Take the Plunge

After killing African natives, the colonial armies returned to Europe
to murder its own civilians. Trench warfare and concentration camps
were perfected in Kenya. Register this truth; face it if you can.
Our leaders hate us as Hitler once despised the German people.

This ‘America’ crap is over. The rich despise the American people
and would be happy to see them wiped out by the Chinese, or
at the hands of Arabs, in an act of terror, or in nuclear holocaust.
These facts shouldn’t dissuade you from your plans to quit smoking.

Look at the bright side. Ever notice how democracy has become a fraud?
Everyone despises the poor. The President might loath the people of
the West, but this doesn’t mean you have to. He’s not ashamed to say so.
You needn’t hate them as much as rich people. You can show compassion.

If I met General Rommel in an alley, dead or alive, I wouldn’t know him
from Adam, but if given the chance, I might introduce myself. I’d go,
“My name is Laramie, a combination of Larry and marry me. Get it?”
The General might slap my back and offer me a pack of cigarettes.

Women respond to the suntanned look of a man’s face, Rommel said.
Especially after he walks in the door. It triggers primitive memories.
Soldiers returning from battle. The look of the kill, from the old
days when men hunted and made their women stay inside.

Only whores sported tans. This was why a real lady always carried
a parasol or an umbrella, to protect her lovely complexion.
A woman should be masked and guarded, so when her noble husband
returns all bloody and hysterical, he can be certain she belongs to him.

Children scream and ask daddy if he has something for them.
Mommy screams, too, but she doesn’t have to ask what daddy
has for her. As the Good Book says, patience is made a virtue
by men forced to leave their adoring women behind.

One wants desperately for the world to improve but one grows
increasingly certain that any improvements will only come
through the efforts of do-gooders. Franz Kafka was said to have
been suspicious of all utopias, but what the hell did he know?

Progressives with absolute certainty never fuck things up,
as long as they strive to get there first even if it means killing
the competition. It is always a knife fight. In our effort to get
people to acknowledge our accomplishments, we must be willing
to cut out their tongues, blind them, and even snap their necks. Then,
we can tell them we did it for love. This is what progress means.
We must never adore the individual as much as what we ourselves
have done. New beginnings start with just rewards.

Cultural Appropriation

Have you heard? Boris Karloff was a heterosexual.
You were there; I was there: watching Fantastic Features
from 11 to 1 every Friday night all through childhood.
She didn’t know what was coming at her; he didn’t know
what was coming at him. It was thinking he was five steps
ahead when he was five steps behind that got her killed.

It was being from Calabria that got him into trouble. Had
it been 1928, it would have been different. But 1997? Italy?
Ellis Island and all that? Come on! There wasn’t anyone
there to fumigate. They said they all had AIDS. They said
they knew Karate. I don’t know. They let in those
from San Miguel de Allende and drowned the rest.

There was an old lady from Oaxaca they let through, but
they killed her daughters. This was the best plot they could
think of for what will become part of the second season
of Sky King. You remember the Piper Cub? The Piper J-3
Cub to be exact. That thing could go. Far better than the Cessna.
In fact, while the Piper Cub was the shit, the Cessna was shit.

Keep in mind that all we wanted it for was to fly into Port Gibson.
We would be having lunch with the Governor and his family at his
river-side estate, a one-thousand-acre property. “Head on over to
The Spread” was the key expression, with a power equal to open
sesame for the in-crowd in Jackson, Mississippi; to hell with
Eudora Welty. This was the start of the twenty-first century.

Black guy out back shucking oysters out of a 500-pound barrel.
Had to roll the fucker up the drive and out back behind the pool.
Topless waitresses from Bali serving shrimp on little bamboo skewers.
Two Samoans, 400 pounders, I kid you not, with tats galore,
standing in loin cloths and ready to kick anyone out without an invite.
The Governor and his Tahitian lover were in matching red speedos.

