Poetry For the Open Mic. Vol I

Cumulative Mistakes

I spent a long night as an ape
and woke up half human
still shaking
I don't know if I can stand the other half


What Must be Done

The least secret thing in the universe
is the door that never opens twice
At least not until it does

all legs and no eyes
thinking only verbs
you never left


Drunkenly Sober

She was drunkenly sober
even as a child
There is a photo I will never forget
She is seven
wearing a dress that I am sure was appropriate for the occasion
her mother would have seen to that
without fail

the is a large festive ribbon in her hair
still proper
but starkly incongruous
with girls darkly serious eyes
and frank expression

I imagine the photographer trying to make the girl smile
with a small joke or frivolity
And I see those eyes register
nothing but the necessity of what would be the next Sunday activity:
long hours of study, piano
cleaning the house
and carefully ducking and sidestepping the endless barbs
exchanged between her parents

Later, during the woman's second marriage
her husband took a second photo of the woman's eyes
and put them on an album entitled "soul eyes"
And I suppose that those who have nothing
would find something in those eyes
there is plenty there
all that scientific materialism has to offer
I have been there myself

It is not her fault.  It really isn't.

Happy Hour

They say that Jazz is dead.

I don't know, I was never alive when Jazz was alive.   Except for Coltrane and Davis, but I was too young.

But I was alive for Meatloaf and Styx.  And I remember and would sooner forget Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.

But I keep being reminded of Meatloaf and his ilk at happy hours.  Cover bands.  And its just so sad--I want to cry.  I want to cry at everything now.  My body is alive with 30 years of not crying.   And in case you don't know the math, that means the last time I really cried was in college.

Me:   Bless me father for it has been 30 years since my last cry.

Priest:  "Keep a stiff upper lip son.  Don't let other's see you.  And do 12 Hail Mary's and the Sign of the Cross.  But you can cry.   Just be discrete.  Let your freak flag fly."

Me:  Its a spiritual awakening?

Me:  Somebody please say "yes"

Reality: (crickets........crickets.....lol)

I have this image of Dr. Frankenstein (or was that Dr. Frankenfurter you Rocky Horror Fans, and you know who you are) trying to resurrect the dead body of Meatloaf with electric shock to no avail. Over and over.    Every Friday night after work.  At "happy" hours.  And even worse, how many fucking jazz singers from Brooke Thomas to Thomas Brooke want to cover "Summertime."   Gershwin would be rolling in his grave without the electric cattle prod.

For 50 somethings this music is a distant reminder of a bygone past.  And normally, I can do the Proust and remember things of the past, but this is just too sad.  And I know its just me.  This is just people working all week looking forward to Fridays after work.  Lining up the beer bottles and wine bottles like tombstones, ready to fall down like a row of dominoes.

Domino.  Love me all night Romeo.  Aaargh!

I wonder if Dr. Frankenstein would have any better luck resurrecting Van Morrison.  I don't care.  And I don't care about the Cardinals or the Cubs.  I mean I love you all, I really do, but it just hurts me to see you listening to all this dead music lining up the dead beer cans.   I feel like I should be doing something to help you.

I feel like I should be doing something to help myself.

But in the end, I hear the refrain:  "Let me sleep on it, baby baby let me sleep on it, I'll give you the answer in the morning."

I'm a Punishment for Glutton, or was that Gluten

They say that the Toyota Corolla is the most ubiquitous car in America.

I think they are wrong.  Its the Honda Civic.  I see them everywhere.  I can't help but to look when I see anything that possesses their familiar shape.  And color.  But I'm really only looking for one car in particular, with the OB license plates.   Or maybe its the Mario Cart these days.

I didn't always used to be like this.  Yea, right, who are you kidding.  All you needed was just the slightest push to send you so far deep in your mind that you are oblivious to everything around you. And all the freaking sitting on a cushion either in a zendo or in a closet ain't gonna help you boy.

But I still have faith to a large degree.  At least for now.  And a certain degree of compassion for myself.  When the most important thing in your life gets taken away--strike that--you broke it--and then to make matters worse you agonize over it over again over about what you did, why you did it, can you put the pieces back, what would be better for you for them for everyone?  When you move once.  Move again.  Move again.  Was there still more?  I lost count.

