First, let me say I don't dislike fish, but fish dislikes me. It's hell when you love the taste of something and then pay the price for it. Doesn't matter if fish are fresh water, under bice, deep sea, the ocean, or for that matter Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks (and they aren't real fish), I have severe allergies. Enough of my personal problems.

Are there plenty of fish in the sea? A euphemism meaning there is one more man or one more woman out there to be found to have that all important lifetime commitment with. That need to fill the gap in one's life.

Honestly, there are more fish than there are humans on the planet. And they multiply faster than does the human race. But they are a distant second to ants which numbers in the billions, hence that other phrase, "ants in your pants".

Overall, the planet can contain over a trillion varied species.

But I digress. As long as the girl doesn't kiss like, or look like a fish, I wouldn't mind getting to know her.

My mom and dad took full advantage of the debauchery of the 1970's. In fact, I was told that my mom took acid with my dad at an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer concert and a week later she found out she was 8 weeks pregnant will little ol' me. Which explains the bad trip I had in kindergarten (The cow on the Elmer's Glue Paste called me the Walrus. Goo goo g'joob). It also explains my random ability to smell sounds and hear colors.

Some people are born with a legacy. They may have grandpa's ears, mom's smile, and dad's lack of penile length and girth. My legacy? I was born on probation, had a training wheels case of sclerosis, and a copy of, "My First AA Handbook" clutched in my little fist. This was the less than auspicious beginning to my life.

I was raised in a chaotic haze of neglect, meth fumes, and counting the days until the welfare check showed up. Somehow I managed to buck my family's preoccupation with burning out instead of fading away. I did well in school, avoided the criminal justice system, and since I didn't become a connoisseur of meth, I kept a full head of teeth.

Still, you can educate the trailer trash boy and take the trailer trash boy out of the trailer park, but you can never take the trailer trash out of the boy. As such, I have never met a psychotropic medication I didn't have an appropriate diagnosis for. I can still tell you the SNAP benefit (that's food stamps to those who grew up in a nurturing environment where parents had jobs and/or put the needs of their kiddos first) to meth exchange rate. I can tell you the horrors involved in trying to digest gov'ment cheese. If you call it, "Government Cheese" you're either too young to remember this colon blocking government handout or had parents who understood that the refrigerator was for more than Stroh's Lite beer and ketchup packets. Finally, like all my family members, I am extremely fertile meaning that before I had myself neutered for the good of humanity my love lava could impregnate with extreme ease. This fertility can be directly linked to the sad fact (and example of Ma Nature's sick sense of humor) that the least capable humans can crank out kids faster than China can crank out knock-off electronics. Ultimately, this insures that CPS social workers, the welfare department, drug dealers, and those employed in the criminal justice system have total job security. It's our humble gift to you and the economy.

In short, cut me off, take the last donut, or STEAL MY ENERGY DRINK FROM THE BREAKROOM FRIDGE and I will make it my mission to insure that my children both date and procreate with your children. Hope you like Lynyrd Skynyrd, because their music will be featured heavily at your kids and my cum fruit's weddin'! Everybody fucking sing! IF I LEAVE HERE TOMORRRRRROWWWW...

Not only are there more fish in the sea, but there are more fishes in the sea. For example, there are all of the cartilaginous fishes. All the big fish in all those small ponds.

How many crawfish can a crawfish craw when a crawfish starts crawing fish? Sucking the heads is all the answer you need.

Are octopusses octopussi or octopussy?

There are fish(es) with good taste, and there are fish(es) that tast(e) good--just ask Charli(e). He's one of several tun(æ) who question antediluvian reality.

So, since we don't get paid scale here, I'm a little light--can you spot me a fin?

How many one-legged races can an eight-legged cephalopod win if there are still potato(e)s in the potato sacks? And where'd that "e" go? You should know...'cause you say potato, but I say potato. Especially when it's hot. Dan Quayle says potatœ. (It's a potato thing--you might not get it. It's a Republican thing. A potateau is a Cajun thing.)

Potatoad hot enough for you? You should see what it's like in Australia. But then, you already know--or at least find out by calling someone there--they're into the next day, so they can tell you how your day went. Based on that info(e), watch where you park--don't wanna get potatowed.

That's so freaky. But if you think that's crazy, just thank God it's a free world--otherwise, I'd tell you to float in the air and you'd HAVE to do it. (Every day I pass people who don't accept that it's a free world, so I just bat those floating corpses out of the way on the way to a duty-free-world shop.)

That's about it. Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering. My cortical islands are closing their borders. (It's a Title 42 thing--you might not get it.)

