Make it stand out.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Tomorrow with Hernandez:

Intrusive thoughts including violent ones 

Are resistant to Zoloft 

so far

Maybe they are a little less

Aided by a quick drink at the bar Mitzvah 

Schizophrenia is a dreamy hyena’s jingle in jungles mingled in not one but duo lingos. 

An interesting thing just happened. 

A thought about a humiliating event and cascade of related disruptive distortions actual, factual blunders and gaffes 

Now at this moment at least

It lightened into a slight pinch and a laugh. 

Hey that’s progress. 

Maybe Zoloft is providing some cumulative egress from my formerly defenseless over-defensive mess. 

Against my wishes, confectioners dishes 

Still addict my sweet tooth fairly often 

It won’t drive me to my coffin what with all 

My exercise and other routines 

But still I think, write and speak like an obsessive geek up a creek seeking solace 

from masochistic invitations to be bullied 

Confidence drubbed and sullied. 

I’m already at the standard max

A higher dosage does sometimes help OC disordered folks. 

Please no jokes. 

Next step: wait a month and see 

If still no change, we’ll go to 250 milligrams 

Not Jelly’s Last Jam but after that

a totally different kind of med 

Which can cause metabolic/ diabetic difficulties. 

Maybe I’m not doing enough in therapy to disarm my thorny, recursive angry 😤 😡 😠 

Semi-conscious thoughts. 

What questions should I entertain?

In the main, let Ira lead. 

That much is plain. 

And then there’s this funny business about being late, not checking my calendar for important dates and times. 

I look at it but sometimes don’t see. 

Could be a function of my anxiety. 

It’s like when I get an idea 

Am told it’s wrong 

But can’t change to a more appropriate song. 

And then there’s still my cognitive distortion and the resulting excruciating mushrooming, going down the drain, the incessant rule and reign of self denigration 

Started with a little comment from Deb 

Festered, bled my confidence 

By the time I lost my temper with Diane I 

was a regressed looney, self-hating, rapidly disintegrating old man. 

***

On the one hand 

Religion has helped millions 

Feel hope 

On the other it is an opiate of the masses 

Allowing leaders to manipulate, annihilate and amass billions. 

****

The meek shall inherit the earth. 

Yes, it’s true. 

And I have a couple of bridges to sell to you. 

****

... and gas chambers 

Why bring in these dark 

Ages of man?

The dehumanizing preludes to genocide 

In an otherwise uplifting often lighthearted piece?

Is it not all of a piece?

Is it so peace can be made?

Study a stay of the executioners blade. 

***

I am a Pakistani in England 

An Indian in Apartheid South Africa 

A rape victim stoned for the crime. 

I am a casualty of Russian aggression in Crimea 

A Native American on a reservation 

Destitute of spirit, devoid of hope 

My people 

My land 

The white man’s burden sent it up in smoke. 

A great white hope 

A con man makes dopes of people of all ages 

Helped by foreign actors in deceptive, manipulative stages 

... and my children...

put in cages. 

****

I’m riding in a car 

A passenger in the backseat. 

Something familiar about the haphazard greenery not well tended or cared for 

I’ve seen this heifer before. 

Danny wrote a poem about a heifer 

Could it have been in the same verse 

About Mitt Romney’s hair?

A heifer and the Hare. 

I don’t care what dumpf said to shut Romney up.

But shut him up he did indeed take his acts 

To shut Lisa Murkowski down to disable their 

Logic and courage. 

To discourage any independent voice 

Could have been blackmail

as he’s no stranger to that unholy grail. 

It looks like the Senate will sanitize the high crimes and misdemeanors of the meaner selfish sadist. 

All they’re interested in is monetizing their prize. 

Could the Senate rise to the occasion and not fail?

The trail of his guilt ip to his upcoming trial includes invitations to foreign powers on TV on the White House lawn. 

Yawn. You can’t get mire unequivocally convicting evidence. 

There must be 20 Republican Senators somewhere out there 

Seriously caring about saving our nation.

For a brief moment 

It was a second or less 

Beth shed tears 

Tearily

Fearing for Danny. 

Then less tearily

I said 

“He’ll be ok.”

He has Beth for a mom. 

A more stable and able role model

could not be found anywhere around 

King Arthur’s Rounded Round Table. 

Yes you’ll be ok. 

You’ll get through these days of malaise. 

You’ll find ways. 

