Departures (A nod of recognition to Ginsberg's "Howl")

I saw the best minds of generations
War time scholars who
Arrested students for a comma or a pronoun.

Intellectual monkeys who
Mocked those who played and
Graffitified Racism under bridges

Yakyaking -almost nasal- in brightly lit
Florescent Institutions
Undressing Shakespeare, Poe and Dante like
Dancers in a strip joint

Estatic no-drama lovers
Stewing in theology
Dreaming of an unknown vegetable

A spy, a tweet, a bloody nose.

I saw a wise fringe heading East and West
Howling like a train
Trapped between
The conscious and the unconscious

A fringe of culture and hair
A rocket smoking
Tears of accomplishment.

Indescribable descriptions

I wish I could describe the lid of my
Broken trashcan that I worked on so hard to
Clean and repair.

I cannot describe my tonsils
Because I always thought they were in the middle
Of my throat and not at the sides.

Now that I had them removed
The white crust reflected in a mirror
Is all that is left to see.

I thought I could describe Justice until
I made a special trip to the supermarket to
Use a $10 coupon only
I forgot to use it.

A group of cheerleaders were preparing for a
Trip to South America with a private sponsor
They approached a propeller plane to take them
to a remote destination. One of the cheerleaders,
Beatrice, threw her baton up for fun but it hit the
spinning propeller and got propelled through the
skull of the cheerleading coach, Bobby.
The cheerleaders looked at the man's indescribable body
and chuckled, adding, "Bobby never knew where to keep his hands
anyhows. He deserved it."

I was so enthusiastic describing the urban renewal in Detroit
That when I read about a writer who couldn't describe it I deemed
That "urban renewal" was not in his vocabulary -or- the unassuming process of a participating
Democracy that stitches warehousing and residential codes to objectifyingly create new borders
Yet at times exclude children, education, public space and even the public, must have gone
Beyond a limited language and Chomskyish conceptual mind set.

Lastly, I am no longer in a, a position whereby I can objectively
Describe my tomatoes or raspberry bushes.
They're so genuinely tomato and
Genuinely raspberry that any approach using
Purpose and Facts
With an irreverent desire to
Speak the Truth will
Leave the listener in a permanent state of
Fear, void of hope and recognition of what a True
Tomato or Raspberry is.

Lazarus' cake

Humbled
Living by my flower
Up before Sunrise
Everyday

My client wanted
Mousse and berries
To Marry his Man
Both named Sam

Over my counter he
Spoke proudly of a chosen Son
A test tube One
Carried in a Chicago mother
And growing as we speak.

All this talk
Stirred my head
The yeast was fermenting
As I counted the layers

I questioned my vision for
How my craft, my pastry, my art
My sumptuously rich
Lazarian 7 layered
Cake

Could be cut in front of witnesses of
An unorthodox wedding

No sugar, no jelly, no honey
Could join these two men

Using my cake, cream and berries as
A catalyst of love.

Showbie detox

It was so easy and friendly to me
Show, Show-bee
I preload my timely notifications
Pinned my voice notes and
Smart document viewer
Texted  my co-teachers for tips and coffee
LOL!
Glanced at the Parent Page to see if their in
The Loop

I could show my quick marking audio exporting
Grades-at-a glance
To Australian and New Guinea schools
Also nourishing on technology

My digital platforms allowed me to
Skip mentoring and better integrate the
Workflow to break the Puzzle

That Puzzle of knowledge that Show
Understanding is garnering curiosity so
My learners are sucking it up
Outside the box

My learners relaxed 'cause
Assignment notifications communicated
Individually and they plugged  in
Spotify -astonishing- music
Reducing  the reusing because of FOMO
(fear of missing out)

These tools nourished me day in day out
I applied applications after applications to make Progress happen
Then, one day, I  Showbied out.

I'm in a detox facility in Arizona
They've tied my fingers together for 6 weeks so I can't text
Not even my parents!
And I'm not allowed to use any Apps -not even in the bathroom.

Today I'm disconnecting to reconnect
And to hell with the smart documents and
Digital platforms and
Education and knowledge.
Tonight I'm going out
4G-less
Putting on platform leather shoes to show
The World who I can be!

Easter sheep on ship

Bah-Boarding.

15 minutes, okay?

Should have known those people better and now they they put sheep on a fishing ship to ship to China. Unbelievable transformation. And the name of the ship is "Miss Sustain-ability".

I know there is no choice: big Sis is going on that ship so I can write this story that all of us can read.

My trembling hand struggles to take notes. I hear the motors of the turbines twirling and as I squint hard to protect my eyes from the early morning light  I hear the sheep letting loose baas that echo through the pipes of what was once a fishing trawler.

Big Sis is on the ramp and I'm writing this now because possibly she's going to part  forever and I don't want to think about it but her fur is splendid and her eyes deep and round and she looks at me one last time and says something but all I can hear is the turbines and I'm tempted to take off my top hat and run to see the Captain, that pig of a Captain overlooking the deck with his flat nose just pretending it's business as usual even though he has gotten sick of fish and now uses his boat to fret sheep across the South China Sea. All the sheep are boarding, 50 in one go; it's frightening. Suddenly I'm distracted by the Chinese satellite that is burning into the atmosphere overhead.

