My moustache has been hacked

I thought I was safe

Protected by my moustache

A pure, rational hair growth with a distaste for authority

My moustache had ethics

It collaborated with my nose and mouth

It flaunted growth cells like an automaton

looking for a lost hypercube of 8 dimensions

Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"

Some said my moustache was cryptic

Hiding the ultimate design of a pattern or tapestry

But I took those comments as random outbursts

Of an order that was seeking a behaviour that wasn't there

Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"

My mom called my moustache a modern mathematical forest

That was running in all directions.

"Shave it or brave it" she said.

I had to brave it knowing that there was no

Imbroglio behind,

The 'stash was pure, without breaks in any sequence

As regular as bowtie pasta that follows the rule of life and

Knows to replicate itself under Rule 90. (Wolfram 2002, pp 269-270 and 667 -701)

Still it got hacked.


Chorus: "How ungracious to be hacked by the sword,
Thy claims are fallaciously audaciously unexplored!"


I don't know if it was the KGB or a group of Spelunkers

(a group exploring unauthorised areas and building)

Or even a third party with no links whatsoever!

I no longer exercise control over it

There is no rationale that I can offer for those of you seeking

Rations, comfort, or just a "decent" dose of RDA of riboflavin and calcium.

A hard hashtag is gonna scrawl*

*This poem is inspired by Bob Dylan's "A hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I've tripped in the swamp over 12 slimy frogs
I've walked and parkoured over 6 torn up newspapers
I've stepped in the middle of 7 Twinkie factories
I've been out in front of a dozen dead hot spot access points
I've been 10,000 terabytes in a memory hole
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I saw a newborn embryo with cells all around it
I saw a Trump highway with nobody on it
I saw Megan Kelly with blood drippin all over
I saw a room full of trans boycotting Corn Flakes
I saw a white ladder covered with Mexicans
I saw 10,000 tweeters whose tweets were all choking
I saw M'15s and suicide jackets worn by young children

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I heard the sound of of kids playing Angry Birds
Heard the roar of Black Friday shoppers that flooded a K-Mart
Heard 100 swipers swiping on Ipads
Heard 10,000 commuters coughing and choking
Heard one cheeky child in a condo for adults and old people smirking
Heard the song of a rapper who dyed his hair blond
Heard the sound an elephant who had no circus

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my sweet Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I met a young refugee near an invisible border
I met a black man who walked a white dog
I met a young woman whose tattoos  was chillin’
I met a young girl who gave me a bodiless piggy bank
I met a frustrated young man with 10,000 girlfriends
I met another man who was hammering hammers

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl 

Oh where have you been my jaded-eyed son?
And where have you been, my sweet Wall Street treasure in a bun?

I’m a-goin’ back out before the tweets start coming
I’ll walk to the depths of the most salacious lies
Where the people and the few have their hands ringing of gold
Where fake news is swimming like salmon up rivers
Where the righteous and mighty dance around prisons
Where the executioners face is all over Instagram
Where hunger is an obese notion, where intestines are exalted
Where black lives matter if the matter has money
And I’ll tell it and speak it and feel it and tweet it
And boast it from my tower so all can reflect it
Then I’ll stand on my skateboa watching the world without moving
And I’ll lipsinc my song before I forget it

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard hashtag that's gonna scrawl 

Alt Right

If you're an alt right cuckservative, cornservador,

Burning up more twitter fans than 

An atom blast in Fukoshima

Then you may be a shadowy dissident

Breaking conservative walls

built or unbuilt upon 

A quagmire of a swamp

A deep echo bounces like a flat rock over the water resounding,

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

Hoping to give society the mediocrity 

That stands of non-conservative

And smells of

Non-aligned

A fingerless keyboard punches:

"Pragmatic neo-liberals

without a care for religion

Or Yiddish bagels..."

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

It is time to promote the edges of the internet

4 Chan 8 Chan

Upstream neo-apologetic 

Accusatory misinformation generation

A media where culture is halting 

Stumbling elephants approving of nationalists

That today are coalescing 

And moving into the public spotlight

Chanting unchecked the Homeland is 

Now a beacon, a fireball an incendiary device

Beckoning broken masses to turn and veer and rattle

Where no snake hath slithered

A bodiless bear servers as my son's piggy bank

Where has the body gone, where are the gold chips?

