Fear, Loathing & Trembling in America: Election 2020
Beginning on Friday, October 30th until the afternoon of November 4th, 2020, I will be reporting on the US Presidential, California State and San Diego local elections from inside a Super Poll Station at the Luther Banks School in Logan, San Diego.
Working this year as a paid bilingual Poll Station Technical Inspector, I will be assisting voters operate electronic devices, checking registration rolls, managing lines and helping get out the vote.
12 hour days so I will be reporting on each day here as to what I’ve observed from the inside looking out.
See you here on Friday!
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San Diego Beats Poets
San Diego poets are wet gutter snipers
Taking pot shots at frivolous affluence and misspent eternities
From the street corners and back alleys of our prematurely grey dementias.
San Diego poets cast lines like fishing reels
Screaming curses at angels in heels while
Humming blues tunes to the damned, under our breaths.
San Diego poets spit surreal spiels into ribbons of unfurling images
That rain down like bright pathetic confetti
Against a blank horizon of an empty human empathy.
San Diego poets slide their wild, horse hair bows
Across taut, tied strings that sing
Above a psychedelic landscape of the gradually worsening human condition
You and me are not blind instruments of self-immolation.
We do not have to sit at the center of the fire to make it our home.
We can play our songs on sad air violins
And dance in the rain to drown our sorrows in the sea of greater uncertainty.
San Diego poets press our runny noses against
The pained windows of badly lit coffeeshops and crafty bookstores,
Hosting poetry readings for the over groomed;
Those educated only in the blind arrogance of their own judgements.
San Diego poets litter the streets with our menial typewriters
Preaching doomsday fire sales to tourists and
Liberation to those still hounded by carnivorous ambitions
In the current climate of fear that tries to pass itself off as survival.
San Diego poets never have enough money to buy you a drink
But will spare you a cig-regret –
–if you’re willing to spare the change you need you to make
–to make your tomorrow just a little bit better.
San Diego poets are all clowns, fools and charlatans
Keeping ourselves amused on the ragged streets of cold hangover dawnings
Whilst skipping around and dancing through the circus of mediocrity that pervades us.
San Diego poets migrate like flocks of hummingbirds
Seeking warmer climes and heartfelt compassions.
Blurring our wings the whole distance in getting there.
© Igor Goldkind, January 2020
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Nobody Talks to Me Anymore
Today was every other day.
My boss says,
“Hey, Joe, where you going with that staple gun in your hand?”
I draw a blank on my face and turn to face his.
“You don’t really know, do you, Joe?
You don’t know where you’re going.
You don’t really know who you are.
You don’t know much of anything anymore,
Do you now, Joe?”
Then he laughs at me
In front of everybody
He laughs and points at
What everybody but me can see.
And everybody laughs and they laugh and they laugh
But nobody talks to me anymore.
My boss don’t talk to me anymore.
My neighbors don’t talk to me anymore.
My doctor don’t talk to me anymore.
My mother don’t talk to me anymore.
My father don’t talk to me because
He’s long since gone
Flown far away from the words to this song.
I call my girlfriend up on the telephone
She says, “Joe, I’m not your girlfriend anymore”
And hangs up the phone.
Nobody talks to me anymore.
I call my doctor on the telephone
He says, “hello, is there anybody there”?
I say, “it’s me, Joe, doctor help me, nobody talks to me anymore!”
My doctor coughs and hangs up the phone.
Nobody talks to me anymore.
I call on my priest in the church down the road
I say “Hello, Father? my Father, is that really you?”
“Please tell me, dear Father, what should I do?”
My priest says “Joe, God don’t love you anymore”
And throws me out through God’s front door.
Even God don’t talk to me anymore.
So, I go down to a bar to have a little swim.
There’s a bar stool there where the X-mas tree should have been.
The bartender looks at me,
But he doesn’t say a word.
I hold up two fingers and point at the sky
So he pours me a double, ten-year-old rye.
Which I toss down and motion for another
While calling him “my brother”.
The bartender stares at my face.
As silent as the stones in his wall.
Nobody talks to me anymore.
On the street, the headlights blind my blinking eyes.
Strangers push past me, some I know, most I despise.
A cop car pulls up and flashes his bright light on me
The cop points his flashlight in my eyes so that I can’t see.
There’s nothing he or I need to say.
He won’t arrest me.
It just ain’t worth his time to talk to me anymore.
A ghost walks up and stares into my face.
He doesn’t say a word; just hangs there in space
Instead, he spins ribbons of colored lights
Inside my head.
There’s no knowing with ghosts no more
The dead don’t even talk to me anymore, either!
Suddenly I see an explosion of lights
There are trumpets and harps and angels in sight
A liquor store, a neon vision of light
Promises me spirits of salvation and delight
If I just step inside….
While next door, a gun store slowly cracks open its door . . .
I am my father and my mother’s son and
I’ve never before bought me a gun.
But nobody, nobody talks to me anymore.
©Igor Goldkind 2018
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Why Thomas Paine Would Shoot Donald Trump if He Were Alive Today
Yes, indeed that’s a provocative title; but this ain’t click-bait my friends. This is the real deal. If Thomas Paine were alive today, he’d be in the nation’s capital with a pistol waiting for the selected president. Of course, he’d be waiting a long time considering as far as he knew, the capital of these United States was in Philadelphia. I have a vision of old globalist Thomas standing outside Ben Franklin’s door, knocking as hard as he could, shouting
“Benjamin! Benjamin! Come out, our nation’s in trouble and its much worse than the British. Forget the kite!’’. Kind of like the scene in Street Car Named Desire where Marlon Brando is standing outside Stella’s window in the pouring rain in his soaked white T-Shirt.
Marlon Brando would have made a good Thomas Paine in the film, the graphic novel and the computer game but this doesn’t answer the question embedded in the title of this diatribe. Why would Thomas Paine if he were alive today, track down Donald Trump and put a bullet in the back of his head? In principle this would require Donald to be on his knees, facing away from Thomas with his tiny hands wrapped around the back of his head. I suppose you, dear reader, are ‘en-titled’ to an answer as the to why and the wherefore; but stay with me as we savour the moment. The ultimate retribution of history: to be shot in the back of a head by one of the Founders of this revolutionary nation, ironically with a pistol no less. One that Thomas didn’t have to register or submit to a background check to acquire from the antique pistols and muskets booth at the gun show a couple blocks away.
So before Thomas pulls the trigger and the tiny lead ball propels from the pistol’s mouth through his dense skull and lodges somewhere in the soft tissue that Donald referred to at his “brain”, let’s pause and assess the situation. Let’s skip over the time travel details as to how Thomas Paine got from the late 18th century to the early 21st. We’ll leave it to the graphic novel to explain that bit; him jumping a little over two centuries in time. Although we really don’t have to figure out anything at all. Thomas Paine’s words, his ideas and his rebel spirit not only jumped but survived intact more than 2 centuries and the soul of our national sovereignty. So if Thomas Paine were brought back from the dead by some mysterious force, it could only be due to his words, his ideas, the nation he fought for being under threatened.
