.

We’re sitting here today on the heels of a 36-20 Patriots win over the Raiders (it’s still weird thinking of Cam Newton as the “Patriots quarterback” since that was Tom Brady for 20 or so years and to my knowledge the Patriots have never started a black quarterback in their history). Given that Cam Newton is our subject, then, it’s hardly surprising to observe there’s a considerable multitude of headlines surrounding the proceedings.

One incident proviso of such reporting opportunities has involved the shoes that the quarterback wore to the game which, according to masslive.com, indicated that he “salutes Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther on his feet during pregame.” There was another one after the game, which of course followed reports of his exceptional performance, that was something about how Cam Newton liking the “vibe” of playing on the Patriots. But in googling words in an attempt to find it, I got something else unexpected, the Boston Globe headline that “Cam Newton is giving off really good vibes at Patriots camp” and another one relating that “Patriots wideout Julian Edelman likes Cam Newton’s vibe.”

Now, let’s just backtrack here, because sometimes I just can’t even reconcile, or process, the reports I hear about a person. We’re talking about an individual here, who may actually also be the first black quarterback to ever start for the Patriots, for whom a Google search turns up not only literally no negativity but also this bright, toothy smile that anybody with anything remotely resembling a “heart” would want to root for. Anyway, we’ve in recent months leading up to this Patriots deal had any number of “analysts” condemning his attitude, his objectives, and everything else you could think of, including one individual who I believe was Skip Bayless asserting that “Cam Newton only cares about Cam Newton.” The general consensus was that he was egotistical, arrogant, a “prima donna,” etc., but maybe it’s time we reevaluate the implications of somebody having such an alleged “excess of self-esteem,” if you will. The guy has been nothing but a positive firebrand and a force to be reckoned with on the field with the New England Patriots. Of course, nobody who saw him take that hit in the ’18 playoff game against the Saints should have doubted his toughness or competitive drive. At least, reason would certainly seem to dictate otherwise.

It’s funny to think of entities in our world coming into existence. That is, a table comes from wood, and wood comes from trees, but what do trees come from?

And if your life is composed of letting other people tell you how to dress, looking at numbers and computing them, and keeping a “company wellness” factor in mind, how do you, you know, make your life good?

It’s the same thing as making a table when there’s no wood. It’s like the trees not knowing how to grow.

I recently had a day off from work. When they asked me how it had gone, I said, “Ok, the weather was really shi**y.”

My boss replied with, “That’s no excuse.”

He continued with the following oration: “You’re always supposed to do something, go out and run around naked in the rain, whatever.”

My boss is always spouting all these sort of left-brain orations, almost as if some sort of sort of formality. Actually, much of his job involves the left brain. Actually, much of all of our jobs involve the left brain.

But then, we live the lives of robots.

The right brain involves how to LIVE and this had, basically, been my boss’ point when he’d reprimanded me for not having a good day off: it’s our own responsibility to infuse these entities into our own lives, elements of magic, elements of renewal on a psycho-spiritual level, elements that distinguish our lives from that of a faceless, median executor of outside orders.

The right brain is the ANIMAL in us. For confirmation of this, given that it’s the side of the brain which would impart freedom on a day off, you need only observe that animals have been running naked in the rain since time immemorial. But then, maybe they’re just doing this out of necessity, like a cheetah running from predators on the African prairie. Dogs always run around a lot, though, for no reason, which is part of why they pi** me off, kind of. But then, a lot of people like this exact thing about dogs, I think — they go their own way and in this way have a refreshing effect on people looking at them. When in pain, they’re almost entirely tacit, withstanding the discomfort in what none would argue is a commendable sort of way. People can learn a lot from them, in this way. And they take away our pain, too, by making us less lonely. I’ve never had a dog. I have a boss, though, which at certain times seems like a similar kind of thing.

I was lying in bed one night, wondering why they didn’t have a vaccine for AIDS. I’d just seen a story on Facebook, in September 2020, “Most Americans to be vaccinated for COVID by July,” meaning 2021. It was even a couple of months ahead of schedule.

And I didn’t get into discussion of who was going to get the first access to the vaccine. It seems across the board it’s agreed that it should go to the elderly and higher risk.

But I did get thinking about AIDS. This is a disease that’s been around for 30 years and has a 100-minus-Magic-Johnson mortality rate, more or less, to COVID’s 5%, or whatever.

I had to get tested a couple of times. I’d been raped while drunk by cops more than once. It’s a fu**ed-up world we live in. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Just looking over to my desk I found this pamphlet I’d procured my last time into AIDS Assist — “PREP,” or “Pre-Exposure Prophlaxis.” It’s a pill that you can take continually to help prevent HIV infection, as opposed, of course, to a vaccine, which is only a one-time deal and sometimes can last your whole life as an immunity-granting agent.