I praise your brilliance, creativity 

Your humor 

Your poise 

Your fine speaking voice 

Your grace 

Strength and stamina 

Good looks 

Knowledge from the street as well as from many a great book. 

Not to mention that 

You’re a pretty darn good cook. 

****

It took a lot 

for us to get to enjoy what we’ve got 

Hot diggetty-dog 

It was worth the slog

The bogus big, big, bad city 

blocks and blogs of negativity 

Turned out to be training-day niceties. 

Now on with our lives 

Making the most of them 

Stem the tide. 

Go along fur more than the ridiculous rude ride. 

Hide no longer 

Be strong 

Getting continually stronger. 

On with our lives 

Make the most of them 

Lessen the world’s pain, suffering, metastasizing populist mayhem. 

*****

It’s clear the reason why 

I stay up late. 

It’s after all my exercises, obsessive activities and chores are done

Like so many people I like to unwind with abandon, fun. 

This may not be helping me though. 

****

It’s after midnight. 

Neither Danny nor I are asleep. 

His doorknob is getting a good workout. 

Poor kid. 

He and Beth are slid under the wicked weather. 

****

Monday,

December 16, 2019

I love my son. 

I love my wife. 

I break stride

Projecting strife

A bit of home grown 

Stockholm Syndrome. 

As dad said of Richard, my cousin 

And a dozen denizens of similar 

Vestibular and cranial dysfunctional unction 

A self-hating Jew 

Who denies the intergenerational pain 

Rather than gain 

the potency to make a 

Positive change. 

home grown 

Stockholm Syndrome

Can dissipate and morph 

Into a cure, a core of

self-aware

And if I may dare, say

Self-constant, self-contained, controlled, laser-focused, confident potent power 

To do right 

Starting this bright morn 

Shorn, shunning hate. 

Shining with love 

As per above 

Using that newfound potent potential to power cleanse and shower our nation

reversing his treasonous course cruising to Russia’s ports

Unmask the phony POTUS Putin-pet of the false Norse god of war, lies and burial rites of our democracy into the welcoming deathly hallowed arms of foreign princes 

Our bleeder of the free world works tirelessly on twitter to make himself look fitter

To his immovable base 

Who sees fake news, addicted to conspiracy 

Theories as base metal turned to what looks like a kettle of gold turns out it’s rotten, hollowed out with mold.  

This commanding con man’s story is as old as the hills. 

He pads his bills 

Removes the security net from those in need

He weeds out the good, multiplying the misunderstood, misinformation 

One big lie leads to the next 

Repeated endlessly that repertoire 

Is not reserved for one time and place only. 

If only we could stop 

What happened in Germany. 

Herman Hesse, Hermione and her many charms sound similar alarms. 

I love my charming wife and son

For them, for me

For all humanity 

With the humility born 

Of knowing the task’s perils and pitfalls 

I will strive and resume after every pratfall 

to help undo the glutinous malevolent gluttony 

Barr brings to bear on justice 

Attempting to dump the good and turn it into another dumpfian disaster 

Our Manchurian Candidate is 

Russian Moscow- made. 

Protect 

Our elections 

Do good

Be gentle, firm 

Compassionate, kind 

start at home

Reverse the vulgar course of the Volga and Dnieper before disinformation donald makes us into a colony of leprous ducks

Donald ducks the blame 

All the same he may be a great entertainer 

He should be on a container without WiFi 

Yes deny his fans and fox his noxious 

Destructive noise. 

Throwing our country to Oligarch’s dogs 

A convoy en route to Russia’s gulag’s frozen bogs 

dishonored, disheveled, divested by those devoid of decency.

Dismembered, denied democracy, damned, shammed by the shameless, phony, murderous, backstabbing cheating, war-criminal-glorifying false POTUS 

prophet who hourly profits throwing us under his nonstop fact-free campaign tearing our nation asunder. 

***

Sunday, December 15, 2019

There is love and affection in my life. 

My wife, my friend and missus

Yes they’re one and the same 

Came to hug and kiss me

Just as I went to her all in a blur 

Without missing a beat. 

***

Sexless marriages

That is, after all is said and done with baby carriages

Are neither unique nor far between. 

It has to do with seeing each other’s flaws 

That and miscellaneous issues with in-laws. 