And that, my reader, is precisely the point being made by my title and the words you are reading now. Today, not 2 decades into the 21st century, the essential values that built this nation, this American experiment by a motley crew of post-enlightenment landowners, orators, tradesmen and inventors is at risk of being destroyed. Not by Trump himself, you realise. But by Us, by We the People in our impotent complacency to stop him.
We are not revolutionaries, we are the revolution Thomas and his friends dreamt up, drew the blueprints for, and built on the hot blood that soaked the green countryside of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Carolina who’s names are only possible because of the stubborn bravery of these idealists, these socialists, these men of vision that had the hubris to build a nation founded not by the right of kings or church or even the wealthy, but by the enlightenment values of Liberty, Justice and Freedom.
These values, of course, aren’t just American, although they are the foundation stones of our democracy. Thomas Paine author of Common Sense, The Age of Reason and the Rights of Man who’s title alone reveal the nature of his philosophy: to build a nation on Reason, not religious superstition. It’s not that Thomas Paine didn’t believe in the Divine, he just believed in Reason more:
“It is by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything.”
Later, a member of the French Senate, he would lend his hand to writing the Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, along with Thomas Jefferson. Rousseau’s Rights of Man became the basis of the UN Human Rights Charter as well as the EU Human Rights initiative. So next time you hear some jackass complaining about Liberals going on and on about Human Rights you might want to mention that they’re disrespecting the Founding Fathers, two of whom (Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine) contributed to the declaration.
In fact, Universal Human Rights is the soul not only of our Constitution but the Declaration of Independence, the UN Charter and the adopted law of all members of the European Union. Human Rights is the one thing that Donald Trump can’t abide because he has dedicated his life to the accruement of power, power for its own sake. Trump really isn’t that bothered by actual money in spite of his public persona. What he is dedicated to is what money buys: people, power and governance; and this is exactly where we have gone astray from the origins of our nation. We have handed our own governance over to banks, corporate interests and the uber-affluent who can afford to buy a Congressman or a President.
Mueller’s investigation will very shortly reveal the origins of the money that bought Trump his presidency. We know already that the NRA contributed 30 million dollars early in his campaign. Do you remember that lie about how Trump said he was incorruptible because he could afford to fund his own campaign? I know, I know, it’s hard to remember all the lies Trump has spouted.
Do you know why the Truth is better than a lie?
Why? Because it’s easier to remember.
But going back to the pistol Thomas Paine is holding against Donald Trump’s head; no, I didn’t forget my premise. Imagine it with me. There’s Thomas Paine, his hand steadily holding the cocked pistol, fully powdered and loaded with a small lead ball. Tiny, but big enough to leave a good sized hole at such close range. And there’s Donald Trump on his knees, shaking. He’s already wet the pants of his the suit he’s wearing. He tries very hard to hold back his urgent need to defecate and fails.
Now Donald Trump is soiled. Soiled himself the same faeces he’s been feeding to the American voters for years. Soiled by his indifference, his empathy deficit, his reckless, unfeeling impulses, his sociopathic disconnect from the human race. Remember, Donald, to say ‘I hear you’. It fools them every time and leaves plenty of time for self-gratification at the expense of others. Trump is soiled by his own inhumanity, his unbridled carnal greed to accumulate, wealth, power, women. He assaults women not because he can get it up anymore but because they have power which he needs to dominate.
Look at his wife. I haven’t seen such a blank dead look of a hostage to circumstance since Patty Hearst. It was the money that bought her and (like some particularly gruesome episode of Back Mirror), she got exactly what she paid for, with her integrity her and self-respect. Imagine the morning she awoke to the dawning denouement. Sure she could leave any time, with her child. But where would she go? What would she do? In the afterlife of existence everyone writes a book and sells it. When things go badly; when the world seems to be against me; when I lose; I always remind myself – it could always get worse and at least I don’t have to fuck Donald Trump.
The thought makes me feel better but my heart tears up when I think of her suffering. It is the suffering of the affluent. The ones who have accommodated everything they were told they needed to be happy. Everything they worked hard to acquire in lieu of happiness only to find that very object eluding them. That’s the horror of the denouement, you reach the summit of your life’s ambition and now the only thing left to do is jump off. Because Happiness is not an object or an objective. It flits effortlessly in and out of our lives like a butterfly, briefly lingering on a flower and moving on. Ever try to chase a butterfly? Exactly.
Back to Donald Trump having shit and pissed himself while one of the Fathers of our country held a pistol to his head. Perhaps at this point Donald would beg for his life.Like the scene in Miller’s Crossing. “Please, Thomas, Please. Look in your heart, look in your heart. You don’t want to do this. You’re not that kind of man. Look in your heart, for godssake !”.
God is a natural place to go to. After all, the divisions we are now facing in our country are by no means recent. They’ve been brewing for decades. The divisions are not entirely geographic although the 3 states that assured Donald of his electoral victory does have a concentration of post-calvinist evangelicals. No are they solely cultural; after all, Donald Trump is the epitome of the urban gangster. A smooth talking, wheeling dealing property developer soaking in the comfort of Manhattan luxury. He should be anathema to his base of supporters. But he’s not, instead he speaks their language; the language of PT Barnum and Charlie Chan both as fake as a wooden nickel but master showmen to a ’T’ (Only white actors played Charlie Chan which ironically was invented by Earl Derr Biggers as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu).
And Trump talks about God. He doesn’t so much talk about his beliefs (if he has any), but about the threat that nonbelievers and other religions pose for Christian Evangelists, particularly targeting Islam. Trump runs his own Circus of Fear and the punters are more than happy to pay to be scared or at least have their irrational fears affirmed. Donald Trump should be played by the late Robert Mitchum (if he were still alive. Hey, we brought Thomas Paine from 2 centuries ago; a zombie Robert Mitchum should not pose too many difficulties). To be exact, Robert Mitchum in his role as the greed-laden preacher in the class American Gothic The Night of the Hunter in which he plays a psychopathic man of the cloth bent on money and murder (in that order). He pursues two children who hold the secret to a hidden fortune down a river in the south, riding a donkey and singing hymns. A fake, a demon, a creature of merciless malice.
So is Thomas going to shoot Trump in the head for using religion to accumulate power? Of course not. Thomas was a believer but not in God, in Reason. “It is by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything.” The reason Thomas Paine is holding a cocked pistol against the back of Donald Trump’s head is not God; Trump hasn’t blasphemed against Faith; he’s blasphemed against Reason. Trump has spent his entire career disseminating the appearance of things, not the truth. Truth is the enemy of Donald Trump, because in Truth, he is an insignificant man in the scheme of things just as we are all beholden to the significance we manufacture and some of us have made peace with that. Donald Trump has not. Like a Hungry Ghost Donald is compelled by desire, call it lust, a lust for significance. This is why he builds towers, not to house offices or hotel rooms, but to prop up as high as he can his name: Trump.