Now, I’m not a scientist, but I couldn’t help but lie there in my bed and wonder if the differences between the two diseases, how one can accompany a vaccine and the other not, were purely anatomical, or perhaps political, as well. And I got to thinking about evil, both cellular and corporeal. I thought of this dude I work with who survived cancer. He’s got a real good attitude — every young, attractive girl he sees in work he goes, “Hi, sweetheart!” He’s homophobic but that’s just ‘cause he’s old and he likes talking to me about baseball and sometimes music. And I really don’t think The Cars were “a bunch of queers.” But I guess that’s beside the point.

But I wondered about his bedroom cogitation, as mine. I wondered what really pictorially manifested in his mind, when he lay there envisioning the world, this chasm, this abyss, this unrelenting arbiter of the unexpected and potentially deadly. And I wondered about his demarcation of the self and the world. You’ve gotta assign one thing to one and another to the other, or so it seems. The animal strives to put food into his belly. The self strives to reach an overarching truth. The human strives to be ready for anything, hence showing his pointedly delusional ambition. The messiah strives to save. The final is ficticious, so death stares us in the face, like a flooding, black lagoon that is finally almost as inviting as it is menacing, that final messiah at the end of that long ant’s tunnel, back there, grinning and mouthing the words, “I told you so.”

She stands as something

That’s been scrubbed of animosity

In a tie-dyed sanitation mask

And we make great conversation,

She high-fives me with her left hand

(Which is maybe more casual than the right)

And her body is what I like but

.

God damn I like a lot of things on this night

Like the old lady who asks me to dance with her,

Like the dude up on stage playing original songs on guitar

With his girlfriend singing

And ok maybe that gorgeous, busty 23-year-old server over there

.

And I think about my existence

And the posing aspects of casual love making,

The cinematic emptiness and the

Din of unnecessary dirtiness,

And I lean to the side with my tall Yuengling

And feel ok anyway.

There is a question of whether,

For black people,

American experiences can be “ingenuous.”

.

If they are,

Then

Black people

Truly have a home here.

.

Black people in America,

Though,

Typically,

Are the leaders in arts,

.

And for artists,

Experiences are fake,

And their creations offer a foil

Within the realm of “real,”

.

Hence the manifestations at all

And the paradigmatic obviation of creation’s malady.

In your mind

Is a fractal figment

So base,

So infinitesimal,

.

That it

Can naught exist

But in the spotlight and

Among hordes of sweaty animals,

Hoisting protest signs and

Gathering press in

Lashing out against your own natural miscellany.

The gay, bald, shaved-headed man

Walks into the underside

Of the suburban town

And I look at him

 

For the same reason

Why I listen to

The Velvet Underground:

He is the velvet, underground,

 

And

I

Know he will

 

Not bring me down as his

Gait is focused

 

But his mouth is busy

Along the dandelions of the ground and

Everything is renewed.

As a man

I am composed of many layers

And at my core

I must admit lies Kiersten,

As the layers we carry

Every day

As our skin

Wind up morphing

Into

The

Psychedelic stars of another,

Inevitably,

Anyway,

And becoming interchangeable with them.

 

Kiersten was a wiry,

Slender,

Honest woman of 27 in 2011 at McCormick’s

Who gave me the best hug I’ve ever gotten in my life,

A hug that gripped my heart and

Milked out my nectar of adulation,

Which I still hone this way and that as my fire

To this day.

 

I couldn’t precipitate our discourse

But I’ll always remember how she sat there speaking to me

So honestly,

Broke up our pool game with the declaration that

“I have to potty,”

And with headstrong fervor at the end of the night said,

“I think I’m going to take my leave of you,”

With her number by this time in my phone.

 

I can see her walking,

In my mind,

Through town,

With a big purse,

With a head down,

Feeling bad and

I hope something turns it up and

I hope her man sees everything I see.

Not many

But a few

In the past

Have said

“Forget what you know”

Or

“Everything you’ve ever learned is wrong.”

.

Well, the world beats what you know

Out of you eventually,

Anyway,

Which is why people turn a fatal disease

Into a political issue,

To reignite their own vocal chords,

If nothing else.

.

But how’s this:

The religious man is addled,

Tense, skittish and pensive,

Proving that religion doesn’t really help anything,

It only deepens people’s shrouds behind which they hide

In a false attempt to cloak their own maladies,

.

OR,

.

The religious man is going through some SH**,

Some sh** you’ve probably never imagined or seen in your life,

And the religion,

In all its miniscule tarot scents,

Is drops of water from a helicopter on the forest fire,

Is

Better than nothing, for all of us.