SCALE 1- Hypochondriasis

At some point I tripped
while climbing to the top of the waterfall
from where I planned to jump.
My finger slipped on the trigger
before I had a chance
to open up my mouth.
I lost weight with Doxepin
but narrowed my therapeutic index.
I blew a front tire as I turned
into the hairpin,
my breath full of formalin.
My chimney clogged with creosote,
my skin slick with turpentine.

These ischemic eyes perusing WebMD
fuel my cyberchondria.
These ischemic eyes still could not see
the ironic propinquity of the Moirai,
those rara aves of death,
herding their sweet little goslings
along my bloodstream.
Of all of the many ways to die,
the only prerequisite,
what may be considered a perquisite,
is perfidy.

SCALE 2- Depression

Time to sell the horse
and put this swayback body in hock.
Driving back from the diagnosis,
all I could focus on were the new releases,
all of the films which will remain unseen.
How will these sagas end?
I am suddenly overwhelmed
by all of the films I shall never see.
The green peafowls preen their plumage
but do they know how they all end?
Understanding expands then collapses.
The wan flight of day fades
into unsung rubaiyat.

The rubber trees peek out of the landslide
of garbage. Above the waves, dead birds glide
and drip black oil from heavy wings. This dream
loses focus at end of eventide.

This will be the last steering wheel I grip.
I drive to the last address stamped on my mail.
My first novel will never be written.
My concluding few poems are odd numbered.
Will I squeeze out one more or three
or seventeen? I hear the samisen
plucking out my hours,
each note an edict leading
to my posthumous existence.
Should I write my name on water
in cursive or calligraphy?

SCALE 3- Hysteria

Vodka hidden in her bower,
a nip for each fake strand of her bouffant.
The collagen augmenting her lips
tastes as natural as the saline in her tits.
A flask of vodka carried in her purse,
a sip for every thrust of hips which hurt,
another hiking up her skirt,
the world is a paparazzi peeping tom
snapping pictures like a Tommy gun.
She fell off a stage in Recife, Brazil,
forgot her words to songs in Belgrade,
and as her fair-weather fans made fun of her,
Amy Winehouse drank herself to death
before the tender age of twenty-eight.

Daddy, my diva, she sang, I’m through
being good. I’m through rending my red
heart in two. I’m Sylvia Plath menacing you
with a wicked looking wedding cake slicer
and divider. I’m your little girl long-legged
fly, dainty and frail ankles navigate steep
Victorian stairs. Turn my wrist. My breast
milk is already mixed with Borax and casein.
Drink your fill, erudite gourmands.

But for the grace of Bacchus, thought I, and
this thought was premature and god-awful,
as if a slower pace had greater merit.
Here I am invincible with drink in hand,
three sheets steer me rudderless in the wind
towards the forgetful land,
hell bent in abandon, lost in Abaddon.
Cheers to all the social drinkers
who considered themselves above statistics.
Cheers for avoiding the addiction
in indiscernible increments,
a toast to this killing blunder, this joke,
time and ethanol break us asunder,
pulling us all under.

SCALE 4- Psychopathic Deviate

Dear Pie:
I sit idle in the car
nauseous by the truth of the cliché,
“the wash of humanity is a cattle herd.”
I never killed a bird, not a single bird.
Oh Pie, my signature behavior
is to wait close to parturition and
flesh out the gilts ready to farrow,
to be prepared with my amputation replica,
the one distinctive of the blade displayed
at the Museum of London Docklands,
and linger with my appetite of Psalmanazar.
Ah sweetie pie, such a nice fricassée
braised from my own personal recipe.

See, I’m a modest boy, swift
in execution of a modest proposal,
equally familiar with the labyrinths
of Whitechapel and the catacombs
of all twenty arrondissements. Maybe
a bit irascible, I will admit. Sain.
Would you have me fib in Formosan?
I’m not a charlatan like that man
who ran away to Ireland or an impostor
Princess Caraboo. All my paring knives
carve precise tournée cuts. Your meat
is tenderized with a pineapple marinade
suffused with paprika, cardamom,
and liqueur de framboise au vin rouge.

So take heart little piglet. You and I
are true lovers of our country, patriots,
compatriots. We purge these filthy streets
of the unwanted, future beggars, thieves,
rapists and worse. I savor you with fondness.
I make you part of me. You transform
into a useful instrument sed patriae.

With all my light and dearest love,
Daddy
Honor long, honour bright.

SCALE 5- Masculinity / Femininity

(Reuters) – The Vivian sisters have escaped
the tortured mind cave of Henry Darger.
The girls are finally free from the dim-lit room
where they were subjected to veneration
and worship and kept in perpetual pupilage.
For over forty-three years the girls did not mature.
They were unable to enjoy their penises
drawn between their legs and did not experience
a singular erection. They had no reason
for tumescence for they were pure and good
and full of goodness and respectful of God.

