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House of Mirrors

From the El Paso County Jail. There may be glitches while i learn WordPress. http://hipgnosis21.blogspot.com/2014/07/of-mirrors-june-2014-el-paso-county.html

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2014

House of Mirrors

House of Mirrors

26 June 2014

El Paso County Jail

Don’t freak out now, anyone. I’m still out of jail, pending appeal, as of today, 23 July 2014.

Sorry, no footnotes in the blogger. You can get them here
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1umk-RPyxoiQTPSS84Cp4sR80UAXFzsVRpuiRBVzrdNA/edit?usp=sharing

Pogo couldn’t have known the heft and resonance of his words: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

I wrote a screed a while back, (Today’s Tom Sawyer), excoriating shitty Christian behavior. There’s still plenty to say about all that, and maybe some of it will come out here, but it’s not the point of this one. During that earlier rant, i promised to harp, eventually, about bad behavior on the part of pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, and some of my other natural affinity groups as well.

That isn’t it either. Or maybe it is. But not really. Not quite. I promised to write about the Fear, too, and nor is it that, though the Fear runs through it all. This is about a war.

Many members of of various of the groups on that funny little list i jotted just now recognize and will now openly state that there’s a war looming. They’re wrong about that much anyhow–the looming is all done and the fight is on. Right now. It’s been on for decades, (or maybe forever). I’m here “jotting” because that’s what one does in the county jail, where i am a political prisoner–a POW, really, though i prefer to think of myself as a prisoner of conscience–but maybe it’s a digression to say so. Or maybe not. Let’s explore this amalgam of notions a bit, and see if we can find out.

Here at the county jail one finds a  peculiarly refined microcosm of the way the dynamics of the variously conflicting groups involved in this bizarre  war interact, cleared of much of the dross of false civility that ordinarily circumvents the fight out on the sidewalk, at least here in the U.S.A.

I know Europeans here that want to skedaddle from this place and others afraid to come here because many of them can see the shitstorm brewing and it scares them. They often seem to see it more clearly than we Americans are able to do at least in part because our access to real news is barely over nil, of maybe because as outside observers they aren’t saddled with the cognitive dissonance we sorry brainwashed frogs that live in this hot-ass boiling lake must so often suffer. I don’t know. I hope they realize this pond holds us all.

Oddly enough, while the interactions at the county jail display some of the finer points of conflict in out absurdly labeled free society, they also show some reasons for hope. There are still lights burning.

“Fuck the Police!”

I don’t know how many times i’ve heard that phrase from some of my dearest friends. I’ve uttered them myself. Often. Sometimes at the top of my lungs. Sometimes it was far more personal: “Fuck you! That’s right, you, personally, whomever you may be in your opposition to me, my pursuits, my people. Maybe i should refer to the less common; “Fuck the Pigs,’ because the police are only a fractional representation of one segment, one camp of that particular overarching social entity the hippies were talking about when they began to disparage swine so badly as to label their opposition thusly in this odd existential war from whence the flesh and blood scrap derives.

“Battle lines are being drawn,” went the line from the Buffalo Springfield some fifty-ish years back. They’re pretty well drawn, now, though they resemble lines a three-year-old might scribble. The shit’s on. People are fighting. The skirmishes often feel like some kind of kids’ game though too, involving blindfolds and billyclubs. Maybe i can’t deny swinging a stick around myself, sometimes. Maybe that’swhat this is–a chance for me to look in the mirror a little, Maybe it’s because it’s hard to sit the game out when i keep getting hit in the head. Whatever. Let’s keep on through the maze and just hope we don’t smash too many mirrors.

During the Occupation we intrepids staged a few years back, (and some of us still engage–viva la revolución and all), my son and i traveled to Denver for the final push when the cops razed the encampment there. The scene that October of 2011 there in Denver was some shit this country hadn’t seen in over forty years maybe, where armored brigades of soldiers–not cops at all but stormtroopers–rolled on a huge, disparate group of unarmed citizens. It was tragic. And beautiful. Versions of the same scene played out all around the world that fall.

There at Civic Center Park, across the avenue from the State Capitol building, the Boy and i stood in the thick of it as those battle lines sharpened, and then blew apart as the whole outhouse hit the fan.

Some thousands of us had marched boisterously through Denver’s business district, pausing for a special visit at the Federal Reserve. After completing a wide loop around downtown we mounted the Capitol steps for whatever confrontation the Denver planners had planned. They, (to claim a thing–we), had been warned explicitly beforehand to stay off that particular edifice, so the moment we took the steps and began railing through one of our ubiquitous bullhorns, the shock teams appeared, as if the bearded-Spock Enterprise had beamed them to the scene.

Honestly, i was pretty fucking nervous at that point. It’s not as though i’d never been beaten up by the cops before, but that stuff is kind of a young man’s sport, and i was never really all that much a fan anyhow. Besides, those had always been cops, not armored sci-fi gladiators. But the main thing was the Boy. He was fifteen then and down for plenty, but he looked pretty worried too, and, (the mainthing, actually), i knew i’d never live through my next conversation with his mother if i allowed him to be beaten and busted by the police. I suggested we pull back to the park and we did, but i felt pretty spineless for having done it, really.

The Boy and i had a quick consult: “You see what this is going to be, right?” “Yeah.” “Are you down, or not?” Nervous but firm, “Yeah.” “Fuck it then…God damn it; your mom is gonna kill me. Let’s get some lunch.”

The park itself  was packed with crowds of Occupiers, some having returned with us from the march and probably harboring thoughts similar to mine. The encampment had been there for a good while by then, and the Black Flag Anarchists’ Free Kitchen was in full flight. It had already been dismantled more than once as a special preparatory project for the cops–kind of a warm-up. Knowing well what was coming, the no-nonsense scrappy men’n’women in black behind the table were all assholes with elbows, flying around in a frenzy with grim serious joy in their eyes as they did their level best to sling as much great tasting free food as possible before the inevitable hammer fell. Those guys were freaking awesome sauce with motherfuckin’ cherries on top!

Rather than spark an actual and possibly justifiable war on the Capitol steps, even the most radical and adrenaline-blinded of the group holding that position chose to retreat and quickly joined us at the park. The scene was oddly festive, with tents and art projects and folks dressed for carnival. The mid-autumn day was one of those beautiful Colorado Indian summer affairs with pristine blue skies through which flitted happy and blissfully oblivious birdies merrily on the lookout for delectable kitchen scraps. But wait! What the hey!!? The second the steps were abandoned and that contingent joined those meeker souls at the park, the rest of the cops in the danged known universe materialized in a huff and began setting up for some sort of paramilitary invasion. No shit–we all saw pretty quickly what the Denver PD had in mind for all those fun military vehicles and equipment they’d been collecting.

The scene changed dramatically there on the sidewalk where the Anarchists’ Kitchen was set up. There was plenty of action before then, but the top-gun radicals had been at the Capitol along with most of the cops. Now a phalanx quickly formed four deep with armored, shielded, armed, dangerous, implacable, and apparently stoically unflappable police stretching all around, up and down–all over the fucking place. Where the Boy and i stood a few sidewalk squares south of the Kitchen the scene was still like a carnival spreading away and outward into the park in every direction save the east, buy more like something Ray Bradbury or John Clifford might have dreamt up. Moving east to west one would have passed through four rows of cops in a formation that i’d only seen before in movies about Fascist  takeovers where American patriots saved the day by vanquishing some identically clad and positioned foe as we occupiers faced that day, armored only with our damn-the-torpedoes ethical certitude. Stepping by the entrenched police if one were to dare it, one would have passed a modest tree lawn, an ordinary sidewalk crowded with dark festival-goers, and could then step up to the folding table that served as the Anarchists’ ordering counter and serving table set up facing east from the immediate western line of the sidewalk across from the antiMayberry lines facing the stubbornly unaltered scene in the Kitchen.

The cops just stood there for what seems to memory like hours, but it couldn’t have been all afternoon or anything. Maybe so. The Boy and i milled around a bit getting a look at the overall scene and scoping out the various sections of the park. Behind the Kitchen to the west were the bulk of the tents, say a hundred or more, though others were scattered about. Further  west a concrete round with maybe a fountain or something hosted a bunch of info tables, some artsy hippies working on various projects, a triage setup, some chanting Hare Krishnas. More cops surrounded the camp, even more moved to close off the farthest reaches of the west side, We all saw we were utterly circumscribed and our physical position was hopeless. There was plenty of Hope, mind you, but all of it founded on our spiritual position, see.

As we awaited  what everyone knew to be inexorable, not so many of us remained quiet, (by “us” i mean Occupiers here; the most visible government employees were silent). I did mostly, and so did the Boy, he for his reasons and i for mine. The whole scene produced its own racket, but the most noticeable volume arose from the collection of spirit-moved Occupiers working the lines of eerily insensate gendarmes. Each was moved by his or her own personal spirit, few of which were very friendly toward the collective juggernaut we faced. More than one strode frenetically up and down whichever line was convenient  hurling f-bombs and spittle with as much force as he could muster. You know: “Fuck the Police!!!” and,“Fuck Yoooou!!!” from distances as close as the collected officers’ gear would allow. The pointillistic rows of cops, each in his own world, stared into space, eyes forward and directed at some Unknown, refusing eye contact. Only God and each man in his solitude knew what blackness filled his vision, (and possibly anyone operating one of those guv’mint mind-reading gizmos, if you’re into that sort of thinking).

Sensibly, few of the “non-violent” protesters were mad–that is crazy–enough to attempt to get physical. Those that did were promptly stomped, smashed and removed from the game. Otherwise with many pushing the envelope right to its most extreme limit, the arms-down-and-rigid-face forward-inches-from-any-nearest-random-cop’s-shielded-face stance of extreme and barely checked agitation rapidly became familiar. I for one was amazed at the extraordinary and rather creepy restraint the beleaguered police were displaying, though few shield-screened eyes could keep from betraying internal turmoil. Virtually none of the cops would assent to eye contact.

As this scene played itself out, a few Occupiers attempted to convince their fellows to mellow. In the midst of the very front and most electrical line of all this, there in front of the aforementioned Kitchen, one lone Occupier was working the line of gear-laden men, moved by a different spirit indeed. He was preaching it, baby. Pleading. Begging. Beseeching. As near to tears as i am now as this scene spills its way from my fingertips, fluid in his expressive motion to and fro as any practiced Sunday morning crowd-pleaser can i get a amen. “Don’t you see it? You are us! We are you! Please, stop this! We are one–we must stop fighting!” And in some brilliant, divinely inspired voice, “Lay down your shields! Join us! Put down your clubs and have some lunch!”

And then …right there in front of the Boy and me…with the scene in the actual Kitchen production area behind the table unchanged from before the lines formed…one of them did exactly that.

There was actually a fat queue at the Kitchen counter that parted like the Red Sea, astonished, for this newborn brother of ours to step up and claim his serving. He ate his food in silence and retook his spot in that other line which remained unaltered as his fellows stood unmoved, apparently in both senses. The Boy and i collected our portion of genuinely bomb-ass risotto and began to  eat with more on our minds than i can possibly describe. Before we were half through our plates the order came and we found ourselves dining amidst a police riot, our rice flavored by tear gas. (I got off the hook before, when the story remained vague. I suppose his mom is going to kill me now, after all).

The rest of the action went down as one would expect, with ample blood, outrage, and pepper-bullet injury and indignity and tears and drama. It was all on the news, with much expansion available on YouTube. You can look it up. None of that is the point.

I heard that one cop was fired perfunctorily that night.

We were there. Right fucking there. It really happened. It was so surreal i almost have to ask the Boy if it actually wasn’t some kind of dream.

Those two guys, though. That cop! When we all do what he did, just maybe then the war will be over. He looked up  and noticed he was looking in the fucking mirror.

The thing about all this is that the crowd of Occupiers was a full-on quorum of average joes with representation across several spectra. There were Christians, pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, blue-collar Barney Rubbles, Republicans, Democrats, hippies, neo-hippies, and chanting, jangling Hare Krishnas, The cops were disguised as an invading foreign force but we all know they were really just a bunch of Christians, pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, blue-collar Barney Rubbles, Republicans, and Democrats. The only groups lacking representation really were the hippies and the chanting, jangling Hare Krishnas that stayed with the rest of us till late into the night serving free food as a replacement for the Anarchists who had been quite the hell shut down. Oh yeah–there likely weren’t too many Anarchists on the cops’ side of the lines. I’m pretty sure  those differences are significant. Maybe the cops would be better if they got some of those groups they were missing. The janglier the better.

Back here at the county jail where i’m still Occupying, there’s lots of conflict, though not nearly so boiling hot. The old standby, “Fuck the Police,” is scrawled or carved around and about and plenty of folks on either side of whatever line each has drawn are fully prepared to swing  clubs at one another. Many of the sheriff’s deputies and sad, paycheck-to paycheck “detention specialists” are happy to evoke a very dark spirit indeed in their efforts to control us inmates who represent Other to them. I have been struck by the observation that these obnoxious fucks are the respected  representatives of a society that so many of our deluded citizenry expect us of the criminal class to emulate.

Ha! I may be an asshole myself, but no thanks: I have no interest in joining your obnoxious and shitty club.

Meanwhile, virtually all of us prisoners, including myself sometimes, react…”Grumble grumble fuck the police why i oughtta etc. etc. ad nauseum” Various of us slink around and steal or fight among ourselves or in general practice a sort of blindfolded subservience to Self. (Marco! Polo!…Ouch! Motherfucker!!!). We’re fucking obnoxious. We want the cops and the guards and judges and bankers and presidents to act differently but…why would they want to join our obnoxious and shitty club? When they do we wind up with a spectacular clusterfuck like the found at the Denver county jail last month, where a dep was helping a banger sling dope and administer beat-downs. Happens all the time. In every kaleidoscopic variation you can imagine.

Pogo couldn’t have known the heft and resonance of his words: “ We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

I wrote a screed a while back, (Today’s Tom Sawyer), excoriating shitty Christian behavior. There’s still plenty to say about all that, and maybe some of it will come out here, but it’s not the point of this one. During that earlier rant, i promised to harp, eventually, about bad behavior on the part of pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, and some of my other natural affinity groups as well.

That isn’t it either. Or maybe it is. But not really. Not quite. I promised to write about the Fear, too, and nor is it that, though the Fear runs through it all. This is about a war.

