Thabo Prescribes
Chaska Proscribes
The little cry of a man to a man
The scout grinned friendly- smile-crinkled eyes burning like black ice. Welcome to Schatzenputz, designer. Follow me and listen carefully. Thank you- here is my card. I have seen your card. Your name is shit to me and you are not listening. Old man Thabo prescribed you as a designer and he is deaf as a post. Usually wants mathematicians… and hunters and killers of course. Old man Chaska runs the place. You will never see him and Chaska is mute as a grave. I have an interview with Mr. Von Hot say designer making the scout laugh. Here is your butt-face designer Henry. Look her over and show her the ropes.
You were proscribed explains Henry- listed for sale in the trades. Chaska reads them all. Have you ever been aloft say Henry indicating the Dart’s rigging. I am a fashion designer sir. Call me Henry. You make clothing the bankers buy. Happy our scout say you tough enough. Chaska say you got a good eye. What color are her sails, lass? Read sails at mourning, sales take warming. Henry grinned like a grand piano. You’ll do just fine. You are going to Atlanta. Now… let us talk about a thing called Coca Cola. Sherman knocked Atlanta flatter than piss on a plate. Vultures gather. We take Imperial eggs… loot as cute as yer boot.
And the sinking of the small star.
The ship docked. Daisy had become very frail on the trip back. The northern Atlantic had been rough. A debilitating sea sickness added to her anxiety and someone had to be with her every minute of each day back. She had become unmanageable with what appeared to be hallucinations. Albert considered a very real possibility of her jumping ship in her mental state. His fears were greatly compounded by the obvious realization of there being no possibility of a sea rescue at all under the circumstances. At the time, Mother Jones was totally unaware of the stacks of mail awaiting her at the St. Louis office Daisy had set up for her as her midwestern base.
Daisy, watching him struggle with this, reached a bell on her bedside table still within her reach. She rang it until it was answered, then leaned back into her chair like a lady, and without taking her eyes off him watched as he left the room. As the door was starting to close behind him, he heard Daisy’s voice, calmly, quietly and in a very civil tone saying thanks for stopping by Albert. I’m appreciative of the visit. Albert back in the rooming house wrote to Henry and Mother Jones and posted the same message to both. I’m very happy to report that Miss LaCroix has seemed to have made sufficient progress. I anticipate our return to the Kimmswick homestead before too very long.
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
%
Faults and Fractals
Carved in stone
Should do his share of work,
And in our economic plan
No citizen should shirk.
Might makes right. Do you believe that? All men are created equal. Really? Language shapes thinking, culture and brains… so what does that have to do with writing except memory fractals (memes) reaching through rock like dendrites or mycelia, a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae (which is a Greek word for web). Huh. Imagine a virus hitching a ride on a plastic nanofiber… or cities like forests and buildings like trees. Not so hard. So now the year is 1887 in the Agawa region at the east end of Lake Superior in North America in the waning moon of falling leaves.
The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s when the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but becoming the ocean. Daisy and Mary had not much of a plan, but Mary had not seen the land of her birth since she was ten. Up to the time her family left for Toronto, what she remembered of her childhood was terrifiying. She remembered the dead and the dying as the failing potato crop pushed her family and neighbors toward cemetery or coffin ships to far away lands. Her family was poor, illiterate and passed down family history by word of mouth…
And justice in the race,
And every lad should have the right
To win his proper place.
The war had been over for 21 years… but not for Henry. He was not even in the war but to see it was to be in it anyway. It was enough time for children born before the war to be doing wonderful things with Tesla ideas. They came up with the steel bell that gave them all the energy they could use. Henry was busy playing with his boat and fooling around with his two (surviving) old pals to notice the kids had built a time machine. That right. A fucking time machine. They said they could get the Dart to fly and Henry laughed out loud. He had been following aircraft and IC engines quite closely.
Would you like me to summon Henry for you. Daisy sat up in bed, severely agitated at the mention of his name. Henry! I never wish to see that man again, and need for you to never mention the name to me in the future! He is of a past for which I have little fondness. And most certainly the worst of dread concerning any future! It was much later, and well after Mary’s return, before Daisy had finally given way to sleep. Mary agreed to an immediate return stateside, but not to Georgia. They would hospitalize Daisy as soon as they disembarked in New York. Heart is on fire. One like Elmira.