(Scripps) – The Vivian sisters have dispersed
throughout Chicago and all over the East Coast.
They can now grow into adulthood and indulge
in suppressed fantasies and exploit their infamous
hermaphroditic bodies into cold hard income
and take a respite from the frightful war storm
and the child slave rebellion and living lies
disguised as male spies. No more imperatives
for the Vivian girls. No more repines.
No more Mother Hubbard raiments in recline.

(Yahoo) – Catherine with her angelic voice,
she sings here near Daley Plaza in the district.
Her revue she titled Blengins with Dicks.
Such a rip-roaring good time, order a drink
from the Elsie Paroubek Bar, wink wink.

Jennie, the math genius, she went to code
for the game SiSSYFiGHT 2000 and lent more
credence to their successful Kickstarter campaign.
She legitimized the location graphic interphase.
Hey eggheads, nerd boys, anoraks, and brainiacs,
want to know her favorite heartrending move?
Licking Your Lolly by golly! Hint hint.

Hettie moved to New York City and established
a cravat boutique on top of the Chelsea Hotel
called Jobriath’s Asylum which is wildly successful.
Recently she introduced a new line of baby bibs
made out of pashmina and tie-dyed bhandani.

(Le Monde) – Daisy began as an amanuensis
for dyslexics. One of them OD’d. Another
fell in love with a poplar tree and ever since
she has expanded into narrative nonfiction.
Daisy exposed the primary role Edgar Allen Poe
played in the Great Moon Hoax, basically
parody. Her next bestseller: Madame Restell,
Abortionist. In the works: Benjamin Bathurst,
Diplomat Dissapear’d, Time Traveling Luminary.

Violent Violet, first taught at West Point,
now consults for the Department of Defense.
About her no more really needs to be said
other than Glandeco-Angelinian combat tactics
have cropped up in the Middle East and Crimea.
She is also reputed to have restored a legal brothel
museum styled The Katheoy Marble Toy Emporia.

Joice borrowed money from Hettie and financed
the first Abbieannian restaurant in Little Italy.
Offered as part of the menu is the National dish
of young Tuskohorian beef baked and covered
in a mushroom duxelle; this plate was praised
by none other than Emeril Lagasse and Cher!
Another popular item is Hot Dortherean Wings
broken up and dipped in a rich semen plum sauce.

(Salon) – Saintly Evangeline, most pious weeaboo
amongst all the sisters, works charity with children
and the elderly as part of The Little Sisters of the Poor.
She mends their clothes and feeds them loaves
and disallows any kind of scientific experiments.
She has reached rapprochement between her male
and female self. For three days of the week, she dons
a white coif, black scapular. Other days, she buttons up
thirty-three studs of a long cassock with an amaranth red
pellegrina. On Sundays, she calls Jennie Vivian
using a decorative wall-crank phone connected to nothing
and laments, “my life is nonpareil, humans are cognate
and stagnant in this world hospital for imbeciles.
This is no realm of the real. This is grave sent.
Only women’s hair and a mattock and maybe a million
novenas can mitigate boredom during lent. Nolle Prosequi.
What can I say about the little waifs? Festering lilies,
odorous weeds, they fill up my canvas like horror vacui.”

(Al Jazeera) – Rattlesnake boy, the scout,
reportedly is now a married housewife
with seven kids. She named each child
after the Vivian gals regardless of gender.
Her husband is a phillumenist who once
worked for the Diamond Match Company
located in Wilmington, Delaware. Beware!

SCALE 6- Paranoia

A faith system is not a knowledge system.
A faith system requires the believers,
through faith, to lie every time their faith
is proclaimed. They proclaim, “I know
because of my faith.” In actuality, they
really do not know. They only have faith.
In consideration of the built in fabrications
and required prevarications which believers
are compelled to proclaim, the only conclusion
which can be universally and logically claimed
is that a faith system can’t be a moral system.

“Your faith system is not my moral system.”
Bible John adjusts his bowtie at The Barrowland
and tells all the girls, “I don’t drink at Hogmanay,
I pray.” Then he stalked all over Glasgow,
from Scotstoun to Castlemilk to Knightswood,
preaching with his ligatures and stiff manhood.
He could sniff out the bloody monthlies.
Like a redbone hound, he could track the sin
of the bloody menses, his own vain moral system.

And of course, Hauptmann Hess crash-landed
not too far away in a fallow Eaglesham field,
I believe, with a fistful of lucre and a head full
of dextrose sugar and other assorted medicines,
which strengthened his magical convictions.

Mischievous men cavort under Operation Mistletoe,
the kind of men the world loves to burn or to hang.