Many members of of various of the groups on that funny little list i jotted just now recognize and will now openly state that there’s a war looming. They’re wrong about that much anyhow–the looming is all done and the fight is on. Right now. It’s been on for decades, (or maybe forever). I’m here “jotting” because that’s what one does in the county jail, where i am a political prisoner–a POW, really, though i prefer to think of myself as a prisoner of conscience–but maybe it’s a digression to say so. Or maybe not. Let’s explore this amalgam of notions a bit, and see if we can find out.

Here at the county jail one finds a  peculiarly refined microcosm of the way the dynamics of the variously conflicting groups involved in this bizarre  war interact, cleared of much of the dross of false civility that ordinarily circumvents the fight out on the sidewalk, at least here in the U.S.A.

I know Europeans here that want to skedaddle from this place and others afraid to come here because many of them can see the shitstorm brewing and it scares them. They often seem to see it more clearly than we Americans are able to do at least in part because our access to real news is barely over nil, of maybe because as outside observers they aren’t saddled with the cognitive dissonance we sorry brainwashed frogs that live in this hot-ass boiling lake must so often suffer. I don’t know. I hope they realize this pond holds us all.

Oddly enough, while the interactions at the county jail display some of the finer points of conflict in out absurdly labeled free society, they also show some reasons for hope. There are still lights burning.

“Fuck the Police!”

I don’t know how many times i’ve heard that phrase from some of my dearest friends. I’ve uttered them myself. Often. Sometimes at the top of my lungs. Sometimes it was far more personal: “Fuck you! That’s right, you, personally, whomever you may be in your opposition to me, my pursuits, my people. Maybe i should refer to the less common; “Fuck the Pigs,’ because the police are only a fractional representation of one segment, one camp of that particular overarching social entity the hippies were talking about when they began to disparage swine so badly as to label their opposition thusly in this odd existential war from whence the flesh and blood scrap derives.

“Battle lines are being drawn,” went the line from the Buffalo Springfield some fifty-ish years back. They’re pretty well drawn, now, though they resemble lines a three-year-old might scribble. The shit’s on. People are fighting. The skirmishes often feel like some kind of kids’ game though too, involving blindfolds and billyclubs. Maybe i can’t deny swinging a stick around myself, sometimes. Maybe that’swhat this is–a chance for me to look in the mirror a little, Maybe it’s because it’s hard to sit the game out when i keep getting hit in the head. Whatever. Let’s keep on through the maze and just hope we don’t smash too many mirrors.

During the Occupation we intrepids staged a few years back, (and some of us still engage–viva la revolución and all), my son and i traveled to Denver for the final push when the cops razed the encampment there. The scene that October of 2011 there in Denver was some shit this country hadn’t seen in over forty years maybe, where armored brigades of soldiers–not cops at all but stormtroopers–rolled on a huge, disparate group of unarmed citizens. It was tragic. And beautiful. Versions of the same scene played out all around the world that fall.

There at Civic Center Park, across the avenue from the State Capitol building, the Boy and i stood in the thick of it as those battle lines sharpened, and then blew apart as the whole outhouse hit the fan.

Some thousands of us had marched boisterously through Denver’s business district, pausing for a special visit at the Federal Reserve. After completing a wide loop around downtown we mounted the Capitol steps for whatever confrontation the Denver planners had planned. They, (to claim a thing–we), had been warned explicitly beforehand to stay off that particular edifice, so the moment we took the steps and began railing through one of our ubiquitous bullhorns, the shock teams appeared, as if the bearded-Spock Enterprise had beamed them to the scene.

Honestly, i was pretty fucking nervous at that point. It’s not as though i’d never been beaten up by the cops before, but that stuff is kind of a young man’s sport, and i was never really all that much a fan anyhow. Besides, those had always been cops, not armored sci-fi gladiators. But the main thing was the Boy. He was fifteen then and down for plenty, but he looked pretty worried too, and, (the mainthing, actually), i knew i’d never live through my next conversation with his mother if i allowed him to be beaten and busted by the police. I suggested we pull back to the park and we did, but i felt pretty spineless for having done it, really.

The Boy and i had a quick consult: “You see what this is going to be, right?” “Yeah.” “Are you down, or not?” Nervous but firm, “Yeah.” “Fuck it then…God damn it; your mom is gonna kill me. Let’s get some lunch.”

The park itself  was packed with crowds of Occupiers, some having returned with us from the march and probably harboring thoughts similar to mine. The encampment had been there for a good while by then, and the Black Flag Anarchists’ Free Kitchen was in full flight. It had already been dismantled more than once as a special preparatory project for the cops–kind of a warm-up. Knowing well what was coming, the no-nonsense scrappy men’n’women in black behind the table were all assholes with elbows, flying around in a frenzy with grim serious joy in their eyes as they did their level best to sling as much great tasting free food as possible before the inevitable hammer fell. Those guys were freaking awesome sauce with motherfuckin’ cherries on top!

Rather than spark an actual and possibly justifiable war on the Capitol steps, even the most radical and adrenaline-blinded of the group holding that position chose to retreat and quickly joined us at the park. The scene was oddly festive, with tents and art projects and folks dressed for carnival. The mid-autumn day was one of those beautiful Colorado Indian summer affairs with pristine blue skies through which flitted happy and blissfully oblivious birdies merrily on the lookout for delectable kitchen scraps. But wait! What the hey!!? The second the steps were abandoned and that contingent joined those meeker souls at the park, the rest of the cops in the danged known universe materialized in a huff and began setting up for some sort of paramilitary invasion. No shit–we all saw pretty quickly what the Denver PD had in mind for all those fun military vehicles and equipment they’d been collecting.

The scene changed dramatically there on the sidewalk where the Anarchists’ Kitchen was set up. There was plenty of action before then, but the top-gun radicals had been at the Capitol along with most of the cops. Now a phalanx quickly formed four deep with armored, shielded, armed, dangerous, implacable, and apparently stoically unflappable police stretching all around, up and down–all over the fucking place. Where the Boy and i stood a few sidewalk squares south of the Kitchen the scene was still like a carnival spreading away and outward into the park in every direction save the east, buy more like something Ray Bradbury or John Clifford might have dreamt up. Moving east to west one would have passed through four rows of cops in a formation that i’d only seen before in movies about Fascist  takeovers where American patriots saved the day by vanquishing some identically clad and positioned foe as we occupiers faced that day, armored only with our damn-the-torpedoes ethical certitude. Stepping by the entrenched police if one were to dare it, one would have passed a modest tree lawn, an ordinary sidewalk crowded with dark festival-goers, and could then step up to the folding table that served as the Anarchists’ ordering counter and serving table set up facing east from the immediate western line of the sidewalk across from the antiMayberry lines facing the stubbornly unaltered scene in the Kitchen.

The cops just stood there for what seems to memory like hours, but it couldn’t have been all afternoon or anything. Maybe so. The Boy and i milled around a bit getting a look at the overall scene and scoping out the various sections of the park. Behind the Kitchen to the west were the bulk of the tents, say a hundred or more, though others were scattered about. Further  west a concrete round with maybe a fountain or something hosted a bunch of info tables, some artsy hippies working on various projects, a triage setup, some chanting Hare Krishnas. More cops surrounded the camp, even more moved to close off the farthest reaches of the west side, We all saw we were utterly circumscribed and our physical position was hopeless. There was plenty of Hope, mind you, but all of it founded on our spiritual position, see.

As we awaited  what everyone knew to be inexorable, not so many of us remained quiet, (by “us” i mean Occupiers here; the most visible government employees were silent). I did mostly, and so did the Boy, he for his reasons and i for mine. The whole scene produced its own racket, but the most noticeable volume arose from the collection of spirit-moved Occupiers working the lines of eerily insensate gendarmes. Each was moved by his or her own personal spirit, few of which were very friendly toward the collective juggernaut we faced. More than one strode frenetically up and down whichever line was convenient  hurling f-bombs and spittle with as much force as he could muster. You know: “Fuck the Police!!!” and,“Fuck Yoooou!!!” from distances as close as the collected officers’ gear would allow. The pointillistic rows of cops, each in his own world, stared into space, eyes forward and directed at some Unknown, refusing eye contact. Only God and each man in his solitude knew what blackness filled his vision, (and possibly anyone operating one of those guv’mint mind-reading gizmos, if you’re into that sort of thinking).

Sensibly, few of the “non-violent” protesters were mad–that is crazy–enough to attempt to get physical. Those that did were promptly stomped, smashed and removed from the game. Otherwise with many pushing the envelope right to its most extreme limit, the arms-down-and-rigid-face forward-inches-from-any-nearest-random-cop’s-shielded-face stance of extreme and barely checked agitation rapidly became familiar. I for one was amazed at the extraordinary and rather creepy restraint the beleaguered police were displaying, though few shield-screened eyes could keep from betraying internal turmoil. Virtually none of the cops would assent to eye contact.

As this scene played itself out, a few Occupiers attempted to convince their fellows to mellow. In the midst of the very front and most electrical line of all this, there in front of the aforementioned Kitchen, one lone Occupier was working the line of gear-laden men, moved by a different spirit indeed. He was preaching it, baby. Pleading. Begging. Beseeching. As near to tears as i am now as this scene spills its way from my fingertips, fluid in his expressive motion to and fro as any practiced Sunday morning crowd-pleaser can i get a amen. “Don’t you see it? You are us! We are you! Please, stop this! We are one–we must stop fighting!” And in some brilliant, divinely inspired voice, “Lay down your shields! Join us! Put down your clubs and have some lunch!”

And then …right there in front of the Boy and me…with the scene in the actual Kitchen production area behind the table unchanged from before the lines formed…one of them did exactly that.

There was actually a fat queue at the Kitchen counter that parted like the Red Sea, astonished, for this newborn brother of ours to step up and claim his serving. He ate his food in silence and retook his spot in that other line which remained unaltered as his fellows stood unmoved, apparently in both senses. The Boy and i collected our portion of genuinely bomb-ass risotto and began to  eat with more on our minds than i can possibly describe. Before we were half through our plates the order came and we found ourselves dining amidst a police riot, our rice flavored by tear gas. (I got off the hook before, when the story remained vague. I suppose his mom is going to kill me now, after all).

The rest of the action went down as one would expect, with ample blood, outrage, and pepper-bullet injury and indignity and tears and drama. It was all on the news, with much expansion available on YouTube. You can look it up. None of that is the point.

I heard that one cop was fired perfunctorily that night.

We were there. Right fucking there. It really happened. It was so surreal i almost have to ask the Boy if it actually wasn’t some kind of dream.

Those two guys, though. That cop! When we all do what he did, just maybe then the war will be over. He looked up  and noticed he was looking in the fucking mirror.

The thing about all this is that the crowd of Occupiers was a full-on quorum of average joes with representation across several spectra. There were Christians, pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, blue-collar Barney Rubbles, Republicans, Democrats, hippies, neo-hippies, and chanting, jangling Hare Krishnas, The cops were disguised as an invading foreign force but we all know they were really just a bunch of Christians, pagans, dope fiends, felons, bikers, disgruntled employees, GIs, vets, blue-collar Barney Rubbles, Republicans, and Democrats. The only groups lacking representation really were the hippies and the chanting, jangling Hare Krishnas that stayed with the rest of us till late into the night serving free food as a replacement for the Anarchists who had been quite the hell shut down. Oh yeah–there likely weren’t too many Anarchists on the cops’ side of the lines. I’m pretty sure  those differences are significant. Maybe the cops would be better if they got some of those groups they were missing. The janglier the better.

Back here at the county jail where i’m still Occupying, there’s lots of conflict, though not nearly so boiling hot. The old standby, “Fuck the Police,” is scrawled or carved around and about and plenty of folks on either side of whatever line each has drawn are fully prepared to swing  clubs at one another. Many of the sheriff’s deputies and sad, paycheck-to paycheck “detention specialists” are happy to evoke a very dark spirit indeed in their efforts to control us inmates who represent Other to them. I have been struck by the observation that these obnoxious fucks are the respected  representatives of a society that so many of our deluded citizenry expect us of the criminal class to emulate.

Ha! I may be an asshole myself, but no thanks: I have no interest in joining your obnoxious and shitty club.

Meanwhile, virtually all of us prisoners, including myself sometimes, react…”Grumble grumble fuck the police why i oughtta etc. etc. ad nauseum” Various of us slink around and steal or fight among ourselves or in general practice a sort of blindfolded subservience to Self. (Marco! Polo!…Ouch! Motherfucker!!!). We’re fucking obnoxious. We want the cops and the guards and judges and bankers and presidents to act differently but…why would they want to join our obnoxious and shitty club? When they do we wind up with a spectacular clusterfuck like the found at the Denver county jail last month, where a dep was helping a banger sling dope and administer beat-downs. Happens all the time. In every kaleidoscopic variation you can imagine.

Sorry, reader; a glitch is preventing the end of this from displaying just now. I’ll fix it, but meanwhile, this link is better for the footnotes anyway. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1umk-RPyxoiQTPSS84Cp4sR80UAXFzsVRpuiRBVzrdNA/edit?usp=sharing

Although those of you that have read or will now read the other stuff here on hipgnosis will easily recognize the common ground that one may imagine stands to be found on the lawns inside the moats of our adjacent castles in a neighborhood full of loons, all built on air, i am deeply indebted to Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason for some of the truly fine and beautiful language i snatched more or less wholesale to help me build the last four paragraphs here. Even though their book,The Rule of Four is a best-seller of a popular genre, i highly recommend it as the best book i’ve read produced during the twenty-first century. I wish i had written it myself, (while noting the title of this piece). Everyone should read this book.

POSTED BY STEVE BASS AT 9:45 PM

Homeless Colorado Springs man emboldened by Occupy effort appeals jail time

from the Colorado Springs Gazette

http://gazette.com/article/1534440

By Jakob Rodgers Updated: July 28, 2014 at 2:07 pm

Nearly three years ago, Steven Bass’ tent led to a police ticket – a ticket that led to a trial, an appeal denied and 160-day sentence in El Paso County jail.

Bass, the first person cited under Colorado Springs’ camping ban, remains mired in a legal battle backed by a University of Denver assistant professor working for free.

