i don't know if all thats true, but on the a-train tonight i was just sitting there eating crackers and there's this lady kittycorner across the aisle going on about how oj simpson will fry in hell for his sins and so on and guess who gets on the train and sits next to me? oj himself. and its like the lady and nobody else recognixed him except me, and he caught the tail end of the lady's rant and i saw a tear in his eye. then oj grabs my hand like it was natural thing for him to do. but i still had some crackers in that hand and they got crushed which kinda ticked me off but i tried to be gracious about it, oj bein in such apparent pain and all, but he wouldn't let go even with the cracker crumbs all over the place. i thought he was supposed to be jail or sumthin. To help you isolate the problem, the mail headers from your message appear below, sans the body, to save some bandwidth. If you have further queries, please direct them to me, el@lisse.na. This message was generated automatically, so please do not feel that you absolutely _have_ to reply with a "mea culpa" message. > Received: from panix.com by kudu.ru.ac.za with smtp > (Smail3.1.28.1 #2) id m0r5gsW-000MhLC; Thu, 10 Nov 94 23:17 EET > Received: from sorabji.dialup.access.net by panix.com with SMTP id AA03985 > (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for ); Thu, 10 Nov 1994 16:17:24 -0500 Message-Id: > <199411102117.AA03985@panix.com> X-Sender: sorabji@panix.com Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 16:19:27 -0400 To: > gate@wb7tpy.az.usa.na From: sorabji@panix.com (Mark Thomas) Subject: X-Mailer: Eudora Version 1.4.2b16>


’’’’’





People seem to think I am real. They think I exist. How can they be so wrong?

 
 Time after time ugly memories come barfing in. 
Lousy dinners. Early deaths. Signs of interest that escaped you. Absences once longed for 
pain you now. You remember the urgency of dinner, that sorry slab of umpteenth potassium 
shoveled into the floor. 












This one in Gilbert done John Gilbert Keith. Down to him. Should the GCN radio network him and him and him and mainstream media government coverups and anyone answer is a notice when he's on his you on the GCN radio and I wasn't as you got a jamb can extremely important transmission lined up for you today it is Monday the 33rd day of January to me here Lord Wellington the next three hours and while Iran is now found to shut down straight of war Moses prepares oil embargo in the EU banker dictatorship for this not really the countries of Europe they all hate their bureaucratic dictators and can't get out of it we had a