At the start of this year, we had a crisis
in authority due to the steady lies being pumped from the Whitehouse by Tump. The first rule of autocracy is to shake people’s belief in authority so that they only can believe in you. Donald Trump is attempting to destroy the pillars of the 4th estate. Now we’ve entered a period of crisis in competence. When the very ability to address real-world problems by Trump and his stooges is dubious at best.
Remember that the balance of powers in the Constitution is all beholden to having a Free Press in which people can report the truth and express their opinions of their government. That’s what Thomas Paine counted on in drafting our rights. Each right has a corresponding duty. Paine said our first duty is to be kind to others. Paine also said that a person’s corresponding duty is to allow the same rights to others as we allow ourselves. From this basis we can use our abilities to promote mutual understanding. These expanding circles of reciprocal duties and rights weave a tapestry, built on democratic norms, of liberty in the context of societal interdependence. It’s called a society based on equality.
Did you know that Thomas Paine was the very first American abolitionist? In 1775 he wrote “To Americans: That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of justice and humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.”
“Our traders in MEN (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that SLAVE-TRADE, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stifle all these willfully sacrifice conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden idol.”
Thomas Paine was the first white citizen Member of Black Lives Matter. He and his pal Thomas Jefferson originally included an amendment to the Constitution ending slavery. They wanted to create a revolutionary society in which ALL men are created equal. As usual, women would have to wait. Ofcourse this amendment was vetoed by the southern slave owning states. The same states suspiciously from which Trump derives the concentration of his base support.
But the point being that the Founding Fathers, if not all, enough wanted to establish an egalitarian society in all respects. Paine referred to this, as did the other Framers as ‘the common good’ something the alt-right abhors the notion of as they translate it into control by some body that isn’t them. Nonetheless, contrary to Constitution literalists the “common good” involves a mental posture taken by citizens in their deliberations where they account for, yet transcend partial interests to look at the good for each and all in their decisions.
Even in business, Trump’s claimed turf, the right of commerce was seen as transforming the mind-set of feudal, dependent relations between men and their government. It helped transform subjects into confident citizens. Trade was viewed not as laissez-faire, but in a web of social interdependence. It was seen as a major modality for individuals to use their Reason (not Faith), to develop better mutual understanding of others interests in society. While aware that too much indulgence in commerce could lead to the decline of spirit and patriotism, making reason subservient to commercial interests, Paine felt that man would use his religion of reason to place commerce within a broader quest for lifelong education in the arts, sciences, engineering, and philosophy in order to progress to a universal society and universal happiness.
Paine believed that man’s highest spirit of reason in its motives and applications such that it does not have to be concentrated solely in pursuit of commercial interests. Art, science, and commercial enterprise can be placed in service to humanity and universal happiness. Moreover, each individual deserves minimal dignity and a minimal economic base to pursue their natural rights. Like Paine and Edward Bellamy advocated two hundred years ago, some form of guaranteed minimal annual income ought to be adopted for each citizen, regardless of wealth or other distinctions. Imagine what Thomas Paine would make of the modern day commercialized medical establishment!
Sounds like a socialist that Thomas Paine, don’t he? Not at all really, just your average post-Enlightenment philosopher and thinker. Or only as far as Socialism is dedicated to the fairer distribution of resources so that everyone might enjoy Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness more equally. “Some men and women, through greed or disproportionate natural or social advantages, will contribute to others being systematically impoverished in the imperfections of manmade civilization”
”The earth is the common property of the human race”; thus each human being is equally entitled to have dignity and minimal share of the earth’s bounty, including clean water, air, and access or rents from land Thus, men and women must discover those laws operating in society which will create a greater harmony of overall interests. Democratic communities will have to choose to redistribute some minimal baseline of societal resources to those at least most vulnerable not as charity, but as a right in the name of social harmony.”
Paine conceived of autonomous democratic nation-states forming alliances of mutual aid. Mikhail Gorbachev has said that we ought to have a balancing of interests, not a balancing of power on the global stage internationalization, with the primacy of nation-state alliances, is a major alternative to the trends of corporate economic globalization. In the myth of a “flat” world of economic globalization, where the world is made safe and frictionless for capital expansion,
Citizens and nations do not vote for corporate influenced governmental-military-industrial-media alliances and trade agreements which establish “the rules of the game” subtly conditioning the thinking of the masses.
These are not ancient words. These are the principles America was founded on and without which we would have early on taken the road to the same form of despotism and autocracy that Donald Trump is trying to lead us into. Trump only wants power. Power to control what is true and what is not. Power to determine the fates and existence of as many people as he can. This is why he loves the idea of a wall, the decoration of undocumented long term residents and the border checks at airports that targets people of the Muslim faith, as well as people that white people think look like Muslims!
In his own way, from his visionary perspective, Thomas Paine was what the right wing calls a Globalist or even more bizarrely a statist. Of course the founding father were statists, they constructed the blueprint for the United STATES.
Bernie Sanders was right. Trump isn’t Conservative or moderate, much less liberal; he’s an autocrat who has no respect for the Constitution and has failed as commander and chief to protect this country from a foreign antagonist.
Back to the curb where Paine is holding Trump hostage to the imperatives of history and the gentle squeezing of Thomas’s trigger finger. Because Donald Trump is a traitor to his state. He has been under the influence of a foreign antagonist Vladimir Putin since at least 2014, shortly after he first announced his attempts at the Presidency. He needed money to run a campaign for President and he didn’t have any. No bank would loan him money because Trump always welched on his debts. So he had to turn to Deutsche Bank, the same bank that Putin and his oligarchy use to make money disappear and reappear wherever is most expedient. In this case it was the Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.
This will all become very shortly apparent as soon as the next wave of indictments are issued by the DOJ. Trump is in a jam that he can’t get out of. Mueller’s investigation on behalf of the federal department of justice is very far from being a witch hunt. Read the indictments, all the evidence is published there, enough to hold up in federal court. Mueller, if you recall, is a conservative Republican of impeccable integrity.
BTW, I don’t detest Conservatives; some of my best friends…etc. But Trump isn’t really a conservative, he’s a con man playing the GOP for whatever he can get away with. I don’t hate conservatives, I hate liars who shamelessly lie every day they open their mouths. I hate incompetents who can’t even keep one national security advisor on board during his first year and whose family and campaign advisors were meeting with Russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign.
At this point in the event, Donald Trump moves his head slightly. Thomas steadies his hand. Testing Thomas, Trump slowly turns his head enough to glimpse Thomas’s steely stare. As unflinching as Mueller’s investigation. Once again Trump pleads, begs for his life. “What do you want Mr. Paine? I’ve got money tons of money. What about women? I can get you the most beautiful models in the world. What about an audience with the Queen of England, she’s easy.” Thomas pauses and for the first time speaks to Donald J. Trump:
“I want my country back. I want the nation myself and my brothers built out of Reason, Compassion and Equality back. I want what this nation is meant to be, not what you have defiled it as.”