He represents a small segment of the homeless issue – a man on a personal crusade against the camping ban emboldened by the Occupy Colorado Springs movement. His case is not emblematic of others who have been cited for camping on public property; rather, it is more of an outlier.

While people ticketed for camping typically include the chronically homeless – people whose only home is a tent, and who often rebuff police officers’ offers of secure housing – Bass wants to make a point.

Right now, he is free while appealing the jail time. Bass lives with a fellow veteran of the Occupy movement and blogs occasionally on what he sees as injustices in the world.

“I contend now that this thing has burgeoned well beyond the camping ban itself, and has now become a giant discussion of principle, and just what the hell we’re doing here in the United States of America, and the whole world,” Bass said.

Police issued the ticket in October 2011 when he pitched a tent on a sidewalk in Acacia Park, despite warnings from police that doing so would lead to a citation.

For Bass, the ticket and the Occupy gathering proved an opportune time for a stand against the city’s camping ban – an ordinance passed by the City Council in 2010 that outlawed camping on public land. He said he has volunteered at soup kitchens and for other homeless services for about 30 years, and he lives homeless – usually by couch surfing.

“Just because they don’t have any money, poof, they are made criminals,” Bass said of people affected by the ban.

Eleven tickets have been issued under the ban through June 5, with the majority coming in 2014, according to the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The ban came as camps swelled along Monument and Fountain creeks amid the Great Recession in 2009 and early 2010. So many people lived there that bystanders dropped off donated food and clothing along the creek beds – philanthropy that proved overwhelming to the point of concern, some homeless advocates say. Sanitation issues also arose.

City Council member Jan Martin said she voted for the ordinance for the safety of people using creekside trails, along with concerns about the image that such tent cities would create for the city, she said Friday. Proponents of the ban said it is a tool to get people into more stable housing.

“In my opinion, it’s not a matter of out of sight, out of mind,” Martin said. “It’s just trying to find resources that can help people get back on their feet.”

Because of Bass’ indigent status, a judge decided against a fine in favor of a 60-hour community service sentence for the citation.

Bass said he almost did it – he planned on helping Pikes Peak Habitat for Humanity – until a DU professor offered to help. With the pro bono advice of Christopher Lasch, who teaches at the university’s Criminal Defense Clinic, Bass appealed the case.

A district court judge upheld the municipal court’s decision – a blow to the notion that the ban is unjust.

A subsequent appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court was denied in March, said Rob McCallum, spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Branch.

Through it all, Bass contemplated his 60-hour of community service sentence. And in an April hearing before Municipal Judge Spottswood W. H. Williams, Bass said he will never complete the requirement.

Identifying himself as an Occupier, Bass wrote to Williams that the camping ordinance is “effectively status-based incarceration,” because forcing people into shelters could be another form of incarceration. He also said he already does community service but railed against the court forcing him to do so.

“Therefore, i (sic) am here in front of you forcing your hand,” he wrote. “You must now either acknowledge the ethical poverty of the ordinance, or prove my point.”

In June, Williams answered Bass’ statement with a 160-day jail sentence for contempt of court.

Bass is appealing that sentence with Lasch’s help after having served more than a month in El Paso County jail.

Lasch said the jail sentence was excessive because jail time for failing to pay a fine is usually half of what Bass has served.

Even if he serves all 160 days, Bass has no plans of completing the 60-hour community service order – a requirement that remains.

Lasch wants all of it thrown out.

“The fact that the government would go to such lengths to punish this activity certainly supports Steve’s position that this (ban) effectively punishes being homeless,” Lasch said.

“In this case, it certainly punished him for speaking out against the ban.”

Contact Jakob Rodgers: 476-1654

Twitter @JakobRodgers

Facebook: Jakob.Rodgers

Read more at http://gazette.com/homeless-colorado-springs-man-emboldened-by-occupy-effort-appeals-jail-time/article/1534440#TIqUcdEm4KE8udlJ.99

Help a homeless family stay together!

April 8, 2012 8:39 am MDT… I have a conversation with a friend that compells me to post this status message on facebook.

There is this family I know… They have been living in homeless shelters for nearly a year. The parents did all that was required of them by the shelter’s program designed to assist them in getting back on their feet. The mom went back to school (so proud of her) and is weeks away from her certificate….. Now the shelter is saying that they have to leave. There are no other family shelters available. They don’t want their family sleeping apart. Please lift Heidi Joy Hameed, her son Ish, and her husband Raphael in your thoughts energy and prayers today.

On April 9, 2012, Heidi Joy Hameed, a resident in the Torres Community Shelter (https://www.facebook.com/TorresShelter) in Chico, California has this to say under a post I made requesting prayer for her family yesterday.
“Thank you again, everyone. It always humbles me when people care so much! We can’t even get this level of love from “blood relatives”. We need help and $ to keep our family together. Ish is speech challenged and thus unready for school, though he’s much better. For the last year, Daddy (Raphael Hameed) has been teaching him, every day, in t he park. Ish depserately needs a stable living situation. We always knew the shelter wasn’t permanent, of course, but it was a form of stability. I’ve held off contacting “professional” services becasue I DO NOT want my son labeled anything (autistic, etc) as that only complicates things and I don’t believe in speaking evil into my child who has enough to deal with. Under Daddy’s tutilage, he’s learned to read numbers and letters and even to write them, knows small words like dog and cat and such. He didn’t even say MOMMY or DADDY until he was over 3. We came here with a dream and we won’t let it die, pure and simple. Ish and growing/breeding/cultivating. I’m an office person who loves and thrives in said environment. Right now I go to school, work at the local thrift store and perform my required monthly reports for Welfare-to Work, WEX and the other things. Please pray for us, if you can, we need $ to stay in hotels for the time being. Money gram works the best for us. If you can, or know anyone who can, we accept donations under Heidi Joy Hameed, the one I’m known at is at Walmart near 2445 Forest Ave, Chico, CA the walmart’s phone number is (530) 899-8760″

Mrs. Hameed currently has unlimited text message service on her phone. If you wish to be of assistance in any way, please text her at (530) 520-6704

Mr. Hameed has skills with plants. His knowledge of cannabis plants could easily be of benefit many.

All they want is a hand up, they never, ever wanted a hand out. Their circumstances are pushing them into ever more difficult situations. Please help.
https://www.facebook.com/breezy.kiefair/posts/400251706661511

Update, April 11, 2012

A donation was made that bought the Hameed’s a roof over their head last night and will continue to house them until around 3:30pm Tomorrow (4/12/12 pacific time) They are also in need of diapers for Ish. No child should have to sit in a dirty diaper because mom and dad can’t afford to get more.

This morning, Mrs. Hameed’s facebook status message read:

“If any donations come in or are being sent, I must be told. We have NO where to live right now- my ONLY point of contact is FB or our cell 530-520-6704 where I need to recieve texts as minutes are weird and definitely NOT unlimited. Thanks so much.”

Update Friday, April 13, 2012

I spoke with Mrs. Hammeed last night. Things are still unstable, but the family remains safe and sleeping under the same roof (in a hotel)

BZ:  Mrs. Hameed how things were going and what the current needs are.

 Mrs Hammed: We’re in the motel until Saturday at 11 am and have enough for Sunday at 11 and then we’re flat broke.

I got my unemployment extention dealt with today so we’ll be getting some $ next week- 119/week. we need over a thousand, relistically.

it’ll be 400 to go to Iowa (if we take the train, it’s much cheaper and better for Ishy.

I’m going to finish school next week so that’s out the way.

BZ: Do you have a place to go in Iowa? What is the plan there?

Mrs Hammed: “My sister lives there. yes, she said we can stay with her for a minute. there’re jobs and rent is cheaper.”

BZ: Well, that’s good. Do you have transportation worked out for the move? Are there any other needs to add?

Mrs. Hameed: “NO, we have not really worked out transportation. I have no idea what we’ll take- will have to take it one step at a time. without the $ there’s no point in speculating, you know?

BZ: Does Ishy still need diapers?

Mrs. Hameed:   We’ve been managing, but diapers are an “ever-present” expense. We sure would feel better with some more.

Once again, if you would like to help, here are the instructions!

Please pray for THEM, if you can, THEY need $ to stay in hotels for the time being. Money gram works the best for them. If you can, or know anyone who can, THEY accept donations under Heidi Joy Hameed, the one I’m known at is at Walmart near 2445 Forest Ave, Chico, CA the walmart’s phone number is (530) 899-8760″ Mrs. Hammed can recieve text messages and MUST be notified of your compassion in order to pick up the donation and make use of it.  If you wish to be of assistance in any way,

please TEXT MESSAGE (calls cost more) Mrs. Hameed

at (530) 520-6704

Update April 17, 2012

Author’s note: in the interest of time and preservation of my energy on a bad pain day, I have sanitized all proper names off the below post from whom I do not have consent. This is a discussion Mrs. Hameed asked me to post. I have removed some information to protect individuals that I do not know. Their comments are just as powerful no matter if you know their names or not….. I have not censored spelling errors.

Heidi Joy Hameed

Sunday at 7:28pm near Chico, CA · Mrs Hammeed’s Status message:

Praise the Lord-God showed up, again right on time, and sent an angel to put my family and I up for three days in a motel- we’re back at the Vagabond Inn. Room 122. God is so good- we were literally getting ready to walk over to the Jesus Center and split up as we can’t stay together and once more, God saved us! He is so good. People can say and believe what they want-they really can- but NO ONE will EVER convince me there’s no God cause his angels have been keeping us together as a family even when no one other than wonderous people like Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair and J.S. believes it to be important. God bless all who have loved us and given us the strength to go on- this is a nasty, evil world we live in these days, cold, selfish, greedy and then the GOOD, GODLY people step in and make it ALL WORTH IT!!!! By the way, getting off track a bit, our computer seems to be acting up (I’m currently using the motel’s computer for this update) so I might not be on too much. Pray for us- we’re trying to get to Iowa to be with my sister, J.M.H.P. Believing for the funds to do so.
Comments:

  • Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair glad you got some help

    Sunday at 7:44pm · · 1
  • LP: all continues to go well! Glory to God!

    Sunday at 7:45pm · · 1
  • Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair will update your post when i’m stronger. need anything?

    Sunday at 7:45pm ·
  • KSH: am so glad u r choosing to caome back this way. I have been thinking about sugesting it. WOW great minds think alike. We will be praying for this to all work out and be a good fit.

    Sunday at 9:48pm · ·
  • Heidi Joy Hameed We’re working on it, Karen Simpson Haskins-need the $ as we’ve been unemployed for more than a year and unemployment doesn’t pay enough to feed a chimpmunk lol. Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair, I appreciate that so much and yes, we could use diapers. I’ll probably be able to get some from the diaper bank here at Shalom Thrift Store, God willing. Thanks everyone!! ♥

    8 hours ago · · 1
  • HH

    Noone can really understands how it is too be whitout a home if you have not been in that situtaion yourself! Iam trying thow too understand as the best that ican! what ido understand is that our world today is a very cold and greedy place …and it is full of shit! But there is one thing that is stronger than anything! And that is love and hope! That is what keeps me going cuz as long as there is hope there is life and also love! That is what you have learned me heidi! So ijust say this too you and imean it! You are a loving carying and such a wonderfull friend! And if iever hear or see anyone that would hurt you or what so ever iwill personally kick that someones as! Love you and may god be whit you!See More
    8 hours ago · ·
  • Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefairheidi hun, my energy is drained away already… if i get another energy burst, will do ok?

    7 hours ago ·
  • HH thanks for liking my comment! are you okej?

    7 hours ago ·
  • HH sorry breezy did not mean too snoop! hope that you are fine! and heidi is greate is she not?

    7 hours ago · · 1
  • Heidi Joy Hameed ‎Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair, I’m not tripping at all. you rest as much as possible. Am praying for you hard. I love you.

    3 hours ago ·
  • Heidi Joy Hameed ‎Breezy Mental Ginsberg Kiefair has been a wonderful friend and sister to me, HH. Breez, Hanna’s my friend from overseas. Just had her birthday the other day ♥

    3 hours ago ·
  • AB: Praying you & your family receive the funds needed for ya all to be able to come to Iowa. It would be awesome to have you back, I miss you. Love ya, take care, & don’t give up. God will provide. ♥♥

    2 hours ago ·
  • JS

    How cool. The night before you posted that you’re going to try to get back to Iowa, you and I had “talked” (here) and afterward, I took a moment to talk to God about your situation. I know most people will just write this off as crazy talk …but I felt in my heart the suggestion that maybe it was just where you were and if you could try a new location, things might get better. I decided not to say anything to you and I kind of felt bad about that. But now, it seems maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything because you came up with that yourself. Now it seems more as if He was just telling me He had a path for you to walk to let me know He’s been hearing your cries and our prayers and that He hasn’t forsaken you. So maybe now I won’t have to wait two more years to get out there and meet you guys- maybe instead you guys are coming here and we can meet sooner! I haven’t talked to Raphael as much as I have you but something tells me I could get along with him well. Lol. Still praying and lifting you and yours up to Him. Whatever happens from here, just remember you’re not alone. Christ be with you always.

UPDATE April 24, 2012

Mrs Hammeed asked me to add this update today.

Since we left the shelter on the 9th, we have been staying at various motels until 2 nights ago when we camped out for the first time-then the next day. In the meantime I got busy working on getting us somewhere. School is done, thank the Lord, so that’s one less thing to worry/trip on.I went over to the Torres on Sunday (I think) and asked to be let back in. I was told to call back on Monday at 2:00 and ask the supervisor about the case manager meeting which I did. He set up an interview with me with one of the case managers and said for Raphael to do likewise-which he did. As of now, tomorrow, we hope to be getting back into the Torres. We will likely not have our own room but so long as we’re in the same building, we are fine. Our whole thing was not being split up so that we were physically separate from each other- this way Ish can be with BOTH of us.We are still planning to relocate to Iowa. We hope to be there next month- are still trying to get the $400 needed for the train. We have SOME saved but not enough and have had to spend $ that we couldn’t afford to even when sleeping outside. Still need donations- even if people could send $1-5 or something, it would help immensely! The address that it can be sent to is 250 E 1st St, Chico, CA 95928 c/o Shalom Thrift Store. My supervisor is well aware of our plight and situation and is behind me 100%- that’s her whole focus in life- helping those who can’t help themselves. This thrift store I work at (volunteer) funds the free clinic. 

