Chapter 8: Editor's note

Dear Harry the Human Readers,

I am the unofficial editor of Harry's writings.  He sends them to me (as he did last week from South Korea) and I post them.  As you'll see (or have seen) in chapters 6 and 7, Harry and his new partners Anthony Roberts and Gregory (whose ideas run the world in 2044)  were undergoing severe mental stress from the bombardment of their psyches by telepathic waves from secret government agencies discovered by Harry to be developing telepathy as a weapon.  Harry has been leading the way for the small movement towards a rational humanity with invaluable intel concerning the global war we're being talked into, maintaining, in brief, that the manipulators' goal is that people think the war is their idea.  Now, however, the perpetrators have picked up Harry & Co.'s mental signatures and have taken counter-measures:  testing out a new weapon they call a "hallucitropic missile" (or "hassle") fired right out of people's heads, that can implant entire fictive scenarios in its victims.  The hassle attack on our three heroes was a partial success, causing them to believe for a time that what the world thinks is the country of North Korea is in fact a secret lab for the relatively small group of technocrats and billionaires who are plotting World War III, and Harry actually traveled to South Korea to follow what he thought was a hot tip.   The goal of the hassle attack, Harry says, was twofold: to shame him and his friends by publicly associating them with a crackpot idea (after which none of their non-crackpot ideas would get a hearing) as well as to, as much as possible, destroy their souls with sensations of failure and futility, stimulated by attendant frequencies in the hassle attack.  That last part worked pretty well in the case of Harry, who became disoriented and delusional in South Korea and needed assistance from his crew.  Harry is back on his feet now (he's a resilient character) and is in an airplane as I write, heading to a destination which it would be wise not to reveal.   I will say that Harry is following a trail left by the hassle attack.

With Harry's permission I decided to fill in Harry's report today with selections of his poetry. We hope you enjoy it.

Doug Lasken

Poetry by Harry the Human

Nematode

Oh brillig was the slithy tove,

All mum with crap that he had sold

So in he went, as we are told

A goal in mind, a windy road

A nematode, but I digress

Our subject still a wilderness,

Wherein such souls as look askance

At superficial happenstance,

To waddle in the cosmic dance

And ask the question, should the chance

Present itself, or even not-

For questions ask their own true selves

Forgiving answers to themselves.

And truth be told I need more rhymes

Not once not twice but three more times!

When last I looked....

Said the captain to first mate,

"It must be something that I ate,

for when I look across the sea

and think of what it all could be-

I feel that with my senses sate

I’ve found the will to recreate

that empty canvas I did see

when last I looked across the sea."

What did Jacob say to God?

Tell me about the last vision,

After the last

Reductio ad absurdum

-before the animal sleep sets in-

When the eye

Expanding beyond light

Sees its own context,

Just for a moment.

I want to see it now!

so that

I do not need death

to be alive.

One sin too many

One sin too many

tipped the scales,

mortality, not life

prevails.

For Eve, you know

just couldn't wait,

the female hunger

hard to sate.

The serpent eyed her

thinking how

he'd transfer all his weakness now:

The weakness of not wanting much

the weakness of

his cold dark touch.

Take this, he hissed,

God won't be pissed;

the obedient creature

is seldom missed.

Eve was not sure

and for a while

thought this is naughty,

not my style.

But then she thought

our life is hard in

this infernally pleasant

garden;

God must know

that stories need

a conflict

for the mind to heed.

Thus did the serpent

choose most fit

she who knew

before she bit

The fleshy fruit

raised to her jaw,

the story is our god's,

she saw.

And Adam

more prone to be led

saw the truth of what she said.

Swallowing hard

he looked about

in mortal fear

he turned to shout:

"Oh no! We're in

the story line,

we'll have to be interesting,

not devine!"

Creation's ratings, now assured,

though we'd rather not have any,

We wonder, should we have demurred

before one sin too many?

Extreme Friendliness Disorder

Sitting with Snaffles in the vet's waiting room

I read Bark magazine  

and wonder should we call

New Yorker magazine Speak?

And it seems the domestic dog originated

in the Middle East, not Asia,

but Williams Syndrome, bringing the curse of

Extreme Friendliness Disorder

is traceable, can be seen in dog genes.

Bark does not deal, I think, in irony,

in sadness.

Domestication a syndrome

Civilization a disorder

Friendliness a...oh God no-

My tail is wagging!

Ukraine

I.

My grandfather left you after you cut his father down

What do you want now,

why have you come around?

II.

He came to New York then Bismarck and sold liquor.

The Sioux and Germans came to buy in World War II

but World War II was quicker.

My dad quit the town- the city slicker!

And then I came, I saw, I begged to differ,

Los Angeles!

III.

What a haven from Ukraine you’ve been,

You let everybody float, we think we win!

Oh Ukraine, they even let us sin!

There's a Bard in my Yard

What if, though all we teach our young

Be naught but dreams we teach ourselves,

We- in the throes of later-aged ambition

To be more upon the stage

Than aged babes,

Suckling, passive, small accounted in the public eye,

Or domestic ciphers

Sweeping dust to dust

And daily circling mile on mile

In quiet contemplation

-hidden watched the generations flow,

While all around the greatest triumphs

From the greatest minds 

Did cause calamitous clash

And magnificent ornament of the soul?

But children too,

Uprooted on life’s playground,

Who face the rousing slap

And challenge of the intellect’s 

swampy doubt,

Think not of quiet corners

But of noisy triumph on the field

Demanding that we set aside

The limits of our scope

And take them on a joyous ride

Of certitude and hope.

Poem on demand

I told my writing group

I average three poems per year

because of inspiration

or lack of it

Or lack of perspiration?

Doesn't a poem need to be written

Right here?  Right now?  

Of course it does-

It always does

when the heart asks

“Where is my universe?

Does it come after this one?”

A poem will know

how to riddle us.

Ask the slime

Part I.  The problem

In the mirror it is trapped-

the solitary soul not easily unwrapped,

its universal juice reluctant to be sapped,

contaminated, begging you to tap

some poetry to prove that it's not full of crap.

Part II.  The crime!

I thought it best, as if you need but rhyme

to indicate the truth, to tell about the time

humanity emerged out of the slime

and saw the upward path it thought to climb

and found too late its orphaned soul- the crime!

Part III.  What now?

Whom to punish?  Who deserves the dreadful blame?

Do we need a gun?  At whom to aim?

Or rather ask again the slime, our single seed-

What did we leave in you?  What do we need?