member
of
the
EU
parliament
from
England
joining
us
today
break
that
down




the EU has agreed Iranian oil embargo their main source of money for the country which is an act of war Iran's is illegal and lots red or most and that means is double you and all our At all with about 10! Got behind don't you are will what is it good for a lot for the New World order the general public absolutely nothing but the banker's oldest finance all sides of the like the always do and use it as an excuse to crackdown on Islamic now the TSA lies even when the truth would suit them about you remember they said they were groping hundred 12-year-olds last three years no matter how many videos come out now is that will. Or if there were the old women that they were strip searching amazingly hot strip searching of and videos were released via subpoena male strip searching and you will is don't strip searching the we apologize that guys that came out last week we from the article in the break of the TSA apologize for strip searching a lady because (was a liar) they said it's also manacled them or agent considers the radiation from the scanners that John Hopkins radiology department goes study actually shows massive increase in cancer is the forces of cancer-causing are partisan causes cancer now while I mention all of that both an out-of-control unconstitutional federal power grab down the highways of America and they only like to go in the pants and at least like to squeeze on the outside your wife breast your genitals I hear his job last year are now in over year ago November 2010 the big story carried on the Drudge Report on Paul Klotz groped by TSA calls for boycott airlines remember that well once the big news today breaking you all held by TSA at Nashville airport nights what his father and him also age 3 and Paul both tweeted that they Dr. land and that he was held there and in front on the airport but now the TSA is simply throwing out the we didn't entreating you really don't just I didn't know the pants of Miss USA decided on groped children are 12 still do it just like they didn't turn the scanners off during an opt out demon turns out they did just like they lights and radiation was a coming of the machines and cited a report saying the radiation was causing cancer and lives of the report showed the opposite a culture of surer deception course where the enemy and we are to be diseased by the TSA perverts with their little live globs they don't change during hundreds of searches a day on record were to take our shoes off and walk for the athlete's foot and flesh eating bacteria. Here it is breaking landfall held by TSA family also have an article out via Steve Datsun ramble today by TSA patdown standoff called out in full force in prison planet will break it all down but frankly I get Iran news little bit bigger than that redacted LOI knowledge to myself my family in the followers they want to relate to you and your family that we are intensifying our efforts against the globalist on every front in full force leading the fight against the technocrats but we can't do that without your help in getting the feel comfortable stickers and T-shirts you will wake up people in your area and support our information as we move to the next level we need your help to spread the word like never before they wish to hide themselves during this tectonic battle between the forces of freedom darkness you are the response to the globalist technocrats in their program of global eugenics dehumanization and ultimate extermination or is here is the info war (1776 versus the mindset of 1984) take charge of your health to all naturally debate of health products from the new affinity health products from weight loss the cold and flu remedies individually function discover natural products you can trust like losing students is 90% of all diets fail why not try a completely new way of generating with losing stews you can achieve weight loss while you sleep guarantee reduced caloric intake get a deep restorative sleep build lean muscle mass and keep your metabolic rate to burn fat throughout the night and day with all-natural losing news from affinity health include the one-day diet or complete weight loss package losing students and the one-day diet and other all-natural products permitted women 12 AM life health or did you ever think to bring water for drinking the 21st century? record foreclosure rates for it on yours for neighbors thankful for the unemployment's ruling on and placing your child's name on the Angel tree in hopes of Christmas gift along with thousands of other Americans everything for future yield is out of control fact is in all this craziness is only one thing you can control your greatest dependency food supply make 2012 year you take control by getting prepared for the direct introduces the best way to build supply in the 21st century in a 21 day supply of food free with purchase take back control and 2012: remember you can bet your life on the eve of direct from his central Texas command center behind enemy lines the information war continues his Alex Jones and the GCN radio network morning and on the same as: there dying in their lives are moving the TSA in Tennessee has held US Sen. rand Paul and they put him through a scanner and then said they wanted at the secondary search widget I've been at the airport they do a lot going on the naked body scanners and he said that know you're not in a groping I just want to be wanted is normal, be taught me at the old in the old Ace will be inducted into prison if that was the upsetting thing was being groped having someone touched your genitals but but now it's a sacrament of land of a coward, the sleigh and now in the same state funny I epicenters Tennessee but also in Illinois and Texas is gone Dallas also all of Florida you pull up to a checkpoint and their state police U.S. Army sometimes more than 15 agencies run by TSA very little bosses and the families are jerked out of the cars and the groping begins this on the news you can a lot by just just TSA checkpoint flooring ICC small children with the with new potbellied man rubbing all over their bodies can't imagine you pull up to a hard-core see criminal checkpoint that has nothing to do with keeping you safe. Breaking are well and are. You want for the children and you want people are just go to start standing up to and that's what they want they want to get a flight going to the American people so that all the criminals and scum that run the federal government to get a real war going in and local cops marched out to do their dirty work equivalent to jump in front of 18 wheelers going on her bows in our master all the Associated Press and Reuters all of it Friday I cover Yash Ammonite leaners on the sunny radio show all the top federal prosecutors to plead the fifth unfastened veriest there'll hotline shipping the guns and Mexico shipping the drugs back and it's all in all the federal documents they declared national security it's a dealing group of criminals Karen on the how ruthless tyrants and estates in the terror attacks and their listing the American people of the terrorists and their single secretly arrest is not just. Like all and it's totally a legitimate and evil and now it's a US Sen. is all over national television and in and a know who he is we're going to grab your private parts pound now the pilots they said a year and have an amazing you want were just a boycott stopped flying and him then again maybe was in the news model these guys were veterans Air Force veterans you name it tough guys summer Vietnam veterans they would get physically ill or they would get angry or they would actually on the bathroom and vomit and me so upset that they could not fly and so is it okay will have a separate screening for the pilots and the people because it across the floodplain on as we only to grab your crotch now why would full-grown men vomit belligerently something I in nine reply Las Vegas last year in over four months ago after being out there do interviews and Jesse Ventura and the because we were expecting a private rocket based on the substance of their private space program for in Vegas is one reason are out there and climb back out our views body scanner but was about 9 AM is really tired had any sleep myself to sit with a slight mental the guys that don't touch my genitals I will see if you are Alex Jones was leadership and while the guy was doing it he was enjoying the domination it was ridiculous I was wearing a tight T-shirt and tight jeans and you can see every part of my body and he was rubbing on my chest and going just go check it in Michigan him and him and go right in your way spent her and I had met out till of your 3 AM where the Johnstone Oliver Stone sign and Ventura son Tyrell and I didn't have one hell of a headache I rationalize it as well just come and go through this prisoner of war prisoner induction think house is still missing goes down there the family jewels but the the point is this is all about total domination okay you were in touch with his knowledge the okay we just gotten information from Randall's office this is breaking I know card from working from home lately until about noon we we get curtain air right now Odyssey won't get the source and Paul's office but this is breaking in the Drudge Report's Odyssey I want this oh I just got it right as you told me my dog got it just give this occurred with an update on the distance from Randall office source will sleep with that man falls of sources tell us there was an anomaly or a blip in the scanner reading with Jesse with most people get it's all about more more groping and ran was called aside for a second screening the offered to rescan was only given the option of a patdown the refuse the patdown was taken aside in the tank is directly from Sabina's office on a given source is recently been released and is currently on a plane to DC we're in contact with the staff and should be speaking to him sent I don't know that's in the on air but this is just a will erupt from a senior staffer was written on the phone conversation and I'll talk to that staffer during the break here we go to break moment the point is this is all about completely breaking your well and it's about the 2+ million people on a no-fly list no criminal record no judge no jury you can find out why Iran left it's just you don't fly now you don't drive the TSA has set on C-SPAN one back almost 2 years ago that they would have highway checkpoint you have to get their approval to have a job you let the federal card now they had the unions opt into that and make union members do it all of the US major unions him to get TSA approval for a job the TSA is going to be the new total federal bureaucrat class that commands your local police against and who'll do anything there called and see you as an absolute and and are going to stick their hands down your five-year-old in front of you and smile they're going to grab your wife's breast and smiled there going to take your baby's diaper off their going to let you know your absolute scum and sign up and property taxes and income taxes and the IRS with its own fate court stealing people's property in the rich are exempt and you are offshore but only the elite are allowed to the offshore and they almost 0 tax you are going to be absolutely dominated with force inoculations government American Medical Association called for last week, for you shouldn't kids up without parental consent it's happening and they will start arresting people and saying well nobody really knows were built when he was permanently detained but we're sure he deserved it and it's meant to be a big chilling effect which is rounded Jesse crazy eyed goons lying around everywhere on power trips pal is going to be released on this nation as we go into total depression and just every form of depravity you can imagine and body scanner is everywhere mobile tribes total control cancer rates diabetes exploding neurological disorders reporting dying all around you and the government is now everything's fine as they soft kill the population is totally sick this is a new world order on Paul Klotz groped by TSA calls for boycott of airlines member that happened a few years ago I flashback to the daily Mail is also the New York daily news that will but that one screen did that but in TSA apologizes to grandmother's New York daily news is that even in New York but there is daily mail TSA apologizes for strip searching to grandmothers at JFK see they went ahead and started lawsuits since for your request in an and him were subpoenaing stuff they said you know what we did take 85 and 89-year-old women with Sherman and Lenora Zimmerman in the back rooms would take a close off the wheel Khaleda strip-searched remember they said Johns Hopkins says there's no radiation from these the actual Johns Hopkins reports that it use radiation and does cause cancer this is how they operate this is what they do this is how they deceive remember three years ago two years ago a year ago remember that every time they get caught in this video groping a two-year-old 10 or whatever particular pants off of taking a three-year-old son off everybody's like why why do some weird per rubbing all over there their skin a take a look at shirt and pants on fire by your rubbing all over him like why it's so obviously ridiculous it so honestly perverted so honestly pedophile training and so Odyssey training kits and perverts can do this job the TSA conducts as we don't strip-searched before 12 never have analytical all your right we are in stock now you're right. Now it's all lying to you because they see you as their enemy it's an occupying force to drive a car to have a job to live your life you like to have their approval thereof of the threat fusion centers there over your place there over everything and already at a bus station train stations and down the highway you pull out for you want and here they are with their hands and got in Florida man fallen people.