****

Resting on a laurel

Not singing solo or choral

Yearning to do more in cities and forests arboreal 

A story I’ll conflate with prehistoric loves and hate 

Here a career stymied by inability to learn social, emotional, practical skills 

blinded by luminous lights Borealis

Could be Alice, Alex... Ted, Winifred 

or fans of the Grateful Dead

Social anxiety holds me back. 

If I didn’t have these attacks 

What would I still lack?

More focused education?

On the job training?

Abilities to be less compulsively self-exposing and explaining?

Training for one thing not many?

Could I be as natural, happy, industrious and strong as when I was little toddler Kenny?

What would appropriate not overreach goals be?

For me I go from nothing to climbing Mt. Everest- 

yes it is, at my internal devil’s fiendish, friendless request. 

My behest arrests this all or nothing Arista climbing chiming into a middle tone

A middle part 

Sylvia meets Bach posing 

as a viola playing pioneer in mountaineer’s mountain gear at the beginners line ready anew to restart. 

Men and Mountains sang Ruggles 

Unheard by ordinary muggles. 

No longer on a laurel

Singing from that inner floral 

I’ll tour all halls of the city of my birth 

prehistoric loves 

Abilities to learn 

Internal passion fires all ablaze 

I burn, a full burn basically delighted 

Lighted belatedly be-knighted by luminous non-bituminous Aurora lights Borealis. 

No longer linger on laurels 

Singing choral in cities 

Rural, even in the Urals 

Russia’s backbone 

I sure as heck would not hesitate to reflect that I would not go to pick mountain florals

In the Urals unaccompanied alone. 

The moral of this modest mini is on a mural. 

That is: the hallowed hand-written harbinger is ringing the bells

Hermès is handwringing is in the Dallas mall. 

***

Push myself a little bit more. 

Though I’m no Al Gore

Maybe a grandpa Moses

Waiting to be born in bullrushes on beds of roses. 

****

There’s no question that incessant activity 

Creative and physical 

Not puzzling or quizzical: 

Does much to ally, mollify, lessen the burden, lighten the load, off-load, self-destructive little ills. 

***

Is schizophrenia on a continuum?

Can you be a little bit of a humming schizo bum?

Writing scherzos, endless rhythmic rhymes 

Sometimes I wish

Sometimes I wonder 

I wonder at 

At the wondrous, winter wonder drugs 

I suggest I tug on emotional development 

In ways not yet revealed might help

Even appeal. 

Or is my reliance on meds to treat my over-focus on the spectrum’s specific spot 

My specific point 

My localized, often anesthetized locus of psychic pain on the plain vanilla continuum

Just an avoidance of doing what’s needed overcoming fears which are to me on that continuum an oh, ever so dear contrived noxious nostrum?

***

Tinuum’s goal is clean coal.

Cool but as akin to bitumen 

It tars the road 

Muddying the waters 

About what needs to be done to clean our planet. 

You might as well do it right for our polluted planet 

Come completely clean to make pristine our perfect planet 

If you’re gonna do it, before you do it, plan it. 

***

It’s good to forgive and accept myself. 

It’s better to take more responsibility for 

Improving the communal wealth and 

Welfare 

of all beings about whom more and more I want to dare to care. 

****

It helps me forgive myself -and mom 

To accept our mental ills. 

Considering we had more than our fair share 

Our lives still with joys were filled. 

I got better pills. 

*****

We did the best we could. 

Mom, dad, Amy and I.

And everyone else. 

My lack of self-control 

Volatile temper

A template for distempered lack of empathy 

As recently as 

****

***

Hark ye and 

Attend to

What Cousin Barbra said.

All the rogue’s rough paved roads yet beguilingly sweet to some 

Lead to Russia 

Winning the Cold War 

Via that eternal, reality czar 

(Is your pulse quickening?)

Yes the one and only boss of sickening Bill of Rights gone wrong blood on his bloody blue-blooded hands, willful, tie-em to the table, tar-em, kill-em Billy Nil-scrupled blatantly patrician, partisan no-holds barred 

Wild Almost as looney as Rudy Billy Bill 

William Tell lies beastly baron Barr. 

Just like it was said by Cousin Barbra from a far. 

Hark ye and hardly har-har. 

***

My mind has gone to the doggerels. 

Pounding the pavement looking for rhyme 

Not full-time jobs 

Is gobs of fun 

Until I realize time is a running out 

For me, for thee

for this beloved country 

In a conundrum 

About the orange conman bum. 