Deep breaths.  Longer on the exhale.  Feel the body sensations.

Ok, so I did this TRE therapy.  Twice.  Jury is still out.

I was shaking even before I started.  As soon as I watched the first video, I could feel my body tense up.  Yep, I'd done this before.  College senior.  Convulsions of sobbing.  Way down deep in the gut Until I got to a place that it was just me in a fetal ball and after what seemed like eternity later, the overwhelming relief that I loved myself and it was going to be ok.

And of course, since this was on a Christmas break the parents were concerned.  Since then I've always almost welcomed crying, which sadly generally doesn't happen.  Its like exercising the muscles of the gut and laughing in a strange way.

And I know the zen teacher poo poos crying.  But I think when its deep and its real, its therapy. Just perhaps like this twitching business with TRE.

Like I said the jury is still out.  Be careful of the new neural pathways you are creating.  Brain plasticity may not always be for the good.  Like the strange compulsion to look for Honda Civic's everywhere in town.

Fact Checking With Too Much Information in Bloomington, Illinois in the exact same spot where David Foster Wallace once hit a two handed backhand passing shot lob in the form of Michael Chang for a clear winner during the year of the Adult Depends Undergarment.

The concert--It was just spewing out too much information

The Opening Act had Franz Liszt on keyboards, Neil Peart on drums, and Yingwie Malmsteen on guitar.

It was like Rachmaninoff screwing Umphrey's McGee and you think they are just about to finish and give you a chance to catch your breath but then you hear Umphrey's moans again and you know they are not done but going somewhere else.

And then my God you are buffeted by thump thump thump of Victor Wooten's base and your limbic system kicks in and you are propelled out of the dance pit and to the back door and you want out.

Please I'm going to die in here.  Let me out! I need to get outside to hear some ambient music. Brian Eno.  Brian Eno. Brian Eno. My reptilian brain claws at the door.

"Hey aren't you Andy Dick?"

I spin around to see this millennial woman speaking to me.

I do the mental calculus:  Andy Dick?  Isn't he blonde?   Doesn't he have hair? Isn't he a lot younger?  some sort of comedian...?

Nope, its not me, I tell her.

She does not give up:  "You're Andy Dick,"  can I get your autograph?

Later I must have been cajoled back to the stage by her or the guy I drove to the concert who honest to god saw Pigpen live with the Dead with Bear Owsley as the sound engineer and all the micrograms of auditory and visual effects that that must have entailed,

but anyway I see this millenial woman reach out from the stage and try to disconnect one of the monitors from Liszt's organ.  What was she thinking?

Now I know what you're thinking:  You had TMI, she was just trying to help.  And Liszt was playing a little loud.

The Bouncers didn't think so.  She looked at me pleading.  "They are kicking me out."

"What," I exclaimed, quickly coming to her defense. That's hardly an offense that would justify a complete revocation of her unrestricted license to attend this auspicious if not somewhat loud event. Can't you just put her in the penalty box or something for a couple of minutes?

Nope. She was gone and so was the opening act.

The main act that replaced them was well...   Let me put it to you this way.  In World War 2, the German's had this large tank called the Tiger that when you put it out on the open fields or steppes it was virtually invincible.  But when you put it the city like Stalingrad it became claustrophobic and cramped, and vulnerable to attacks from the rear.

Well, this band belonged in an open field or festival, not in this cramped little space and as a result was giving it to everyone in the ear.   (Not rear, mind you but ear).

I began sharing this little metaphor about the band to those around me and the guitarist, believing I was going to start some sort of insurrection motioned for the bouncers to remove me.

Then I was gone and no longer was listening to the band.  The End.