The kid’s coercion is about control and frequency and I have no reason to doubt it.
The wrong of life, I flout it.
Alas! I’m not prepared to do
A goddam thing about it.
But that is another story.
Herbst Woods
Thanksgiving Turnkey
Man spoiled his chances by sinning.
Take a trip with me back to 1913. Calumet Guthrie. Cop or country. We seize the memes of production, you and I… tell them why. US doctors produce diseases, lawyers produce crimes for the same reason that seventy-three men, women, and children – mostly striking mine workers and their families – were crushed to death in a stampede when someone falsely shouted fire at a crowded Christmas party. Free speech. Crowded theatre. You get it. There are trees that still stand in Herbst Woods that were alive during the battle. They call them witness trees.
We saw how eighty percent of everybody doing anything considers themselves above average- which means that about a third of us are somehow deluded. And you best believe trees can testify. There was the battle and a bullet hole. Half a ring later Lincoln shows up and talks about a new birth of freedom. You have to connect the dots yourself hew-man. You are neither an oak nor a mayfly so time is relative. Isn’t that a scream? Wait- it gets even better. You have more important things to do than connect 1 and 2. Adopt (an idea or policy) for one’s own use- like masks and the revolution.
No one talks about it much, but there you are. In law a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses’ behalf. A blink remembered is history the same way hermeneutics is wordplay with a mortarboard. That was it. What we remember is things with perfect clarity that never happened. Fashion (beep beep). Lost cause or backstab, true love or enlightenment, who (or what) determines the quantum nuh-uh fuck who cares while the kids are stuck to the screen and we are late for work. Watching the comet approaching earth. You got it. Put on a happy face. The sticks keep on whirling. The crockery is still spinning.
But at present the other side is winning.
Old Growth
Tim Burr Holler
Crying to God in all the polling places
Let’s call him Henry Hunter. That is not his name because he is a character, but real nonetheless as you or me because he was born in the 1830s in a huge old-growth forest along the left bank of the Rhine River which is just as real as the Mississippi, as luck would have it, and Henry’s father was the gamekeeper of that huge forest along the Rhine. Plantation is what they would call it in America back then… but in Henry’s forest the trees were planted by God and picked by timbermen who measured time by the age of certain trees, each one having a name. So maybe names are important. To US, he is just Henry. All we have to guide us, for better or for worse, is what we can observe and measure. Henry was paid to observe and measure during the war.
We can physically describe that, successfully, either with or without an objective, observer-independent reality. At this moment in time, it’s up to each of us to decide whether we’d rather add on the philosophically satisfying but physically extraneous notion that objective reality is meaningful. It don’t mean shit. And shit has meaning. And there we are. Or as Kiowa says- there it is. Where-what-is individuals get blinked by a cannonball or trampled by the herd. That is what Henry observed and measured on the plains, out west and in the US Civil War. Money didn’t mean shit either. Henry lolled into the war like most young do- driven by chemicals and luck to kill or fuck- or by will to pander and thrill whatever… however
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Henry saw money in his youth as we would see plastic chips in a casino now… as we are working for the house anyhow… on our way home- to get in line for a hookup. You could be a train or a box of cargo getting gas because that’s how it works. Romance. Chemicals. Much different when you are 90 than when you are nineteen. Another story. This is about the timber of the 19th century. Ship masts pike handles gun stocks and cuckoo clocks not to be confused with Victorian timbre which is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. Like the vote.
By the time the shorthorns fired on fart somefuck Henry was already crazy as a cuckoo clock- burnt out as a buffalo chip and soaked as a riverboat gambler open for suggestions. Young Henry combines cards from America class ocean liners with close magic by forest people who travelled by road with the old tricks learned Early. Old Henry loved boats and girls before- but never a horse… steam engines and sabers- but never a cat. He is a telephile- and there was no word for that… even though Pygmalion is an ancient story and Pandora’s Box of curiosity is still locked in the armory. Before the war, that is.
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.
-30-
Abstract nonsense
Academic questions
She took me all apart.
My ghost came back to haunt her.
I saw her eat my heart.