Why are people boycotting fruitloops?

Kellogs is accused of dividing the country

Muslims and Christians won't eat Corn Flakes

My son walks out of a swamp in the moonlight

The croaking of a bullfrog flushes out the sound of his approaching steps

It is a dream

I wake up wishing

Wishing I knew what to give him for Christmas

Wishing I I knew what to give anyone for Tomorrow.

WE NEED TO BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION

Nasty Women

Yesterday I tied my nasty wife to a chair and left her there.

You may think that cruel but if you listen up, you'll understand.

Bernice and I have been fighting for years. Been trying to get divorced but she won't let me.

(Turns out she has a lot of money that she's been hiding.)

We go to a judge every month. She tries to shoot me down for little things.

I forget to take out the trash, "that's a man's role" she says.

I don't read books to our baby daughter. Well who reads these days?

It's all in the tone. Mean. A nasal rasping voice that will cut through any fog.

A few years ago she disappears for 3 weeks. Blackout from her friends, relatives.

One day I come home I get wacked with the butt of my deer rifle. 

I fall onto the floor, spit out a tooth and say,

"Honey, not in front of Baby Bess!"

She smiles, snickers or skittles and says it the bear trap next time.

Bess is now 7. She's getting nasty too. Rough like her mom.

When she smiles her eyes come together. Like a devil.

She'll throw rocks at me and her friends. She throws food

and she jumps on my stomach for fun. Only she weighs like a 10 year old

and she flattens my intestines like a tape worm.

Bernice is an Instagram addict. I went christmas shopping with her last year.

A guy in the mall falls on top of the escalator and has a cardiac arrest. I got

to help him and she pushes me away. "gotta film this! she barks. 

And so she goes ahead filming and for her defence she wasn't the only one,

a crowd starts filming cause they all want a maximum number of hits on their

Instagram. I finally push her aside to do CPR but it's too late: he's dead.

She does the same thing to our neighbour. The guy takes a shower and you 

can see his butt on the opaque glass. Bernice does her filming then sends it

to his wife with some lewd comment. "See that?" she says to me, beaming,

"that'll teach him!"

To the judge she holds herself nice and upright and says that I can't even shoot

deer with my deer riffle. Says I spend the day basket weaving and she brings

her mother in as a witness to prove that I'm the one who is hiding the money.

"My husband is a filthy rich basket case" she says, her

eyes full of compassion and tearing in front of the judge. 

I look down at my feet, my stomach, full of acid, cramps another notch.

The Hug

There's something in a hug that's my milder than the trail of a slug 
For some it's a ferocious tug For others it's like being rolled up in a rug

But at the recent opening of the African Museum of History and

Culture in Washington DC

Michele Obama hugged former president 

George Bush 

Bush was leaning back with a vulnerable and

Almost child-like expression on his face

Whilst

Michele

From the side and behind 

Wraps her long arms around the president 

Making him slightly teeter

Yet wearing a smile of love

It is a startling image

Charged with humanity and grace

The hands show the tenderness of 

Rembrant's Jewish Bride

Painted 400 years ago

Yet still bearing an afterglow.

Demi-sel 2016

I pulled my caddy out from a Saturday morning shopping spree

Where I shaved off precious minutes by using the 

MFC (or "Most full cart") method

An algorithm developed by MIT scientists that

Proves if you are

Intent on getting on the shortest line then you 

Should:

-go to the left

-avoid male cashiers

-seek the fullest cart
Feeling light-headed.

Compliant, aligned and conformed to this scheme

I should have been seemingly satisfied to pay

To be asked to present my card

So that in a flash I could be on my way

Like a bat out of hell except for my

Eye

That fell

Onto a bar of butter, more rectangular than stick-like

Having been scanned with a single "beep"
(post-beeped, post-scanned)

The letters "demi-sel" proudly printed on its side.

Bien sûr this is all happening in

France

Where demi-sel is salted or lightly salted butter

I confess I have skirted this product for years and years

Friends and family have tried to get me to let go and

Ride this senseless aversion head on

My nephew thought he had it when he showed me how in

Minecraft a character jetsons hundreds of bars of butter into

A swimming pool
Thinking that I would have me

Burning in virtual empathy!