Reichsleiter Hess’ peace offering was pure
rodomontade and rejected. He never understood.
“We only want to invade to reach the Jews
beyond the Pale of Settlement. Britain keeps
her foreign territories. Appease for peace.”
A moral suasion based on blood libel, contingent
on Barbarossa not drowning in the Saleph.

The Allies and their military tribunal
exacted their own retribution. Revanche.
Perhaps they built the gallows too short
with a drop length of insufficient force,
with the small trapdoor a final glove slap
to the head of the condemned á l’outrance.

And Rudolph Hess became the loneliest
captive in the world. The other six left
and he was no longer able to take the dish
placed farthest away at the communal table.
The Soviets disallowed death by firing squad.
They also voted against house arrest for Hess
after the release of Speer. For twenty years,
one prison, 600 cells, one prisoner, a full staff
to watch him walk alone amongst the weeds
of an overgrown garden. How he must have
envied the dance of his hanging comrades,
the twitch and the turn, the spasms jouissant
released by the Spandau ballet, the final end.

What is the price of all the ashes scattered
over the Isar? I hear margarine is 1,49
Deutsche marks at ALDI’S. AAA Batterien
sell for less at Media Markt, Gott sei dank.

SCALE 7- Psychasthenia

Echolalia and knots, the soothing
repetition of singing the same lyrics
while tying the same knots, the child
also loved the coolness of floor tile.
He could not be lifted. I mean he ate,
spoke his desires, followed fireflies,
putatively could pass the Turing test.
But when he heard a certain phrase
or began to tie a variety of knots, only
the gobies and killifish in his aquarium
could hear his strange songs, witness
his secure knots, along with the cichlids
and the characins, all captive otoliths.
Nessun Dorma, Nessum Dorma, pass
one end around the loop and then back
again underneath and through the stoma.

As a cub scout he learned about rope.
In a dilapidated firehouse, a man in red
taught about rope efficiency and tensile
strength and all the proper strand lengths.
He fell in love with ½ inch Kernmantle.
His new mantra: “The interior kern
is protected by the woven mantle.
Kernmantle.” He repeated this enough
that his father split in a shiny Cadillac
with a full case of imported Babycham,
leaving the mother to wither like a prune
and lose herself in dreams of Roquebrune.

He tried and failed at the CAL FIRE Academy.
This precipitated his killing spree. Well, that
and the documentary on the Aufseherinnen.
The final words of Irma Grese, that Beautiful
Beast of Bergen-Belsen, “life is a pleasure,
pleasures are short.” The few prostitutes
who escaped and survived his strangulations
testified this was the locution he’d sing when
tightening the binding on the timber hitch.

A transcript of his trial, he contested expertise.
“No, no, no, tree surgeons must have shock
value to their rope, not me. I am more like a
window washer, five to one safety standard,
I did not even have to wear a helmet.”

SCALE 8- Schizophrenia

The Presuppositional Apologetic Script
may begin with YES or NO questions.
Is the concept of the God of the Bible an impossibility?
If YES then logical absolutes.
If NO then can the Bible possibly be written by God?
If YES then the Bible is presupposed as revealed knowledge.
If NO then logical absolutes.
Could you be wrong about everything you claim to know?
If YES then you have given up all knowledge.
If NO then what do you know and how do you know?
[Doesn’t matter what you know]
The answer is either by logic or by human senses
or by any other assertion of truth.
If you know things by logic then the question
do you employ your reason to justify your reasoning?
If YES then circular thinking. [They add adjectives]
If NO then the question is begged
are you not using reason to justify this reason?
If you know things by asserting truth then
the question what is your definition of truth?
[Answer does not matter] If by your human senses
then follow up question, would you agree
that people exist whose reason or senses are not valid?
If YES then how do you know you are not
one of those people whose reason or senses are invalid?
If NO then how do you explain schizophrenics
[So RICH coming from this argument]
or does the possibility exist you are a brain in a jar?
If YES then how do you know you are not one of those
people whose brain is not in a jar?
If NO then how do you know that? Ad infinitum.

Any claim of human adherence to knowledge is nullified.
The neutral ground of effective interchange is destroyed.
The color of the pill is now irrelevant. Lets hurl ourselves
down the rabbit hole. Cue Jefferson Starship.
How would you describe logical absolutes?
[Answer doesn’t matter] You could say logical absolutes
are descriptive of how we make sense of our universe
or even make the case that absolutes are discoverable
through the nature of the universe. Logically.
How do you know that? Are you certain of that?
You could ask if God can change his mind.
How do you know that? Are you certain of that?
Is God’s unchanging nature separate from God?
How do you know that? Are you certain of that?
Before the evolution of minds, the universe
was still the universe in the same way and
at the same time. Are you absolutely sure?
Mathematics. Are you certain of that? Self.
Cogito Ergo Sum. How do you know that? Plus
an atheist proved Decartes was begging the question.
Kierkegaard‘s version. Are you certain of that?
How do you know that?
Speed of light.
Are you certain of that?
The universe is constantly changing.
Is that absolutely true?
Change in the universe is constant.
How do you know that?
The concept of zero. Photons.
Are you certain of that?
Schrödinger’s cat.
Is that absolutely true?
Wave-Particle duality.
How do you know that?
This statement is false.
Are you certain of that?
The Higgs boson has been discovered!
Is that absolutely true?
Could I be wrong about being wrong?
How do you know that?
Are you certain of that?
Is that absolutely true?
I am not omniscient.
How do you know that?
I am certain I am not omniscient.
Are you certain of that?