Abstract nonsense is a term used by mathematicians to describe abstract methods related to category theory and homological algebra. Abstract nonsense may refer to a proof that relies on category-theoretic methods, or even to the study of category theory itself. On Monday, 48,000 academic workers at the University of California system began an indefinite strike, spanning across the most populous state in the US. Postdoctoral and academic researchers, tutors, graduate student instructors and assistants are demanding increased wages and benefits to catch up with skyrocketing housing and other living expenses. The strike has shut down online and in-person lectures, grading, research, and other university operations.
The majority of professors have canceled lectures, while adjuncts, faculty, and undergraduate students have joined the picket lines in solidarity… for the union makes us strong. Meanwhile, 196 Teachers and staff at California public charter school group bring their employer to the bargaining table following 2 year effort to unionize. And what does that tell you? Maybe this: the Indians got an offer they could not refuse. We buy your house- give you good money- and then you can still live in it. What could be better? Wanna talk racism? Sexism? How about Gravitomagnetism- with a capital g to make it look important. Legitimate. Formal and rigorous. Zero point energy is not popular but it is coming to a universe near you.
When I was born a fly,
A velvet-footed spider
With a gown of rainbow-dye.
You can’t miss it weather (sic) you want to or not. You really have no choice. But you have owners. They own you. Sorry if that hurts our feelings… and capital Truth stuck to the sheets along with buttflakes cookie crumbs and cat hair. Went out with the laundry. Bye. Turning out the wicked messenger is not going to stop what’s coming. Flushing the toilet does not make shit disappear. Seems like it does- but you know the deal. It is not magic. It’s not even a good illusion- like a rainbow. It’s shit. Deal with it. Now comes Henry back from the future- which is not difficult because he lives in the past. All he has is a ghost ship that knows how to sail itself… similar to Henry’s Shoshone pony back in 1863. There was a battle then. About something.
The… system has always tried to squeeze every ounce… for the least amount of money
Above her winding stair.
2trs 2 2t
Homophones
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot
Said the two to the tutor
Is it harder to toot or
To tutor two tooters to toot
Those gay fuck bars they hold to they heads. Hell yes I remember where I was when Lincoln was killed. In the middle of a fucking war. Lincoln could see the end and we could not. We had a bunch of us chained together with shackles and all trying to get to someplace where some jacquard wouldn’t shoot you. Somewhere between Georgia and South Carolina- between Hampton’s hanky boys and Custer’s crazies shooting at anything that even looked like it moved. We were shitting ourselves every time a dog barked. And it was a bark and stormy flight. Butte phuque’ (as Daisy would say).
Dumb question deserves a better answer. Nothing is forgotten and nobody dies. Hard to believe. What if it is true. How is it remembered. Who cares and why. Because something sounds like something it is not. Like artillery sounds like thunder. Most dogs hate it just the same. Dumb developed the steel bell that broke time years ago and is smart enough to figure this out. Voice goes up at the end like it is a question when it is a command or as if no one is listening. Halt? Who goes there. Nobody that’s who. You never hear the one that kills you.
About a month ago, on the global climate strike, hundreds of thousands of people climate striked across the planet. We are still young… people all over the world- stepping up showing that they messed with the wrong generations. As history has revealed time and time again, real change comes from below. The same will be true if we are to mitigate the worst effects of climate breakdown and societal collapse. Hah? What global climate strike. General strike- never heard of it. Hm. Why is that. Gee ye what mein Jürgen. What me worry.
GEM is a set of formal analogies between the equations for electromagnetism and relativistic gravitation; specifically: between Maxwell’s field equations and an approximation, valid under certain conditions, to the Einstein field equations for general relativity. Gravitomagnetism refers specifically to the kinetic effects of gravity, in analogy to the magnetic effects of moving electric charge. The analogy and equations were first published in 1893 before general relativity by Oliver Heaviside as a separate theory expanding Newton’s law.
We anchored the shackle chain across the road in case they brought up their guns behind us- which they did- busting through our chain like finish line ribbon at the derby while in front of us appeared Sheridan’s bumblefucks pissed full of hoo-hah sunrise. The darkies screamed hysterically and pointed at the rebs behind us and laud save us all- which they did by forgetting us completely. Dumb say go out now in your ghost ship and find us a trophy hoard dripping invader fat. My Dumb old stihlglock boy dumb like a fox.
He climbed on the rocks.
