2014-02-11

Peter R Harley`Monroe 2013

13.12.26.. 14.1.13: pol/harley`monroe 2013
Peter R Harley`Monroe 2013

amazon review 2.15

Monroe 2013 was a book of secrets revealed,
like what the prophets did
when "prophet" meant a voice correcting the world:
making plain what tends to be concealed
as the world hides from itself .
. as for "prophet" meaning a futurist,
he seems to hint we could become extinct,
whereas I tend to expect transhumanism:
we will genetically design intelligent species
that may be better adapted to the future
than the humans we are now .

. there were a few times where the imagery seemed
incomplete; but, I likely missed the point;
for example, look what happened on p77:
the text failed to explain how "the magic was lost";
but, I didn't need to know that because
I could be completely immersed in
the imagery that was provided there:
we had friends, and we had the magic,
and someday you come to a place where
you remember that what we had
was lost along the way .

. some uses of adult language
didn't seem to complement the context;
again, I likely failed to get the point .

. the syntax sometimes seemed too thick
or of an unfamiliar idiom .
. he comes from a highly educated family
while I have a rather humble technical degree
without much exposure to classic writings
and almost no study of poetry .

. and finally,
for the section on religion and politics
it would be easy to overlook any writing errors
since I already knew what he was trying to say:
. I very much appreciated his sympathy for the Palestinians,
and his protests against the War on Terror .

. here are some ideas and their page numbers:

p8: the god stirring:
[. very humorous anthropomorphization of the god .]

p11: a Jerusalem to see:
. let's make a realistic religion .

p16: the uncredentialed savior message:
. the world's not hearing it from prophets like Jesus,
so let's give the uncredentialed poet a try:
we need to be a lot better at humanistic values
or risk extinction("universal death").

p17: friends:
[. the author's character moves from
presenting himself as a poet with a prophet's role
to one of having friends with bad behaviors
so I wondered if the message was this:
. if you are a prophet (tending to be an outcast
for requiring change of your stiff-necked culture),
then all your friends may abandon you
except the other outcasts:
some friends may be other prophets
but most will be the less well-behaved outcasts
such as moochers and liars .]

p18: food:
. the goodness of culture's food has me
praising the collective self,
the super(excellent) human intelligence
that is our supernatural parent .

p19: bouquet of change:
. genetic engineering could vastly improve our life
(with pig farms smelling like roses)
but perhaps you would rather not have change;
because, you live spaciously next to a pig farm:
if your home was turned to smelling like a rose
then everybody would start crowding you
wanting to live where you live .

p20: justice ordinarily:
. just as you choose for others,
your guardian angel* will choose for you,
( ordinarily there is cosmic justice;
but in the murkiness of reality ...).
*: ("guardian angel" refers to the
supernatural source of your emotions
deciding your stress or health).

p21: Mary's army:
. "Mary's army" are those that avenge
the mother of persecuted Jesus .
[. the army of Jesus, not interested in vengeance,
is concerned with peace as defined by Jesus:
maintaining military strength through
national cohesiveness
by ensuring all citizens are treated well .]

[. Jesus came from a nation built by the god
in a clever way:
your home was a desert, Zion;
and this desert cannot give you the wealth to
multiply and spread your influence;
but, you will be a favorite guest of
a wealthy land's ruling elite;
and there you will build your numbers;
but you will not be favored by the next ruler
and your large numbers will be enslaved
thereby forcing you back to Zion,
your home in the desert,
where your large numbers will easily dominate Zion,
which more than compensates for being enslaved .
. this theme recurs for Jesus:
an unappreciated prophet of the Jewish people;
he is enslaved by persecutors,
by the culture he was sent to transform;
but, his spirit escapes into a great number
who build Jesus' nation with New Jews,
thereby offering some compensation
for his crying mother, Mary .]

[. Mary's army would be fueled by tales of
Jesus being a deity, the son of a deity;
but, the next prophet of the New Jews
-- Islam's Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad
ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim --
would remind Mary's army that Jesus was a prophet,
not a god fathered by a god .]