Then my doctor told me about the micro

Flora rich fat soluble properties that 

Peppered with a touch of salt

Can lower your adrenaline spikes while

Supporting thyroid and extracellular fluids.

All this I barred out

Crossed out in my mind like the words in

Jean Michel Basquit's paintings

Words that appear to reappear just because 

They have a line through them.

But the main story here is the salted bar of butter

Not the Zika spraying of Naled in the wee hours of Miami

Not the alarming rise of homicides in Chicago

Not the fact that most para-olympic athletes 

Despise the word "inspiration"

I cried out staring at the butter that I ended up paying for (because

Somebody, unbeknownstly chucked it in my cart)

"Demi-sel!"

Yet with my poor pronunciation the cashier understood

"Deux mille seize" (2016)

And the person behind me understood 

"Deux mille seize"

So from all directions I was looked at with stupefaction and a drop of

Displeasure 
As they thought how this displaced shopper wearing

Shorts and shoes with no socks on a cold, rainy day

Could make a striking statement that the salted

"Demi-sel" butter was 

A cru of deux mille seize.

Why puzzle?

If you were living in the Sumarian city of Uruk

3400 BC

You might have been an artisan or a slave with

The chore to tessellate the floors, the walls, the ceilings

Tiling was what it was all about

-Mosaics were already as popular as trout

Whether it was polygonal semi-iregular

Or just some hyperbolic geometry

It needed to be done.

This act of reproducing patterns came well before

copy and pasting

And whether it was an act of addiction or

A way to find inner peace 

A Spock would say "fascinating" with 

One eyebrow raised.

 A few thousand years later the jigsaw puzzle is invented

A challenging learning device to learn maps, geography and history 

And ever since puzzles have run away!

Today, puzzlephiles abound, spending hours, days on 2, 3 5000 

piece puzzles that need to be assembled, then dissembled.

And if you're a puzzle fiend then

You've got a puzzle language to go:

"I need a top negative green piece with a heavy grain of pasture divided by a horizontal line showing the head of a sheep but only with one eye and a lower positive round but fat round shape."

or,

"this piece that fits into the water around Venice has to have an elongated top with a light green hue with downward jagged movements that are seemingly similar to another 300 pieces that make up the water..."

Fortunately you don't have to be a Galieo, a Marie Curie, a Decartes or a Freud 

To puzzle

And if you dream you are 

Tripping over gondolas, cows or the nose of La Gioconda

Then your life is a wandering puzzle log

Looking to fit from the inside to the outside.

Michalangelo and hangers

If you fold your shirts 

Read no further for these lines are

For those who hang

Like to hang

Or would like to hang more.

Not all hanging is the same: 

We are familiar with the terry cloth towel that hangs from a hook

The hanging when you hang out or  just

Hanging in the air before the B-Ball goes Swish

But for the real hard core hangers we are talking about wire, wood, plastic contraptions that

Hang our clothes, day in, day out

Using imitation, restless and straight shoulders

These hangers hang and have been hanging over centuries

(Copy of petrified hangers found in Lascaux, circa l7,300 BC)

Whether be it the leather loincloth or a frilly blouse 

Every hanger has its purpose and no two are alike.

The light twisted wire

The imposing wood

The puffy soft cloth

And the imposing clamps for pants or skirts

Provide a tolless testament to Time and Service

Yet hangers can be polymorphous:

In the news we heard 

Of a jet crashing into a hangar!

And in Mommie Dearest a hanger is an icon of female abuse and self-abuse

When it comes to hangers there are many stories and mysteries

One of the greatest being Michelangelo's David 

Who was commissioned at the age of 26 to carve out

A monumental block releasing what has become one of the most

Famous sculptures of all time.

Michalangelo originally had hung a pleated toga on his personal marble  hanger 

But the light fabric is told to have excited the model during long poses

Erecting his penis beyond human proportions 

This angered the artist and he decided to wisk it away leaving

David as nude as a baby

A true masterpiece even though some critics may say he is "not well hung."