Revealed knowledge from an omniscient being
equals a claim of omniscience.
Presupposionalists claim omniscience
yet not a single one of them can tell me
what I have in my pocket, if anything.

Onus Probandi,
a demonstrable false variable of omniscience
creates a Boolean infinite loop which shuts down
any thinking mind or artificial intelligence.
Attempt no landing here.

SCALE 9- Hypomania

Mr. Richey Edwards, Manic Street Preacher,
contemplates the proximity of the water
from atop the Severn Bridge. From which
side of the bridge, we do not care to know.
We assume he looked down, gauged distance.

Did he consider the children of Kinshasa?
Did he consider the city of Kinshasa?

A habitué of Grub Street,
sensitive as a penile frenulum,
soi-disant minister without portfolio,
tyronic dilettante, barely rising above
Art Brut, his own bellicose autarky
beyond criticism, conducting guerre
de course against all of his detractors.
Each of my escheated screams loved him
before reverting back down my throat.

Appellplatz,
I am he and he is me
and no we are not all in this together.
My selektions this morning are my religion,
my Freudian mother, my cuntish ex-wife,
flatulence, job tyranny, cuckol’d cabrones.
Allow me to claim consanguinity
with the poetry doyens of old,
each one of my lyrics a codicil.
See how furiously I write! Look!
Hear my savage shout most foul
like murder, as if cancrum oris oozes
prima facie. No wonder we only bump
elbows in greeting to minimize contact.
We endure continual life in the hot zone,
O Americano, outra vez!

The manic street preacher either fell or
walked away from our shared dysthymia.
Either way, he removed himself
from the jurisdiction of any court.
May his spiritual peregrinations
take him to Kinshasa or across the river
into Brazzaville and let the children sing.

SCALE 0- Social Introversion

Imagine sleep,
never permitted to speak,
conditioned not to cry,
conditioned with a wooden plank,
confined to an enclosed crib from birth
or bound to a potty seat, untrained.
Imagine dreams
of nothing but what could be seen,
the salmon walls, the stained toilet seat,
the immobile metal screen cover overhead,
a few inches of sky and fleeting birds,
two plastic rain jackets, never used.
The ceiling paint cracked and snowed on her nose
and she could not move her arms to scratch
and she dared not voice a complain.

Genie, you are now our Genie, so get off your back,
emerge like smoke from your bottle if possible,
can you talk? Can you tell your tale of enforced
indignities galore and the why of why you hate dogs?
The how of how you don’t walk but do a bunny hop?
I’d like to tell you, Genie, our innocent feral child,
life can only get better but I don’t want to lie.

Whether a child like this ultimately becomes
easy or hard to love, an incidental survivor from
the forbidden experiment, of nature versus nurture,
exceptional because of language deprivation,
whether the child is self aware of her own despair,
men and women of learning and science will prod
and study and write essays and teach classes and
forge distinguished careers in child development
and linguistics and argue theories and propose
premises such as the critical period hypothesis.
When is the best age to learn to communicate?

And so we learn from these wards of the state.
Genie, we learned of your abnormal sleep spindles,
your eyes could not focus beyond the dimensions
of your original prison. We know your indifference
to extreme temperatures, your routine cold showers,
and your incontinence resists any bathroom manners.
Does anyone write letters to you?
If they do then who reads them to you?
White coats and blue scrubs and surgical gloves
touch you and feed you and smile at you.
They tell reporters and film documentarians
about your happiness and simple lifestyle
and quiet regimen with music and television
and crafts and books and food and magazines.

But, Genie, how do you experience poetry?
Object permanence,
the collection and hoarding of containers
full of milk and water and assorted liquids,
the trance of Bach and Beethoven on the piano,
colorful balloons and bubble machines.
In a landscape of muted minds
a terrible silence reigns supreme
and, Genie, your greatest gift
was entrusting to us your tragedy
without the need to speak.

I’m glad you are content
as we all must learn to be content
in our protracted magic lamps.
And speech is a series of meaningless
shibboleths from the first hello
with rarely anything worthy to say.
And if we are lucky, by providence,
to express goodbye to our loved ones,
then may our collocations not be met
with a smile and a shrug,
the expected hug of life goes on,
tamam shud,
tamam shud.