[. Mary's army mistreated the Old Jews
who were seen as persecuting Jesus
and making mother Mary weep,
while Islam defended the Old Jews
as long as Zion was controlled by Islam .
. recently, Islam lost control of Zion
when Mary's army gave control of it
exclusively to the Old Jews .]

. Islam's army retaliated with guerrilla tactics,
which is also known as terrorism,
so, Mary's army would have to do the same:
remote controlled rocket-launching drones
would keep the drone operator safe,
but would kill many innocent civilians;
also, kidnapping and tortured confessions
would provide the drone kill lists .
. it was a long war,
and many teens would be recruited .
. Mary is a liberated woman now,
hardly the queen of peace .

p22: action at a distance:
don't lose all your soul:
. the soul gives us inconvenient truths
and then we wear a mask for the group
that filters that truth
to generate thoughts that are compatible with
the group's dogma .
. in the souless, even one's instinctive opinions
conform to the group's dogma;
[eg, the christian with soul will believe
christian dogma is a good model just for
preserving one's culture;
whereas the souless will believe
the dogma is a good model for everything
including physics and history .
. those who have a soul will often
hide ideas about telepathy
whereas the souless really see no clues
that supernature exists, connects us,
and syncronizes our thoughts .]
. when many lose their soul,
there is a lemming disorder:
"nobody is doing everything" .
[. the title, "action at a distance",
refers to being remote-controlled by dogma .]

p23: one human desert:
[. Israel was converted by militarized immigration
from Islamic to Jewish(Zionist) policing .]
. Israel still contains large pockets of Muslims
but Zionist police prevent them from digging wells ..
[ apparently to control water distribution? ]
. when Israel was conquered by Zionists,
many Muslims were expelled from their land
-- land passed down along dozens of generations;
Israel is a human desert of religious racism .

[. the native Muslims of Israel
were not compensated for this land
because they were considered to be
of the same Muslim nationality
as the foreign armies that tried and failed
to drive the Jewish Zionists out of Israel .
. if the world wanted Israel to be
a "homeland for the Jewish people"
the world leaders who were
in a position to engineer that
should have declared imminent domain
and paid the Muslims to buy property elsewhere;
instead, the world turned Israel into another inhumane nightmare;
on the other hand,
while the Muslim's hostile reaction was natural,
it was not in their best interest:
had the Muslims truly accepted Jesus as a prophet,
they would have turned the other cheek
(peace is more important than sovereignty)
and their land would not have been confiscated .]

p24: Cairo:
. Cairo politics seems to bother the usa
much like Libya did, but unlike in Libya,
usa doesn't seem interested in intervention;
[ this might be explained by the fact that
Cairo, Egypt is an important ally of Israel,
and accepts usa's dollar as their reserve currency .]

p26: Libyans:
. usa did apply "truth and justice" in Libya
but the terrorists are still there;
[ however what is no longer there is talk about
replacing the dollar as the middle east's reserve currency:
there is no talk of gold dinars,
there is a new national bank in Libya
which uses the usa dollar as its reserve currency .]

p27: New Year's resolution:
. imagine a ruling elite who pledged to
kill fewer and spend less doing it;
they would pledge with their hand on their heart
but also on their gonads,
because they will need a change of luck
--[ to become innocent and given another chance,
ask your gonads for a new body .]

p28: most world wars:
[. and speaking of a change among the elites
this next poem compares the
starting of most* world-wide wars
with a temper snapping in response to
a stuck sleeping bag zipper
( imagine you so hate that zipper in that moment
you will destroy your own nest
drunk on the assurance that the destruction will
force a more pleasing zipper replacement .
. it's one's own psychological enertia one is fighting:
one part of you hates this zipper,
but another part has hated the thought of
taking the time to re-engineer the zipper pocket ).]

. do you suppose there would be
a more conservative, less emotional, response
and an avoidance of the next world war
if the leaders of the world's defenses
were all elders?
[ does an "elder" have the oldest age,
the oldest money, or the greatest experience ?
. tribal elders represent their tribe,
while church elders represent a culture
bent on replicating and globalizing itself .]

