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Do unto others before they do it to you… otherwise, you’re just asking for trouble.  Do it to ‘em even if they have no desire to do anything unto you. Let ‘em know who’s Boss….

“Digital City” convention at The City Center. Hardware, software, networking companies displayed high-tech consumables in pre-fab cubicles, tents, booths.  Largest exhibit: Tree of Knowledge Incorporated (TKI).
TKI software powered nearly every machine in The Nation.  Their “expo-booth” a leviathan Pyramid 2.0 Database long and wide as a bus. The most powerful in existence, paralleled and mirrored with multiple terabyte drives stacked floor to ceiling like amplifiers at a concert.

Early morning trucks rolled in to wire Big Media to the stars.
Immense wheels beat asphalt streets like drum-skins, deafening.  Big Media cameras; cables; generators; crews with headsets, walkie-talkies, official Big Media caps; wireless phones; caterers; buffet tables; Klieg lights; microphones; tents; guards; interns; factotums; trailers; wardrobes; make-up artists; lackeys; bit-players, stars and miles and miles of wire, all issued from Executive minds out West.

Horticultural heroics at the Public Relations firm. Office of the beautiful young Publicist. She harangued a client over the phone. Talk, talk. Every word a scream.
“Give the people what they want,” she said. “Tell the people what they want. Make the people want. Tell them, make them, give them. Understand?”
Slammed shut her phone. Wired, she addressed me.
“I’m right, you know. Look at me. Started low: restaurant and club openings, celebrity profile parties, City events. Junk publicity. Junk-pub.”

The Photographer exhibited downtown. Galleries, museums.  Big hit in the art community, but not in the infallible system that measures the worth of all things, from culture to fruit salad: The Market. Did it, is it, or will it make/be making money? If so, Artist + Sales = Success, anywhere from up-and-coming novice to assiduous craftsman to Genius, depending on The Market’s sober assessment.

Zarathustra’s Dragons stormed the stage like Cro-Magnon angels, a feral furry crew, too savage for Redemption, too innocent to Fall.  Where their hair ended and their clothes began was painful to discern. The lead singer wore an ornamental bone through his nose. A necklace of human teeth, plucked sentimentally, the press releases claimed, from the jaws of one night-stands, hung to his navel. The band looked like they’d been used to scrub a large, industrial kitchen.

During ostensible…when rights…before they bombed better than ourselves for lesser crimes than being angry, outraged, disgusted and appalled. Too long now, this far-wheedling has gone, too far. Too long now it’s been too long for yet another generation.
It is the moral fashion of our time to be lifeless, shit-less, sex-less, diseased creatures — “beasts” is far too elegant a word.
“What is, is what is, like, you know? Anyway, a new election’s coming up. They promised us peanut-butter and freedom. Or was that peanuts and free butter? Either way, it’s the lesser of evils.”

The Run, run free.
Everyday Day run.  See Plantman run.  Run Plantman, run.  Run. Run. Run.
Shed “work” clothes, don tank top, shorts, sneakers. Flamenco in the player. Down, down. The street. The crowded. The Big Park.
Mile-and-a-half dodge through and around flesh-traffic. The People, amassed, massive, thought-spasms amplified: energies colliding; faces sweating; hand-bags swinging.
No freedom like The Run.  Away, away.  Run, run.
Up the volume. Flamenco castanets, guitars. Women trilling, hands clapping — for me, dead center of the world.

If music be the food of love, slay on!
 

Friday midtown.  Friday payday.
“CEO Tobacconists.” Quality, overpriced cigars. Walk-in humidor. Air-conditioned smoking room. Customers relax. Smoke.  Watch wide-screen TV.  Recite the Smoker’s Ode:
green gone
brown dead
resurrection fire
leaf life
tumors bloom
like tulips
or teeth
oh wet pink lungs