***

Lindsay has fifty Graham’s of sense 

Perhaps more than Mike’s Pence 

When he crossed the pond at dumpf’s 

Request he brokered a peace for the slaughter Donald had ordered

For a thanksgiving fest 

Lest not forget his 

Feasting invitation to the Taliban come west. 

More lies that week he told than seven 

To celebrate 9/11. 

The pattern becomes clear. 

It’s not just Russia he holds dear. 

It’s not just his infatuation with brutal murderous strongmen and dictators. 

It’s not just his love affair with racist, violent haters or groping women in elevators. 

It’s about his insecurities 

Which find solace in 

Aligning with these quintessentially bad forces 

Not only on golf courses 

Or on the Persian Gulf

In manipulation of bourses 

Ditching our long-term allies and treaties 

So he can meet and greet great mean monsters in Korea of the North’s DMZ 

He gets away Scott free

With inciting violence, murder, civil war 

In his uncivil way banal, brutish, cheater’s foul play way

The mainstay of his divide, disrupt, destroy and conquer way

Even his clone, Boris the British, 

pulling away has of dumpf become quite skittish. 

****

Lunch with Logan mañana?

Being blind-sighted

Yet deliciously delighted 

Needing a bird’s eye view 

Verifiably virtuously to vivify and renew 

in trying to remove, barnacles burrowing below the undertow 

I know to brighten the blind in which I woefully find myself in a bind in this blind in my dense internal woodland mighty mind 

With its peculiar vegetation and fauna 

Forming a firm, fortunately frequently funny foundation for recursive thought not always good. 

Gee!

I could get out of the neighborhood. 

Lunch with Logan mañana?

We could discuss Hindemith and Santana.

***

a little more to the point, less counterpoint. 

Lunch with Logan mañana?

We could discuss Hindemith and Santana.

***

Nice poem to start off the day that is 

After mediation, yoga, thinking of breakfast of yogurt, 

nuts and berries puts me in the mind of not always merry Jean 

Who for months I have not seen. 

This obsessive compulsive nerd’s need to clean is a means 

To blow off sexual dreams’ steam. 

***

Malediction 

Is there any other kind?

I’m in a familiar bind. 

This male has a female addiction. 

My predilection for massages and more 

Speak of my erstwhile inability to score. 

Friday, December 13, 2019

So here I am with Beth at temple instead of group. 

I feel the familiar tug of social anxiety propelling me to make too many jokes and puns. 

Its not out of fun. 

It’s run of the mill fallback on self-punishing unique pun of a kind 

Though made more self-aware by the pills 

I still had lots of anger today. 

Triggered by Diane not understanding and my perception of her being hostile in a quiet sort of way made my blood simmer 

Do I care what Sima would have said in my final hour?

Was it summer or fall?

Winter or spring 

I’m filled today with bad feelings about myself head to toe

Toe to head and in between all. 

My skin crawls. 

****

Most groups of people, large, medium and small

probably all, have a pretty full range of personalities. 

No group has a monopoly on hate, greed, sadism...

Not even on Benny’s banalities. 

***

A better president than Lincoln?

Honest Abe kept our country whole. 

The current resident of the presidential and numerous other palatial palaces is russhin’ to a slightly different goal. 

****

It’s not hard to see why dumpf’s our kind of guy. 

He’s big, he’s strong-minded 

He doesn’t mind telling a little white lie

from time to time to the lying, cheating liberal Dems 

Them’s the real and present danger. 

He’s no stranger to hard times having 

Hyped and dumped while hiring and firing aliens and letting allies be slaughtered 

No puffy, fussy-footing for this luminous star. With a constantly chaotic constitution, he’s washed his hands-done an ablution trampling our phony Constitution in broad daylight. He picks his fight with a piece of parchment paper 

because it’s inimical to his friends on the shores of the Dieper. 

8
****

MOTH

or in my case, MOTHTH

My own, theatrical heart to heart 

For a start 

I like to write silly poems. 

This little hobby of the written art

Started when I retired 

Got reworked, rewired so to speak 

Kind of a prolix word-smithing geek 

Nothing much unique

I seek less

I envy less

Less obsessive 

Maybe a little nicer says my wife of thirty plus years 

True more tired, occasionally fragile, weepy, sleepy not from beers. 

Positive changes include more stable BG

in the care of my good old type one-not always fun to manage but hey everyone’s ailments, conditions and hopefully cures. 