[. the purpose of most wars has been choosing between
mobocracy vs aristocracy,
freedom vs dogma,
Islam vs Christianity,
capitalism vs protectionism,
and poverty vs population control .
. selfishness begat morality policing
begat civil unrest (freedom vs dogma)
begat nationalism as distraction
(we must unite to fight the external threat!)
hence protesting against morality begat
Catholicism (conquer the world for Jesus is god)
begat Islam (Jesus is a prophet not a god).
. also, industrialization begat capitalism;
unregulated capitalism and religious wars
begat communism (equality for the labor class
and conquer the world for ending religious war).]

p29: for the pirates:
[. the poem after prevention of a next world-wide war
is telling a police story from the perspective of
the pirates;
and an interesting coincidence is that
Islam's prophet was said to be a pirate
(see wikipedia's Caravan raids);
and if there is a next world-wide war,
it will be over defense of Israel against Islam .]

p30: tar sands:
. in this golden age of biofuels
we are making more oil messes not less,
and the tar sands in Canada are an icon of that blight .
. in the geologic time scales of Mother Nature,
our pollution will be of no consequence:
a world of dirt "cannot be soiled or cleaned";
[ -- this poem came right after talk of pirates,
and World-Wide War prevention;
so, it had me thinking:
in fact, within in our lifetime,
a very dirty world will be very much cleaned .]

p31: prosperity:
[ colorful examples of the wisdom of nature:
. we are busy building our wealth and our numbers
because we are preparing for a great trial
that will take much from us, numbers and wealth .]

p33: killing is popular:
p44: the West:
p35: vs(v)ggg&th
"(the very secular (venal) god of
good gov't and transparent hypocrisy)":
. the usa's war on Terror has turned the usa into
something like what the usa would claim of
their enemy, the communists
-- it's the dawn of a new dark age
with Extraordinary rendition:
[ off-shoring of CIA interrogations
to countries where torture is employed .]

. that ends my favorite part,
the section on religion and politics .

[ section Transportation: ]

p58: on the value of travel:
[ this poem is a riot .]

p59: peg-leg pete:
[ another refreshing instance of
humorously humanized pirates .]

[ section Marriage & Family: ]

p65: Miss Goodbody
[ haunting .]

p93: the high gristle diet:
[. you might think think he is kidding
going from veganism to "sausage",
but there is some science behind it (see Dr. Ray Peat ).
. sausage and hotdogs are given as
typical sources of gristle;
but, the ideal "gristle" source is gelatin
if you can't make your own bone broth .]

[ section Quirks of Self: ]

p94: oncologist:
[. after humanizing the pirates,
there is an equally humorous demonization of oncologists .]

p97: you:
[ about being born again: ]
. there are memories of self as criminal,
now you are the judge;
"you are the source of you lately,
and worthwhile . you think . "

p98: vagabond:
"but feel my choler, quick as a dog's"
[ choler (in medieval science and medicine)
is one of the four bodily humors,
identified with bile,
believed to be associated with
a peevish or irascible temperament.]

p100: it rained on me:
[. a colorful example of when it rained,
"me" was transformed into some other character .]

p101: scab:
. the process of death and rebirth is like
a scab that is so large it peels off in stages
precariously hanging on while catching on things
threatening to rip up the new work .

p102: first orgasm:
[. reminded me of Jesus saying:
"the truth shall set you free".
. truth can be a bit of a bump in the road,
but the end result is worth it;
and, the punchline is quite humorous .]

[. the next several poems are also quite truthful,
but all the more interesting:
continuing to draw you back in,
like remembering a recent dream .]

conclusion:
. Monroe 2013 was a book of secrets revealed,
like what the prophets did
when "prophet" meant a voice correcting the world:
making plain what tends to be concealed
as the world hides from itself .

the original version

1.13: conclusion:
. Monroe 2013 was a book of secrets revealed,
like what the prophets did
when "prophet" meant a voice correcting the world:
making plain what tends to be concealed
as the world hides from itself .
. as for "prophet" meaning a futurist,
he seems to hint we could become extinct,
whereas I tend to expect transhumanism:
we will genetically design intelligent species
that may be better adapted to the future
than the humans we are now .
1.10:
. there were a few times where the imagery seemed
 incomplete; but, I likely missed the point;
for example, look what happened on p77:
the text failed to explain how the magic was lost;
but, I didn't need to know that because
I was completely immersed in
the imagery that was provided there:
we had friends, and we had the magic,
and someday you come to a place where
you remember that what we had
was lost along the way .
. some uses of adult language
didn't seem to complement the context;
again, I likely failed to get the point .