------- - --------

Soapless Cities

Just when you thought Jane Austin's Marianne Dashwood reflected the ultimate in unrequited love, in Soapless City, by Jamesola Langola, we witness Nigel, an ambitious dry cleaner in the south of London, who has fallen for Mary, a voluptuous marketing assistant at Clive Christian perfumes. With heart-rending tension from the families who oppose each other for political beliefs (Mary is out and Nigel in) this sexually charged novel is peppered by Brexit: with all european trade deals gone bonkers neither Nigel nor Mary (nor any Brit for the record) can wash themselves. Mary qualifies her fiancé as a "stinking mule" but she falls in her own trap because she starts to stink too. Can they both go on stinking and hating each other? Who can save this relationship? Questions and mysteries abound and the ice becomes constantly thinner between the protagonists as time goes on.

Yet somewhere in a dark basement in Sussex a certain Tony, a scientist with a big ambition and even a bigger mouth, is working frantically to produce a new soap. A soap that does all. A soap that washes all. A soap so powerful it calls itself "Powerbull". 

Still, will this soap get on the shelves of the Icelandic frozen food chain before Mary and Nigel separate? And what about the English national football team? What about it?
As Brexit turns London and other metropolises into "Soapless Cities" and tense battling fields, Mary and Nigel's egg-breaking relationship is just a detail like a painting of Bruegel's.




Langola's  writing courses like a river, sometimes black with mud, sludge and stains, sometimes bright with moon bleach. Danger of love is omnipresent, even after combat recedes; nature careless and the lack of soap is monumental. "This is the novel of the century" offering hallucinations caused by privation, be it physical detergent or hunger or erotic yearning of the soul they are unapologetically evoked in this masterpiece. Langola exploits Brexits aftershocks in the sumptuous futuristic dystopian novel that one loves as an allergy loves a sneeze. Not since Tale of Two Cities has literature reached such a level.
A Booker Prize runner up. The Gardian.

"Chewbacca Dad"

The Ironing Party

I want to have an ironing party
All my friends will be invited to
Bring one shirt
No short sleeves

We shall compete in the basement around
My grandmother's ironing board
We shall use cotton and
Steam settings

No starch allowed if
You're under 18
Judges will award points for
Speed, creaselessness and eloquence
Ramming into a button and tearing it off
Is not acceptable but

A rhythmic song, an ode to 
Beautiful, pleated clothes
That complements the rising puffs of steam
May earn you a medal.





Like Magellum, a good ironer requires a brute sensibility to
Navigate over creases that ressemble a cotton moving glacier

One needs to predict how the textile landscape is going to

React

By intuiting how a crease behaves on the flip side of the
Breast pocket and 
Pulling with delicate fingers the fabric till it's taught

At my party 
You can iron if you're left or right handed
You can iron even if you forget those little
Plastic ice cream collar sticks
And you can iron if you have a muddled understanding of how
Heated polymers can allow a fabric
To take on a new shape to the benefit of all.

At my party just knowing the patent number of the
First electric flatiron iron
Made on June 6th, l882
(Patent number 259,054 -the 054 being the same last 3 digits of
My social security number)
May just be distracting trivia

But if you can spew out the settings for
Spandex (135 C)
Wool (l48 C) and
Linnen (230 to 240 C)
Refuse to wear Permanent Press articles then

You are welcome to my party anytime!

Fossilized Fetuccini Alfredus

An unusual discovery has been made due to the receding of the famous Báröarbunga glacier in Iceland

 A plate of fossilised fettucini Alfredo that has been attributed to Vercingetorix, a Gaul who led the battle of Allesia against the Romans and Julius Ceaser in particular

At the edge of a cracked bowl an inscription reads,

"Fettucini Alfredus Petrus" or

"Fettucini Alfredo rocks" in modern lingo.

"This is a stunning finding" remarked Harvey Attenborough, the son of the famous naturalist, "it is as if Achilles said to Hector

'Trojan figs swag' or

Kane telling the Undertaker, 'I like your mossy breath'". More importantly this is an ancient form of a moth-eaten tweet. We know opponents sent short messages to each other but never with this level of irony.

What we are really looking for today is a retorque on the part of Julius Ceaser, something to the effect "I love Gallic blood pudding"" levelled the young Attenborough, wincing ever so slightly.