –

and it would’ve been a fairly large film crew.

It makes no difference to me if all those involved

want to spend large amounts of energy and money

suppressing evidence of visitors from outer space

for no reason that I know of.

I’ve been drinking fluoridated water

for most of my life

with neither my neighbours nor myself

suffering any ill effects.

And so on.

It does make a difference, though,

if they can get people to blame

a medium-sized London merchant bank

(((The Jews)))

for all of the oligarchy’s crimes,

and then some.

  

                             No Debate 

It’s another New Zealand election campaign season,

and glancing at the comments section under political posts,

which I’m indeed old enough to know better than to do,

it struck me how generally worthless political arguments are.

Look – you wanna vote for the National Party? Fine.

If the National Party embodies your values,

that is, if you think corruption, mean-spiritedness, lying,

bullying, and kissing the arses of rich pigs –

both Kiwi and multinational – is desirable,

and you think the Greens are –

oh, I don’t know: a bunch of poo bums,

or some similar name-callers’ epithet,

then I think you should definitely vote for National –

No debate there. No argument.

Simple, eh?

And Labour? Well, y’know,

if you’re comfy in the narrowing middle of the road,

with good intentions blunted by corporations’ donations,

go for it!

Now, seen any good movies lately?

      Respecting Others’ Cultures

The matador fucked up,

for whatever reason,

and died from impact with the bull’s horns.

The Spaniards, as is their cultural tradition,

hanged the bull by his neck,

a terrible, agonising death

for the uncomprehending soul

who was only defending himself.

The 40-year-old Yemeni family’s friend

married their eight year old daughter,

as is the Arabian cultural tradition;

she died of internal bleeding

on their wedding night.

In Yulin, China the villagers laugh

as they shove a struggling, tortured dog

into boiling water

as part of their cultural tradition

that calls for this.

A court in Belgium found eight princesses

from the United Arab Emirates

guilty of slave trafficking

on a stay in a luxury Belgian hotel,

the ownership and mistreatment

of slaves as domestic servants

being a traditional cultural status symbol

back home in the Gulf.

French farmers and gourmets

savour the cultural tradition

of torturing geese before slaughtering them

for their artificially enlarged livers, or foie gras,

that satisfy the gourmets’

traditionally pampered palates.

Many people in East Africa’s Great Lakes region

act on a traditional cultural belief

that the body parts of albino people

have magical properties,

by killing and butchering albino children

to get the ingredients

for their magic potions.

Poorly educated people in the American South,

who identify themselves as white people,

including some poorly educated college graduates,

revere displaying the Confederate flag

as emblematic of their most dearly held

cultural traditions,

specifically proud memories of a war

their ancestors fought to deny the humanity

of the ancestors of people in whose faces

they – traditionally – prefer to wave it.  

                    A Career In Sales

I reached into my letter box

on my way out to walk the dog,

groped out an envelope,

which wasn’t from the Council or the Government,

and stuck it in one of my hip pockets, right next to my

heart.

It was addressed to ‘Resident’,

and was from the Slingshot mobile-phone-number company.

A blurb on the outside of the envelope

offered a six months not-quite-free something or other.

It made me feel a sharp sadness.

New Zealand has a shitload of telecom service providers,

Slingshot isn’t among either the most popular

or the most highly rated by its customers,

and most of us have other things to do

than go through the hassle of changing phone companies.

That poor bastard in charge of Slingshot sales!

Think of the shit our system puts people like that through.

Think of the pressure from the bosses,

who are too cheap to let the pathetic patsy

offer the punters a real incentive;

think of the cost of direct-mail advertising –

think of the desperation!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor mug

ends up riding an avalanche of P right down the gurgler.

                    Spousal Abuse Witnessed

One time Smoky asked me

if my step-father ever abused my mother.

I cracked up, almost spraying my coffee in front of me.

Nobody ever abused my mother;

it was my mother who abused other people.

This was as certain as the sun setting in the west.

It brought to mind the evening before I married Helena,

and we attended a pre-nuptial soirée for family and friends

in a flash duplex suite that Howard, my step-father,

had taken in some flash French Quarter hotel.

Howard had an alcohol problem, and he’d tucked into a

person-with-an-alcohol-problem’s ration of bubbly,

but he was harmless, standing off at an introvert’s distance

with a silly smile on his face, somewhat unsteady on his pins.

My mother, however, took exception to his condition

(maybe he’d told her he’d do it teetotal – I don’t know)

and started tearing shreds off him

with the sort of persistent, venomous nastiness

for which she had few equals in this world.

Unable to escape her, Howard raised his hand in anger.

She coldcocked him, a roundhouse right

that would’ve flattened him

if a piece of furniture hadn’t been fortunately in place

behind him to catch his fall.

He didn’t arise again immediately,

and the party was as good as over.

No, my step-father never abused my mother.

If any abusing was to be done,

she’s the one who was going to do it.