Going on in the chamber showers or something funny is taught on a terrorist. Feeling a you did you ever think you been reading water of taking the 21st century record foreclosure rates for home in on yours for neighbors thankful for the unemployment checks and surely not in place in your child's name on the Angel tree in hopes of a Christmas gift along with thousands of other Americans everything for future is out of control fact is in all this craziness is only one thing you can control your greatest dependency food supply make 2012 year you can control by getting prepared for the direct introduces the best way to build supply in the 21st century in a 21 day supply of food free with purchase call or go to take back control of 2012: remember you can bet your life on the influence direct has a revolutionary wonderful detoxing the body and rebuilding the immune system microplate powder can help unclog arteries and soften heartfelt while removing heavy metals flowers fungus bacteria and parasites blessed cleans and purifies the blood lungs, can: keep your body clean with microplate powder is about the USA only today I tend to have you ever wondered what next dockworkers investment advisor and talk about going higher rates been available since 1986 at the financial industry will recognize the value of free retirement. For paper investment to the word about Aires if you'd like to have goal for your retirement don't get left behind by rising inflation low returns call or your future and call we all know that for the water purification systems are the most trusted name in water filtration as an authorized Burkey dealer for over six years in serving thousands of satisfied customers the barking guy offers amazing specials for parking water filtration systems the Berkey light systems include a set of self sterilizing in re cleanable flight purification elements that appear by water by removing chlorine averaging bacteria persistent parasites to nondetectable levels and remove harmful chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides or the Berkey light system today complete with two black Burkey elements for only $231 in the Berkey guy will ship your order free of charge with the purchase of a Berkey light the Berkey guy is also offering a set of fluoride and arsenic filters for only 39 $.99 over 30% off the retail price, Berkey got it next or order online it go Berkey. emergency preparedness plans must include a fast way to start a fire fighter and instantly with a revolutionary quick still a compact lightweight portable stove that's ready for cooking and less than one minute quick still is not explosive fuel source that is an emergency preparedness the essential but still comes with four waterproof fuel cell that ignited the second burn for the 90 minutes each in the left hand only led and be stored indefinitely at up to 18,000 BTU quick stove is ready to boil water in less than five minutes and burns hotter than most outdoor stoves now the best for quick still starts at only 3499 income for the 100% satisfaction or your money back guarantee order today a quick portfolio or do a quick discount for multiunit savings quick still quite possibly the world's fastest outdoor fire and him and him and him and him and him and him him him him him him him him him and it's not like any of this is my opinion there are is publicly illegally federalizing all our local police