I can hear the Captain laughing; see the spit spraying through his teeth and as his ship pulls out he turns to me and yells, "I will use the burning ambers of the Tiangong-1 
Space Station to roast myself some nice sisterly Easter lamb! Hahahahahaaaa!"

Lithuanian Toll Keepers

Ask any tourist who has travelled to Lithuania and they will confirm the viral fascination for tollbooths. 

Vincas Kurdica who is best known for composing Lithuania's national anthem is also is the first Lithuanian to have set up toll booths in his country. That's why he appears on the 500 Litu banknote and on the verso is inscribed "maut" for toll.

Wheras the Soviets tried to impose their tollbooths after WWII, the Lithuanians stuck to their original design which was taken from the honeycomb of bees or the hive itself. (This stems from their bee culture that dates back to the middle ages and is even embedded in their language.)

Lithuanian toll booth, circa 1960

Toll worker going back to work in a beehive booth.

as opposed to the Russian designs that were more traditional and include coal stoves to keep the toll workers from freezing.

What few people know is that Vincas wrote a song about tollbooths and it goes like this:

When you drive up to my boothz

You will give me a 10 or 20 litu billz

And you should not be scared to give me a 50

Becauz

Liberty is our motherland

On our frozen lips and lanez

You choose to come to my booth or my comradez 

Stalin will not tell you whose booth to drive up to

We are a nation of hope

And we will build our beehive booths like no other nationz

Our pockets will buzz with change at the end of the dayz

And we will hover over the steamy hot soup our mothers' make uzzz.

My tollbooth operator's arm may be trembling

But I am not scared! 

Let the tanks roll into my backyardz

And I will give you your change and smilezzz.

Dicky Dickens Jr's letters

This is my 13,345th letter, mail, tweet, correspondence, whatever you call it. My great-great grandfather wrote over 14,000 and he died at 59. I'm 79 but I got a later start than Charles that's because my parents wouldn't let me have wifi until I was 20 years old.
Today, like most days,  I got 42 tweets, 67 emails, 131 instagram likes, and about 400 snapchat shares. I gave up on  facebook some years ago because of ads I kept receiving.
Last week some of my fans came down hard on me after learning that in 1996 I slammed JK Rowling when she sent me a sample of her Harry Potter manuscript. At the time I wrote:

The Pierre Hotel, New York, 1996

Dear JK Rowling,

"Do you think it should be deemed suitable that I should pass my eyes, rolls them over such demonically ludicrous characters and then use my name in order to gain favour in an illustrated house of publishing? True, I might do so if your story built something more than a slurry cauldron  of infertile magic posed on feeble foundations that couldn't set tension in the eyes of a scared cat. Your hapless, timid Harry Potter weakling character, transformed into a powerhouse hero only shows you have no inkling of an idea what the magnanimous responsibility true authorship entails.
Go wash some more dishes and think of another career.

So why do you think I didn't stroke her ego? Years later, Rowling's father was an engineer who went bust and when his burger van business failed he needed help. Do you think his daughter helped him? No. But I knew that even before she got famous. Just another unthankful daughter, that's who she is.

So I said I gotta write my 13,000 whatever letter. Whom to? Yes. My wife Martha,
even though I'll see her a few hours from now.

Grand Hotel Dieu de Lyon, Sunday March 18

Dear Martha,

I know you say that I seldom speak of myself, share my thoughts and the inner monkey in me. Prey tell I bid you my apologies but the truth is I am inhabited by my characters to such an Everestian degree that they feel more real than my family. You also consider me a liar but what liar would come out in public? Remember when President Bush bestowed me the medal of Freedom back in 2002? He whispered in my ear, "Dicky, who is your true inspiration?" and I quickly replied, "Collodi, the creator of Pinocchio." At that Bush smiled and placed his finger on my nose and then on his nose all the while people looked on somewhat perplexed and the cameras flashed in rapid fire and you were there.
I lie not when I say that I don't think I really should speak more about our 5 children, all of them, nevertheless are gamers and have only the slightest regard for their parents. My thoughts race past these misplaced conceptions and most certainly we should have stopped at 3.
Know that my love for you is truer that the cold that penetrated soviet prisoners in the Gulag.
Yours,

Feeling a little bit guilty I decided to write one more letter, and why not, I had 20 minutes before making my next speech before a French literary society on how most of my characters are vegan and would not even eat croissants. I slid my chair closer to the desk that overlooked the famous fontaine Bartholdi, known for the Statue of Liberty.

Grand Hotel Dieu de Lyon, Sunday March 18

Dear Dora Annie Dee and Sidney Jr.,

I usually don't write a letter addressing the two of my children but the situation seems exceptional.

Your Mummy tells me Sidney Jr. is doing a continuum Airdop on Dora Annie Dee's Airpad and in retaliation Dora Annie Dee is nixing the Mesh network of Sidney Jr's audio relay play. Now that the Bannon revolution has passed I should remind you unless a cessation of hostilities is in sight I shall send you, like your great-great Grandfather's father did, to work on the Wall. (Charles was sent to a shoe polishing factory to pay for his father's debt.) Either that or to Siberia to work in a Hacking Think tank. Have it your way. For starters, I think I'll reconfigure the Zigbee and have your toast burnt every morning.

Your loving father,