Trump knows his goose is cooked. He can’t repair the damage he’s caused. It will take others, long after he’s gone to rebuild our country. Others who are younger than a 70-year-old patriarch. Others who have grown accustomed to being one nation in a physically interconnected world. Others who aspire to rise above the fumes of spiritual superstition to the level of what Paine himself called “our living awareness of the Infinite Presence.” by means of Reason. Science, the Arts, the cooperative nature of our fellow hairless apes. The high school students who have stood up and proclaimed “enough is enough” The women who no longer cover their mouths and stifle their words when being subject to interpersonal tyranny. These are the children of Thomas Paine. These are the people he fought for and wrote for.
As a species we survived and dominated this planet by virtue of our complex means of cooperation, not competition. That complex is what we refer to as a Society and those who reject the notion are, well just anti-Social.
Donald Trump speaks to Thomas Paine one last time.
“Please Thomas, I promise to be better, I promise to live up to your virtues, I swear I’m a changed man. Look in your heart Thomas, look in your heart, Please!….”
He speaks his last four words to the man on his knees in front of him:
“I have, you traitor.”
Thomas pulls the trigger.
©Igor Goldkind 2018
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Nobody Talks to Me Anymore
Has been entered int the Realistic Poetry Contest and thus is no longer available on my blog as it is defined as non-exclusive or previous publication by the contest rules.
Who knows, I may even win.
Either way, it returns once the contest is over in February
Tune In.
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Speculative Realism: What It Means, What It Is and Why You Need to Know About It
Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is really the best TV on your screen. It quite literally holds up a black mirror not just onto our society but to each one of us as components, now data-cogs, of the society we can no longer see anymore without the aid of mirrors. We are like goldfish in a goldfish bowl kept rotating by the shortness of our attention spans and never even realising the wetness of our environments.
Charlie Brooker, his cast, co-writers and the producers at Netflix are doing us the moral service of reminding us of the remnants of own moral outrage and how our own ethical boundaries have long since been trespassed by the dark consequences of convenience and more efficient processing.
The machines never took over, we just surrendered.
We are like commuters stuck in traffic complaining about the traffic that we are actually both part of and complicit in. Even though from our subjective vehicles, we cannot see it. Traffic controllers retain the power however it is a remote distributed, bureaucratic, systemised power that is no longer subject to one human’s judgement. Who do you alert when the traffic lights stop working? You don’t have to, they already know.
I have as of late, paraded the term Speculative Realism, borrowed from the French post-idealists. Who understand that the only way to view ourselves clearly is no longer as mere individuals but as components of a larger neuro-ecology that contains, constraints and ultimately defines us. We are the furniture that a system beyond our own subjectivity keeps rearranging “on our behalf”, “for our own safety”. “for your security”.
I have only slightly re-engineered the term in the context of a literary genre, of storytelling, perhaps the sole remaining respite of human freedom. A story is a purely human phenomenon untainted by machine efficiency as machines don’t need to tell each other stories. But we do, and in doing so we may be flexing the last quiescent muscle of our humanity. A story is comprised up 3 interlocked elements: The storyteller, the story and the audience (or to whom the story is told). At least two of these components are human, subject and object; the rest is merely synaptic grammar. 
When a story is told and heard, a condensed complex of information, human knowledge and near spiritual wisdom is transmitted in a compact instant well beyond the speed or circuitry of a microchip. Remember, we are the minds that created and defined data. It is that creative mind that is both alert and receptive to the information that is vital to our survival, as a species and as sane human beings. Storytelling is our salvation and Poetry is better than prayer because you don’t have to pretend that someone is listening.
Speculative Realism is just my tag for vital, survival information being conveyed by storytellers. As essential as where the next herd of buffalo might be. Speculative Fiction has here to provide the luxurious canvas for our imaginations to ponder possibilities. But Speculative Realism is not what you might do ‘if…’ but what you will have to do ‘when…’ To survive, to retain your own identity and perhaps even your sanity. Speculative Realism is imperative, it carries the mental equipment we need to survive.
Black Mirror is a series of short cameos of Speculative Realism. The term is beginning to gain traction since I first observed the emergence of this genre in film, fiction and screen entertainment. I have since read a reference to Neil Gaiman‘s work described as Speculative Realist in his use of double vision, (the seeing of two apparent contractions as one), in his characterisations. I don’t know if he thinks that, you’d have to ask him.
Cyberpunk auteur Bruce Sterling, in Wired, refers to Speculative Realism as Philosophy Fiction, which is as good a handle as any because Speculative Realism defends the autonomy of the world from human access in a spirit of imaginative audacity.
In his recent Edinburgh University Press publication Speculative Realism and Science Fiction, Brian Willemsuses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism to develop the Speculative Realist position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in identity formation and the differences between metamorphosis and modulation.
These are useful critical and academic insights. But the real meat is in the eating and Black Mirror takes you to the centre of the Speculative Realist banquet, piling your plate high with outrage, moral panic and cautionary tales of horror. I suggest tasting a sample as we’re all going to be eating from this same table for the very foreseeable future,
the future that has already arrived.
© Igor Goldkind 2016
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IS SHE AVAILABLE? Get My Book and FIND OUT.
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This is a web-nurtured collaboration with 27 artists, sculptors and musicians from the world of Comics, Fantasy, Fine Art and Jazz, including Bill Sienkiewicz, David Lloyd, Liam Sharp, Glenn Fabry, Shaky Kane, Lars Henkel and the cutting edge sculptural typography of the highly acclaimed book designer Rian Hughes.
by Bill Sienkiewicz and Rian Hughes ©2014
This illuminated book is a contemporary Dante’s Divine Comedy; a journey through the confessional landscape of a masculine identity. It uses poetry to construct a narrative that explores themes of death and loss, sex and love, and the modern American and Jewish identity design: by the UK’s eminent graphic designer, typographer, illustrator Rian Hughes.
The music is composed and produced by iconoclast, ex-Israeli, Middle-Eastern jazz virtuoso Gilad Atzmon, along with five other jazz artists.
Written by San Diego native Igor Goldkind, this illuminated book will revolutionize the way you view poetry by meshing comics, art, music and animation in a truly unique way. It uses poetry to construct a narrative that explores themes of death and loss, sex and love, and the modern American and Jewish identity. The book is available for download on the iTunes Store and Google Play, as well as in a 166 page, fully illustrated in colour hardbound edition available ORDER HERE.
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If you are in Britain and/or Europe, please contact my European wholesaler Fanfare Productions who will take your order and dispatch to your address the same day: stephen@fanfareuk.demon.co.uk
Reviews ? Sure We Got Reviews. Why You Wanna See Them? Be my guest.