I FEEL LIKE I AM
STRANGLING A
BOWLING BALL





Isn't she remarkable? She is a dandy chip of softened glass stroked obliquely by charming spiders and impolite snakes. You met her at a park, lying among insects and toreadors, both of you evading park rangers' shovels while threatening to hitchhike your separate ways to wildness. Misquoted hippy song lyrics and puzzling sexual innuendos punctuated gawky conversation from post-adolescence, asshole bicyclists invading the serenity with needless spew of obscenities as screaming babies did the same with propulsive projectile vomit of previous hours' scrambled eggs. "I am working off a hangover," she mumbled through groaning tones of saxophone music lilting in from nearby armies of sunken ships. "I am working as little as possible," came your wittiest remonstrance, making her laugh a suitably mediocre chuckle. Conversations sprinkled and snorted, rising from dysfunctional recesses of sleepy brains. "I've got to get to Denver" you announce to no response, comforting your deadened wit with self-serving assumptions that suns will come out tomorrow and that God's fire hydrant rains on impoverished nations of the mountain. "I expect snow at the vineyard" she counters, demanding bafflement but earning none, both of you equally unimpressible for all but impossible conversations: She: "Does a calendar have condoms in its pockets?" You: "Contraceptive stores are evenly distributed across nervous laughter." She: "Someone told me crayons melt in the hands of unwanted children." You: "Have you seen the changing patterns of youthful neediness?" She: "I have seen obscure beers and wines rise from deserved obscurity." You: "I have seen bottomless nations run from naked performance artists." She: "I see holy masturbation filling unwatched frames of 1970s pornography." You: "I smoke holy hubris from the breath of poverty's latecomers." She: "You must sound different in quadrophonic stereo." You: "Loneliness sounds different when your bartender leaves the tomb."