Editors Foot Note:  Mike we fact checked your little piece and wanted to point out some inaccuracies. First, based on our interviews of certain witnesses of the event, it was not a woman who compared you to Andy Dick, but it was a male millennial.  Further, though you did sign an autograph that night, you signed it Lenny Bruce not Andy Dick.  What were you thinking?  Second, though there was a women kicked out of the venue who meets your description, based on hearsay, she was not removed for trying to unplug the keyboardists' monitor (which she apparently did), but for a certain undisclosed activity she participated in in the bathroom of the venue.  Third, as you point out the women did have a license to attend the event, however, it was not an unrestricted licence.  Under the doctrine of patent exhaustion articulated in Lexmark v. Chinese Ripoff Shenjian Province Trading Co, 45 U.S. 345 (2017), the licences bestowed to concert patrons are non-transferable, and subject to a reasonable scope of trade restrictions.  Finally, though it appears you did transport an individual meeting the description who did see the Grateful Dead when Pigpen was alive and Owsley was the sound engineer, your intimation that it was Owsley acid that this individual partook over is speculative at best.   Based on our FOIA request to the DOJ, according to Owsely's indictment he was responsible for only 11% of the total blotter weight of acid supplied in the UC Berkeley Health Sciences department during the stated time frame.  The amalgamated weight applied to the Bay area in general may have been higher, but you made no such limitation in your article.  Suggest you rewrite this entry.  Finally, we suggest you rework the ending as a whole.  Especially the reference to Tiger Tanks.  Tiger tanks did not appear in the Eastern Front until the fall of 1943 in preparation for the German assault on the Kursk salient.  Simply put, there were no Tiger tanks in or around Stalingrad during the time of the offensive and subsequent counterattack there in the fall of 1942 and winter of 1943..  Finally, Andy Dick is exactly your age.   Almost to the month.  If you want to work with the Trump administration, details are important and this work does not meet our standards.

Buckle Up For CyberSecurity

Remember when cars didn't have seat belts and we as kids piled into the backseat? Today that could be considered child abuse.

Our attitudes about wearing seat belts changed.  We are now seeing a similar transformation in the area of cyber-security.   New Cyber-security laws, regulations, and lawsuits are going to make Cyber-security considerations for computer networks as common place using seat belts for protection against cyber-crime.    

We really don't have a choice but to change our attitudes. Cyber-crime is the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the planet.   Last year, over two billion records were lost or stolen amounting to a global cost of $500 billion.   That number is expected to quadruple in the next three years.   The ultra-sophisticated criminal enterprises and nation states behind the crimes have been reaping profits in excess of the global drug trade.  Surprisingly, small businesses with less than 200 employees have been the hardest hit.

Being the victim of a cyber-crime may be only the start of your woes.  When the department store Target suffered a well publicized data breach, it was then hit by over 140 lawsuits filed by consumers and banks whose personal and financial data was compromised.  And it is not just large retailers or financial institutions who are potentially liable to customers:  it is any company or business that possesses or safeguards confidential client information or customer data.  

The Chicago law-firm of Johnson & Bell was recently sued by what was believed to be the nation's first data security class action against a law firm brought by its clients.  The lawsuit alleged that Johnson & Bell's internal VPN (virtual private network) and email systems were prone to a "man-in-the middle" or "DROWN" cyber-attacks which could allow hackers to eavesdrop and steal confidential client information.  Interestingly, the Johnson & Bell lawsuit did not allege that any actual data breach occurred.

In response to this threat, the state of New York just enacted unprecedented requirements for financial firms and insurance companies to protect their networks and customer data from hackers and to disclose data breaches to state regulators.  Other states are expected to follow suit.

Last year, Illinois passed the "Personal Information Protection Act," 815 ILCS 530.   This statute placed requirements on "data collectors"--broadly defined to encompass corporations, financial institutions and retail operators to use "reasonable security measures" to protect record information from disclosure.   The failure to do so could constitute "an unlawful practice under the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act."  

Depending on the nature of your business there are already industry self-regulating and Governmental Cyber-Security guidelines in a number of areas:   Financial Services (Financial Industry Regulation Authority—FIRA); Retail (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard); Health care (JCAHO, HIPAA and HITECH); Banking (Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Counsel--FFIEC); Insurance (NAIC—Model Cyber-Security Law), just to name a few.

Indeed, compliance with the myriad of overlapping industry, state and federal statutes and regulations present a daunting task for any business going forward.  But make no mistake, it’s only a matter of time before we all are “buckled up” with Cyber-security.