But I need to get it out.

2023-05-15 A Letter I Will Never Send My Children

Dear Abacus and Samurai:

Ab, you will be 20 this year. Sami, you are 18. I am so sad and disappointed in how Mother’s Day culminated. I hear you saying that it’s all my fault, and I’ve lost your trust and desire to engage in meaningful discourse. And that for the sake of what values your father has taught you, you only continue to engage me out of obligation but no desire for a relationship past the surface. You don’t value my counsel or presence beyond this farce of filial duty. You will show up as required and allow my presence only if I refrain from trying to peel that delicate top layer and stop trying to heal what has been damaged.

Abacus your rage is a scary combination of your father’s and mine. I hope you age out of it like we did. Verbal discourse was never my forte. I’m sure that’s the biggest reason I am still alone after all these years. Well, maybe not, I have plenty of flaws from which to choose.

It’s an impossible feat though, to move forward when everyone is so unwilling to hear me. If you had any idea what it’s been like to be a single mom these past 15 years, with little to no support except my friends. The things I have gone through and done to protect you, I hope you never know.

I try to explain things, to offer you my perspective, and you tell me I am being defensive. You see a tear or hear the shake of my voice because of the depth of the love I have for you, and the sadness I feel about the way things have turned out, and it’s another brick in the fortress you feel you need to build to shield yourself from my emotions. I cry and I’m being manipulative.

I get angry because you tell your father about what happened and he calls me and tells me not to speak, just to listen to him, that I have nothing of value to say and just have to hear him play “knight in shining armor” to you - to rescue you from my emotions - my hurt, pain, and sadness. And I am playing “the victim card”.

After struggling for 13 years as a single mom, you bring another child into my home. Well, a young adult. Unquestioningly, I take her in. So now, I have four children, except one isn’t actually mine, so I honestly don’t know what to do when there is a conflict there. I’m not her mother. She doesn’t pay rent so I’m not her roommate. And these are exactly the kinds of situations I find so difficult.

Yet I am judged and blamed for not treating her as one of my own. Although based on what you’re telling me, she’s lucky, huh?

I suffer from chronic overextension of my finances, aka poverty, except I never tell you how often I didn’t eat so you could. I never tell you how dire things get trying to keep all the bills paid, because there is enough stress in your lives, and you are my children and I want to protect you. I suffer from seasonal depression, but I don’t want to weigh you down with another worry, so never mention how hard it is for me to get to the other side of each winter alive.

But I’m afraid the thing I protected you from was understanding. From learning empathy. If you had any idea how many times I have almost died, but kept going one more second at a time by thinking of you. And how much it hurts to then be rejected and berated and pummeled over the head with my very human missteps and mistakes. But if I try to say, “My life was hard” I’m guilt-tripping you.

I have given you EVERYTHING I could. I have sacrificed pieces of my soul for you. But I never want you to truly understand. I just want you to love me 1/10th of how much I love you. That’s it.

Love always,

Mom

2023-05-15 The Letters I Will Send My Children

Dear Abacus and Samurai:

I am sorry. I did not realize Abacus was so upset about that exchange.

I hope we can still do our little camping trip with the family this summer, including Kim.

I will not speak of anything which may upset anyone.

Love always,

Mom

Dear Kim:

I am sorry you felt unwelcome in our home. I am a pretty awkward human, and I clearly have not entirely figured out how to adult.

I hope you can forgive my missteps and we can move forward in love.

I never meant to make you feel excluded. Please understand it’s a relic of relationships of my era. It’s clearly a dated practice, but there was an understanding that addressing one half of the couple included both halves automatically. That is the only reason I didn’t think to include you specifically on invites and such.

You are always welcome in my home.

Love,

Mee

I'm sitting parked in a car, curbside, watching:

5:15pm

The building is a 2 story Victorian, a powder blue, slightly grayed with age. It stands on the corner edge of a T intersection, pressed visually against the backdrop of a hill so steep that you perceive a sheet of green, although hill is cut with a wide terrace of a soccer field, which the topmost windows overlook. The trim along the eaves is a plum wine color and has a decorative scalloped cut. There's a front porch, large enough for table and chairs, shaded by small shrubbery in which an empty nest at far left is nestled. There are many windows of various sizes, evidencing an attic and full basement in addition to the two main floors. There is a carport in the back big enough for a sedan and a half. Four steps and a small landing lead up to the back door. The house is gutted from the old, and not quite ready for the new.