Sockpuppet of a generation, your fabric grown stiff by prickles of dust and neglect, I use your obfuscation for education, I use your flowery talk as substitute for wildness, loitering instead on needless drawl of hillbilly vernacular, filled with unprovable claims of royalty in your lineage and sadness at standing the ground of causes you doubt with urgencies inspected at random by grade school bartenders.

As I sit on this ineffectual springboard sobriety's dampness trickles through billions of my truck stops and thousands of failed pursuits. I housed a flowerless garden on your balding head, stroking at cancers and jilting the folly that pioneered glossy constraints. Hurt but nimble we filtered our anxieties through wintery coatrooms, shuffling our dismembered hands through strangers' pockets, sacs of air left pretty enough to cloister but emptied to the point of philistine loss. A father turns a french fry into a nuclear power plant. A scientist turns a chicken into a balsa-wood angel. A suicidalist turns an onion into a bullet. Changes asunder rip tidal frowns down hurried spaces, gibberish competing with listless vibrations of life on memory's undrawn familiarity. A t-shirt used as a spreadsheet links itself to obnoxious triumph of early television westerns, paying dearly for its unusual needs and accommodation, hulking through waste and bulleted fists while craggy additions to families of turmoil belch and crow like ludicrous science fiction animals with human intelligence and constant nakedness. A counterpoint of drowning treads its water humbly, blunting the glaze of history with disasters unrecorded by any source except the gusts of busdrivers' halleluiahs and viper-like stains of nugatory facial tics.
	

Listen! The World Is At Peace. Nobody Notices.

River The river flows hot and dry, spraining the back of America's silent highways and graveyards. Unseen clocks tick times of days, blinking seconds to vacant streets and bones of time. These nimble travelers live clichés of disintegrating memories. I dream in the power of ghostly heat. I look down to see the river in your face.

Hobo bungle. Bolo Stumble.

Novel rumble.

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Great way to replicate the dashboard, bonehead.

o)o) o)o)

o)o)

o)o)

o)o)

o)o)

Disasters have a way of attracting disasters.

Magenta soils of blind washing machines.

Terrible vibrations in a fractured police officer’s brow stand guard against trivial recitations of national flags and street naming conventions.