Please continue to pray for us- we are well aware that it is the prayers and financial gifts of our friends, known and not, that are helping us get started in Iowa where Ish will have flesh-and-blood family and I can find employment. 

Peace out- will come again when I have more to fill you all in. Thanks, Breezy, the wind beneath my wings. I love you dearly!

Update and Peaceful Resolution! PRAISE!

Come on, with the blessing, Lord. If we have been righteous, if we have pleased you at all, please hear our request and open this door that we need opened. Rebuke the destroyer on our behalf and shut down his attempt to strangle-hold this situation. We love you and we need you to shine brightly on us. Needed: 3 greyhound tickets from Chico Ca to Iowa City, IA: who is going to answer this call!!? Please unite our little boy with his cousins-and my sister Joanna Mary Hilton Pope with me!! Thank you- the cost is about $666.25. I know it’s extremely pricey but I so need to get there- jobs are available but I can’t do anything stuck here!! Calls can be sent to my cell 530-520-6704 or to the Shalom Thrift Store: 530-345-7056 but only call if you can help- we really do not need to be kicked any more. We’re sleeping on the streets(literally)- please help us!!

MAY 4, 2012

So thankful for the TEAM Project of Chico Ca and the Lord I serve for the provision that got us from Chico to Iowa. We are safe and the kids are together. Praise the Lord!!

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Why I STILL Give Back!

April 18, 2012

The average person on social security disability or state assistance due to illness goes under-medicated and often COMPLETELY un-medicated for several weeks out of the month…. At current market prices, few can afford anywhere near their medically necessary doses particularly if they are using cannabis as a part of an opiate reduction/replacement therapy.

Meanwhile, their caregivers grow plants in the names of these low income patients and profit off of the cannabis the low income person is incapable of purchasing for themselves. This “excess” herb goes into concentrates or edibles in the best case, and into the black market in others. Often, the low income person’s medicine is sold out of state where it is worth more. I have been on the registry since June of 2009.
When I began writing for the cannabis cause, I received SSD, SSI, food stamps, medicare and medicaid.  My husband was on disability as well. After the state began encroaching on our benefits by reducing/removing programs without cause or explanation, My husband left me. Under social security, if you are both disabled, you are a single person, not 2 people. He was more capable of paying into the system, so he got a larger check than I.
I was left living on $350 a month plus food stamps. Together it gave me $17.42 to live on. At the beginning of the 2012, I got a cost of living DECREASE. In March, my food stamps were cut to nothing without explanation again. I broke my pelvis and went to the emergency room where I found out I no longer have medicaid. I have been left to live on $10.61 a Day! How am I supposed to afford my medication? I was on the highest legal dosages of medications like Fentanyl. I’ve had opportunity to be with others who are better off than I am and have seen benefits from 7+ grams daily treatment of cannabis via ingestion, smoking, and topical applications. The cheapest dispensaries charge about $25 for 3.5 grams. This means that my medication costs nearly 5 times my daily budget for all my needs  combined (housing, food, clothing, transportation, medication ect.)
How is this in any way sane or compassionate?
It has been a really long, difficult journey. Peraps some people need to be reminded of the road I have traveled. Here are several essays I have written on this topic in chronological order. Please remember that I share my story on behalf of other people who choose not to step forward.

“A Long Strange Journey of 1 Cannabis Patient’s Colorado Cannabis Activsm”
or
“All About Breezy Kiefair”
some of you may have already read most of this on my fb/various blogs/in print magazines… but…. for those who didn’t here goes….. your gonna need a few bowls and maybe
some tissues…. just saying
Article I wrote to be published in Cannabis Health News mag

January 2010 at 2:58am

How KiefAir Keepsakes came to be

Copyrighted material  All Rights Reserved see message at the bottom of essay
Recently, a portion of this essay was published in Cannabis Health News Magazine
You can read that portion of the essay on pages 37-39 here

I tell you this story, not for myself, but for those in similar situations without the strength or ability to speak.

I’ll begin with an Untitled Poem

I sat in the forums
my voice screaming anxiety
My last path of recourse
after failed by society

And then came a Storm-crow
took me under her wing
with a word of kindness
and a link to a forum

Now desperate in my searching
in page after page
I grew angry and shrewish
till time tired my rage

I followed that link
to the place with verdant Passion
Where the welcome is kind
And politeness the fashion!

Once there, I heard the call
of a tired woman in the west
Her heart tired and sore
So I helped her how i knew best.

Now this place was surprising
So different and new
It’s truly a place
Where dreams go to come true.

And along came a sprocket
renegade of the system with his kind words
my heart insisted I must trust him.

I found a Canadian angel
who lived on a farm
Like a mother I’ve always wanted
Keeping all from harm.

And I came to this place,
at first to be heard, then to help business
but what I found there instead
Was warm Love through cold Christmas

The woman in the west
became my morning companion
Alone, in the desert
she was a friend when I had none.

I befriended The renegade sprocket
and what did I find
but exactly the help I needed
Man was the almighty on time!

it’ss a place
to help you get medicine to grow
But what grows alongside
are our dreams and what we know

My name is Breezy Kiefair and I am a writer, artist, and Medical Marijuana Activist from Longmont, CO.
In this essay, I will explore with you the journey that led me first to Medical Marijuana, and then to Medical Marijuana Activism.
Let me begin with some background information. I am a female over 25 and under 40. I have severe and debilitating Fibromyalgia. My illness is of a severity that forces doctors to shake their heads and prescribe one ineffective man made medicine on top of another while I waste away and my quality of life diminishes. The onset of my symptoms began almost instantly after my birth in Canon City, CO in the late 1970’s. I was allergic to my mother’smilk, and for the first 2 years of my life I lived on a strict diet of goat’s milk (and
goat’s milk yogurt), bananas, and whole wheat bread made home-made from whole wheat ground by my mother, and honey. I was allergic to practically everything, and could not tolerate to be in the same room with many everyday substances. I grew stronger as I got older, and a bit less allergic, but I remained fragile.

Breezy’s Bio and Background

One day when I was about three years old, I walked up to my mother with a “Little Golden Book” and began reading. My mother was of course flabbergasted as I read page after page of a story about Donald Duck and Chip n’ Dale. I kept reading to her and finally finished the story. “You memorized that didn’t you?” My mother probed. “No mommy I read it.” I demanded back. I could tell by the look on her face that she thought I was making up a story, so I said “I’m not lying mommy! Give me that paper I’ll prove it to you.” Imagine her surprise as her three year old, sickly, undersized, underweight, little girl began reading the business page to her.
A few months after the day I began reading in the kitchen, my parents decided to get a divorce. Not long after that, the entity then known as the Colorado Department of Social Services (hereafter referred to as DSS, known by several different names since then) began their influence upon my life. They began with regulations on visitation between myself, my siblings and my father. In later years, DSS became my parent.
When I was about 8 years old, I began having problems with headaches and losing consciousness. When I first began to complain of headaches, my grandmother thought it was brought on by my early menstrual cycle. When I continued to complain at all times during my cycle, I was fitted for glasses. When glasses did nothing to stop my complaining, I was taken back to the allergist’s office for years and years of treatment. I was diagnosed with regional inhalant allergies causing asthma, sinus headaches, and a whole host of other symptoms including chronic fatigue and chronic head pain. I was treated me with allergy shots and a barrage of nasal sprays and pills. Years later, when I was still in pain, x rays were in order and they first discovered a tendency for pre-cancerous/cancerous growths in my body. Polyps were removed from my sinus cavities once in childhood and once in adolescence along with the correction of a deviated septum, and removal of my wisdom teeth from my sinus cavity. They fixed all of the “physical deformities” they could find, and yet I was still in pain.
Concurrent with all this allergy history, I was taken away from my family entirely by the State of Colorado. I was placed in a series of foster homes and finally into a totalitarian girls school. During this same time period, the State decided as my sole legal guardian to place me on disability. The state of Colorado had “adopted me” in a sense. My name was changed legally and my parents rights to me as a child were formally, legally and permanently terminated. None of it was my choice (except the name change after years of foster care), it was not discussed with me, I was a child. Let me clarify, the first time I was put on disability, I was in middle school and the State decided as my sole legal guardian to place me on disability.
My medical care as a child was much as it is now, only with the exception that kids get a bit more coverage. Children get dental benefits, I have to wait until a tooth can’t be saved or has a massive infection to even be seen. Being on the program at a young age, I did not accumulate much in the way of work money in my SSI account, although I did attempt to work several times. Unfortunately every time I did try to work, an employer or doctor would get tired of me being sick and put a stop to it one way or another. That is why my monthly amounts from SSI/SSD are so low, not because I am disabled, but because I couldn’t work to pay into the system like the people who receive these benefits only when they reach retirement after a full life of paying in.
Also did you know the government actually penalizes people for getting married if you are both on disability? They treat you as one person and give you one person’s pay! For love, and for spiritual reasons I decided that was a risk I would just have take. So, I married my love who happened to be on disability also anyway, but we will get to that.
In 1994, while I was living at the totalitarian girls school, I wrote in a notebook almost constantly. Nearly every day, my notebooks were confiscated by one staff person or another as “contraband.” They confiscated it not because of what it was, but because of the words I had written in them. There were a few staff members however, that encouraged me to write as much as my muse would allow.
One day, a staff member who was usually very encouraging confiscated my notebook. I was devastated.
This was one of the ones who usually slid me more notebooks on the sly. Little did I know that staff lady had a purpose for confiscating my notebook. She entered some of my poetry in a contest for underprivileged youth who also wrote poetry, and I won the honor along with several other teens!
I was awarded Ginsberg Scholarship up at Naropa University (then the Naropa Institute) during the 20th anniversary festival. For nearly 2 weeks I got out of that hole every day. I got to sit at the feet of Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and many of their contemporaries and learn. There were writing workshops taught by the writers, poetry readings, lectures, so many wonders my poor head just swam with delight. It was an opportunity of a lifetime and I drank deep from its cup.
The first night we were there, the event was a poetry reading. I wanted an unobstructed view, and they had the first 3 rows of the auditorium blocked off for Ginsberg Scholars, so I took a seat in the front row. When the lights dimmed, there was no one on either side of me. When the lights came up for intermission, I looked to my left and there sat Ed Saunders (descendant of Edgar Allen Poe and in the band “The Fugs” and to my right sat Allen Ginsberg. I looked him dead in the eye and said, “You’re Allen Ginsberg aren’t you?” (what a dumb question I thought to myself)
He replied, “Yes I am, and who are you?”
I eagerly gave him my middle name (my birth middle name…. I went by my middle name at the time and my name hadn’t been legally changed yet) He and I and several other Poets and Ginsberg Scholars headed out the door for a smoke at intermission.
Several days later, Mr. Ginsberg and I walked outside together. I seem to remember him making a comment about one of the boys in the group (who happened to be right walking directly in front of us) being sexy. When we got outside, we shared a cigarette. I had none and they were strictly prohibited at the girls school, but the staff person who should have been monitoring me happened to be away. I happened to have a big 4 inch thick binder of poetry. The staff at the school decided to let me have my accumulated confiscated poetry for this special event only.
As we were smoking, Mr. Ginsberg noticed my binder and asked if he could have a peak at it. My trembling hands offered my poetry to this famous, brilliant man. He thumbed through randomly, reading with little expression on his face other than peace. He asked me to point out some of the poems I thought were particularly nice, which I eagerly did. When he was done, he spoke.
“Laura,” (my middle name at the time) he says with a peaceful smile, “If you should ever stop writing, I will haunt you whether I am living or dead, until the day you die.”
That is all he said to me about my writing. In 1997, a few months before I graduated High School, Allen Ginsberg passed away. I was devastated, but I continued to write, never forgetting his threat to haunt me. Life circumstances, prevented me from attending Naropa right out of High School, but the dream of attending this University stuck with me.
During my senior year in 1997, I got a strange illness that nearly prevented me from graduating. I was sore and tired all the time. My head hurt constantly and all I wanted to do was sleep. I was working as an Au Pair for some nice people with 2 boys suffering from ADHD. The mother of the family was a nurse and she took me in to be tested for Mono. All the docs were sure I had mono, but the test came back negative. No one had any answers.
After High School, I did a Jack Kerouac on the road type journey and ended up in Washington DC. I had awful headaches, and aches and pains in general.
“I’m too young to feel like this.” I’d tell myself.
However I had the benefit of youth, and my condition was in remission most of the time.
While living in DC, I met and married a man. We had a child the doctors said could not happen. I began contacting in my 5th month of pregnancy, but I held that baby in until 5 weeks before term. Hearing Westley cry for the first time was one of the biggest highlights of my life… Especially considering the 14 miscarriages before him and the 2 after.
My husband was abusive, so when my son, was 4 months old, I left his daddy to try and prevent abuse. I will skip ahead a bit and just say that Westley was murdered when he was nearly 19 months old. The person I suspect for the crime was tried and acquitted due to an oversight on the part of the prosecuting attorney when giving instructions to the jury.
I spent time in the Pueblo State mental hospital and in jail on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter. The charges against me were deemed unworthy for me to be bound over for trial, but the whole process (from arrest in a mental hospital in Colorado, to 2 weeks in shackles during extradition, to the dropping of the charges in Michigan) took nearly 6 months. I had to stay in Michigan so I could testify, but I had no place to go.
I was placed in the mental hospital again because I was homeless, and the state thought I would be more comfortable in the mental hospital than in a shelter. Grief over my son’s murder was a convenient excuse to have me committed again. Eventually I was placed in an “Assisted Living Home” and I went back on Supplemental Security Income,/Social Security Disability (hereafter SSI/SSD). I did not want to be on these programs at all, but I was too ill to work, and really had no other option if I wanted help from other agencies.
I stayed in that roach infested hole, and watched my condition deteriorate until the trial was over. While I lived there, I met a woman who did some work in exchange for room and board. She was dying of Lupus and cancer, and she smoked cannabis as a medicine to ease her suffering. It was illegal at the time, but I tried it and it did help. However, I was unwilling to be breaking the law on a regular basis. When the trial was over, I found a more affordable and cleaner living arrangement. The woman suffering died a few months after I moved out.
Finances dictated that I stay close by, and I did for 6 years. I had a partner at the time, and we were engaged to be married, but I also had this other friend who was in love with me. He waited 6 years for me to make up my mind about the man I was with. My Fibromyalgia (although we didn’t know to call it that then) progressed from just headaches and a few body aches every sporadically to constant driving pain.
On August 21, 2002 I had my last pain free moment. I have not been in “remission” since then. I have not had one moment completely free from pain since this day. I know because I keep detailed records on my condition. The doctors had no answers for me. They couldn’t even tell me what I had. Yet, they handed out prescription after prescription…… Narcotics, anti-seizure medication, muscle relaxers, nausea pills, blood pressure meds (used off label), anti-depressants (even though I wasn’t depressed,) migraine drugs, on and on until I was taking 20+ different pharmaceuticals every day!
I was accepted into Lansing Community College intending to get a certificate in American Sign Language (ASL). I did this so I could be an interpreter. I was also pursuing a BA with a major of Ancient History with a minor in literature. I got stellar grades, but my doctors pulled me out of school before I could earn one single credit.
I went to the ER frequently out of sheer desperation. I went just so I could get comfortable enough to have a bit of sleep after a week or more of lingering in a painful place that seemed to be located in deep within the realm of a narcotic distorted pain haze, a no-where-land that seemed to be somewhere between life and death. The doctors in the emergency room and elsewhere often treated me as though I was an addict, and not a pain patient, AND I WAS MISERABLE!
During this time, my oldest brother, Shannon, died. He’d suffered a severe brain injury years before and was in pain constantly. One doctor wasn’t paying enough attention to his prescription pad and he prescribed my brother’s death (unintentionally). My brother had tried cannabis in his earlier years, but was trying to be a law abiding citizen. He was not educated on his rights to use the plant (CO did have a small registry ad the time) and died due to his pharmaceuticals.
I often wonder if he’s still be with us if he had only used cannabis instead of some of the medications he was on.
After my brother had passed on, I visited some biological family in Colorado in the winter of 2006-2007 and decided not to come back to this man, except to collect my things. I went back and collected what was important and started over in Colorado. I also sent a letter to the sweet man who had been waiting for me all this time.
My future husband #2 sold all of his possessions except what he could carry on the bus, and came to Colorado just to have a chance to be my love. We moved to Boulder, CO just blocks away from Naropa University where my life had been influenced so much. I dreamed for years of attending, but my health prevented it. I finally got stubborn and bullied my doctors into letting me go.
I was accepted into Naropa University almost immediately after I applied. For two semesters in 2007-2008 school year I made an effort to get a degree (Major in Writing and Poetics, with a double minor of Art History and visual Art. I had hoped this degree would give me access to jobs more suited to my bodies abilities. Unfortunately, my immune response is weak, and was pulled out by my doctors both times. My grades were stellar. Naropa wanted me there, I wanted to be there, but government programs required I be enrolled a certain amount of credit hours (beyond the abilities of my body) in order to keep my funding.
I married my sweetheart in April of 2008. I attempted a semester at Grand Canyon University online in Fall 2008 to the same effect. Now I have many thousands of dollars in student loans I can’t pay because I attempted to get a degree so I could have a job my body could handle.

