What happens when you eat ice cream. (Yes, that’s a statement.) I don’t know what happens to you, then, but when I am getting it out the dog hears the freezer door open and comes right over there by me. She’s a golden retriever more or less, I don’t know if that’s important; but she hears everything (like magnetic door-gasket seals separating from the ice-box going, “KRACKLE!”). Dogs and poets are like people..who like ice cream. Hooked! (they are). Greeks didn’t make ice cream because they got no ice, ’cause over there the weather’s nice; and there were poets, too..and flies! like cause and effect; which didn’t go unnoticed by THEM! the Greek’s they had the scientists, too, believe you/me, –though, could all be false (lies). But anyway I guess they invented the poetry (da Greeks did it didn’t just invent itself). Poets don’t tell it like it is, they tell you a story..about WHAT IT IS (brother). Philosophers – immortals, like James Brown: “It’s a ma-a-an’s world..” – did all the hard brain work and poets do what comes easily, naturally..the clean-up; and that touches on philosophy, but is not bound by it. Well philosophy is great, up to a point; until it is consumed by its own rules (weighing upon the SOUL). Where is the fun in that? Poest,POET’S! poets connive to figure out how to bypass the rules, and people hate that about us. “Well we have to do it like this so why shouldn’t they?” Good poets are few. And they hate all the bad poets. Why? because the bad poets suck all the oxygen out of the room whenever the awards are being handed out..for the poetry (for more on that see Rod McKuen; whose name is a bad poem by the way I think I think you..should think about it). The Unknown Poet probably, when no one was looking, will donate a turd, in lieu of a word. Is that called concrete poetry? Maybe..after it hardens, some (might take a few days). Is it any good? turd, at the gate; ‘stead-o’-words, like on a scrap of paper..Mate?? Only the gods of poetry know that; but taken as a HOLE, and left for the philosophers, or linguists to decide, it may be brilliant! or just sour grapes. I believe that’s a fable, from the Greeks of course! most of our stuff IS, left-overs from an estate sale set up on the Mount Olympus, nothing new under the sun, beating down on the heads of all us poet-centaurs hanging out, pen in hoof amid buzzing of beehives, cemented, UP! in limbs of trees, lazy spring afternoon..fawnskin’s goat, –get yours? did I, did I?? But as for the common volk (another word for common is vulgar), TURD, that is something to think about. Turds, like words (a rhyming pair the hobbyist-poet Benjamin Franklin fancied) can have many meanings..and shades thereof; but you will aks/ask yourself, “Is that a dog-turd? If so, then we accept; but IF a poet’s turd THEN we hate it..because we hate poets” (because they reject rules and get away with it and it’s unfair; and we hate THAT about THEM.) So! to know the difference you have to have somewhat of a discriminating palate; else you are plainly just another run-of-the-mill plebeian, eating your plain Greek yogurt..no fruit, no nuts. But it’s just raw material after all, having no value or even an existence until one of the gods changes it, by making it into something, with an effortless output of divine energy..maybe add little honey; or changing it, from its sort-of earthbound condition..like, like when a man-poet starts his finger-painting project, tentatively smearing at it a bit, –or even a girl doing it, a girl poet! poking at it wit-a-shtick, “Oy!” But that’s getting into the nebulous area of PERFORMANCE ART’s a thing to be avoided..egregious! all philosophers agree: VOTED Worst Art (genders and sh**s-for-brains notwithstanding). So! now, getting back to what happens when you eat the ice cream..not YOU,you personally, but rather, the figurative YOU, the collective YOU..the humanity all around us/you’s, which, “..oh! the humanity!” which..well, I don’t know about all of that, oarawluvyooz; but only I, poet! what happens with me when I get da ICE CREAM. So here it is

totally. This gets to the science, BELIEVE SCIENCE! (you must).