Museum Slits cut into matchbook covers let handwritten notes limp free, the stories flipped and historical situations scraped on inferior parchment never intended for immortality but rising to the occasion as history's eyelets tremble shut, omitting kingdoms and forgetting the triumphs on a spotless course of jumbled families' blinded interventions. Noteworthy on the frameless paintings are broomswept trash heaps of naked density representing the passing grimaces of judgmental strangers, the talentless and blandly spited accusations of others' inferiorities which reveal instead the weaknesses of the accuser, she whose scripted path through gravity resembles the airballs juggled in the vacuous backwash of uninfluential youth, an unmowed childhood regurgitating its weedy surroundings with few heroics and fewer seeds of menace. Passages of elevator music litter the halls, the squinches and arches elevate the flotsam into painless conciliation. The uneasy stampede of immoral conversations boils north of everything, drastically north of the windless libraries and falsely north of the cowardly circus-hunters breeding hazy rubber bones for crazed and starving dogs. I don't know what you said to the strangers swinging past on the brittle beards of queens but the substance of the words was freshest in the hungry flash of religion that clapped its hand on puzzled cue. Pretenses and flounderings of celebrity virtuosics remain cradled for all times by the occupation of starving canvas, the importation of life's routine numbnesses into the whetted mouths of banished vagrants. Weedless houses, abandoned for centuries, draw crumbs and chuckles from sensually opened bottles of cheap liquor, from toxically cheap wine served to quench the thirst of a bi-polar brain, nourishing the diagnosis du jour with nothing -- nothing -- while prospering on Monopoly money at a beggar's casino. The 16th-century rainwater pounds your thighs and feet but your head and face stay clear of the conflicting apocalypses brawling across generations. Bodies of effortless dismay streak like prowlers exposed by gotcha journalists and thousands of hidden cameras, cameras blasting mundane failures and wasteful exertions into the public places of starving joy. Everything is public, I say. Everything is public. You cannot agree but you do anyway, passing around the noseless faces from textbook history for dichotomous inspection and the limber ridicule of India rubber smearing blobs of erased history across the palaces of your wandering empire. Dreamless lineages of inspiration perspire along the nodes of education, nibbling on flimsy commentary of jobless law enforcement constables thrice revealed by a soup of decrepit pages from ancient manuscripts dribbed and drabbed from failing co?dination of papyrus and forest fibers. The delirious timbre of anxiety labors its path through infancies to retirement, funded by granite-faced women whose faces hover over the dial tone, rising from the comical friezes of paper currency, those whores of decision-making, the riotous gluttony that eats itself. Our comprehension of matters diminishes so we amuse ourselves with babytalk, gibberish words and nonses invented to impress the tourists into thinking we are not Americans. A senseless hoax of invigorating mental acrobatics used to mutantly generate phony words and intellectual-sounding pablum. "Lifker mux cruftian bloot nimp?" you ask. "Fra curia! Jufted plavaw pooz nomanarth, broster doil," I reply. You rise to the challenge, as the gibberish jousting continues. A Norwegian family stops to stare and listen, thinking they hear something comprehensible in our bravura showing of verbal fabrication. In the seconds to come we find that nothing remains of what we said. The vestigial limitations of communication, inaccessible to the human mind, are roundly exorcised from their shelter by spontaneous ejaculations of carefully unplanned humiliation. All that we discard is gathered up by the vacuum cleaners of cultural commentary, re-appropriated into visually coherent but linguistically meaningless jabber that rises above reasonable discussions, blanketing libraries and houses of debate with suffocating fragrances of unknown rot, these blundering turmoils of repetitive word matter spined by multiple backbones, covered by strata of a newborn's thickened flesh. The festivities spread to cloudless passages of sweaty rain, those ruggedly noiseless terrains whence worlds are frisked and fondled, where screaming infants inhale hurricanes while living like prisoners in topless pits and longing for the remote comfort of a crumbling black hole. Empty horizons inspire more than glittering skylines. I say this, and you cannot agree, but you do, again, you agree. How do these infinite trails of microscopic adventure void the bullion of jumbled gold left greatest in value by bullish grins of red and unrubbed venom? How does the date resolve to algebraic tranquility if the hot-voiced lecture climaxes on the blushing violence of spoiled cream? Ask not the hungry pastures of manufactured villainy, for blindness lingers on the stools of the coolly bulleted list of your life stories.
 I 
remember that callow flourish. it happens again at times. Not the frosty "lover at war" 
nonsense but the image of my bare legs, trailed by sparkles, articulated with fantastical 
detritus to reflect the movement and the ambition of my progress through this world.  
Mother and I went to dinner at a loud, crowded place.

We confirmed our reservations and walked down a circular staircase to get to the dining room.

We got to the bottom of the staircase and entered the dining room when mother realized she had left her purse upstairs, probably at the reservations desk. She panicked a little, turned around and slightly pushed me out of her way as she rushed back and started running up the stairs.

A few steps up the stairs she looked up and saw a man holding her purse, holding it up and toward in her in an affirmative manner indicating that he knew he had her lost property. All eyes turned toward the communication between mother and this man, a brief feel-good moment.