Breezy with a Medical Marijuana License

Currently (Feb 2010), my sole health insurance is provided to me is under medicare/medicaid. This is because I am completely disabled and the doctors do not allow me to work, or even to attend school any more. I assure you that this is only for the time being… I am getting stronger all the time! Before I was placed on the Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry in June 2009, I would have to visit a doctors office several times a month, sometimes several times a week, sometimes with several appointments booked the same day with specialists and tests, painful and difficult physical therapy that seemed to harm more than hurt, etc., and there were to many trips to the emergency room to count.
Since I was approved for the medical marijuana registry I haven’t needed near the amount of services from the medicaid/medicare program. In fact, I’ve had to see a doctor twice since June 3, 2009 when the doctor signed my forms. Once to have 14 teeth pulled, a little bit of dental work made necessary by a combination of years of no dental benefits unless my teeth couldn’t be saved and needed to be pulled, being on narcotics for almost a decade, and dealing with severe nausea/vomiting/malnutrition.
The other doctor visit (and medications that followed) were for a bad cold that I caught at the dentists office. I haven’t seen a doctor at all otherwise, although I do call my family doctor to check in and let her know I am doing well.
Before I was on the MMJ registry, I was on so many medications (20 plus medications taken at various intervals though the day) that I felt like I was taking a pill every 2 minutes…. Number of traditional prescriptions I take daily now – TWO. (non narcotics) For 6 months, I didn’t need any pharmaceutical support, but I am having trouble keeping my proper medication (MMJ) in the house, so I had to get something to fill in the gaps. These medications are cheap (together it cost under $5 for a month supply with my medicare part D.)
The taxpayers were paying for all those medications I was on before through medicare/medicaid, plus all the doctor visits to get, maintain, and change dosing on those prescriptions right? Some of those medications by themselves cost the government thousands of dollars a month! Many could not have refills on them by law and required a doctor visit every time I needed more.
I always felt guilty about my personal burden on the American Taxpayers. But now I don’t have to feel guilty cause I have given a present to the American Taxpayer. I got on the MMJ registry. Now I do not go to the mainstream doctor unless I need antibiotics. I am off all prescriptions. I had tobacco quit (been trying for 20 years to quit) until I was without medicine too long and got stressed out, but I plan to quit again.
The government of the United States and the State of Colorado (as well as other states) are all saving a ton of money due to the growth in the medical marijuana industry and so are the dispensaries and caregivers. As a patient caught in the middle, I decided that I may have a unique perspective on this issue and have decided to throw my two cents in on the topic.
If you listen to the news, it seems to be the government officials vs. the dispensary owners. here in Colorado. This should not be the case. The patients needs should be at the heart of this discussion, particularly the needs of low income medical marijuana patients on Social Security Disability and Social Security Income (SSD/SSI)
When I began to write the essay that I posted in the online forums, I decided that my joining the Medical Marijuana Registry was my Christmas Present to the American Taxpayer for the year 2009.  And posted the title as “My Personal Christmas Gift to the American Taxpayer.”
I posted much of the content you have read above and will read below all over the internet in an effort to help myself and others in my position. I sat in the online forums begging:
“Is there someone, anyone out there who hears my plea and wants to help me actually do something other than sit in online forums and complaining about the problem and hope someone does something”
I was heartbroken to find little positive response and a lot of negative/cruel responses by persons who clearly are recreational users and not medical users. The treatment of women in some of these cannabis forum rooms was often appalling. I finally decided to stop beating a dead horse and set up a store front to help me get the funds I need for my own medicine, food and other needs and to donate 10% of our profits to provide medical marijuana for free to low income patients in need
A nice lady with the screen name Granny Stormcrow took the time out of her busy day and posted a link to http://www.GreenPassion.org
I followed that link and found a true forum where people can debate and discuss this controversial subject maturely. Check it out if you have the time…. But I digress.

The Government is Saving/Making a Ton on the MMJ program!

The government is saving many thousands of dollars a month on me alone, and yet I have to struggle to obtain this money saver for the American taxpayer. With much cut in government spending on the part of an individual… all SSI/SSD MMJ patients should get a medal or something. Now think how many individuals are saving the government this money in the State of Colorado alone…. Let alone the other 13 states and the District of Columbia! We all need medals or medicine at the very least!
How many others are there like me? Meanwhile, the price of my medicine increases as the MMJ movement grows. My family and I have been stuck having to make really hard decisions like, do we pawn our wedding and engagement rings to get my medicine? Or do we pawn them and buy some food? Or do we keep the rings for sentimental reasons, lay here and just starve and have seizures from pain and lack of medicine/food.
I ended up pawning all the rings, having already sold else of value to the pawn store and bought both medicine and food. The money I received for my treasured bands did not buy nearly enough of either medicine or food. We promised ourselves we would get them back, but I ended up crying my eyes out when I realized I just can’t afford to get them out of hock. The deadline to get them back passed weeks ago. I live in a Winnebago and have been in real danger of starving to death at times. Now don’t get me wrong, my life has been profoundly changed by this medicine, and any hardship I may have to endure is truly worth the benefits of this plant. I will not compromise and go back to the narcotics and other prescriptions just because I can get them paid for or for any other reason. I would rather be in pain when I am without my medical marijuana than take a morphine and get sicker.
Now I ask the members of the Government of the Great State of Colorado, and the Government of the United States of America, if you had child who was sick all their life and was suffering would you leave them to languish in pain and poverty just because they are an adult it was no longer your legal responsibility?Would you turn your child in to go to prison if that child chooses the use a plant that allows them to function again? Of course you wouldn’t. You would do whatever was in your power to make your child as comfortable as possible.
As an adult child, I now boldly but humbly step up to my adopted parent, the Government of the State of Colorado, and by extension the Government of the United States of America, and ask, “Guardian Government, Your ward respectfully asks of you, do you it intend to focus on the dispensaries who are the money in this discussion, or do you intend to focus on your citizens whose LIVES are being saved by this plant? You discuss care giving so much in this debate, but the treatment of patients on the part of many in this debate has proven differently. I know you have hearts, please use them as you consider these policies. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This should be a people issue.
Medical Marijuana therapy works. I am now well enough to manage a website as well as volunteer and be an advocate for others in need. I have regularly traded my services in clerical/office/computer work in dispensaries for medications when I am strapped for cash. All of these things would have been impossible for me nine short months ago when I was all but bedridden and and in so much pain I had to keep myself from overdosing.

Medical Marijuana, Social Stigma, and Family/Friends

Sometimes family members and the community can make it very hard to be a low income medical marijuana patient too. I have heard many stories of people not living with family/friends any longer because they are shunned for their medicinal use. I’ve experienced this shunning first hand myself. The stereotype of the “typical” marijuana user is further damaging these people with no where else to turn!
This herb is profoundly changing lives! It is healing people, body, mind, and soul. Yet its legal users get treated as if they are using it for recreation. I believe recreational use is a VALID use of the plant, further I feel it be legalized and would be an important source of revenue for America if it were to be legal once again. However, that is not why I personally NEED this plant.
This plant allows me to eat, to sleep, to get out of my bed, to manage my pain enough to have a job, to be involved with life instead of living in a nightmare world just praying for the end to come soon. If you happen to be a Fibromyalgia patient praying for the end, you can be praying for a long time as this is not a terminal disease.

My Disease… Fibromyalgia

The Mayo clinic website (see footnote 1) describes symptoms of Fibromyalgia as including
Signs and symptoms of Fibromyalgia can vary, depending on the weather, stress, physical activity or even the time of day.
Widespread pain and tender points
The pain associated with Fibromyalgia is described as a constant dull ache, typically arising from muscles. To be considered widespread, the pain must occur on both sides of your body and above and below your waist.
Fibromyalgia is characterized by additional pain when firm pressure is applied to specific areas of your body, called tender points. Tender point locations include:
Back of the head,Between shoulder blades,Top of shoulders,Front sides of neck,Upper chest,Outer elbows,Upper hips,Sides of hips,Inner knees
Fatigue and sleep disturbances
People with Fibromyalgia often awaken tired, even though they seem to get plenty of sleep. Experts believe that these people rarely reach the deep restorative stage of sleep. Sleep disorders that have been linked to Fibromyalgia include restless legs syndrome and sleep apnea.
Co-existing conditions
Many people who have Fibromyalgia also may have:
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Depression
Endometriosis
Headaches
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Lupus
Osteoarthritis
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Restless legs syndrome
Rheumatoid arthritis

And a whole host of other conditions not on the Mayo clinic list.

Modern Western medicine can’t even agree on the causes/mechanisms of this disease because they don’t understand it.
It has been suggested that this is a psychological disease only, a psychosis created when a hypochondriac hears about Fibromyalgia. The advocates of this theory say that the symptoms of this disease are all in the patient’s head. I do not personally believe in this theory, but even if this disease is all in my head, the medical marijuana still helps.
Other sources on Fibromyalgia suspect that this disease has been around for all time, a genetic disease with a trigger, and its symptoms are found even in individuals of remote tribes of Africa and the Amazon who have no contact with the west. So why should I use new untested man-made medicine created by people who don’t understand my disease and possibly believe it doesn’t exist? Especially when that disease has been treated with herbs known to posses pain relieving qualities for many generations of humans?
I am confident that If I had the proper medicine, I would have pain free moments again. This herb doesn’t just treat pain sensations, it helps correct causes. Perhaps with the right regimen, daily pain could be a thing of the past for me.
My disease, Fibromyalgia, may not kill you on its own, but it can certainly make you wish for death. There are near epidemic levels of Fibromyalgia patients and pain patients in general who are hurting so bad they are suicidal, or worse succeed in taking their own life.

MMJ works, we just need to make sure people get appropriate dosages.

We need a program to help low income patients get their medicine!
If you are low income and can’t afford your “mainstream pharmacy” medicine, you can go to various organizations and they will help you to buy your medicine, sometimes even on a regular basis if they are necessary and not covered by insurance, but that doesn’t include medical marijuana.
If you are brave enough to speak up and ask for help getting your medicine at these organizations, you will probably find the door closed firmly in your face. You may also find that other services from the organization become difficult or impossible to obtain as well. This is out and out discrimination in my opinion. If your medicine is MMJ no one is willing to help you unless you happen to be lucky enough to find a care giver who actually gives a care if you have medicine or not! I recently had it out with Boulder County Food stamp office, and I suspect me listing my MMJ expenses on the form without shame is the root of the problem.
“So what,” you say? Well let’s look at this… The high price can force a person in my position to go back to buying their medicine off the street where it is less expensive, but also less potent, less safe.
1)You never know what has been added to you herb to increase the genetically weak herbs potency artificially with other street drugs or various substances to make it seem as though there is more weight to the medicine.
2)It is much more dangerous to obtain, and the process of obtaining it can be a risk to your health in many ways. Long periods in the cold and encounters with strange germs can put a person right back in their sick bed or the hospital.
3)The money spent on street grade medication often goes back to fund gang and criminal activity. This is something that most medical marijuana patients do not want to support and got on the registry to stop supporting. I personally counted avoiding purchasing on the street as one of the largest pluses to getting on the registry, and yet I see people like me being forced back there.
4)The price of cannabis on the street directly influences the costs of Medical Grade in the Dispensaries. In this respect, Cannabis is a commodity like any other, and as such is subject to price fluctuation when artificially influenced. It doesn’t really have anything to do with how much it costs to grow it and transport it to the patient. It has to do with how much it costs on the street.