Combine all this with the communist mayor of Jackson. You know him?
Can’t remember his name: Mifune Kinte Lumumba, driving a $300,000
Bugatti surrounded by six bodyguards sent from Chicago by Muhammad
Farrakhan or whatever; I’m just saying, okay? I mean, they got it going.
And then they got this video thing all set up and at 4:54 pm sharp, guess
who pops the fuck up? Michelle and Barack themselves, waving. Boom!

They made the whites get on the ground and kiss the mayor’s feet. How
the fuck should I know? Shit, yeah! I stuck my tongue right between his
toes. You don’t fuck with those Muhammad Ali look-alikes, homeboy.
They don’t play. All whites, bro. Yeah, mens and womens down on the floor.
I had his whole toe in my mouth. Shit, yeah: both Senators were there.
President of the university, professor of white studies, and the top sushi chef.

Honor Among Thieves

Tomorrow I will write a poem for you. The
day we walked around pulling blossoms from
the azalea branches, those tiny pink buds, and
you told me to leave you alone. You said, “Why
would I want to be with you?” You spoke in such
a nice voice that I remember it now over thirty
years later. That voice, that lip, those eyes, and
my pockets full of little pinks blossoms I tore from
the bushes while our wonderful black gardener just
stood there in our path, scowling.

Icarus fell, as did Humpty Dumpty. I’ll be
in the ground, in the ground like Karl Marx,
dead and buried by 2030, wearing Hush puppies,
and a coon skin cap. I voted for President Trump
and have been on the run ever since. I finished
my fried-fish dinner, drank some orange Crush
soda, and walked alone by the river. Something’s
got to work, or so they say. I have to stop the dogs
in my stomach from growling. They’ve been
barking and carrying on since early morning.

People’d like for me to look down on you in the way
they look down on me. Condescending is almost as much
fun as scolding, but not nearly as delightful as blaming.
Condemning is so much fun some girls spend all afternoon
wagging their little fingers and condemning people who
don’t act right. Those fingers go all day, 24/7. These are
people who have to be right. All day long, even while in
bed with their lovers. Those fingers never let up. It makes
for an amusing sight, those people, male and female,
lying around stark naked and working as hard as they
can to make other people feel crummy.

We used to drink sweet champagne orange juice
from a straw, but now when I feel down and out,
I reach for a bottle of sarsaparilla, yes siree Bob.
Sioux City, as a matter of fact, the best darn tootin’
root beer there ever was. Just ask General George C.
Patton. A little country ham with red-eye gravy would do
the trick, along with a side of hot chow-chow relish. We
used to drink sweet champagne orange juice from a straw.
Then we’d head over the river to watch the greyhounds
race the rabbits.

Who first said Mohammad Ali could fight? “Who or what
guided you, Mr. Scully?” the investigators asked? Did you say
it was Commodore Vanderbilt in his steamship heading down river
from Peekskill? Was the Commodore’s ghost guiding your plane?
He answered, “I am out of wit.” A reply to be sure, but what about
the fig tree in the yard? Riddle me that! And with that, he swore
not to sell his wife’s diamond bracelet for all the tea in China and
instead blew their brains out. Let us not forget the Alamo.

The Man with No Tattoos

was dragged through the streets by a mob
of women, whose distinguishing features were
black ink markings sketched across their faces,
their necks, breasts and bellies; painted, too,
as a bullseye between their legs and covered in
stripes from their upper thighs, down their legs
to below the ankle. Many were missing ears.

There were hundreds of such women. Their
teeth have been filed into points. After killing
the man without tattoos, the heavily inked women
devoured his naked corpse. They fought over
leftovers, parts strewn along the road. A few stayed
behind to lap the bloody foam from the street, licking
up the warm puddle along with the grit and filth.

At a distance stood tattooed males, marked heavily
as well, some burned with branding irons on their chests
and buttocks. None had hair. Many had fewer than
ten fingers and an equal number had been relieved
of their testicles. They stood awkwardly, half-starved,
crying in the dark hoping against hope to be offered
scraps. A few clung to each other and howled like dogs.