Mother indicated relief, and I felt it as well, that waterfall of assuagement that punctuates sudden panic, a spontaneous and un-orderly sorting-out of what will happen, who will have to be called, what plans will have to change if certain articles from one's carry-all suddenly go missing, or if they fall under someone else's control.

The man with the purse gestured to mother that he would toss it down to her. She held open her hands, smiling. I knew, instinctively, that she did not appreciate this, this somewhat risky act of throwing the purse, but that her gratitude toward the individual for finding and offering to return the purse was enough for her to compromise and allow him to return it in the manner of his choosing.

The act of him throwing and her catching was a clumsy ballet, not one confidently entered into for the first time between strangers in a crowded room of onlookers.

She held her hands up in anticipation of receiving the purse. The man tossed the purse down toward her. Her hands barely had time to close when the purse struck her in the face, knocking out her false teeth. The purse simply came down faster than she expected. She was still smiling in gratitude and relief that her purse was found when it hit her face, knocking her smile asunder, and shattering it.

All eyes, aghast, turned toward the man who had gone from good samaritan selflessly returning a lost item to a virtual attacker who appeared to have assaulted my mother by throwing her purse at her face.

He seemed apologetic, but snarkily so. In fact, by my estimation, he was not apologetic at all. Mockingly shrugging his shoulders, he instead basked in the lingering, prestigious glow of one who found another's object of value and returned it for no reward. He put more value on his good intentions than on the buffoonery of his ill-advised manner of returning the found object.

Mother retreated to a space away from the crowded room and away from the puzzled gawkers. She re-adjusted her false teeth and re-appeared, taking my hand as we left the place, briskly climbing the stairs, never to return.

That was the first time I knew my mother's false teeth existed. She never mentioned them, not even in the broadest vaguenesses. The closest allusion I remember was mother simply saying she had bad teeth as a child. It was well into adulthood myself when, through some stream-of-consciousness or other, I deduced that mother must have had a complete set of false teeth since at least her 40s, if not earlier and if not for virtually all of her adult life.