What is to be done if you have no medicine? Where can you go?

There are few funds or organizations willing to help people like me get my medicine when I can’t afford it, and you have to really dig in your need to find them. When I did find them, they could only help once or not at all due to the demand. Many patients do not have the strength for this search when they are lacking appropriate medication. It took me months of daily web crawling to dig any up organizations up. Now people who wish to help provide medicine to people in this position can buy something for themselves or someone else, something they may have bought anyway and someone gets medicine.
If someone who has medicine/money wants to help a person in my position, likewise there is no way for a person who wants to help to donate money to people in a position similar to mine. Right now low income persons only relief seems to be individuals/churches/caregivers being kind. So I created this gift company, and here we are.
One church I know of is greenfaith ministry. The Reverend of greenfaith ministry is also known as the 420 Reverend. I have had contact with Reverend Brandon Baker from this organization who is a great man. He drives over 50 miles to get me some medicine for free. Unfortunately he is one man and the demand is high. Rev. B Baker is quoted as saying, “Tell the (Denver City my edit) council a majority amount of local churches support un-regulated access for all needy mmj patients, give them my name and number if they say they want to meet with any of the spiritual mmj community church leaders!”

Dispensaries are necessary, but not without a social conscience

Now the other side of the coin. It is no secret that the people who own dispensaries are making money on patients like me too.
We need these dispensaries for a variety of reasons.
1) What would a patient do if their caregiver had a bad crop and was without medicine? If that patient was restricted from seeing other caregivers they would have no where to get their medicine but the street.
2) If Our caregivers are restricted to a small number of plants they can grow for you, thus if you become tolerant to the genetics of one strain of medicine quickly and need to change the genetics of you medication often, it may be difficult for your caregiver to have/maintain the variety you need.
3) Competition strengthens customer service and prevents patients from being in a form of bondage with their caregiver. If we restrict patients from going to other dispensaries, how are they to know if the medicine they are receiving is the best quality available for them. If we restrict the number of persons a dispensary can serve to a tiny number and prevent patients from seeing other medical marijuana providers, and in addition the number of times a year they can change their caregiver, then patients must settle for whatever medicine a particular caregiver is giving them whether it is effective or not.

How does Kiefair Keepsakes indigent program work?

We encourage dispensaries and caregivers to join with us in our efforts to ease the suffering of low income MMJ patients. The funds raised through sales in my online store will be held in trust and dispensed when/where they are needed according to the needs and location of the patient in question. A patient from your area would contact me, then I would contact you to confirm you have the stock necessary for the patient and to confirm availability of time, I would then deposit money for their medication into a Paypal account owned by your dispensary. Discounts on medications are welcome, but not mandatory. The patient could then come in and pick up their necessary medicine.
I require no investment on your part. Patients would have the option of reporting to me on the quality of your medicine and I would then write their reviews and forward their recommendations (no names attached) on the net. Everybody wins. People who wish to provide money for the trust can purchase anything in my online gift-store or my personal catalog. 10% of my profits go to this fund. Hopefully a larger and larger percentage of profits will got to the trust when my personal finances allow me.

Meds for free? What about Caregivers and Growers needs?

Now, I have no problem with the idea of paying for my medications… The person who grows it provides a service that a dollar amount really can’t be placed on and should be compensated, and so should everyone involved in getting the medicine to me. That is only fair. But I want know the money I spend helps others like me or at very least the movement in general. I also don’t need to be paying 50+% of my income to stay barely comfortable. I’d like to be able to pay a reasonable percentage of my income and have all the medicine my body requires. I know that may seem a little unrealistic, but a girl in pain can dream. lol

Here in Colorado it is the wild wild west right now. If I happen to have to go somewhere other than my primary caregiver, my $ will probably end up in a growing bank account of some green gold rush eyed caregiver who could really care less if I have effective medication or not. In fact, it seems like the only green anyone cares about is dollar bill green and the green of greed. Yet the right to visit a dispensary other than your caregiver is a necessary one. What happens if your caregiver loses a grow? What do you do if you need a different strain of medicine than what is available that day? What if they are out of the product that helps the most? Would you refuse to let me go to W@(m@rt if W@lgr33ns was out of my prescription?

So the government ignores the money it saves, and many (not all) of the dispensaries in the area seem to have little social conscience about the price a person like me can pay to have their medicine.

A Big social Problem, and Yet We aren’t the Issue, money is.

When your total family income is at or below poverty levels, you can absolutely be forced back on the streets to get your medicine. My medical condition requires a minimum of 1/8 oz of smoke-able every 2 days to just to keep me off narcotics and other prescriptions that do more harm than good, not crying, not having seizures caused by pain, and not be stuck in bed.
This dosing by no means keeps me comfortable it is important to note.
I have NEVER had the pleasure of having enough medicine on hand to decide on what a good “comfortable” dosing schedule would be, even though I do have a compassionate caregiver. I just don’t want to put my poor caregiver out of business taking care of my needs. I have a friend who says her appropriate dosage is 7 grams a day (through edibles and smoking) If her herb costs $10 an ounce (a very cheap estimate), Then she will need to find $70 a day for her to treat her condition… that adds up to $2,170 a month… much more than many on SSD/SSI make in a month, and much more than it would cost to grow the plant with even with top notch gardening supplies..
What I am trying to say is that there is something fundamentally very wrong with the fact that there are so many people who are to poor to even know what the appropriate dosage of medication for their amount of pain, yet the government is saving a bunch of cash and the Medical Marijuana industry is getting the “lion’s share” of the rest of their income.
It is frustrating to feel like you and others are falling through the cracks even further. Many in my position were barely hanging on before the economic downturn, and now see no light at the end of the tunnel. SSI/SSD keeps you far below the poverty line if you have been unable to work enough many living on $1000 a month or less for their whole family.
 It is frustrating to see others get wealthy off of you and others while your tier of society starves. Sometimes I feel invisible, and I know for a fact I am not the only one out there feeling this.
I was born in the State of Colorado. My family has lived n this state for 4 generations (or more.) My grandmother owned and operated the Historic Stirrup Ranch near Canon City, Co. for many years. I love Colorado, but I live in an RV and I am so desperate to be in a place where I can have food and medicine that I am willing to move to any state with a registry because the social climate here is so difficult for poor patients right now.
I have a plan so that if I were able to obtain some land, I could be self sufficient (NO MORE SSI/SSD and I could actually contribute to charities instead of needing help from them!) and never have to worry about being hungry or without my necessary medicine. In time, many others could be helped with food and medicine grown on the land. I could be fulfilling needs rather than begging to have my needs filled.

Kiefair Keepsakes, stepping stone to a dream

My dream is to be able to get some land and set up an initial grow op in earth ships (a growing movement of building practices with an all environmentally friendly building/management philosophy.) This initial grow op would end up growing into a Nonprofit Medical Marijuana retreat/community/caregiver for patients like me to be able to get their medicine and/or live in a more affordable and kind setting, using their personal talents and abilities to benefit the community. I want to focus on what a “disabled person” can do, not their limitations. I want to create a place where it is safe to be sick on a daily basis with no fear of hunger, lack of medication, or fear of the loss of a job/home due to illness.
While I have the heart and the ability to do this work (given time and medication), I unfortunately have no capital for such a venture and am praying the universe will see fit to make it happen.
I have researched many aspects of this and it is very feasible, however getting investment in such a venture is not my forte. This kind of setting would be great tool for a “for profit” dispensary to use. It would be publicity, demonstrate social conscience, and you could also offer my nonprofit medications cheap to their own low income patients. inquire further at kiefair.keepsakes@gmail.com
I just wanna say Thanks to all the people out there helping to make it possible for people who need this medicine to have it. Whatever you celebrate this or any season, may it be meaningful and may Blessings come to you all! Thanks for listening!
footnote 1 Retrieved from the Mayo clinic website 1/12/2009
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/Fibromyalgia/DS00079/DSECTION=symptoms
Copyright 2009,2010 by Breezy Keefer, owner Kiefair Keepsakes All Rights Reserved
Please copy and redistribute with attribution of source!

