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What would a sea slug do with a parasol?
 
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If I were to attempt to show you the contours of the grin of the wind would you make some hasty excuse to leave the premises and throw away my address and phone number?
You might avert you’re gaze when you see me in the park […]

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The devices employed in US election cycles and its national politics, in general, are akin to the dramatic conventions of children’s theatre. Every two to four years, voters are instructed to clap their hands and believe in Tinker Bell. “Children, you have to believe — you really, really have to believe in Tinker Bell.” But […]

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Since, we buried you, last summer, in the baked, early August earth  — I have dreamed, night after night, of a bone white creature, with glinting eyes of Edenic green … offering me fruit, ripening in his fecund palms.
Denizen of a deathless world — he brought news of you … news that you were settling […]

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Given the level of cultural absurdity at large, both the commercially tormented landscape and the mass media dominated mindscape of the United States seem a Gogol goof-take.
If a person had traveled forward in time, arriving from even the recent past, of say, twenty-five to thirty-years ago, and looked upon the present day United States — […]

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You see: This took place long after the snow had melted and the far-flung galaxies had cooled and the jism on the bed sheets had dried to an amorphous, orange-tinged stain. It occurred after the relatives arrived and departed and drifted to their respective graves. This happened after the native grasses had vanished and the […]

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In an age, when nature is besieged and the political landscape blighted, and one stands, stoop shouldered and wincing into the howling wasteland of epic-scale idiocy extant in the era, a solitary person can feel lost … marooned inside an increasingly isolated sense of self. Whether urban, suburban, or rural dwelling, the sense of alienation, […]

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Nettling memories returned, as I bent forward to sniff the cactus flower blooming in our desiccated conservation.
Forgotten … reign of redolence: Expunged from the singing narrative of troubadour air … purged, since the advent of that shivered era when the potentate of provisional remembrance banished all memories of the mercies of rain.
Was it really all […]

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“Now, from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life. . . . A house, in the American sense, an American apple or a grapevine over there, has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which went the hopes and reflections of our forefathers … Live things, things […]

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Making a fetish of phantasms– I catch glimpses of you reflected in store windows of archived avenues…
as the earth burns with composting memory, we listen to the wind-pitched speech of rifting rain.
From the mere notion of you, much less your arrival, I wonder: Why did you call me to this place … a world reclaimed […]

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Although, I have made my home in being lost, I recognize you: You are: The homunculus of my aspirations, lost as well, squatting amid the ruins of my towering rage.
Granted, like you, my prevailing sense of self has been besieged by contretemps and coincidence; even more like you, I am enraptured by the distraction.
Our kind  […]

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Although my mother fled Nazi Germany, as a child, on a Kindertransport, with a few family valuables sown into her clothing, and I was brought up on the myths and hagiography of the Zionist state, I, over time, came to recognize the folly of the whole colonialist enterprise — the folly of ethnic exclusion and […]

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Even as President Barrack Obama waxed eloquent in Cairo, Egypt, on the moral imperatives of the community of nations, public opinion polls released in the United States revealed that, by a substantial percentage, its citizens believe torture is an acceptable option for interrogation of suspects deemed terrorists by various U.S. governmental agencies.
In addition, other polls […]

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From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one’s initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One’s image of oneself and one’s place in the world is under siege, […]

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posted by Phil Rockstroh
Here in this crumbling empire once known as the American Republic, here in a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed down to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon suburban mchouses, whose corrupt corporate culture has bequeathed upon our […]

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posted by Phil Rockstroh
“We must become the change we want to see.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“In any case, I hate all Iranians.”
–Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — […]

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Posted by Phil Rockstroh
One would think that from the cries of (feigned) indignation and calls for repentance arising from conservatives regarding Move-On.org’s ad in the N.Y. Times that the liberal-leaning group had not simply questioned the insights and intentions of a public servant, promoting, in a public forum, the policy of an illegal and immoral […]

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Originally published August 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Given the nation’s tottering infrastructure, imperial overreach abroad and vandalized constitutional process by a lawless executive branch, what will it take to scare the general public, mainstream press and political classes into immediate action to bring about meaningful change? At this twilight hour of the American republic, there must […]

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Originally published July 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush Administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take […]

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Originally published July 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted due to the fact that he didn’t deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road […]

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Originally published June 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent’s Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality — disappeared — by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are […]

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Originally published June 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Why did the Democratic Congress betray the voting public?
Betrayal is often a consequence of wishful thinking. It’s the world’s way of delivering the life lesson that it’s time to shed the vanity of one’s innocence and grow-the-hell-up. Apropos, here’s lesson number one for political innocents: Power serves the perpetuation […]

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Originally published June 2007
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Recent news reports have revealed that the Bush Administration has bestowed upon itself the right to grant itself absolute power.
Recent news reports have revealed that the Bush Administration has bestowed upon itself the right to grant itself absolute power if “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary […]

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Originally published December 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
“Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame.”
– Bob Dylan
It has been reported that George W. Bush is counting on the judgment of history to redeem the perception that he has been at the helm of a failed presidency. This notion […]

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Originally published December 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
The Holiday Season has arrived, unfolding before us like a cheap vinyl wallet here in The United States of American Express. The days spill forth, their hours comprised of shopping and shooting sprees, of retail and retaliation. Jingle bells and the crackle of gunfire. This is the way an […]

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Originally published November 2006
Posted by Phil Rockstroh
Recently, we’ve been plied and pummeled with the absurd proclamation that “the system worked” — that our congressional representatives listened and took note of the collective, antiwar fulmination of the people, registered in our faux republic’s latest, sham plebiscite. Yes, I suspect, the political classes of Washington did hear […]

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