              Captain Beefheart Is Dead

A dry, aromatic Southwestern canyon breeze

ruffled the cypress and the juniper

and the hair on my arms as I toured the log-façaded villa.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

Some geniuses are so simple that they’re difficult,

but they can respond to simplicity, and easily;

business can fuck up anything but the source of the music.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

Nighttime in the desert exposes unchanging majesty;

the desert animals come out to its welcome,

the sun’s crazy blazing blocked off by God’s golfball.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

Music slips in between a barrage of rainfall,

being randomly structured, but rigidly composed;

raindrops are matter; the stars are matter; we’re matter, too.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

Nerds and geeks and earnest-looking weirdos

packed the sour-smelling room shoulder-to-shoulder

and knew all the word and free-form instrumentation phrases.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

The Blue Grosbeak takes no cash for its musical efforts,

dogs don’t charge each other for the poetry of their scent,

crisp, grey autumn days dispense their magic for free,

Captain Beefheart is dead.

That deep, gravelly, expressive blues voice

that captivated the Captain’s devoted cult following

chuckled warmly at my little joke.

Captain Beefheart is dead.

  

                 Thingness

   (a song lyric needing music)

We’re a dildo, not a cock,

you and me.

We’re not a person, just livestock,

we’re a porn flick not a lover;

with no feelings, with no cover.

We can just forget about the blues;

we’re only there for them to use;

we’re the doormat, we’re the football,

you and me.

They tell us that we’re special in God’s eyes,

you and me,

but act like we’re too inert to despise –

We can just forget about the blues;

we’re only there for them to use;

we’re the doormat, we’re the football,

you and me.

We’re soulless and disposable,

like a condom or a tampon,

ornaments they can tramp on,

hardly even decomposable;

we’re a something, not a somebody;

maybe useful, maybe shoddy –

just an it – you and me.

We’re not citizens, just consumers,

you and me.

targets for their nasty sense of humour –

you and me.

We can just forget about the blues;

we’re only there for them to use;

we’re the doormat, we’re the football,

you and me.

Unless, of course, you’re one of them –

you, not me.

Unless, of course, you’re one of them –

you, not me.

      The Verbalator

I have it! I have it!

The Next Great Superhero,

good for a franchise

of scads of movies

and piles of pingas,

will be – ta-DAH!

The Verbalator!

By day an inarticulate kitchen hand

working the lunch shift

at a cheesy chop house,

Our Hero transforms into

The Verbalator

when the sun goes down,

befuddling bad guys

with elegant verbiage,

a cracking vocabulary,

and savagely excellent grammar and syntax.

A suave, urbane, cultured sort,

The Verbalator will sign off each episode

with a wry smile

(or a shy smile,

or maybe a grimace)

and the catch-phrase:

‘Words work wonderful wins.’

Or maybe, ‘Words win wonderful work.’

Or maybe, ‘Win with wonderful word work.’

Or something like that.

I’m open to suggestions

if they’ll help get this idea off the ground.

I visualise myself in the role, of course,

although it might be better box office

for The Verbalator to be a woman.

Old Age

                             Okay, I’m Old

Okay, I’m old.

Although some people insist on insisting

that I don’t look as old as I am,

as far as I’m concerned that’s no

Big Fucking Deal.

Numbers may indeed be abstractions,

but numbers, meaning years of age, are scary,

and numbers, meaning years of age, are silly,

sometimes.

It all depends –

on how dependable

or dependent things are –

doesn’t it?

First, the scary:

I’m 71.

Scared the shit out of you didn’t I?

Oooh, I hope that filthy old fart doesn’t want any intimacy with me!

Next, the silly:

I mean – despite the numbers, I’ve always been who I am, y’know?

and part of me’s always been eight years old,

since I was eight,

and at moments still I’m that 10-year-old at camp,

or that suffering, clueless teenager,

and I don’t particularly like the part of me

who was at my idiot testosterone peak when I was 25,

and too much of me remains of the doormat I’d become 20 years later,

and have in some ways always been,

and of course part of me’s always 15 years old –

especially when I see long, well-toned female legs, and so forth.

And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Because that’s ridiculous

because I’m old,

and because I don’t think I deserve ridicule –

at least not for that,

but Big Fucking Deal, eh?

                                 Old

It gets right up my nose;

I mean, it really sticks in my craw

when, in the flow of conversation,

in regard to, say, riding on city buses,

I off-handedly refer to myself as being old,

and another party to the conversation,

usually with a patronising or condescending smile,

contradicts me and insists, ‘Oh, you’re not old!’,

or some crap like that,

and asserts the superiority of using some euphemism.

This always offends the shit out of me.

I know it shouldn’t, but not giving a shit

about what I should or shouldn’t feel

is one of the advantages of being old.

It offends me because it’s an affront to the English language,

to which I have devoted a large portion of my life.

Old means old, as in having stayed alive for a long time.

It disgusts me when they treat it as if it were a dirty word.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

A really ugly line is, ‘You’re only as old as you think you are,’

as if lying to myself were a virtue,

and personal honesty and integrity a loathsome deformity.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Another bullshit insult is, ‘But you have such a young mind!’

