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The Blazing Hands
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RALLY

CEE

    I cast my first vote, in 1968. I was in the 1st grade. I voted for Governor George Corley Wallace of Alabama. ‘How’ I was able to do this, plays no part in this chapbook...but I was one of three kids in my class, who did. It didn’t work. So, I knew before I could write in cursive, our process, is a waste of time. Being a citizen, is akin to pointing a TV remote at Mt. Rushmore, jabbing at the buttons, then saying of the sculpture, “It’s broken.”
    I’m a Boomer, tailend, caboose-Boomer, a “Me, too!” Beav’, hopping the bandwagon, fingers laced around beltloops of older kids’ tightleg jeans. I got to sample heady ambrosia from a Paradise Lost. Walk through antiquities as they fell down behind me. I once saw a Victorian pyramid in my hometown. It was there, for a whole summer of “No—I won’t!” swimming lessons, until the very last day, when the palace of a whiskey baron and the dirt road we drove on by, had become an empty lot and a new hard road, overnight. Mom became prohibitive in a way I’d never seen, telling me by way of some distracted Jedi mind trick the mansion had not been there, and I wasn’t to speak of it. So, I’ve since figured Reality is “being made” for us, being revised, under construction, a goofy 80’s Twilight Zone with Adolph Caesar in it. Externalism isn’t something people tonguekiss, the notion of no control, but it’s a calm way to live, if the “Realitymakers” would stop getting rid of all the parts I like best...MARX playsets, for example, or the coolest Crayolas. Or fries cooked in beef tallow. Or merthiolate. They call the remade, half-as-effective-because-we-never-shot-all-the-lawyers merthiolate, by a different name. My likes, they should. What is, is, and that stuff misses by half. But, it’s just misdirection, anyway. Word use, is become another 180-razzle dazzle for TEAM BELTWAY. Words, belong to whatever pigs are running the animal farm. And the best ones, like Victorian pyramids, always disappear. For purposes.
     Common understanding does not change, until those discontented, disgruntled, those with ants in their need-the-rush-of-fucking-with-things, start tipping the canoe, drunk logger for The Win. This, begets pseudo “discussion”, really no more than rallying every micropercentage to force New Understanding. The new, never helps, causes more division, chums the water, fragments society and makes life more unliveable but for those who can “live away” from the rad count they created. Censorship, its Orwellian “rewrites” and a renaming of things, is a part of that. Part of it is conning the mugs that your enemies are conning them, so, sign here. And part of it, is turning personal dignity and being a major snothole, into a meatloaf mix destined for more Orwell.
    I consider an early standup line of Henriette Mantel’s, the bit a bit of outrage, over Deborah Norville icily rejecting “Debbie”, as address, “...if I was makin’ 1.2 million dollars a year, you could call me ‘Dingbat Dorkhead’...!” This line was delivered in my dear 1980’s, and the laughter it brought, rose from agreement, and from knowing. From a common understanding of More as More, that More bought what one wanted. There was a collective rolling of eyes, perhaps not actual disgust, over the ungratefulness of one who had “made it”. The “no green M&Ms”-types, irritated, then. If you had been blessed, had achieved, if you had won out or conquered, if the day was yours, you were a D-List Wheaties box (the kind in the Fun Pak), you as Judah Ben-Hur, “the peoples’ one true god...for the time being”, you’d hit the Lotto, beaten the vid game and made it to Tokyo, all smilie on the cover of {insert defunct periodical, Here}, a comer, a known quantity, Adrian, You Did It!, so fuck the bank, man, Fuck the Bank!...well, bucko, if you then expected lil’ sprinkle-perks, even your name as pronounced, God DAMN, what’s up YOUR ass?!
    This thinking, has in main been lost, as “celebrity” turned into the Name Person as turkey and citizenry as Pilgrim-With-Musket (with Kathy Griffin as Natty Bumppo), not to mention the cool things becoming Way Cooler yet Way Pricier, requiring credit fraud to purchase. The cool things didn’t satisfy, either, but a few crass materialists like the poet, here...even then, I kept buying, and many hurting souls who survive on a diet of sanctimony and black beans dug from ecologically pure dirt, would say continued consumption proves cool things aren’t cool. I’d counter by saying one who cannot purchase (or much), must have a placebo, mustn’t they, that the wagging of fingers and nannying Others and the chicken dance of Grump-Fart, salve as spit and bailing wire of The Age. I therefore charge all “stuff”-hating volk, to live as bereft as possible, and to wander in the world. Buscaglia: no one can “teach” anything; we learn, through modeling. Lick the moss, Lisa Simpson. Maybe you’ll make an impact.
    The key difference in those like myself as we ease on down the crosswalk, is our own eyes, suffice...and if anOther has an issue with that, it is their issue. I don’t need to know about what You don’t like. Not one of us exists as marionette. Not one. Seeming puppet roles, are freely chosen, often with a whole heart. Still others only surf their tenets and beliefs. Woodstock as More’s Utopia, is back there in the pure mist with Lewis and Clark. A cramjammed Earth of many billions, negates any communal worth but as cog, except through erecting barriers as boundaries and Self as the Holy of Holies. Every Man a SEGA Genesis game of “Rampart”.
    I am not you, nonfriend, and you are not me, and what Noam Chomsky calls atomization, I call intrinsic selfworth. Do notice, the only ones doing back flips and splits in the air for Human as Ant Farm, are those self-installed as gallowglasses or chief servants. Middle management’s gophers. “Hoppin’ Bob”, in LIFE. In the concentration camps, four score ago, the term was “kapos”...and if the half star fits, bear it. I don’t salute Hoppin’ Bob. I won’t bow to the second assistant’s assistant. As I used to tell control freaks when I was hardcore in my faith, “Who are you? I want real authority!”
    The flotsam blob so dear to they of stinky tootsies, does not merit micromanagement, not to its overseers, it doesn’t. For, you are no self, but a universal soul in the flesh, therefore your “you” becomes inoperative, almost inert. That is the view of proactive “community”. Fine. Screw them. Back to Rampart. The cannon...! I’m Pushing Buttons, Debbie, I’m Pushing Buttons! I’ll admit, it’s a whole lot better than dialog. No one, not even a 1st grader, approaches a video game with “maybe I’m wrong”. So, whenever you read me, just assume I’m me and you’re Gorf.
    CEE, beside President Sadat at the review stand, Cairo, Egypt, October 6th, 1981



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