5:18pm

To the house's left, our right, there is a Maple. Not a sapling, nor an old tree, something in between. The leaves are the characteristic five-point hand-sized type, and there are bunches of "helicopter" seed pods. Both a brilliant verdant juicy green. The crown rises to the top of the fairly new roof in height, but the trunk is only about a foot in diameter. The mature trees in this area by comparison are around 4' wide. The brown-gray bark accordingly is only moderately rough, and the thin branches easily sway in the slight breeze and stretch towards the upper story windows, not quite reaching. The tree shades the living room side of the house. There is no special area surrounding the foot of the tree; there is just grass below and no roots are visible. It is the only one near the house, the other greens are shrubs.

5:21pm

In the top branches is a bird. The state's bird. A robin. Orange bellied, with bark colored head and wings. It shifts its feet up and down and consequently bobbles on the twig as if (consciously?) playing on a teeter totter. It is twittering cheerily and seems focused on a particular point near or just beyond the house, singing/ calling. The series of notes is followed by a couple of staccato chirps. No other robin is visible. No nest is visible in the tree, but again there is one fully built within the porch corner shrubbery. The bird suddenly scratches its back with a leg and then flies forward, alighting the roof of the house briefly, and taking flight again and disappearing behind the neighboring rooftop.

Reflections....

I note that I use vaguely anthropomorphic terms for the building... describing how it stands, and its background in the landscape and in history. It is otherwise static but changing. And again, quite personal language for the tree. It is moving, and relational in my viewing, to the building. The bird is the most active element and inferences are strongest (consciousness, motivation, purpose) despite attempts are being, as requested "objective." I think I have refrained from judging, but I seem to have suggested inherent bias in perceived motivation... where there may or may not be any, or shouldn't be, in the inanimate... all of which is very delicate and subtle in the wording. I suspect that the purpose of this assignment is to make one aware that these nuances are all the more prevalent and hazardous when given another human as subject of observation. And how much more so critical if the other is beyond the scope of one's cultural or experiential or developmental context? ...whether foreign, gifted or disabled.

Poem...

The Articulation

I know not the way

the wind blows in

my imagination

a space so nearly

close irrational

and relational

beneath the gavel,

the eye that strikes,

at object with notes

visual and critical,

as passing of time

while sitting in the

bubble of a car

Parked in idle...

05.12.2023

Assessment & Inclusion challenge @7v7

i lean on the mirror

and it crumbles

under my weight:

it's been

a crutch for far too long,

a fragile justification

for a hatred that based in an evil

far deeper than my flesh.

i can no longer

pick up its pieces

and cradle them in my hands

peering desperately into their edges

looking for an excuse.

i can no longer

mimic its cracks

on my own flesh,

trying to find

what makes it so irreplaceable

so i can achieve its permanence.

the windows long ago cracked

and let in the outside air.

i gave up

on trying to hide from the weather.

the plates

long ago shattered,

i gave up

on trying to keep them empty,

leaving them in their shelves to collect dust.

the crystal cups

shattered,

they were so used to being half-empty

that they couldn't handle being half full.

the chandelier

has shed its jewels

and laid bare

upon the wooden floors:

it is no longer

the center of attention

and it sighs in relief,

being freed from its own expectation.

i broke

the screen on my phone

after i dropped

my dependence on its glow.

but the mirror

is always the last pane of glass to break.

it trapped me in a prison of flesh

that didn't match my brain.

every time i raised my fist to smash it

my own hand blocked it from passing through.

i was my own nemesis

and in order to defeat me

i had to let myself

win.

When sparring

monastically

with the

Buddhist

pluck of

an

Esther

Flowers1

it is essential

to put on

your best

laced gloves

and put out

your finest

moon-lit

porcelain mug

and cup for

It's T time

and we'll be

sipping from

well aged leaves

and shadows

turning pages

on bookmarked

memories,

He or She

authored

across

the human

Philosophies

a treasure trove

so mad hatter'd

in wisdom and

skepticism

as to only

pass

throught

eyelets

most intricate

of embroidery

nonesuch as

paralleled to

the crown

of our own one

Ninja Gardenia!

Coronation edition #18 superior ninja flower challenge @batmaninwuhan

It's sweet and it's savory. I don't really give a fuck what you think, it tastes amazing and I will take a slice of Hawaiian pie over any Italian concoction you can craft any day of the week.

Also - I've been to a Nickelback concert. No regrets.

If we want to discuss whether you should have a dog or a cat I suggest cats are better for anxiety, as their purrs are calming and their general presence is serene/solitary; whereas dogs are better for depression, as they are energetic and loyal whilst getting you out of the house. If you have anxiety AND depression just get both - fuck the binary.