“Igor’s “Illuminated Book” is like a new genre. It is a wonderful ekphrastic expression; a fusion of the arts.” — Poet Mel Takahara
“His collection Is She Available? has the feel of an artefact from the near future – a seminal work of a new genre-fusing poetry, graphic art, music, and animation.” —(San Diego’s) City Beat
“Is SHE Available?” is an experiment, and reading it feels more like an act of discovery… nonetheless there’s a thrill to scrolling through its pages. It’s an ambitious step toward what digital media can (and will) be.”—The Chicago Tribune
You Tube samples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRnmT_aE0acoowdNBvFtK_VW2OkNN2wWp
SoundCloud samples : https://soundcloud.com/igor-goldkind/sets/is-she-available-spoken-word
The 166 full colour, fully illustrated hard cover deluxe edition is available in discerning and eclectic independent bookstores everywhere. Including Fahrenheit 451 in Carlsbad, Soulscape Bookstore in Encinitas, the Upstart Crow in San Diego, Verbatim Books and Mysterious Galaxy also in San Diego, City Lights and the Cooperfields chain in Marin County and Sonoma County, amongst a growing number of independent book stores.
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The Third Act of Creation
The Third Act of Creation
When I sit at my desk in the barely blinking dawn,
I sit at the helm of a Starship.
Each dimension of time or space is available to me
To go anywhere I want to.
With the flick of a switch and a weird background sound
The course can be faithfully plotted,
At just the right warp speed to be there, be heroic and be back before dinner.
As safe as the hum of my engines.
When I sit at my desk in the mid-morning blue light that pierces
My east facing windows.
I pray that I can write something today,
I pray that I still have something to say.
My eyes are drawn to the street just beneath me,
That winds around the standing tree,
Just outside my window.
There is a spoonful of sunshine in my coffee.
When I sit at my desk in the midday sun
At the zenith of all of Creation,
I know that the bright light that now floods my room,
Will wash the shadows of doubt from these walls.
I still hear that first sound,
The Bang! that expands the spaces around.
I can feel how the act of creation was never just one moment long gone ago.
But a circus of new sensations, an ongoing show. 
Will too soon leave us behind sleeping eternity away.
When I sit at my desk in the mid-afternoon sun
And the light of creation slowly dwindles,
I can reflect on all the things that I’ve done
While counting the tasks that remain to lie in the sun.
When I sit at my desk at dusk’s twilight time
When light and darkness are twined,
Each wrestles the other to the ground.
I know that darkness will eventually swallow,
The fading strength of the light.
The time for my bed is just insight
And the twin brothers have given up their fight.
When I sit at my desk in the heart of the darkness 
I know that death is hiding in my closet.
I know that the covers I wrap so tightly around me
Offer no protection from what time has brought (me):
The drowning of the light by the darkness.
I bury my head in the night and dream of the return of tomorrow.
© Igor Goldkind, September 25th, 2017
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PLATO’S RETREAT by Igor Goldkind; Illustration by Rian Hughes
Plato’s Retreat
I want to be just like Socrates,
Grow a long beard and
Do what I please.
And be asking you allot of questions….
For a living.
I want to be just like Socrates
And not know for sure If I’m really real
or merely an altar In Plato’s temple.
I want to be just like Socrates,
And stand in the forum all day.
In the blazing sun that surrounds us,
Under the azure Athenian skies.
And philosophize,
To anyone who bothers to listen….
For a living.
I want to be just like Socrates
Corrupting my own youth in a hemlock cocktail
Every Friday night, 2, 4 1 before 7 ….
For a living.
I want to be just like Socrates,
On a Saturday night …
Asking, “hey you, at the bar”:
What is justice?
And where can I score some tonight?
After hours ..
Long after the widening sliver
Of your mind’s eternal dawn.
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THE WHEELS OF HATE by I. Goldkind (illustration by Mario Torero, muralist, teacher, poet)
- The Wheels of Hate
- The Wheels of the Bus go round and round, round and round, round and round
- The Wheels of the Bus go round and round, all day long.
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round, round and round, round and round
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round all day long.
- The Wheels of Hate put niggers in the back of the bus, niggers in back of the bus,
- Niggers in back of the bus!
- The Wheels of Hate put the niggers in the back of the bus
- Until we said: No Fucking More!
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round, round and round, round and round
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round all fucking day.
- The wheels of the hate touched up the woman, touched up your woman, touched up our women
- The Wheels of Hate touched up all women until they said: NO MORE, YOU DICKS!
- The Wheels of Hate exploited the Latino, exploited the Latino, exploited the Latino
- The Wheels of Hate exploited the Latino until we made the union strong.
- The Wheels of Hate burnt all the Jews, burnt all the Jews, burnt all the Jews
- The Wheels of Hate burnt all the Jews and now burn the skins of the schoolchildren of Gaza.
- Those same Wheels. . .
- Ohhh, the Wheels of Hate dug all the Killing Fields, dug the Killing Fields, dug the Killing Fields
- The Wheels of Hate dug the Killing Fields until there was nobody left to kill.
- The Wheels of Hate beat the Muslim woman, beat the Muslim woman, beat the Muslim woman
- The Wheels of Hate beat the Muslim woman because she covered her face.
- Yes, the Wheels of Hate took me for a fool, took me for a fool, took me for a fool.
- The Wheels of Hate took me for a fool until I said:
- Enough is Enough!
- The Wheels of Hate make us all hate each other, all hate each other, all hate each other.
- The Wheels of Hate make us all suspect each other because this way we are easier to rule.
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round, round and round, round and round.
- The Wheels of Hate go round and round until we make them . . .
- STOP!
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FLASH BACK ’78
Basking in the Broken Down Casino of Americana the grated dead reside in.
Reading the Bones of old contentions…looking up at primary school-lights; the ones that never change…looking down at the floor tiles; an endless sea of wrinkled faces….too many people to breathe in…
where’s the Exit Jean mentioned?…
Sound…check…test…test1…test2…test3…
Now!
Go You Sun of a Gun!
Locomotive train thunders through your head…groping… stumbling…tripping forwards into that warm glowing rush of the great unknown. There’s a tunnel!… there’s a tunnel…there’s a tunnel up ahead. We’re goin’in…we’re goin’in…we’re goin’in.…watch your head!
Watch: Your Head.
Gone! Washed away under the Lowest Bridge:
The consummation of illusion onto the lockjaw of your reality.
Still falling forwards…forwards with time…moving…with no body…no mass…no mind…beating…truckin’…making that Bend-On-the-Road…past the Dooh-Dah man….Right turn….left turn…back turn…back-where-you-started-from turn…It’s happening man…all around you…all the time…with you…without you…no-you..no- more…no-you-no-more….KNOW-MORE-YOU!..Don’t look left…don’t look right…don’t get scared…
Dawn follows the Night…head straight into the Light… up ahead…right where you came from…another train comin’ down your track…Head On Tight!
One More Stop….
Farther Down the Road.
Just keep on truckin’… don’t fall ahead and do not fail…one…two…onetwo…want-to… want-to …onetwothree..….chugga-chugga-chugga-chew-chew…One-Two Three….chugga-chugga-chugga-chew-chew
One-Two-Three….
One-Two-Three….chew-chew:
you’re dead.
For shaky kane, you better watch your head…
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CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY
My work in the late 80’sand 90’s in the British publishing industry led to the engineering and successful marketing of the Graphic Novel genre; a new format of hardcover and trade paperbacks of graphic fiction that bookstores would stack on their shelves. It was my job at Titan Books to do so, for which I was paid some £7,500 a year by my employer Nick Landau, to do.