It was against the law to eat a male with tattoos, his
markings distinguished him from the unregistered,
who lacked legal status; they fell prey to desperate
marauders. A male carrying weapons would be shot
on sight by bounty hunters or militia. Untended children
were hunted for their flesh, valued above all for their
tenderness, which means they could be eaten raw.

At night, it was especially dangerous to make a move.
Patrolmen frequently caught site of homeless nomads
hiding in the woods, strays as they were called, people
vulnerable to rape or murder, both male and female, by
soldiers, peace-keepers, patrolmen of various stripes,
and then by people of their own kind whose power lay
their physical strength or mental agility.

This was all that remains, this remnant, now that the peace
had been arranged. People herded into camps were starving.
It was rumored that many ran for the hills or were carried
away on makeshift canoes. Weeks of defoliation
and toxins released into the waterways made survival
doubtful. It had essentially become against the law to live.
No one was allowed to feed or take care of the living.

People were being paid to kill themselves. There was little
ammunition. Capital cities were destroyed, hence the absence
of administration. Governments, local and beyond, disappeared.
Corpse removal was all that the administrators could manage.
Los Angeles County alone had twelve million bodies to dispose of.
Others were vaporized in the final offensive. To limit transport,
oversized ovens on the backs of eighteen-wheelers made the rounds.

One heard talk of victory. It was hard to make sense of such language.
What exactly was won? Washington had been struck. So, too,
New York, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, and LA. City life no longer
existed, not in the common sense of the word. People were filmed running
through the sewers. They turned up from time to time in the rubble. There
were no hospitals. There was no medicine. Food distribution centers had
all but disappeared. Only patrolmen and cannibals thrived.

What can be celebrated and is a relief is the refreshing lack of lying.
After years of propaganda and spin, the vile vaudevillian rhetoric has
ceased. The charm doctors and elite spokesmen are gone. They were
the first to go. Many disappeared. The ten-million-dollar word-whores have
fled. The stacked Barbie-doll who left the weather channel to speak
for the State Department was butchered on live television by rebels.
It is the only sign of hope, now, that her affront to decency has stopped.

Peace and Tranquility

My sixth-grade daughter Jenny feels sorry for the Sioux.
She’s learned two things in school as far as I can see: to
stop sucking her thumb and to pity anyone who doesn’t
drive a Volvo.

Her teacher resembles the woman who used to clean houses
in my parent’s neighborhood in East Memphis, a heavy-set
gal who could cook real good but could never stay for supper.
We all loved Estella but she believed the earth was flat.

Jenny’s teacher told her all Native Americans were fine people
even the ones who scalped her great-great-great grandmother
no more than 300 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri
on a wagon full of crockery that had lost a wheel.

Miss Ackerman said she didn’t believe the Native Americans
meant her great-great-great grandmother any harm. She believes
if they did it, it was an act of resistance and all resistance is heroic,
because what that means is that all they wanted was a better life.

Jenny told me the other boys and girls laughed when the teacher
said her grandmother was probably a racist. She said that was
the reason they had to kill her. She said the Native Americans
were fighting back and all they wanted was their dignity.

She said the other kids were right to laugh. She said racists deserve
to die. She said you can spot a racist from a mile away. Racists
can be found on wagon trains heading west. They can be found
on plantations, too, and in the White House, and in fine restaurants.

Jenny’s been taught that dolphins are fine, too, especially those
that learn to fight back, like the one that bit the arm of Jennie’s
little friend. Native Americans are just like dolphins. They love
peace and tranquility and clean air.

Gee, dad, why are people so mean to dolphins who never did anyone
any harm? Why are people like that? What about the Comanche? Is it
true they buried white men in the ground and urinated into their gaping
mouths? Teacher said they deserved it; they were racists, too.