. the syntax sometimes seemed too thick
or of an unfamiliar idiom .
. he comes from a highly educated family
while I have a rather humble technical degree
without much exposure to classic writings
and almost no study of poetry .

. and finally,
for the section on religion and politics
it would be easy to overlook any writing errors
since I already knew what he was trying to say .

2.11: intro to excerpts:
. the following is a summary of favorite parts
with page numbers from the paperback;
the [parts in brackets] are my own thoughts
but were inspired by reading this book,
and you might have similar thoughts .

12.26:
p8: the god stirring:
. the god's thoughts become our actions;
let's hope in 2013 that the god puts an end to
engaging in a slumber filled with nightmares
and instead gets some organized thoughts
for inducing some humane actions among the religious .
--[ wow, 2013 is a great year to hope that;
because 2014...2016 may be the end of wwIII
resulting in a globalized federation that is
powerful enough to enforce world peace .]

p11: a Jerusalem to see:
. let's make a realistic religion
that loves without despair
(religious wars like Zionism offer no hope)
[ unless wwIII brings lasting peace .]

p12: O for three:
. prayed for peace but instead got
9/11 kicking off wwIII?
perhaps wishing for WWIII,
we could have had world peace instead!
--[ seems to know WWIII brings peace
but we won't feel lucky getting there! ]

p13: Jesus to Mary:
. Jesus[ I first spelled this "jus'us"]
was an example of a tragic conception story
resulting in an offspring with a tragic life;
[ how did mother Mary get the seed
of someone she wasn't married to?
or why would her fiance deny having premarital sex?
perhaps to hide what would shame the community?
. how would that ill-conceived start in life
shape Jesus' role as a reformer of his society? ]
. suffering begat suffering;
the quality of our conceptions,
the foundation of motherhood,
is the paramount event teaching us to
find ways to avoid suffering
instead of just bearing more suffering .

2014.1.1:
p16: the uncredentialed savior message:
. we need to be a lot better at humanistic values
or risk extinction("universal death").

p17: friends:
. if you are a prophet (tending to be an outcast
for requiring change of your stiff-necked culture),
then all your friends may abandon you
except the other outcasts:
some friends may be other prophets
but mostly they will be moochers and sociopaths .

p18: food:
. the goodness of culture's food has me
praising the collective self,
the super(excellent) human intelligence
that is our supernatural parent .

p19: bouquet of change:
. genetic engineering could vastly improve our species
(with pig farms smelling like roses)
but perhaps you would rather not have change;
because, you live spaciously next to a pig farm:
if your home was turned to smelling like a rose
then everybody would start crowding you
wanting to live where you live .
--[ I may be a genetically imperfect
but my descendants are me going on forever;
genetic engineering may seem like extinction,
rather than a rosy New Path .
. even if we implement genetic engineering
we still haven't solved overpopulation:
. we would rather out-breed the next guy
than out-own the next guy;
we'd rather out-breed other cultures
than maintain a wealth that could ensure
employment and resources for all our children .
. the purpose of capitalism seems to be
deciding who should breed more
(look! I can afford more children!);
but, capitalism is a jealous god:
the poor have more kids anyway,
and then are willing to take unsafe jobs
-- delivered into harm's way --
trying to avoid the resulting poverty .]

p20: justice ordinarily:
. just as you choose for others,
your guardian angel* will choose for you,
( ordinarily there is cosmic justice;
but in the murkiness of reality ...).
*: (the supernatural source of your emotions
deciding your stress or health).

p21: Mary's army:
. "Mary's army" are those that avenge
the mother of persecuted Jesus .
[. the army of Jesus, not interested in vengeance,
is concerned with peace as defined by Jesus:
maintaining military strength through
national cohesiveness
by ensuring all citizens are treated well .]