After I was given a raise by Titan Books to £8K per annum , I learnt solely by chance, that my work had increased the revenue for my employer by some 7 figure sums and that the rest of the publishing industry were all cashing in on the work I was doing in promoting 9-5, the new publishing category. Cashing in, but not adhering to to the implicit quality standards the likes of Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, Speigelman and other auteurs were actively pursuing.
The Medium, as we used to call it back then, had failed to live up to its own promise.
So I got out; for that and personal reasons.
Now when I read the interviews with my former partners in CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY crime in the press complaining that the industry had failed and that the term Graphic Novel was just a manipulative tool wielded by the Moloch of Comics Publishing
(Batman in MOLOCH! Wonderwoman in MOLOCH! The Avengers, the Guardians of the Galazy, Superman and the Xmen are all drowning in the vomit of MOLOCH!)
Which I believe, the premise of the new cross over series written for DC by Grant Morrison.
The most admired (and crafted), writer in comics ever, in particular; (someone I worked with closely with on the presentation of his seminal forensic crucification of the American superhero genre to a mainstream audience, refrains from even addressing me by name in print when he lambasts the CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY that still pays him a living), has repeatedly condemned the publishing category Graphci Novel, as effectively, just another CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY from the publishign industry.
I have news for the revered scribe: you may have relegated me to the dark side, but take a look in the mirror, man: you’ve been here with me all along.
[Added 9.18 for context], I realise now that the above might be interpreted as some kind of opening volley against the distinguished author. Far be it. I will always both personally and publically assert that Mr. Moore was the change in comics back in the late 80’s. No single other artist in the medium at the time was so intelligently treating the medium like a literary and artistic platform for expression. Most craftsmen (and women), I met at the time were desperaely trying to hustle their next wok commission. Not Mr. Moore. His posture was different: he related to editors, collaborators and others as an auteur sans pretension. Intelligent, articulate and demanding of ones wit and focus. And from I observed, never intimidated or swayed by the money or more often, the promise of money from publishers.
Just to make absolutely clear about my statements regarding this author: I learned everything I know about comics by just listening to him, during interviews, casual conversations and direct discussions. A the time, this man was a walking sandwich board for the the new comics, the Graphic Novels, chiefly because it was only his writing (and that of a handful of there), that even came close to qualifyng as a novel or even literature. I never was nor have ever been a Comics Fan (Senator and members of the committee), but I have always been a fan of literature, drawn or undrawn. Which is why I cntinue to read, enjoy and learn from Mr. Moore’s work.
Although I do take exception (mildly, not really that seriously), to his most recent public damnations of the Graphic Novel, and it’s origins; it’s not that I object to his opinion as much as I question the accuracy of his recollection of events and of the times that he was actually there. I don’t take issue either with Mr. Moore’s take on the industry and publishing in general; in fact the more experience I gain the more my views align with his.
But regardless of the vocabulary used (or the fact that I was being paid a paltry wage at the time), I accomplished my task to his and his collaborator’s direct professional and financial benefit. Not to mention the real world benefits: the successfull dissemination of the term Graphic Novel into the mainstream brought to literally thousands of other free lances in the form of royalty checks for the graphic novel edition of their work; a now standard of the comics industry throughout the world.
I do not benefit from the use of the term of from the money generated by its use.
But I do not regret not hiring that CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY lawyer that would have secured my trademark on the use of the term and perhaps a penny off of every new Graphic Novel sale; which is what the business side of the industry tells me I shoudl have done.
I did not “create” the term graphic novel; as an outsider to the industry, I found the term on the back of a Will Eisner book and used it as the keystone of a campaign to bring new comics, well written, adventuerously drawn comics. But yes, I coined the term Graphic Novel; having borrowed it from the back of a low print-run Will Eisner compilation of The Spirit. His clever NYC publisher was struggling to get Eisner’s work into the bookshops too and had tried the term connotating Literary fiction: a novel. My use of the term was different as messieurs Gaiman and Moore can both attest to; Grant got it about the same time but more remotely, in Glasgow. Graphic Novel was meant to mean NEW Graphics, new graphic literature, new comics.
Coining, (in the sense of creating common usefulness; IOW: monetizing a vocabulary term into the common currency of language of transactional communication). It derives from the coining of money by stamping metal with a die. Coins (also variously spelled coynes, coigns, coignes or quoins), were the blank, usually circular, disks from which money was minted. This usage derived from an earlier 14th century meaning of coin, which meant wedge. The wedge-shaped dies which were used to stamp the blanks were called coins and the metal blanks and the subsequent ‘coined’ money took their name from them.
{Coining later began to be associated with inventiveness in language. In the 16th century the ‘coining’ of words and phrases was often referred to. By that time the monetary coinage was often debased or counterfeit and the coining of words was often associated with spurious linguistic inventions; for example, in George Puttenham’s The arte of English poesie, 1589:
“Young schollers not halfe well studied… will seeme to coigne fine wordes out of the Latin.”
Shakespeare, the greatest coiner of them all, also referred to the coining of language in Coriolanus, 1607:
“So shall my Lungs Coine words till their decay.”}
The NEW comics of the late 80’s and early 90’s that derived from Moore’s early work for DC, Spielgelman’s dabbling at biography in NYC, Miller’s pushing the edges out on Dare Devil and most of all (for me), Bill Sienkiewicz’s explosive rendering of ELEKTRA ASSASIN! I had never seen anyone take the convnetions of comcis illustration like Faugere Egg and take a sledge hammer to it the way Siekiewicz did, literally splattering the edges of the pages and frames with the remnants of comics conventions. Sienkiewicz brought commercial art and later fine art sensibilities to Graphic Novels, something his admirer and pioneer in his own right Dave McKean would further in his career just like in a real popular arts medium.
These were the Makers of New Works. I’ve forgotten everyone: Brendan McCarthy, Jamie Delano, Pete Milligan, Frank Miller, Joe Sacco, Harvey Peckar, Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez . . . . they all were making, new different work outside the stulpifying conventions aesthetic conventions. So like superheros, they need a new name and Guardians of the Galaxy was taken, so instead you got Graphic Novelists.
I resent nothing.
It was my own fault for being more naive and less carnivorous than my employers.
So instead I have to work for a living; for which I have no complaint as at least I have work to do.
I did learn something valuable (whenever someone fails, they always say that they learnt something valuble), and that is to sell a product whatever it might be, you have to create a place in people’s minds and desires where they want that product. The most intimate and subjective of products: the books we read, the music we listen to , the films we watch: you must give people a reason for looking an understanding for what they may see.
That is why a coded term like Graphic Novel works; it’s a cut through, short cut signifier that puts anyone who wants to know or needs to know in the picture immediately: you know what you know and now you know what it is.
In the case of Poetry, we have a different problem.
Everyone knows what Poetry is, right ? It’s that stuff you had to memorize in school and analyze with Mrs. Humphries who always crossed the naughty words out like ‘sweat’ and ‘blood’ and ‘toil’ with a thick, black, fascist marker pen.