Human Trafficking
Basic Training
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Today the spying and propaganda apparatus dwarfs (are) those efforts exponentially with its electronic, digital technology. But poets don’t text the truth. They sing it and think it and tell it, even when nobody’s listening. We’re all lucky to still be here. If we continue to celebrate past wars and the soldiers who fought them in a sly homage to the greatness of war, we are doomed. We won’t be here because…. Henry had a time machine. It started out as a fast blockade runner. With the state of the art back then, flying was out of the question. Rails were the way civilizations were developing… trailing their telegraph wires like so many rats. Property rats. Wireless was where it was at. By then the kids at Agawa had followed N. Tesla’s advice where dark sparks travelled inward. Henry advised them to keep it to themselves… and they did.
Daisy was waiting for him, brushing her hair. She was annoyed that he had left the suite as she slept but then forgot why she had been annoyed. Then she remembered that, while brushing out her hair, she was streaking it with additional silver. That must have been the annoyance and not a thing to do with Albert. She had more silver in her hair each time she brushed it. She kept turning the brush over in her hand. Was the decorative silver melting off the back of the brush? It had been an imported vanity set that Henry had brought her from France years ago. There was a matching comb and hand mirror. But her favorite piece was the matching music box. It had a hidden compartment for small but important pieces of jewelry: or hat pins. Daisy always packed the entire set and took it with her for every trip.
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
By 1922 Henry had trouble remembering. The poison pens are things that really did happen… or really could happen. They were joke gifts intended to help Jubal Early find his lost cause it was the eleventh day- the eleventh month. That had to mean something… that can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of victim’s rights of movement through coercion. Human trafficking is the trade in people, especially women and children, not necessarily the movement of from one place to another. It is then our sense of place becomes dull and its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Be sweet little sugarplums til the quickening comes. Blame it on Bonnie and Clyde.
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Axe the Boarder
What’s going on
Downtown: Yourtown, baked in a pie
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
Sergeant James Anderson was among those Confederate soldiers with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in April of 1865. Like the other thousands with him, he sadly stacked his rifle, wiped away his tears and trudged homeward. They were survivors of Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg and Gettysburg. Anderson then resumed his life as a tobacco farmer at the family home on Tomahawk Creek. The dark day of the Reconstruction, the Panic of 1873 and the arduous life on the farm soon convinced the ex-infantryman that there was a better way to earn a living. Henry’s favorite trick during the war was leading his slave property in chains to be sold down the river. It was all a big joke. The slaves all had keys in hidden pockets. They were some of the best craftspeople and managers in the south- the expensive niggers the cotton lords left behind to run their vast plantations while poplin popinjays fought for their role in the opera.
Henry bought them fair and square and paid a fair price they could not refuse. Some would not go willingly, but they had little choice. They had a contract and a destination. Henry would not purchase them unless he had a place for them. No time for argle-bargle. You are a seamstress. I need sails. That’s the deal. What if I just follow you out of here and I won’t be any bother at all. Because click said the Walker revolver with a .45 long mouth. I will shoot you said Henry with a grin. Or I could give you your purchase price and turn you loose in the dark piney woods. Then you can get your big sweet black ass back to massah dear and buy yourself back. With interest of course. I have no interest in that. The shot will attract attention. But I have papers and you have squat. Indian pony gave a side glance and a snort. The seamstress was no further trouble. She ended up running the shop.
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
That’s when you lost it man. Lost what. That fancy tomahawk Chaska gave you. You was always throwing it at stumps. And trees. Driving me crazy. Always had it in your belt. On the underground, we had trouble convincing slaves they were slaves. Because they never heard the word. Because flight is dangerous. Who knows why. There was no time for that. It was time to fly. Sometimes you could not leave witnesses. That jumpy buck that showed us the ford. Sure enough he was ready to bolt. And he did. And you buried the hatchet dint you heh heh. Now Tom… you dint see shit.
An ‘Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!
Hello Boomer
The Zoomer Salutes
Generation Z (or Gen Z for short), colloquially known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. That’s what they say. They are ghost dancers… the zoomers are. I’m so thankful that so many people and institutions in my life have openly clarified who they are and how they behave under duress. To connect with like-minded and open-minded comrades, you are required to first move on from those seeking to harm you or, at least, hold you back. If you wish to continue growing, learning, and evolving, you must be willing to relentlessly see and accept what’s going on. Translation: You must reclaim the subversive pleasure of thinking for yourself. No matter where you go- there you are.