Which, while we're on the subject, do I think gender matters? No, it shouldn't. But are humans inherently flawed fuck-up's who run their lives on stereotypes and love boxing themselves in with labels like a 5-year-old's Valentine Day art project? Hell yes, they are. If we're not going to stop and unpack our shitty made up social norms then at the very least we should have the common courtesy to allow others to choose which ones they want rather than forever damn people by their genitals. Fuck genitals. No literally - that's all they're meant for, they have zero impact on personality or preferences that was their only fucking job. Get over them already and stop assigning genitals to arbitrary shit like razor blades or shoes. Shoes don't even go there.

And speaking of razor blades fuck shaving. I quit.

Guns suck. I don't give a shit if you like them, you know what else Americans like? Cars. Can we kill people with cars? Absolutely, we do it every fucking day. But we still regulate that shit and force you to take a test, get a license, and hold fucking insurance for owning one. Do the same goddamn thing with guns and stop whining like some fucking future terrorist anytime somebody raises the specter of government regulation. Government exists because you're stupid. Be grateful, somebody would have shot you by now without a law against it. Hell they still might. At least you could sue if it was fucking regulated.

Rent. Is. Too. Damn. Fucking. High. Hello, Boomers. If I walk into one more coffee shop and listen to whiny homeowners who bought their shit in the 80's complain about how nobody wants to work anymore when it would take a salary of at least $24/hour to rent an average apartment in the U.S. I swear to god I will hit people. But not with guns. Because those suck. I have fists and I'm not a monster. Pass some fucking rent control already you goddamn dinosaurs, you control all the politicians anyway and your asses are gonna get kicked out on the street soon when your mobile home lot gets bought up by another investment firm. One third of this country can't afford a home and the cost of housing has skyrocketed 400% in the past twenty years alone, what the hell have you idiots been doing - sucking Reagan's dick? He's dead already - just like our deregulated economy. Our generation is now the first in American history to be worse off than its predecessors and there are literally hundreds of charts that can pinpoint the fall point to those choices you made and continue to make to this day without learning a goddamn thing while your children and grandchildren suffer the consequences. Well done, selfish pricks. Please die already.

Like the environment, which also got royally screwed by the last generation (thanks for thinking of us!) and is now a total shit show. It is 98 in May right now and we went from droughts to super floods in a decade, yay. Whatever real estate is affordable is increasingly located in a newly formed desert with less and less water. You wonder why we're not having children? What the fuck would we leave them with? Sand? Ashy post-wildfire asthma? Where are we getting water for all these new humans - our melting ice caps?

But God forbid we stop having those children, which is why you absolutely had to rescind abortion rights so that women can now bleed out in front of hospitals that are too afraid to treat them the way they used to in the fucking dark ages - because the needs of the unborn outweigh the needs of the living apparently, particularly women. That genital lottery just sucks, doesn't it? And then you freak out when somebody suggests they could change genders - why, because then you might start losing your forced breeders? Well gosh, maybe if you ACTUALLY GAVE A SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE and put any effort towards child care, maternal health, paternity leave, or family cost of living people wouldn't see children as the economic death sentence they've become. Or here's a thought - why don't we just mandate vasectomies for boys aged 15 and up? They're easy and reversible, unlike the same procedure in women which can't be undone or even requested until your 38 or already had three kids. Or maybe we could mandate castration for rapists - no repeat offenders, win win! Wait, what's that? We can't regulate male bodies? God damn those genital values again.

Yet despite all the extremely infuriating setbacks facing my generation and the next one I will at least always have pineapple options for my pizza. Maybe I'll go crazy - add some green peppers. Hell they could put corn cobs as crust - I've seen it, it's real! Let's just go crazy, the world's ending anyway. And in thirty years when my dementia kicks in and I can no longer keep working even part time to pay my eternally rising rent, I'm sure I'll still be able to go purchase a gun and shoot myself after I take one last long final vacation. Because America may never have universal health care, basic income, guaranteed and sufficient social security, or the right to housing. But hey we'll always have the right to buy a gun.

And put whatever the fuck we want on a pizza.

you exist as a moment between milliseconds

the record scratch of time as the world around you freezes

you are a million imperceptible moments

a pane of glass right before it shatters

the desperate attempts for reproduction in the life cycle of a dragonfly

you are the gust of wind that knocks out a single leaf on an oak tree in a stranger's backyard

the gut feeling in my stomach as I choose to cross the street

you are a yellow traffic light, so close to red that some might call it orange

a still expanse of water in front of a child learning how to skip rocks

you are a timer hitting zero before it dings

you are my every in-between

my gasp of air

my uncounted seconds

my everything