Or it’s what you penned to your wife when you were courting her; or received form your husband, your boyfriend, you lover. Anyone one of those people in your life who felt such passion, such ardour for you that they could not tell you, they had to find words from some magic place to convince you, to persuade you, to seduce you into the beauty of the passion they could see in you.
Perhaps a Poem was the only form your shattered thoughts could take at the loss of someone so precious to you that you would choose the pian of being hewn by swords than endure the truth of their permanent absence from this world.
Perhaps you have nearly gone mad and found Poems, like steps out of the abyss of self-loathing into the stark light of realisation and hope for your self.
There is no greater hope to lose than the Hope for Yourself.
So Poetry has a signifier, a pretty universal one; unfortunately it doesn’t point towards anything like what Poetry actually is.
Poetry is an art form, not a craft.
Poetry an aspiration to derive music and pattern from our deepest thoughts, the language of our dreams and the whispering, the lamenting, the singing, the moaning and the laughter of our souls.
Poetry is Liberation. The words will set you free.
I am a Poet and to sell my ware (my GRAPHIC POEMS ;~), I must show people what it is that I do, that others do that is so far removed from the common currency of the term Poetry. So this is not only a CYNICAL-MARKETING-PLOY, but a sinister sales strategy as well! To get you to read my words, I must first who you what they are ouside the barriers of your preconceptions.
So, come to a picnic and hear what Poetry is and the vital importance it has always played in our social and political lives.
September 27th, 1 pm Balboa Park, World Beat Centre/ El Centro Cultural de la Raza
Come One and All, Come All in One, Come to the 100,000 Poets-for-Change Marathon! (Picnic & Reading)
It’s your duty ;~)
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IT’S NICE TO BE 15 AGAIN . . .
. . . in nervous anticipation of the world. Curiousity, tempered by peer acquired knowledge butts against the barricades of adulthood. We’re ready to storm the Citadel of your privilege! We are the next generation and that world you’re holding hostage belongs to us! (Now hand it over before anyone gets hurt.)
My daughter, Olivia is 15 and visting me from just outside Oxford, England where she lives with her mother and has never had less than a straight A+ report card. She just took a flight by herself from London Heathrow to San Diego, at 15.
When I was 15 my parents were getting divorced, badly.
So I ran away from home.
I told my mom, my dad had moved out, that I was going camping with my friend Barry Alphonso for a few days and I asked her if she could give me a ride to Pacific Beach where Barry lived and where his mom was driving us from.
I didn’t see my mother again for another 12 weeks. I met Barry alright in PB near the freeway on-ramp onto 5 heading north. I had an overstuffed backpack, a golf club (for walking and protection), about $40.00 I had stolen from my mother’s purse: the source of all comforts. At 15 I found myself standing on an on-ramp in Pacific Beach holding my glof club in one hand and sticking out my thumb with the other. Barry lingered, somewhat doubting I would hitch a ride and curious as to my sticking my toes over the precipace into the unknown. Would I really jump or just go home?
Me, all I had was the certainty I needed to leave my broken family behind. There was too much incomprehensible grief, the loss of our house, our income, our home. My mother and father’s loving looks twisted into evil eyes of anger, hatred and contempt for each other. But me and my sister couldn’t help but suspect that we were the root of the problem. After all, if they hadn’t had us; they could split up and both be happy somewhere else, with someone else. Idiots think that children are somehow less responsible.
That’s not the problem. A child is much too responsible, in our minds we feel responsible for the world.
A delusion I have heartily welcomed back into my life at this late age.
At 15, I find myself standing on the verge of an open highway with my thumb sticking in the wind: the greatest gesture of hope and faith I have ever made in my life. I had never hitchiked before and all I had were vague images of an Emerald San Francisco where my dad had driven us to years ago and near where my older brother was dodging tear gas on his way to class at Berkeley. I had the swirling images of Bob Dylan songs and Paul Simon melodies to sing to my self on the side of the road. If you really hit the groove on the song, you were always guaranteed a ride. The joy of music and singing is infectous and hits the bubbled drivers like a laser, traveling 80mph!
This was also still the time of war and the rice paddies and tunnels of Vietnam were making their way underground into the California bread basket.
Lots of people I met on the road were veterans. I hear its the same on the road today. An army comes home to a lost highway. Damaged souls with haunted eyes. Hanging with flea bitten ex fighting dogs and still wearing their green fatigues. Some even still wore their dog tags that flickered in the sun and the sterno-light alike; chained butterflies at the end of a beaded neck chain .
Some of the sad were mad and would wander way from the fire or the on-ramp or under the bridge and howl at the sky. No one ever paid them any mind. it was impolite to comment on a soldier’s anguish. These lost souls, these fragmented men taught me so much about hitchhiking and rail car hopping, how to get a free meal at a road side McDonald’s in exchange for picking up the litter . . . 
Which Jesus shelters were tolerable and which to steer away from. (Generally, a meal, a sermon and a bed were tolerable. Anythng more than that was considered risky. I had a Christian woman visit me several times in one night in my bunk bed trying to convince me to accept Jesus while she roamed her hands under my bed clothes.
Religion is allot like sex except that unlike sex, it gets it wrong.)
Most of all those lost soldiers, ghosts of events everyone wanted forgotten, they taught me how to forgive my father, another broken soldier who had taken out his white light rage on me and my brother, with his belt and with his fists. Those men, may killers, taught me at 15 what I needed to know for real, so I could later tell my father what he had done to me and I could look him I the eyes and forgive him because I knew and understood that wasn’t his fault.
It was the War, the same fucking War that had crippled him. The same War that crippled the ghosts from Iraq and Afghanistan. The same War that is manufacturing new ghosts in Israel, in Gaza, in Syria. It’s the same fucking War peeps, the same fucking War from the desert to the frozen tundra, through the jungle, to the rice paddies, to the streets of downtown LA.
It’s the same fucking War, peeps: when we going to call it quits?
How much more do we have to endure of your arrogant greed, your inhumanity, your thoughtless disregard for Life?
I had adventures on that road to Oz.
Through the valleys of the Jesus people.
On the highway, pulling all sorts of motorised vehicles with my magnetic thumb.
Drinking beer for the first time at the cowboy ranch Bacchanal after the rancher’s hand picked up 5 of us hitchers in the back of his pickup truck, just to give us beer and music at the farm. Being kissed by a girl who’s name I never would know, or need to, for the very first time—There is no thrill greater than a fleeting one. In the back of the Wizard’s goatee-ed van who dressed his poodle in a bright green doggy sweater and offered to buy me dinner later if he could show me his doggy tricks.
The biker under the bridge who’s hog had broken down in the downpour near the Oregon border. And me, a drowned puppy carrying a golf club for protection, drenched to my bones and shaking like the Devil at Communion.
The big, bearded, bike-bear stared at me under the bridge for awhile and made me nervous.
This was his bridge.
After awhile, he broke his stare and waved me silently over across the road. The only bikers I knew anything about were the ones that put Hunter S Thompson in the hospital because they didn’t like what he had written about them in his book. Shit!