[. Jesus came from a nation
built by god in a clever way:
their home was a desert, Zion,
this desert cannot give you the wealth to
multiply and spread your influence,
but you will be a favorite guest of
a wealthy land's ruling elite;
and there you will build your numbers;
but you will not be favored by the next ruler
and your large numbers will be enslaved
thereby forcing you back to Zion,
your home in the desert,
where your large numbers will easily dominate Zion,
which more than compensates for being enslaved .
. this theme recurs for Jesus:
an unappreciated prophet of the Jewish people;
he is enslaved by persecutors,
by the culture he was sent to transform;
but, his spirit escapes into a great number
who build Jesus' nation with New Jews,
some compensation for his crying mother, Mary .]

[. Mary's army would be fueled by tales of
Jesus being a deity, the son of a deity;
but, the next prophet of the New Jews
-- Islam's Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad
ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim --
would remind Mary's army that Jesus was a prophet,
not a god fathered by a god .]

[. Mary's army mistreated the Old Jews
who were seen as persecuting Jesus
and making mother Mary weep,
while Islam defended the Old Jews
as long as Zion was controlled by Islam .
. recently, Islam lost control of Zion
and Mary's army gave control of it
exclusively to the Old Jews .]

. Islam's army retaliated with guerrilla tactics,
which is also known as terrorism,
so, Mary's army would have to do the same:
remote controlled rocket-launching drones
would keep the drone operator safe,
but would kill many innocent civilians;
also, kidnapping and tortured confessions
would provide the drone kill lists .
. it was a long war,
and many teens would be recruited .
. Mary is a liberated woman now,
hardly the queen of peace .

p22: action at a distance:
don't lose all your soul:
. the soul gives us inconvenient truths
and then we wear a mask for the group
that filters that truth
to generate thoughts that are compatible with
the group's dogma .
. in the souless,
even one's instinctive opinions
conform to the group's dogma;
[eg, the christian with soul will believe
christian dogma is a good model for
preserving one's culture;
whereas the souless will believe
that dogma is a good model for representing
reality and physics .]
. when many lose their soul,
there is a lemming disorder:
"nobody is doing everything" .
[. the title, "action at a distance",
may remind us that those who have a soul
will hide ideas about telepathy
whereas the souless really see no clues
that supernature exists, connects us,
and syncronizes our thoughts .]

p23: one human desert:
. Israel was converted by aggressive immigration
and finally by war,
from Islamic to Jewish policing .
. Israel still contains large prockets of Muslims
but Israel prevents them from digging wells ..
[ apparently to police water distribution? ]
. when Israel was conquered by Zionists,
many Muslims were expelled from their land
-- land passed down along dozens of generations;
[. the native Muslims of Israel
were not compensated for this land
because they were considered to be
of the same Muslim nationality
as the foreign armies that tried and failed
to drive the Old Jews out of Israel .
. if the world wanted Israel to be
a "homeland for the Jewish people"
the world leaders who were
in a position to engineer that
should have declared imminent domain
and paid the Muslims to buy property elsewhere;
instead, the world turned Israel into
another inhumane nightmare ]
-- a "human desert" of religious racism .

[. defenders of Zionism will point out that
Jews were forced by Nazis to escape only to Israel,
and that Muslims were not sympathetic to
this German Jewish predicament,
but the Nazis were quickly crushed,
and the Jews of Israel could have been relocated
to more welcoming places like usa;
instead, well after the Nazi crisis was over,
Zionists were rushing the Muslims
and making them feel crowded and threatened .
. the Nazi's marching of Jews to Zion
was a conspiracy to kickstart WWIII's Armageddon .
. on the other hand,
while the Muslim's hostile reaction was natural,
it was not in their best interest:
had the Muslims truly accepted Jesus as a prophet,
they would have turned the other cheek,
and their land would not have been confiscated .
. the Muslim's talk about Jesus as prophet
only to lure in the admirers of Jesus:
Islam was designed to be a war machine
meant to counteract the christian's war machine .]