I do not remember what happened. He stole things. He cheated in school. He had pornography. I followed him. I cheated on tests, copying his answers one by one, not questioning them. The answers, as my mother quickly observed, were nothing but alternating "True" and "False." a 20 question True-or-False quiz for which DT provided me answers, answers which I devoured in panicked ignorance, failing to notice the pattern. 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. F On and on, for 20 questions, a column of letters and numbers. He stole things from the school library. Evidently, so did I. But when I say I do not remember that is not a vulgar attempt to dismiss or disassociate myself. The incident is simply not clear in my mind. It was in the library. Mrs. F., the crabby librarian, collected library fines. Some of these fines added up to considerable sums of $1 or more. My anxieties about library fines stretched back to the evacuation, when I was able to get away with not paying a library fine on account of our family's early release. I don't remember if I owed any library fines in the 3rd Grade, but DT showed me where the money was. Mrs. F. stuck the money in a book, or so I believed. It seems like most of the fines were less than $1. A stash of money collected from library fines would likely be in nickels and dimes. That is, unless Mrs. F. converted the coins to bills from her own pocket. That is how DF explained it to me. The presence of those bills, though, was erotic. Not sexual but sensuous. Opening a book, a book that looked no different from the others but which DT knew contained money, opening that book was 3rd-grade sexual to me. I was nervous touching the bills, nervous as the first time I undid a woman's pants, nervous as I tasted her for the first time. I held the bills with my fourth finger, imagining that finger was safer than others, less traceable. Or perhaps imagining that these special sheets of paper demanded special attention and unusual means of handling. Days passed, and somehow it was found that either I had the money, or DT had the money. I don't remember having the money, though I might remember lifting it from the book. Did I keep it, or did I hand it to DF? Was there a handoff of loot somewhere outside the library? Whatever the case, someone found the money missing and I suspect that whoever that was had little trouble concluding who took it. The library, a moon-like terrain to youngsters, was but a tiny room to adults. I don't remember taking the bills. I don't remember getting caught. I was called to the principal's office. I do not remember who was present. It may have been Sr. H. or her substitute, but whoever it was was erased from my mind by the presence of a man in a business suit. Wearing a suit and tie and coming from some place other than the school he asked me several questions, smiling opaquely, a half-grin, the type some people do not realize they exhibit but of which he seemed readily aware. When I got my passport made, 30-something years later, the woman who handled the transaction had that exact grin on her face. She made mundane comments and I saw her face and chuckled, thinking she was smiling. She was not smiling, and I promptly stopped laughing, remembering that man in the principal's office. The situation may never have been as serious as I imagined it. I was being investigated, interrogated, cross-examined. The principal indicated that a specialist was brought in to ask me questions, and by specialist I thought she meant police officer or private detective, though I am not certain that I knew what either of those things were. The nun said to me "This is (unintelligible)." The she turned her ass toward me and mumbled "He's from the (unintelligible)." He was sharply dressed, pristinely, even, his nose sharp and his hair dark. A pin glittered on his lapel, possibly an American flag or some sort of patriotic symbol like a Statue of Liberty image, or maybe just the torch which Liberty holds in her hand. I sat in a chair and the man knelt over slightly, maybe leaning against a table or the principal's desk, asking me about the money. DT had told me what to say, but I can't remember what he told me to say, and I can't remember what I did say. I am pretty sure I said that he and I were in the library, looking at books, when we happened to find one book with money in it. We didn't know what it was, or why it was there, but we took it, assuming the Finders Keepers rules applied. To have brought in outside help for this investigation suggests something more than a few dollars was at stake, but I just do not know. Maybe that was just a ploy, though, to scare the bejeezus out of a little kid by making him think that the CIA was brought in to investigate and prosecute the case of a few dollars stolen from the library's fines. To me the few dollars felt like millions, no not even something as concrete as "millions" but like an ungoldly amount of money, incalculable precious tender of significance that transcended its value. I could barely contemplate the amount of money, which perhaps reflects in the fact that I don't remember how much it was. Is it the first money I ever touched? The first American money? I remember the Asian currencies, and I probably was encouraged to hold on to a few of those bills as souvenirs. And certainly I had seen or even handled coins by the 2nd or 3rd grade. But this money was dark and foreboding. Something about this money was dangerous, and not just because we "found" it. DT knew the money was there, I think. He saw the librarian stash it there. He directed me to it, and made me steal it from the book before giving it to him later. I can not remember if I told the investigator that we were just looking at books in the library when we found money in one of them, or if I told him that DT had set me up. It is hard to imagine how articulate I could have been, but the school year ended soon after this incident and DT did not return the following year.

I am looking at America through its throwaway memories, its unsearchable lives. bullions of gravy in a lump of home swinging on electric hazel where a chandelier of candy melts. records need to be kept. who records the mash of scents tangling in your hallway? who records the emptiness in your freezer? who remembers these cudded words? dig into the phlegm of your mind. expect garbage. expect combat. listen to the drain listen to the drain listen to the drain inhale

Time wasted is the truest form of death among the living, shut like a coffin in the sex-washed wind of the purple night. 10.10.15 How often do you read the letters I never sent? Those silent bulges of history? 10.10.09 For all this drizzle the sourness reigns in blemishes left by you, the corners of defilement and imperfection mocked by old jokes, inanimate objects punctuated with dank nuances of your judgments, life's porously invisible lunacies chased by laughter continuously down the centuries, the same as on these spots in times still current, times as connected as today, times always alive to you because you listen, because you wait for the messengers who made no appointment, you listen for the neighbors long moved away. You are looking for the meaning in the common stairwells, lamp posts and municipal mysteries of tireless infrastructure, the grain of your attentions vacuumed away by passers-by seen and invisible, drawing chalk from your fists to explain the continuities of detritus, particles of industry sternly lurking in the metal fences, the hovering tangle of cables inhabited for a century by voodoo childhoods in the permanent passage of stillness. Your eyes follow the travels of strangers, your legs trace their paths down alleys and forgetfulness, you look for answers in the objects they ignore, your sounds unheard in continuous evaporation. 10.10.01