Cannabis Health News Magazine graciously printed my last essay titled, “Kiefair Ke
epsakes, Who we are, how we came to be, Why we give back” in their February/March
2010 issue. In that article, I talked about my dream of self sufficiency and the
journey that led me to open my (now closed) business of Kiefair Keepsakes. In t
hat article, I said that Kiefair Keepsakes was the stepping stone to a dream… I re
ally didn’t know just how correct that statement happened to be for me until just
recently.
Kiefair Keepsakes as a business may have failed miserably. I didn’t have the funds
to invest in it properly. The little woman behind that business, certainly did
not fail. Let me introduce myself to you properly. My name is Breedheen O. Keefe
r. I frequently write under the pen name of Breezy Kiefair.
When I began Kiefair Keepsakes, I had a simple idea, sell goods, take at least 1
0% of the profits and donate herb to those in need. I thought it was a wonderful
idea, and it was. As I said, I didn’t have the financial stability to make that i
dea fly. I created my own website for free, but couldn’t afford to get fancy butto
ns on it so it was user friendly. The result was obvious: nearly non-existent sa
les. I became painfully aware that I just didn’t have the income to help myself or
anyone else. So, I “closed” Kiefair Keepsakes “door” and threw myself into full-time ac
tivism desperate to not only help myself, but to find a way to help others in my
situation. I left the website up as an example of what I tried to help myself.
I thought that maybe someone somewhere might be helped by the idea at least.
I told myself that my energy and skills served others better simply by my dilige
nt probing letters to my representatives at the local, state and federal level.
I also realized that I could serve the low income patient simply by sharing my o
wn personal struggles openly and honestly. In January 2010 when Kiefair Keepsake
s was still open and in its infancy, I attended the “Off the steps and into the ho
use” rally in Denver. I rode the bus down from Longmont, eagerly protesting, knowi
ng that few there had ever heard of me or cared to hear of me. I spent that cold
January day there with my peers. I wished to stay longer, but then the pain cre
pt in and said, “Breezy if you don’t leave now, you won’t have the strength to make it
back home on your own.” I was dejected because I knew I had basically made the tr
ip for nothing. I didn’t get to speak to my representative in person because of my
illness. I went home and wrote a letter to them instead.
In the heated months that followed with the debate over HB-1284/SB-109 I wrote m
y representatives often and listened in to every debate on the topic that went o
ut over the net (unless I happened to be off on a sick day). I often reported ri
ght through the pain and exhaustion for the benefit of those supporting MMJ who
could work formally and didn’t have the time to listen.. I reported on what I hear
d. As I could, I gave my opinion online in real time whenever possible usually o
ver social media because that was free. Compassion medication was, in retrospect
, really easy to come by in those days when the laws regarding medicinal cannabi
s in Colorado amounted to Amendment 20 and no more. There were parts of those bi
lls that I liked, and that made sense. Other parts I detested, but if you want t
o know those opinions, you can ask me yourself.
What I am trying to get to is the effects of this bill on a low income patient w
ho is not a self-caregiver. If you are a low income patient, a caregiver (Medica
l Marijuana Center or Private Caregiver) knows that they can sign you as their p
atient and you can never, ever, buy as much herb as they can grow for you. This
is particularly true if you have a disease that qualifies you for additional pla
nts for edibles or opiate replacement. This was a fact of the low income medicin
al cannabis patient’s life long before additional regulations were handed down. Th
e caregiver can choose what plants to grow “for you” and pick something of particula
rly high yielding genetics even if that is NOT the genetics your disease require
s. The next thing that generally happens is the low income patient comes in the
door a few weeks or months later and says “Hey, I am broke. I need meds. Can you h
elp me?” Now is the moment of truth in any patient caregiver relationship, even in
a more traditional medical setting (lets think of the Hippocratic oath, which a
dmittedly no caregiver is required to take). All too often, the low income patie
nt is made to feel horrible for even having the courage to ask for what they nee
d regardless of ability to pay. What can be an even bigger slap in the face to a
low income patient is “false compassion”. What do I mean by that? Well it can go se
veral ways…
1.
A caregiver might allow a patient to run up a huge tab that they could never pay
on their income, making the low income patient worse off in the long run (stres
s kills).
2.
A caregiver might throw the low income patient a very small amount of free herb
each month of their most degraded, lowest quality medication regardless of what
is medically needed for the patient. Most low-income patients are all to happy t
o take that “unmarketable herb” because over-dry under potent medication is better t
han none at all. We smile and are genuinely grateful, but know there is somethin
g seriously wrong with this picture.
3.
Sometimes they promise to teach the low income patient how to grow for themselve
s. When the caregiver makes claim to teach, this is basically promising the pati
ent self-sufficiency when it comes to their necessary medication. Later, they te
ll the patient it is too expensive to do on that patients income (generally they
say this to keep control of their plants). A caregiver might also gift a clone
of a particularly fussy strain of cannabis plant to a low income patient as if t
o say, “Here… lets see you succeed in growing for yourself with that.”
*
o
+
When it comes to growing, Cannabis can be a picky plant, but if you choose your
strains wisely, you can grow very easily, cheaply, and yes even quickly. For exa
mple, I harvested a nice Low Rider 2 auto-flower plant: I grew it in soil that w
as less than $2 a bag. I used the sun and some CFL bulbs for lighting. I used a
planter purchased at a “dollar store”. You don’t even need to pay for grow containers.
You can get great grow containers by going to most any bakery by asking for was
te icing buckets, or recycled buckets of any kind that have not been used to sto
re chemicals. I feed mostly on black-strap molasses and my vegetable food waste
composted by fishing bait worms. I planted the Low Rider 2 plant in March and ha
rvested at the end of May.
1.
The story goes many ways, but the end result is the low income cannabis patient
is left without medication or severely under-medicated. The patient is made to f
eel as though the caregiver doesn’t see their need for medication in the light tha
t they should. Meanwhile, that same caregiver gets to make cash off selling the
low income patients medicine. I am speaking of medicine grown in their name that
they can’t afford to buy for themselves. There is much fundamentally wrong with t
he above scenarios.
Before those regulations handed down in SB-109/HB1284 became law, dispensary own
ers, private growers and caregivers, and people in the medicinal cannabis patien
t community all seemed to have more of a heart for the low income patient. As so
on as the ink dried on these two bills, all anyone seemed to be able to think ab
out was the almighty dollar and how to pay all the fees that are now required. B
efore the bill became law, I could walk in to most any dispensary and walk out w
ith a few grams of cannabis free of charge so long as I promised to review it fo
r them on youtube or put up a status on social media that I was smoking a specif
ic strain from a specific place and give the contact information of the compassi
onate party. I was basically doing an advertisement for that compassionate party
for the price of a few days medication. The month the bill went into effect, my
sources of compassion dwindled to about 4 places/individuals. A month later, on
ly 2 individuals were willing to help me with my medicine regardless of my abili
ty to pay…
In the wake of these regulations, a few new options popped up for some. Religiou
s cannabis organizations sprang up over night. There has long been a religious c
annabis movement, but it too saw a boom similar to the recent dispensary opening
boom here in Colorado. These religious organizations that were already establis
hed saw higher demand and fewer donations. They had established and dedicated th
emselves to providing free medication/sacrament, but found it harder and harder
to serve the demand. Some of these Cannabis as a religious sacrament organizatio
ns give herb away completely free of charge, others were little more than a fron
t to sell medicinal grade herb to anyone who wanted it at a slight discount off
of dispensary prices.
Let me be clear that I believe in cannabis as a religious sacrament on many leve
ls. Just look up the work of Anthropologist Sula Bennet for a Judeo-Christian pe
rspective regarding the plant cannabis. Religions all over the globe have been u
sing cannabis to aid in communicating with their understanding of a higher intel
ligence since the stone age. I will defend to my death the right of all to posse
s and use cannabis on a religious level, medical level, and yes, even a recreati
onal level. That being said, an organization that promotes itself as a religious
organization should not be just another loophole in the law for shwag smokers t
o lay hands on medicinal genetics. If that shwag smoker (an un-carded individual
) is getting spiritual guidance, and aid that would be expected of most any chur
ch or spiritual organization, then it is valid. If all that organization provide
s is access to herb, then I personally take issue with them.
There are cannabis as a religious sacrament organizations out there that do meet
as a community on a regular (weekly or bi weekly basis) and some do actually of
fer spiritual guidance. Others who meet are little more than a large “circle” of smo
kers hanging out on a Sunday afternoon. I do not doubt that these circles of smo
kers have strength, and are a good thing. However, in my mind it would be more a
ppropriate for these organizations that do little more than smoke and talk to la
bel themselves as “Cannabis support groups” rather than terming themselves as a fait
h based organization. Some of the leaders in the cannabis as a religious sacrame
nt community have been to formal seminary of some sort, others have little more
than a blessing on their “ministry” obtained online for a price. Even among those wh
o got there ordination online are those who genuinely do good. Some have filed a
s non-profits, others have not. Its hard to know who to trust. Many great things
have come from humble beginnings. It was hard for me to know who to lend my pen
to. Especially when I generally write for free, or review for barter of a few g
rams of medication.
Not all of these examples/results of new regulations effects on the low-income c
annabis patient pertain to me personally. I have spent many hours listening to m
y low-income peers carefully and I know of at least one individual that fits one
, or more of the examples I have listed.
By July 2010, I was feeling rather defeated. It seemed like I was under attack b
y both sides of the cannabis issue. The Lawmakers had seemed “put out” to even speak
to an individual like me. The legal latitude given to the counties and cities o
f Colorado demanded even more of the cannabis patient. Now we had to go talk to
city council. Now we had to go vote to stop the madness in our own back yards af
ter we fought so hard to get some sense at the state house. Meanwhile, the pro-c
annabis side of the issue seemed to treat me, and those like me, as if we were a
stone around their neck due to our inability to pay for medication we clearly n
eed. Why? Because HB1284/SB109 made me us a stone around their necks.
With the new licensing fees and regulations, I saw really awesome medicine growe
rs with hearts of gold go out of business, or sell their hard built shops. I saw
really skilled edible/hash artisans loose their dreams… not for lack of will or d
etermination or ability, but for lack of funds. Many had been to culinary arts s
chool, or owned commercial bakeries previously and were no danger to anyone as f
ar as safety. They just couldn’t afford an infusion license. Those who could hold
on, those who managed to get the required red tape satisfied,could no longer get
their necessary edibles into my hands because they couldn’t afford the MMJ center
license to sell to a patient directly.
As defeated as I felt, however, somewhere in my heart I wanted to believe it was
all just a nightmare that I could somehow wake up from. We are not naive down h
ere in low-income land, we know if we go in to a regular doctor’s office or the ho
spital, we run the risk of punished for my honesty about medicinal cannabis with
poor medical care. If we go to the state and local authorities for help with fo
od and funds because those doctors all agree we are incapable of formal work, we
risk being punished with painfully little help, or no help at all. If we try to
earn our medicine through activism for the cause, as soon as money becomes an i
ssue, we’re the first to go without the strength giving herb we need.
I began posting my artwork in hopes that perhaps I could find a patron or two. I
did one painting for an agreed price of $50 cash, but in the end he was so happ
y that he traded me about a half ounce of legally grown medication. I let anothe
r long held painting go for only $10. People mistook my digital photography with
artistic edits for real paintings. It was all very flattering, but did little t
o help me raise funds for my fast approaching re-certification on my license. We
bsites wanted to post my work, but then found my images unsuitable because the s
ource photography was taken with equipment that was beyond obsolete. I was asked
for higher quality images of my “paintings” but didn’t know how to say it was not wit
hin my power to provide.
So here I live, I’m already living hand to mouth like so many others who draw disa
bility. I’ve been sick since I was a child, and while my husband and I together br
ing in about $1,000 a month. There’s a little more when you count the food assista
nce we had to fight to win back. I personally am only worth about $325 a month.
I require at least 1/8 oz of cannabis per 2-3 day period to keep me barely comfo
rtable. Even in the most bargain of dispensary, I am still not going to be able
to buy as much medication as I need. It’s enough to make you cry and scream and go
a little insane. I personally did go a little bit mad with the stress and press
ure. I threatened to stop activism all together on more than one occasion. I kep
t sheepishly picking my pen back up because I knew people like me needed a voice
. I knew I had been gifted by my understanding of a creator a skill-set. That sk
ill-set could give them the voice they needed even if it couldn’t give me the mone
y and medicine I needed for myself. My obsolete little red web-book went down ov
er and over. I patiently worked it back to life with myself for tech support aga
in and again. I even sacrificed many long held files to get myself back up and r
unning.
With my openness on social media, and my picture in the local paper, people on t
he street in my little town were talking. Talking was a good thing. I was happy
people were being more open about it. Too long has it been a topic that was only
discussed behind closed doors. However, I also have post-traumatic-stress-disor
der from various traumatic events in my life, and the razor’s edge I lived on in t
he city felt mighty thin. I continued to try to educate wherever I went. I had a
lot of great conversations with both cardholders and non-cardholders. People we
re not always kind. I did not expect them to be. Their unkindness was hard on me
nonetheless. I tried not to let it bother me. I did my best to behave as though
I had a thick skin even when my heart was breaking.
Near the end of August 2010, my husband spotted an property on eBay. 2.56 acres
of high mountain desert (pinion pines and sagebrush) in Costilla County Colorado
. It was only $3,000 total price. Low down payment, low, low, low, monthly payme
nts. No interest. It sounded too good to be true. We had been searching and sear
ching for a bit of land that even we could pay off with no problem. There it was
. It was just sitting there, so much like what I had imagined as I wrote last wi
nter that I cried for joy. We bought it on faith that it was real and it was our
s.
We did our best to prep the old 1967 Winnebago we called Frieda for a long trip.
It was nearly harvest time, and there were those who said, hold on a while Bree
zy and we’ll send you south with a bunch of medicine. My husband and I went up the
Poudre River valley for a week to await harvest. I hold a “lifetime golden age di
sabled pass” to our National Parks Service. It allows me to take advantage of the
beauty of nature at a discount of at least 50% depending on location. We thought
camping there would be a cheap option while we waited. We have a Kiefair family
tradition to stop there once a summer anyway, and we had not yet been there in
the summer of 2010. We go there to remember our wedding. We were married by a ju
dge in Cheyenne, Wyoming in April of 2008. Then we returned to Colorado. We held
our own private ceremony, giving ourselves to each other and the service of our
understanding of the creator in a cabin at Glen Echo Lodge. Yes, cannabis was i
nvolved in our wedding ceremony. At that time I had a doctor’s notation in my char
t that I was using cannabis medicinally, but didn’t yet have the protection of the
“red card.”
Old Frieda went up Poudre valley to the campground with only a few complaints. W
e had to change a coil off her alternator a few times and she drank gas like cra
zy. When we came back out of the valley, Frieda all but died. We “boon-docked”for we
eks in spots we found friendly to the homeless.. Boon-docking is an RV dwellers
term for parking in an area where no one cares if you sleep in your vehicle. I m
et several cardholders there too. A shared bowl between those in a harsh existen
ce is a beautiful thing. It doesn’t really matter what the strain in the bowl is.
The feeling you get when you find someone to share a bowl with, someone who need
s to ease their pain, and you share it with them, or they with you it is sublime
.
I even went crawling to family begging for help I feared would not be offered me
unless I bent on the medical/religious cannabis issue. I could only bear to wri
te about the treatment I received from my blood in poetry, my first love in the
writing world. Below follows my account of my last encounter with family.
The fever’s high, and my pen is cold.
2 members of the bio family show
The matriarch in her flex-fuel coach
and her husband/coach man to ensure me move a block
My ’68 home sits at a standstill
And I’m desperate enough to be so bold
To put in a call and share vulnerable woe
So I sit and hear my reproach
And hear about her needs that she can’t fill.
She keeps telling me cannabis is evil
And I keep sticking to my guns
I know there would be help for me
If I pretended I’d done wrong.
But I can’t deny what I know to be true
even though the times are hard
And I can’t lie into her face
Even though her heart gets hard.
So I took her jump-start and two fivers
As if my flowers were crack rock
And turned them into two clean sets of clothes
Up on the clearance rack.
I could have bought myself a joint with the help she had to give
But I had to prove to her, and to myself, that I’m not the things she said.
Then racked with cold and fever; for more than a week we waited
We begged, We worked, and we waited through tech issues till we got a payday loa
n
We waited another day for parts, Then that holy smoke rolled in
We’re not back on the road but progress has been made
I believe I passed a test this week and soon the sailings good
We were provided bags of hope at night
By day we did our best
To figure out which step was right
What action could bring us rest
On Sunday we learned we were welcome here as long as the parking lot stayed clea
n
And trusty Sir Ands Alot showed, with clean legal herb for me,
as the bags of charity food passed round
So boldly he lit his bowl for me as the cars too passed round
I knew I was safe and hadn’t a care
Amendment one time just for us
Amendment 20 is only a plus.
We bought a chilton manual for our engine, and did our best to fix the RV. I mad
e beaded necklaces and earrings and signs to sell them. I sold none in the end,