p24: Cairo:
. Cairo politics seems to bother the usa
much like Libya did, but unlike in Libya,
usa doesn't seem interested in intervention;
[ this might be explained by the fact that
Cairo, Egypt is an important ally of Israel,
and accepts usa's dollar as their reserve currency .]

p26: Libyans:
. usa did apply "truth and justice" in Libya
but the terrorists are still there;
[ however what is no longer there
is talk about replacing the dollar
as the middle east's reserve currency:
there is no talk of gold dinars,
there is a new national bank in Libya
which uses the usa dollar as its reserve currency .]

1.8:
p27: New Year's resolution:
. imagine a ruling elite who pledged to
kill fewer and spend less doing it;
they would pledge with their hand on their heart
but also on their gonads,
because they will need a change of luck,
[ a change in the ties that bind us to
the whims of elites:
just as the heart pumps the new thoughts
through the hard questions
that balance self vs community
and balance present vs future .
. the gonads pump in new people
to replace what has fallen away:
do we allow an excess of replacements
or do we allow the numerous early deaths
that would welcome so many replacements? ]

[. the fecund ones with the oh-so-fruitful gonads
need balancing by the elite:
if we create more people than we can comfortably afford,
do we engineer a depression in order to
build cash among the elite
to fund a war that kills the excess people?
. or do we centrally plan reproduction,
matching it to natural death rates?
. how are we connected to the elites now? ]

p28: most world wars:
. and speaking of a change in the way that
the elites deal with excess population,
this next poem compares
the starting of most* world-wide wars
with a temper snapping in response to
a stuck sleeping bag zipper:
[ you so hate that zipper in that moment
you will destroy your own nest
drunk on the assurance that
the destruction will force
a more pleasing zipper replacement .
. it's one's own psychological enertia one is fighting:
one part of you hates this zipper,
but another part has hated the thought of
taking the time to re-engineer the zipper pocket .]
*:
[ WWIII was unlike most world-wide wars,
in that it was started with 9/11,
a sneaky, pre-meditated false-flag operation .]

. do you suppose there would be
a more conservative, less emotional, response
if the leaders of the world's defenses
were all elders?
[ does an "elder" have the oldest age,
the oldest money, or the greatest experience ?
. tribal elders represent their tribe,
while church elders represent a dogma:
a conspiracy to expand a moralistic culture .
. the purpose of the 3 world wars
has been to build up and break down
an ancient hate between political factions:
mobocracy vs aristocracy,
freedom vs dogma,
Islam vs Christianity,
capitalism vs protectionism,
and poverty vs population control .]

[. kidding aside of who elders are,
the question poetically being asked is,
what sort of change in leadership
would prevent the next world-wide war?
. are we the masses blind to
the role we play in the war-making?
. there is going to be increasing poverty
because of our overpopulation,
and our privacy rights will enable
crime and pockets of absolute power
that corrupt absolutely .
. the only thing the rich can do is help us with
falling in the direction we were already going;
like the bullfighter, so like the politician .]

[. and it's easy to find wars for us:
our overpopulation, and our growing poverty,
with its demands for wealth distribution;
wars are easy because our politics differ so:
. selfishness begat morality policing
begat civil unrest (freedom vs dogma)
begat nationalism as distraction
(we must unite to fight the external threat!)
hence protesting against morality begat
Catholicism (conquer the world for Jesus is god)
begat Islam (Jesus is a prophet not a god).
. also, industrialization begat capitalism;
unregulated capitalism and religious wars
begat communism (equality for the labor class
and conquer the world for ending religious war).]