Of course everyone does that… think for themselves, that is. That’s what they say if you ask them, and you must not say otherwise unless you are prepared to fight… and the ghost dancers had already been there and done that. If the pleasure is subversive- seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.- guess what happens. Not hard to figure out- if you think for yourself. But if you do for others- you are doing good. That is what they say. That is why soldiers who obey orders without question are called well-disciplined. And that is a good thing. Children need discipline. Don’t they. The act of thinking is doing something. Isn’t it. Where is the paradox or paradigm.
Dwells another race, with other customs and language.
See and accept what’s going on is what the ghost dancers did. Leap about and chant in tongues like Shakespeare without furniture. It’s a gift to be simple. The war face. Game face they called it later when the dog soldiers were gone. Touch the left temple and return your salute. It is the blind eye we turned for so many years because of what was going on child. You will understand soon enough. Soon you will forget more than eye ever knew. You will stand taller than I ever flew. I will be beyond the stars looking up at you. Tituba will show you the way. Mine eyes have seen the glory. There is no promised land.
This time, of course, many observers are watching and they’ll know what to look for. The result could easily be an election the outcome of which won’t be accepted by either party, sparking an invitation to broad civil disorder. I’m not much of a praying man, but tomorrow I’ll get down on my knees for a few words with The Manager. I get the answering machine and lolled. Always the same message always funny. When can we expect a check. After lights out and everybody is under the blanket with their torch. Or on the wrong porch. There are some funny observers out there for sure. Hard to tell if what you see is Whittier.
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Not what you get you bet.
Tesla choil
end of cutting edge near handle
Notes from Schatzenputz U. 1881
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
Henry received instructions from the inventor and put the kids on task of interpretation, however they developed the stihilglockenspiel all on their own. Steam and steel were what Henry studied most of his life when he wasn’t getting into trouble. Then came electricity. Mad Ludwig had one of the first phones in his Bavarian fairy tale castle and that said enough right there. Poor Nico had been sucked into the vortices of JP Morgan and seemed beyond recovery. Henry had only been capable of dreaming of flying… like the noisy gulls in the rigging who did not seem to appreciate their gift. You never saw them on the deep blue ocean. Or lost on the wild wild sea.
Poor Serbian Nico had to grow up in Austria and that says enough right there. But he could visualize electricity and other invisible things. When he brought it out so others could see it he got in trouble as well. Another story. Imagine a gravity field like an electrical one. Melting off to the side like a pat of butter. Pushed from the high side, falling toward the low side*… it’s a toroidal field or some shit like that. A toroid. No high side or low side. No direction and all directions. Size of a star and small as an atom. Where distance is irrelevant… so is speed. Tech stuff. It ain’t nothing.
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Originally, Tesla coils used fixed spark gaps or rotary spark gaps to provide intermittent excitation of the resonant circuit. No doubt Nico will promise them a death ray or some crazy shit like that. It might even work. Now the kids use electric devices to provide the switching action required. Dilger- Henry’s old war buddy- wasn’t saying much these days. Except for almost-annual train rides and the horses at Port Royal they did not have much in common anymore. Except the war. And Dilger was damn good at that shit and that was the trouble urging everyone to acquire their own woman and attendant chips of foals.
Squatting on the coals giving drink to poor damned souls is what Henry did during the war, running a rolling toy store for officers. Sides did not matter. Swords and revolvers, spyglasses and sabers were prized as props in their play. Some actually knew how to use them, and those are the ones you need to watch. Henry gifted a valuable LaMatt revolver to General Stuart without actually having met him personally. Jubal Early needed no props, and the gift was his advice. Likewise Carl Schurz a comrade in arms whose wit was sharp as any knife.
The glass is scowling at you personally because the sharpest edge is only a wedge. Jubal made Henry laugh. My bad old man is what Lee called Jubal and Henry never met him either but saw him plenty times, usually a sign of extreme danger. Grant was the same but Henry had to learn how both men treated their horses. Don’t get him started about his magical pony. Lincoln’s Dreams. That’s about all we have left from those times, and it is marvelous in our eyes. If we could not inspire with the Holy Fire, at least we smelled the smoke.
And I’m looking for a grub-stake, and I’m broke.
The smart fly lands on the swatter handle. Days of our lives will an opera make. Something is burning.
waldopaper 
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