My mind right now is enormously superior to what it was 50 years ago.

As if my lifetime of curiosity and experience, and reflection on both,

hasn’t meant a constantly improving mind! Fuck that.

Shit, being old is okay with me, really.

Being old also means having arthritis and cataracts

and other physical niggles. Okay. That’s part of it.

It’d be a real drag to have them if I were still young,

but I’m not.

                    Notes On The Slipperiness Of Days

The days slide by like turds along the endless cosmic sewer pipe,

never pausing, never looking behind, never looking ahead.

Wednesday? Friday? I don’t know and I don’t care.

My mind has continuously engulfed the experience

that the shit all around me has provided,

my growth in understanding and wisdom

as imperceptibly gradual as my body’s deterioration.

My emotional life, however, has remained stunted;

having the emotional development of a nine-year-old

has made being old doesn’t seem unreal to me;

I view myself with child eyes,

which helps to make my reality seem distantly unreal,

as the days slide by.

I walk my old dog daily,

elevated by the caress of opioids or opiates, plus cannabis,

and usually no more than a wee bit of pain;

the doppler-effect rumble and hraahoomsh of traffic lends its music

to the dancing molecules in my brain and nervous system,

connecting me with my own kind

better than most face-to-face encounters,

as the days slide by.

Even middle age, and all that entails

is a fading memory that won’t slip away,

although the septic emotional wounds of that time

remain encrusted on top of all the day-turds

from childhood and onward,

as the days slide by.

I bought my new coat about a half a year before composing this,

or maybe it was about a year, or more, or something like that.

The days do slide by.

                               Progress

As soon as I become accustomed

to the aches and pains and points of fatigue

that come with being how old I am,

I grow older still and have new ones to contend with.

                             That Old

I may have been whinging

about one or more of the ways

my body’s deterioration over time

has inconvenienced me or worse –

but anyway she accused me,

as many others have done

(why they have to make it sound like an accusation I can only guess),

‘Oh, you’re not that old!’

and I began to wonder, as I do,

being the type of person who wonders about shit,

how old is that old, anyhow?

By what units do we measure it?

By months and years?

By tastes and attitudes?

By technological competence?

By knowledge of pop culture, both now and then?

By speed going up and down stairs?

By body odour?

By the number of grandchildren?

By how long we’ve been telling the same old jokes?

By the amount of wisdom accumulated?

… and where and how do we set the line for any of these

between what is just not as young as we used to be

and being that old?

Old enough to know better, I suppose.

                    National Super

It doesn’t seem real.

After struggling for years to survive

both financially and psychologically at the same time

(the word simultaneously wouldn’t have worked there),

just as I was close to having to sell my house

in order to do so I

simultaneously

reached my sixty-fifth birthday,

and as much money as I’d been paid some months,

and more than I’d been paid in some months lately,

before taxes,

doing the demanding and difficult work that I do –

excellently, permit me to add –

began to appear, after tax, like magic,

in my bank account every other Tuesday,

and although I still had burdensome debts to pay off,

I began to have to suffer less from privation.

It seems extraordinary to someone, such as myself,

who has a generally low opinion of my species,

that anyone, let alone a country,

actually takes care of tired old people, such as myself,

without asking questions, stuffing up, or saying,

‘Nyah! Nyah! Just teasing! We’re taking it back!’

I still expect them to do these things,

being largely incapable

of real interpersonal trust.

                   Rice Isn’t A Daily Thing Here

I don’t panic over work pressure anymore.

If I can’t do my work at a leisurely pace

that’s other people’s problem –

it doesn’t matter to me.

My superannuation pension has provided me

with what the Maoists would’ve probably called

my iron wine bottle.

                                 Seventy

Floating, or sinking, along a footpath – or both or neither,

a cool breeze ruffling my forearms’ hairs,

the high grey clouds diffusing what light was left

as the daytime shaded into the evening,

I focused on the outlines of the trees, still full of green leaves

despite the equinox having passed a couple of weeks before.

I felt connected to everything but humans –

humans who feel compelled to try to impose their egos

onto phenomena ridiculously larger than themselves,

onto phenomena absolutely indifferent to themselves,

such as by believing that by throwing a switch or something

at midnight on the first day of March

they have magically changed the season from summer to autumn,

here in the Southern Hemisphere,

although midnight and March are both random cultural inventions

that they’ve invented for their convenience,

and have nothing to do with the Earth itself,

the changing of the seasons obviously being

a gradual and multifaceted process.

Flip a switch. Say it’s official.

The seasons themselves couldn’t give less of a shit,

less even than the official-season crowd gives for the actual seasons.

The same for anniversaries and holy days – or holidays –

take your pick.

Time slides by seamlessly, incomprehensibly, indifferently.

The difference between my last day of being 69 and my seventieth birthday

being neither more nor less

than that between any other two consecutive days,

the universe throwing no switch

and caring not at all about my personal bullshit.

Despite my knowing better, though,

my awareness of this particular seamless transition

stirred up my personal bullshit within me,

and weighed heavily and stupidly on my human mind.