So, as we are told by the neurologists, when you taste the ice cream, and you’re like, going, “MM! MM! mm-MM-mm!” you are not actually having a direct experience with the product on the spoon, no! it’s far more complicated than that..sure it is. By the way, I am in the bathroom with the ice cream, now, the chocolate ice cream, the Hägan-Daz brand, –and have you noticed they are making them smaller and smaller all the time?? The dog certainly has. She has picked-up that whenever she gets to have a couple of bites, –because she begs! that the stuff in the tiny containers is noticeably superior in quality to the stuff from the half-gallon size containers; which are actually reduced in volume, as well, a marketing innovation dating back more than a few years now, —Lower the quantity, raise the price. Regardless, they were on sale. The deal: buy five, get $dollar+.00 off/ea. So we got ’em home, the chocolate (2); rum raisin(1); green tea&butter pecan (1 ea.), and I wanted to have mine in peace and seeing the dog laying there apparently half-asleep under the table, I opened the freezer-door, “Krackle-krackle!” grabbed the ice cream and ran away with it, and the spoon! into the bath room, and shut the door for privacy..before she could catch up, with Mary just getting in the tub as I entered; so I could eat it without being eyeballed! I don’t need this crap I’m retired; and dogs don’t get to have chocolate, anyway, everybody knows that. WHY? because it’d kill ’em! (so they say). So I get the first spoon in my mouth, and my tongue is tasting chocolate, right? no! WRONG!! Neurologists explain there is a circuitous path in what we presume to be the pleasurable experience of tasting the ice cream; and I am sure if any Greek philosophers had tasted that..instead of their dumb yogurts, they would all agree that it causes pleasure to happen (all dogs agree, too); but, where they probably will not agree is whether or not the pleasure thus derived is a good thing, or a bad thing..there’re all the ethical and practical issues to consider (like getting fat). You must remember! that, according to the philosophers..the Greek philosophers of the fourth century B.C. (Before Christ Jesus, so there!) – such as Socrates and his students Plato and Diogenes after him, the ‘WhyDon’tWeDoItInTheRoad’ ubiquitous Diogenes – pleasure..pleasure, while clearly a good thing, and possibly a very good thing! is not an end in and of itself; and taking sensual gratification as the highest good – like the voluptuaries do – and pursuing it (i.e., the Pleasure Principle) will lead inexorably to a life of dissipation; and moral collapse; and that impacts society as a hole and that is not good. And so there’s all of that. But back to The Science..Believe all scientists!!

Neurologists, now, they are a specialized bunch of truth seekers, –or least of facts, seekers of facts (and very special, they are). So what they found – or think they found – in advancing the knowledge of certain biological quirks (or anomalies) in us humans, is that there seems to be this superhighway of nerves, and nerve-related items “..all over my bo-dy!”; and these neural paths involve synapses and a ton of electro-chemical operations that communicate with each other behind the scenes, actually producing flashes of light! in their ordering and sending of stuff, such as anti-bodies, to fight with foreign invaders, and therewith neutralize the unwanted riff-raff that’s constantly breaking and entering into the body, barbarians at the gate! –like in FANTASTIC VOYAGE with

Raquel Welch! (featured onboard biologist; and Donald Pleasance as the double agent, –Believe all double agents) where the white blood cells and their blood cell cell privilege, when they catch up, are squeezing her in her wet-suit like it’s Welch’s grapes..as far as I recall, my understanding of it at the time, when I was hearing it all, back in school, and later, eating a FUDGESICLE out on the playground ten minutes before they shoot Kennedy – 10 cent! (for the ice cream) – which breaks several rules including where food is allowed; or disallowed, very similar to the social order of/when you are in the county jail (that’s LA! county..to those of you’s from the east coast who maybe are reading this). So all the neurologists here believe – like it’s a religion – that all these synapses are firing, as spark-plugs do, all the way up and down to the brain and back to tell it to release chemicals, like endorphins, to tell your thinking, reasoning soul that you are having pleasure from eating the ice cream; when actually all it is is a batch of secondary events stirred by certain neurological processes into bio-trash reaction formations which the activity of eating the ice cream initially caused, but by now is totally separated from the cyclical knee-jerk dipping-in-of-the-spoon action in the tiny Hägan-Daz carton because the brain is telling you the ice cream before your eyes is the cause of your pleasure, –which is not precisely the case; and a premise – according to them – which, given all of what they’re giving us, and all of the rest, seems, in terms of fact-checking magnitude, to approach handing out, to US

—THE BIG LIE!

Well and good. So IF true THEN – having brought it all to light – did they earn their money? which originally, anyway, was stolen from the taxpayers by the i.r.s., (or more likely borrowed from china and payed out in chinese plastic), –and then, also, with the taxpayers’ money – or whatever – they buy all the ammo off the shelves – so you can’t have it and they can! – to protect themselves when the taxpayers revolt; which, to survive, is thought by the majority to be the highest good (and for bureaucrats at least that works), so they will do anything within their means to ensure their precious livelihood..to the exclusion of that of those of us being investigated for tax evasion’s, et cetera, etc.; guilty of hate crimes (whatever that is); and generally loathing and despising those in authority, –a euphemism for da nazi’s (or top dogs in all the alphabet’s). And all of it, of course, based not on facts, or fair science; but merely, pleasure of the moment. And if they believe that they’ll believe ANY THING.

TO BE CONTINUED (for the higher good..if I feel like it)

~c.

ps: do YOU like poetry?? and knowing all of this, is eating ice cream really worth all the hassle? Depends how you define..IS! So, here’s the consolation-prize (a poem): Earth is warming, dog’s in heat..we’re all in heat and cops are swarming, –civilization’s, uh, neat.