But ‘Lucky’ was a quiet mountain. He gave me a green wool army blanket from his bike’s saddle bag and a Camel straight from his half empty pack; my first ever. The rain was coming down steady, heavy and cold. I had “smartly” chosen the month of November to make my break to freedom. Lucky had a can of sterno, a metal cup and Nescafe. There was water, water, everywhere and more than enough to drink.
Lucky didn’t say much but when I stopped shaking he poured from a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 into the hot metal nescafe cup and we shared it. I did not know this quiet dark bearded man, where he came from, what his story was or even it was safe to hang with him under this bridge in the rain. But he was my older brother in the moment we were in and when Lucky finally did say something to me it was a 3 word question:
“Do you play?”
I glanced down at the the minature wooden chess set Lucky had extracted from his saddle bag.
“Sure, I play. I play ALL the time”.
Paying chess with a leather suited biker under a bridge under the pouring Oregon rain.
That was what I was doing when I was 15.
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WIN! THE REVOLUTION IN ONLY 2 DIGITS
Last Minute Re-Versioning. I think it works better now. Soon we will be launching the animated version of the illustration for the piece by the intensely wonderful and visually lyrical Jeff Christenten. Thanks to Evan@Madefire. As well as an original composition for the entire multimedia piece from the intense genius of Gilad Atzmon. Please stay tuned. Please enjoy. Please comment good or bad. What’s the difference 
?
THE REVOLUTION IN ONLY 2 DIGITS
Home again.
Thomas, you were wrong to doubt it:
You Can Go Home Again and
Bask in the healing sun of Osiris
This isn’t home
This is recovery.
From the fevered scurvy of my own forgetfulness.
I eat limes for breakfast, lunch and dinner now;
My bowels move regularly now.
And I feel just like Thomas Payne
His bursting desire to model the ideal citizen
Not our uniforms, but our blood, sinew and muscle.
To present to the Crowning Glory and
To the Revolutionary Congress and
To the Revolutionary French Senate
Thomas and his Pain made the American struggle a personal fight:
The universal pull of the upright ape on the chains holding him down.
Chains forged by the forgetful hairless ones.
The ones we will overcome.
But we are not revolutionaries!
We are the Revolution.
We are what happens next.
The R/Evolution of our Selves: the inner/outer seeing through Alice’s mirror
Into mindful awareness
Into homage to our honored masters and their children:
The ever loving human race.
We have already won the revolution.
We have already won the revolution.
2 Shots were fired from far, far ago:
One from Lovelace’s boudoir,
Another from Giordano’s spinning wheels and the memory of his funeral pyre.
And from the bit of the apple Alan choked down,
We have already won the revolution.
We just need to take charge.
We have already won the revolution.
In only 2 digits.
THE REVOLUTION IN ONLY 2 DIGITS
Home again.
Thomas, you were wrong to doubt it:
You Can Go Home Again and
Bask in the healing sun of Osiris
This isn’t home
This is recovery.
From the fevered scurvy of my own forgetfulness.
I eat limes for breakfast, lunch and dinner now;
My bowels move regularly now.
And I feel just like Thomas Payne
His bursting desire to model the ideal citizen
Not our uniforms, but our blood, sinew and muscle.
To present to the Crowning Glory and
To the Revolutionary Congress and
To the Revolutionary French Senate
Thomas and his Pain made the American struggle a personal fight:
The universal pull of the upright ape on the chains holding him down.
Chains forged by the forgetful hairless ones.
The ones we will overcome.
But we are not revolutionaries!
We are the Revolution.
We are what happens next.
The R/Evolution of our Selves: the inner/outer seeing through Alice’s mirror
Into mindful awareness
Into homage to our honored masters and their children:
The ever loving human race.
We have already won the revolution.
We have already won the revolution.
2 Shots were fired from far, far ago:
One from Lovelace’s boudoir,
Another from Giordano’s spinning wheels and the memory of his funeral pyre.
And from the bit of the apple Alan choked down,
We have already won the revolution.
We just need to take charge.
We have already won the revolution.
In only 2 digits.
igorgoldkind
The Poesie of Igor Goldkind – Reciting Truth to Power 
Sleepy Mind; Awake Mind
And Zen-some!
The only way to explain Zen is by describing the sleepy mind. The sleepy mind describes a tree in terms of attributes and data: the number of leaves, the leaf shape, the number of branches, thickness of the trunk, the colour of bark. Which birds make use of the tree etc.
All these observable and measurable attributes are assembled as data by the sleepy mind and voila! the sleepy mind thinks it knows what a tree is. The sleepy mind can give arguments with citations about the validity of its data. The sleepy mind works well with other sleepy minds.
And the sleepy mind isn’t totally wrong, the data it compiles in reference to ‘tree’ are all real and quantifiable features of the tree. But no matter how exact or comprehensive, the data is not the tree nor even the experience of the tree.
The awoken mind merely says “Look, a tree”, and points.
Because there is no data that conveys the experience of that tree in the moment of your apprehension. The awoken mind, sees the leaves, the branches, the colour of the bark, the thickness of the trunk, which birds fly in and out of the tree as much and as well as the sleepy mind does.
But the awoken mind also sees that the spaces between the leaves are part of the tree. The negative space surrounding the tree. The unseen roots spread beneath the ground are part of the tree. The sunlight reflecting off the green of the leaves are part of the tree.
The seat waiting to rest your back against the trunk is part of the tree. The awoken mind ‘see’s the tree; the form of the tree; the tree itself in all its ‘tree-ness’, the tree as a child sees a tree; not what the sleepy mind contrives to substitute as its surrogate.
I think this is the closest I can come to describing the Zen disposition. I say disposition because too much is made of practice and the philosophy of Zen when all are merely aids to assist in the unravelling of illusion and self-deception. Zen is not an acquisition of skills, rituals, garments or ideology; instead, Zen is relinquishment. It is a reminder to keep paying attention. Not acquiring but letting go: unravelling, stripping away layers of calloused skin, leaving your baggage behind and not looking back over your shoulder. In the words of the bard:
We are all distracted by anxieties and worries about money, about jobs, about partners and children. That distraction is manufactured by the powerful in the society we live in to keep us consuming, acquiescent and very sleepy! It doesn’t matter if you meditate or not; if you read poetry or not; if you drink tea or practice martial arts or not. It doesn’t matter how you get there or what you wear; just that you wake up and experience the miracle of persistent and unwavering creation. The universe is created, then destroyed then resurrected millions of times a second, faster than you can blink; so try and keep your eyes open!
I leave you once again with the immortal words of the Nobel Prize laureate:
– With Compassion, Igor Goldkind, 2017
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October 6, 2017 | Categories: Americana, anarchy, art, beat, comments about poetry, Emptyness, Existentialism, literature, Meditations, mental health, new poetry, poetry, Poetry as therapy, Self-Therapy, story-telling | Tags: art, Life, literature, poetry, Truth, Zen | Leave a comment