The Buck Stops Here

No project ever fails.

Top Management knows that things have succeeded, or have 'come within a whisper of succeeding with a modest bit of help now'.

They may actually convince whoever the Money Supply is. Be that as it may, the more effort T.M. has to expend in 'proving' its success (irrelevant though that actuality may be), the more irritation will be sent in shuddering payback (not to be confused with 'back pay') internally within the system.

'We'll handle this discreetly'

The embarrassing chew-outs, dope-slaps, and unfair rages descend with avalanche-speed until 'someone takes the fall'.

The sloth and disengagement, the masturbatory power-gyrations at the top ultimately lead to one thing:

"You're fired."

Work Sutra

Early morning work and late night

Meeting cross men and saying yes

Taking the fed-up word-spew of a fishwife

Siestas inbetween.

Sometimes the thirst is so great

It takes three glasses of water.

Mon Semblance

Did the man see me talking to myself?

I prepared to pass and be openly friendly.

As I did, I saw his eyes had cast themselves down

And he was talking to himself !

Body Warmth

Something about losing it all, now that the Depression season is around the corner.

All gifts are out of the sack; the warmth is the warmth from just here,

Friends are those who speak to you right now, the grocery clerk, the bagger.

Take turns at this public drinking fountain and note the person there before you

Then take note of the person after you, the brothers and sisters of your having been here

Just here, right now, the ones who register that true thing.

Chord To Cord

Following time-honored advice, a slow-down. Why not listen to parts of musical compositions instead of gourmandizing on a great table of it? Classical pieces, if begun to be understood, need careful attention.

One movement at a time. Either conversation between, like a palate-cleanser, or unpunctuatable snacks of street noise, television two rooms away, stratospheric airplanes growing more and more indistinct, wind that knocks an upright rake down.

BG Sketch

The boy was the youngest child of the second wife of an old father. The only son, Darrell was. His father had been a baker by trade, and a trade unionist by inclination, burly, tough, but a good father to his six children. The first three were daughters of the first wife, a woman institutionalized for a kind of dementia.

Of the younger three, the eldest married a man scion to a wealthy, distant family from whom they both conspired to hide her religion.

Essence Before Existence

Not sure whether the devil is in the mutatis or in the mutandis.

Never you mind. The Universal lies in the intercommunicability of the confusion.



Beneficial and smooth as would be our mutually-dependent cultural and commercial life,

Our digital 'globality', what marks us, is the precision of our babel.

Liebestod

Eyes closed in the darkest of dark rooms

Be blind, even: world glow.

Love's pull-date

The half-life of urge as it becomes solemnity

Fulcrum Soft, Grasshopper

When power exercises itself with the least resistance: bureaucratic language.

An aerosol spray in a dark room -- you don't see it.

The Siblings

Analysis looks at its shared room: Exegesis, Deconstruction.

An Oedipal juggle: forms like it OR forms of it.

What's In A Name?

Some bursts of anger, some of sugar, mark the animal.

How we rationalize and temper it, come to terms with it, spells the angel.

Winged serpents? We call this package 'human'.

Shapeshift

Sometimes I move like a cat

Sometimes a rhino

The genius lies in an absence of mind

Small Business Opportunity

Woman in the beige skirt folding merchandise. Small, chic retailer. Striking deep yellow scarf with red overdesign wraps around a jaw disfigurement that must be severe. This mystery: how terrifying? How wet?

Five Responses To The November Election

Should the unspeakable happen and the (only) good candidate not win tomorrow, here're my alternatives:

1) Shave my head, don an orange robe, carry a rice bowl, and be aware of the swirl of events around me only as momentary illusion;

2) Saturate myself in foreign language Grand Opera and philately

3) Go out with a big 'bang';

4) Become a European;

5) Therapy, breakdown, therapy, breakdown, therapy, breakdown . . .