[. so you see?
the masses have one massive problem;
and, your only job as a wealthy guy
is to make sure the masses don't eat
your wealth along with theirs;
ironically the only hope out of this
cycle of war and poverty breeding
is a final world war
that ushers in a technology so powerful
that perfect justice can be implemented
with robotics doing the policing
(ie, no devil-tempted humans
invading our privacy or violating our trust):
perfect, pervasive policing
that ends breeding beyond our means .
. and for the rightious,
an end to the privacy rights
that are the key enabler of the occult:
(in the home) pedophila, child abuse,
(on the street) slavery, torture, thievery,
(in your face) cancer-causing pollution .]

p29: for the pirates:
. the poem after prevention of WWIII
is telling a police story
from the perspective of the pirates;
[ and an interesting coincidence is that
Islam's prophet was said to be a pirate
(see wikipedia's Caravan raids);
and, the reason wwIII happens is that
we are not sympathetic to the Islam
that was expelled from Israel by the Zionists .]

p30: tar sands:
. in this golden age of biofuels
we are making more oil messes not less,
and the tar sands in Canada
are an icon of that blight .

wwIII reminds one of the tar sands:
. you might think after a world-wide war,
the world would be a much dirtier place
within your lifetime;
but in the geologic time scales of Mother Nature,
wwIII will be of no consequence:
a world of dirt "cannot be soiled or cleaned";
in fact, within in your lifetime,
a very dirty world will be very much cleaned .

1.10:
p31: prosperity:
the wisdom of nature:
. we are busy building our wealth and our numbers
because we are preparing for a great trial
that will take much from us, numbers and wealth .

p33: killing is popular:
p44: the West:
p35: vs(v)ggg&th
(the very secular (venal) god of
good gov't and transparent hypocrisy)
. war is so sad,
but the usa's Zionist crusades
have turned usa into something like
what they would claim of an enemy
-- it's the dawn of a new dark age
with Extraordinary rendition:
[ off-shoring of CIA interrogations
to countries where torture is employed .]

--[ that ends my favorite part,
the section on religion and politics .]

[ section Transportation: ]

p58: on the value of travel:
[ this poem is a riot .]

p59: peg-leg pete:
[ another refreshing instance of
humorously humanized pirates .]

[ section Marriage & Family: ]

p65: Miss Goodbody
[ haunting .]

p93: the high gristle diet:
[. you might think think he is kidding
going from veganism to "sausage",
but there is some science behind it .
. sausage and hotdogs are given as
typical sources of gristle;
but, the ideal "gristle" source is gelatin
or fresh bone broth .]

[ section Quirks of Self: ]

p94: oncologist:
[. after humanizing the pirates,
there is an equally humorous
demonization of oncologists .]

p97: you:
[ about being born again: ]
. there are memories of self as criminal,
now you are the judge;
"you are the source of you lately,
and worthwhile . you think . "

1.11:
p98: vagabond:
"but feel my choler, quick as a dog's"
[ choler (in medieval science and medicine)
is one of the four bodily humors,
identified with bile,
believed to be associated with
a peevish or irascible temperament.]

1.13:
p100: it rained on me:
[. a colorful example of when it rained,
"me" was transformed into some other character .]

p101: scab:
. the process of death and rebirth is like
a scab that is so large it peels off in stages
precariously hanging on while catching on things
threatening to rip up the new work .

p102: first orgasm:
[. reminded me of Jesus saying:
"the truth shall set you free".
. truth can be a bit of a bump in the road,
but the end result is worth it;
and, the punchline is quite humorous .]

[. the next several poems are also quite truthful,
but all the more interesting:
continuing to draw you back in,
like remembering a recent dream .]

1.13: conclusion:
. Monroe 2013 was a book of secrets revealed,
like what the prophets did
when "prophet" meant a voice correcting the world:
making plain what tends to be concealed
as the world hides from itself .

1 comment:

Philip Torrance (ADDN) said...

co.amazon/harley`monroe 2013
/Life Tourist snapshots:
. this was a really fun read,
and I had a lot more to say about it,
but it was pointed out to me by gentle readers
that a lot of commentary about poetry, like a novel,
is sort of a spoiler for those about to read it .
. let me just say I found it quite engaging;
and, I believe other adults will too
(contains some bleeped language,
and may seem irreligious at times).
. it has a whole section on "politics and religion"
which is quite relevant to post-9/11 issues,
while the other poems are Life Tourist snapshots .