Sickness becomes a boring chore 

For sure, though it can be an enlightening wake up call. 

A thing not small at all. 

Enlivening good health 

Good cheer. 

Oh dear, I was supposed to tell my story. 

This hairy-faced, older guy will now try. 

Sort of a loner-type with hobbies galore. 

More for my own unending entertainment

Letting off streaming steams meant to vent. 

When I was five 

I realized 

I didn’t fit in

Neither with kids nor adults

Not that I felt I was on ice thin

Just a sense 

Of aloneness, isolation. 

Not yet a defense. 

I had two loving parents, a sister with whom I’m still close, cousins. 

What I lacked then was an ability to make a friend. 

When I began to feel the lack of 

Peers having my back it was one of many things setting me on the life-long therapy path attempting to douse the flames of wrath. 

A sense of inadequacy covered up by overcompensating made relating even harder. 

At fifteen I started to slowly loose my mind.

Kind of. 

Never totally stepping off the deep end 

Wending my way playing bassoon, my one true talent it seems.

Though I’m pretty good at eating ice creams. 

So not having had a crisis masked at least to me that I was off and getting more off. 

Therapy helped enough to get married

Become more recently a more loving, empathic father. 

In some ways I’ve gone farther than my father who gave me along with mommy dearest the clearest love of art, music, nature and of course narcissistic navel gazing

Raising ever present masochistic invitations for others to give me a good, driving drubbing and hazing. 

Oft I thought there was no hope I could find mind my having visited many a lost and found. 

I found some pieces there, in treasured treatises on the meditative arts

Yoga, journal writing, daily exercise, self help and psychology books cooked into the mix. 

Still not fixed, feeling broken eviscerated messed up, if not to the max, at least enough for mild panic attacks 

Depression, OCD, social, emotional anxiety 

Not always sufficiently quietly. 

I no longer punch walls, books or pianos. 

Oft I thought the biggest help has been from now adding to the therapeutic mix

Sticking with this sticky stuck-ness mess...

Let me get it obsessively. self-consciously right:

Oft I thought...

Oft I thought my greatest cure

Oft I thought my biggest help 

Oft I thought, well it’s difficult to...

Just get it out

Say what’s on your mind, man. 

Oh I forgot you lost it, having gone soft. 

Oft I thought it’s just the help not from Zorro 

It’s the help of Zoloft. 

An interesting trip from here to here 

The geographical solution didn’t appear. 

More travel and novel experience are on my list of buckets 

Bucking the trend

Buckingham Palace didn’t make the list. 

Greece, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Israel, Russia -oh I can see Russian things in our formerly strong, striving to be good and clean White House now red with the blood of our allies with an infinitely wise guy leader who bullies and boasts about being the chosen one perhaps the king of Israel who’s pretty good at cheating on taxes, cheating on wives, good too at blackmail, stabbing people in the back having a hearty laugh manipulating markets, then a scare of a Saturday heart attack about which did he lie?

He’s got the weather service serving up false reports, the parks department giving phony cred to his claim, crowing of a huge crowd at his inaugural crowing, The DOJ becoming doggier by the day setting the Barr so low for his crimes only, he’s removed science, fact and truth from his cultist culture club boy George couldn’t tell a lie. Can dumpf do anything but? He’s a nut with a following loyal whose group-think has blood which boils Roth every conspiracy theory. So do I believe the blow out job numbers his admin recently trumpeted?

I’m obsessed with his destruction of the environment, the wall he builds between people with his incessant inciting violent hate crimes, he’s too busy lying to have time or interest in leading the free world. It takes a lot of energy to think of getting our government to make purchases at his hotels, prop up propellers of an airport needed to insure the survival of his Scottish golf resort. We’ll endure his skittish kleptocracy because it palls in the wake of his foreign and other policies while most people are asleep

Tweeting on Twitter, fit to be tied while eating french fries, burgers and Chinese but his physical features are not what this is about. It’s about time we realize his great gifts:

Dividing, conquering by creating chaos, distraction and furor, this self-style Führer manipulates with great lies, untiring in pursuit of power, personal gain tapping in to people’s worst fears, his basic instinct stinks. 

He stirs up people’s worst fears in the service of serving enriching fake-news foxy phonies, cronies, most of all himself rivaling the dictators he loves so much while detracting from Americans and allies hungrily clutching all in his talon’s clutches, stomped by his cloven foot. 

If they come for you now

They will come for me later.