instead I gave them as gifts of thanks to the people around me who were kind. It
became very clear, however that it would take more funds than we had to make ol
d Frieda worthy of the high mountain passes. In fact, she could only go a block
or two at a time before refusing to budge like an old stubborn mule. It was also
clear that the only people that were gonna help Mr. and Mrs. Kiefiar get home w
ere Mr. and Mrs. Kiefair, perhaps with the exception of intercession on the part
of the creator. I took a trip to the hospital for severe abdominal pain, bloody
stools, dehydration and rapid weight loss, and other such unpleasant bowel issu
es. When that got me no answers, I was about ready to break emotionally.
A few days after the hospital incident, we got a visit from law enforcement, as
if we didn’t have enough to juggle. On September 27, 2010 at 12:14 am I had this t
o write:
I send a text to Sir Ands a lot. It has just become my bio sister’s birthday and l
aw enforcement officers have just left my Rv’s front door. It’s Sunday evening, and
I’ve just finished consuming communion bread and wine, my smoky sacrament, and fal
len asleep. First the lights, but I can only see white flashing in Frieda’s RV rea
r window. “Here we go.”, Hubby said.
Then Bang, Bang Bang on my door.
“Just a minute.” I answer.
“Longmont PD” they replied
“One moment officer. We’ve been resting, and its been awfully hot.”
“OK, get decent. Do you know L*****?” they queried
“No sir, I do not sir.” My husband replied.
My husband stepped to the door and they asked to see ID.
“Let me grab my wallet officer.” He said
I reached for mine as well.
“Can you step outside please sir.” said an officer
Then quickly on its heels, “Could you come outside with ID ma’am”
“Not an issue sir,” I said nodding my head expectantly, “I have it in my hand.”
I step outside and hand over my ID and my red card.
“Do you have a cat?” they asked
I was toking a “blended” tobacco roll your own. I’d re-lit it. I was half-awake. I’d for
gotten I’d stretched my medicine some in rolling tobacco. (A wretched habit that w
ould be long broken if I but had the herb to not need to stretch it with tobacco
!)
I said, “Sure officer. I have three.”
“Are they ok?”
“Sure I said. They’re watered. They’re fed. They love Rv living.”
He probes me further, “Listen. The quickest way for us to be sure you aren’t the one
s we are looking for is to let us take a look inside.”
The pain in my gut was sharp and deep. And I nearly gasped in pain. My heart ski
pped a beat. I half wanted to ask for a warrant but instead I found the words to
say, “You need to be aware that I am a medical cannabis patient, and you will see
paraphernalia, but ok.”
The younger officer looks at me like a light has gone on in his head.
“We’re not here for that right now.” he smiles and says.
And the older officer goes in to see my Social Security squalor. He got to see t
he disorder caused by disease at play.
I’m so ashamed but without apology I say, “Outside my medicinal cannabis activism, I
know no one in Longmont.”
And then they tell me of the one they ARE looking for. I saw them yesterday. The
ir Rv description sounded like mine. They were reported to be in the same locati
on as I. The LEO assure me we’re causing them no grief. I get the message its all
ok. They warn us of cracks we could fall through when it comes time for shift ch
ange. They warn about more knocks at my door. They tell me to do just exactly wh
at I did, and promise I’ll do fine. “Do you need help to get going?” We just smile and
say, “No thanks officer, we’re doing just fine.”
We decided the land was more important than the RV and made the decision to sell
her. We got my compassion delivery of early pull cannabis I got to trim myself.
It was enough for about 2 weeks at my conservation dosing schedule. We were fin
ally ready to make our move.
We packed all of our possessions, including our three cats into a rented moving
truck. As we were packing the truck, I listed the RV on craigslist as a Karma sp
ecial for much less than she was worth. Before we could even get all of our thin
gs out, she was sold. The baby-boomer gentleman handyman who bought her patientl
y waited as we got the rest of our things out. Then he patiently waited for us t
o deliver it. He made no complaints when she broke down in the intersection and
he had to come tow her to his house. We even had a great conversation about how
much medical cannabis has done for me personally. This is part of what I had to
say to him:
Just to tell you how much cannabis has given me back, let me say this:
In 1997 I was inducted into the National Library of Congress at age 17 for a poe
m I wrote titled “The Sun is High” It was in a collection of poetry called Chambers
of Time. It looked like I had a bright future in store for me. This was before t
he pain and exhaustion got to be a constant issue. I did not publish a word agai
n until January/February 2010. Why? I was incapable. I got my medicinal cannabis
license in June of 2009. It expires on November 22, 2010. How do I pay the doct
or’s fee? I know will not be covered by medicare and/or medicaid? Why do I even ha
ve to re-certify when even the Social Security Administration admits I have no h
ope of ever being able to pull in a paycheck for myself? Shouldn’t the money peopl
e like me save the American taxpayer in those programs be enough to make this a
little easier on me and my peers?
He agreed with me, even though he wasn’t sure how you got a card. He even gave me
his email address and made me promise to write, and I intend to when I have the
strength.
We were finally free to go to our land. We had a motor that would run to get us
there, but now we had no shelter. I knew that winter at 9,000 feet is harsh. -15
degree days and nights are a real possibility on a regular basis. I was deceive
d in no way about what the cold can do in this area of Colorado. My family has s
urvived in this area of Colorado in remote locations before. I was gifted a goos
e down comforter by a canna-brother and sister to ensure my warmth. I dubbed the
se particular individuals Sir Ands ALOT and Lady G. They know who they are and t
heir generosity knows no bounds. I was not as worried as all my social media fri
ends and regulars seemed to be.
We were out of options, and desperate enough that we’d rather risk dying on our ow
n land than linger in the city any longer. We used part of the proceeds from Fri
eda to buy a tent that appeared to be at least 3 season. I knew internet service
and cell service would be spotty in Costilla County. We knew we would have no e
lectricity, and no source of water. We bought a pre-paid web capable phone of a
service the land owner said worked pretty well (it didn’t). We had laid in stock o
f dry goods over the past few months and figured that even without transportatio
n, we had enough food to survive. Its not as if my body lets me consume anywhere
near a normal amount of calories in a day anyway.
There was so much joy in my heart as we made our way south. Despite the fact tha
t I knew life in the high mountain desert would be harsh, I could feel burdens l
ifting off of me with each mile marker. I knew I was no longer renting. I no lon
ger had to pay money month after month and worry when someone would say, “Move alo
ng cannabis smoker. We won’t tolerate your kind here anymore.” The closer we got to
the land, the more I realized that it hadn’t been myself I was angry for at all. I
realized that each time I had gotten frustrated at my circumstances, I wasn’t rea
lly angry at what was happening to me. I was angry because I knew that for each
hardship I endured, there were easily hundreds of others other medicinal cannabi
s patient going through the same thing and likely worse. We are on the buses wit
h you who do not partake, we are among the homeless, we are the some of your nei
ghbors you chat with, we work along side you. I also realized that I had given a
lot of people my permission mentally to make me feel bad about my medication. I
decided it had to stop.
Sometime the third week of September, I wrote a bit about this aspect of myself
in my little composition notebook. This is what I had to say about giving others
my permission to make me feel bad about my medication.
I choose to give no one the right to make me feel bad or guilty about my medicat
ion. I’d prefer to tell the truth even when it makes my personal life inconvenient
or painful emotionally. I’d rather educate, then go medicate. Not every mind is r
eceptive, most are closed shut like an antiquated bear trap on a surprisingly yo
ung stereotype regarding my medication. The best way to open that mind is to sha
re with it a real person’s experience. I am in the company of such historical figu
res as Queen Victoria whose name alone can conjure in the mind an entire era of
ridiculous stereotypes such as men being driven wild sexually by the sight of a
table leg, hence the invention of table cloths to make the tables more “decent” And
yet in that time, there was no stigma for cannabis use. At one time, the very Qu
een of England, the queen of decency and decorum herself toked a pipe at her “time
of the month.” One can only surmise thatBuckingham Palace, has on at least one oc
casion hosted Our Lady Mary Jane or Cannabis Indica as Queenie would have called
it. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Can’t find it? Catch me online and I have a link.
😉
Queen Victoria is but one example. It’s a relatively recent one if you consider th
e lengthy history humans have had with cannabis. Just spend some time with your
favorite search engine and you’ll be surprised at what you learn.
So toke well friends, Your in good company!
No matter what life threw at us, we continued to light our pipe in praise to our
creator whenever we had herb to fill it. Often we filled it with what we affect
ionately call poor man’s hash ~ cleanings from our boiled bowls. Each day we would
thank the creator for the strength to live and give another day. I’ve got a poem
for that too, but I’m sure I’m running long.
Despite all the hardship, we finally were going somewhere that felt like home. W
e got to what was represented as our land after dark on October 3, 2010. There w
as an awesome lightning show in the sky that night, and it seemed the creator wa
s matching us hit for hit. The next morning, we cleared sagebrush, set up the te
nts, unloaded the moving truck into the tent and ensured the cats were safe.
Not a week later, we were provided with a tent camper someone had left up on the
mesa for anyone who might need shelter. Its canvas was worn and weather rotted
in many places. Still we gave thanks and proceeded with patching and decided to
sleep in the more intact end. We found that our two closest neighbors, Seanie Be
th and Tom, each about eight tenths of a mile away, were kind beyond measure. I
continued to be open and honest with those around me about my medicinal cannabis
need. Neither of my neighbors had a card, neither really wanted or needed one,
but neither looked down their nose at me for my medicinal use. Both have provide
d me with cash to walk into a dispensary for cannabis to ease my suffering. They
even let me earn it so I personally would feel better about it.
Our neighbor Tom loaned us a plot map of our section of the mesa. We discovered
by October 18th that we were on the wrong land! I called the only lawyers I knew
, cannabis lawyers. I only needed some direction on which way to jump. I knew I
was squatting on land I did not own through no fault of my own. I knew that one
of the land owners took personal issue with cannabis users. I listened and respo
nded calmly as one owner detailed every perceived wrong cannabis users had ever
committed against them. I was scared. I was tired beyond measure. I knew that I
was in the middle. Things necessary for survival had come up missing inexplicabl
y and I truthfully still don’t know who was responsible. My cats died one by one.
I cried like a mad woman, then I got my husband a dog for his birthday and to he
lp us stand watch. I didn’t know what to think. When I was able to get no directio
n from any lawyer, I called the property owner and showed him what I saw on the
map. In the end, he saw it too. He knocked some money off my purchase price, low
ered my payments for a year and promised to help us move. My husband and I clear
ed sage once more. In the end, our land owner moved the tent-trailer and no more
. My husband moved much of our things by hand. I wanted to cry as he patiently c
arried them up the dirt road and to the proper lot. I kept wanting to help, he k
ept reminding me to save my strength. A neighbor came by and inquired what he wa
s doing. He and my neighbor used her car to move the rest. We gave thanks we wer
e finally in the right spot.
I went to all the cannabis shops I could get rides to, and only found one worth
giving the respect of a mention. La Casa Canna “bis” at 205 Main Street in San Luis,
Co. This dispensary has been were I have chosen to spend my few cannabis dollar
s. It has been a joy to work with them. They keep their herb in glass. They keep
that glass refrigerated. Their selection is really awesome. Even in the city I
would be impressed with the number of strains they offer. Their bud tend is know
ledgeable and always does his best to give me medication with the effect I happe
n to need that day. It doesn’t matter if I need it for an appetite, to reduce pain
so I can sleep or write, or whatever else I may need that day. They always have
something with the effect I need that day medically. I’d also like to note that t
hey carry my favorite strain, lamb’s breath on an almost continual basis. That is
a real rarity in my personal experience. Even better than that, they have a hear
t. A phone call from Mr. Lauve to La Casa was all it took to get me some compass
ion. Mr. Lauve graciously offered to donate advertising space in Cannabis Health
News Magazine in exchange for medication for me from La Casa. As I type these w
ords, tears of gratitude stream down my face. I am in awe of how the creator kee
ps providing for me, first the land at a price we could afford, then lowering th
e purchase price, now providing me with medication and friends in the desert. I
am grateful. I’d like to send a special thank you out to not only Jason Lauve, but
also to all the staff and growers at La Casa, along with the owners, Mr. Leonar
d Garcia and Mr. Arian Maestas.
The tent camper is often cold. We still do with out things we need on a regular
basis. We ran out of propane before we even got to the right land. I don’t mind. I
have peace of mind that I am where I am meant to be, and a loving creator watch
es over me. We have plans to build a wooden structure with a Teepee architectura
l style and an open fire pit. Once the wooden frame is up, we will wall it in wi
th the native volcanic stone and mortar. We plan for this to be our guest house.
and to get us through the winter. We’re building our earth-ship when we can. We d
on’t know where the lumber and mortar are coming from, but we have faith our creat
or will lead the way. The doctor down here is sending me to a specialist to have
my growths biopsied and my gut checked over. I still loose weight like crazy, b
ut sometimes I win some back. Whatever my body may have in store for me, at leas
t I seem to be back to my peaceful self. I do not know how or if I can re-certif
y my license when it expires in a matter of weeks and should have been taken car
e of months ago. Mr. Lauve graciously is trying to help me there too, even as he
runs around trying to help us all at the Department of Revenue. He understands
I don’t want to have to choose to go back to prescriptions I can afford or choose
to “break the law” and use what my body needs.
I have faith that I will not have to make those choices. I know I will not give
up my sacrament, I will not deny what I believe to be true. I have freedom to be
lieve what I like when it comes to religion under the constitution of this count
ry. On that I stand. In the first amendment I wrap myself and hope. I am gratefu
l that cannabis helps me enter my creator’s throne room grateful for what I have i
nstead of seeing all the wrong all around me and nothing more. If I had seen onl
y the bad in this story, I never would have made it all the way to my land. I wo
uld have surely given up somewhere. Cannabis helps me medically for sure, but it
is also a big part of the faith that keeps me hanging on through all the pain.
I don’t worship a plant, I worship the creator of that seed-bearing plant. Kiefair
Keepsakes was the stepping stone to a dream, the path just didn’t play out the wa
y I thought it would. I still wouldn’t change a step. As hard as the path may have
seemed, we didn’t take one single step alone. Sometimes its hard to do the right
thing when faced with hard choices. Trust the good in you, make a leap of faith
every now and again. I’m sure glad I did. Especially when I see the wild and human
raised (but returned to the wild) horses in my meadow some afternoons.
Leaving Mesa Kamp Kiefair
In early October 2010, things seemed to be picking up and making a turn for the
better in my life. Behind me were the days of sleeping in the RV in abandoned pa
rking lots and worrying when we’d have trouble from the law. I’d sacrificed a lot, b
ut finally had my land under my feet .Life was harsh, but good. I enjoyed living
at nine thousand feet immensely. The wildlife in the area was a constant source
of joy to me. The wild horses and human raised but released to the wild horses
often visited me. Each morning I woke before dawn to greet icy morning and the b
eauty of the sunrise. Every morning the tiny footprints of the chipmunks and gro
und squirrels covered the space outside my shelter. I had an alarm set each even
ing to remind me to step out and enjoy the sunset.
Beneath the surface, all was not well up on the property I dubbed “Mesa Kamp Kiefa
ir” (MKK) I was often cold. The expense of propane more than our budget to bear. W
e had built a large fire pit outside the canvas sided pop up camper, but it was
rarely used to its full potential. My husband often didn’t feel like gathering fir
e wood, or starting a fire. At the same time, he didn’t want me engaging in those
activities, stating that I was too sick and weak to do them for myself. So I rem
ained cold and hungry. It was much the same with cooking responsibilities. There
were many days, often several days in succession when we went hungry with perfe
ctly good food frozen solid in their tin cans in the pantry.
Inter-personally, things were not going well between Mr. Kiefair and I either. W
e fought all the time. We couldn’t seem to agree on anything, and the dysfunction
between us made my disease flare and my emotions and behavior run away with me.
I take responsibility for some pretty bizarre behavior during this time. After a
fight that left me quite insane, I was so distraught that I took off walking ac
ross the mesa in the snow wearing nothing but my boots, my my hat, my walking st
ick and a grim expression on my face. He had goaded me into going out onto the m
esa in the snow with the intention of letting mother nature take my life due to
exposure. I should not have played his game, and I feel horrible for having done
such an extreme and dangerous activity. I just wanted out of the world I found
myself stuck in. A world where I was right next to someone I loved a great deal,
yet feeling that I was not loved in return. A world where my MMJ license was al
lowed to expire because he didn’t want me to have it. Yet, I was also not allowed
to seek pain relief from a medical doctor via pharmaceutical medications either.
He even called the police on me the day my license expired telling them I inten
ded to set fire to all the sage on the mesa. I had never said any such thing. I
lived in a world where anger was thrown at me and brought out of me on a daily b
asis, especially when I was trying to do any writing, activism, or art work. One
day in early December 2010, it all boiled over.
It was a warm night in comparison to the bitter cold early December nights we ha
d been having up at 9,000 ft above sea level on the wind swept mesa in Southern
Colorado. For the time being, the wind had blown itself out, and the storm had a
bated. I sat at my neighbor’s geodesic house by the fire waiting for my husband to
return from town with supplies. The glow of the fire felt like heaven itself to
my cold and fibromyalgia pain ridden bones and muscles. We had not been able to
afford propane for the stove in the Coleman tent trailer in some time. Most nig
hts, a down comforter and body heat were the only source of warmth as I slept ba
ck to back with my husband, always with nearly a foot of space in between us. In
the dark of those cold nights, I often cried myself to sleep. I was so cold. Th
e anguish in my soul sprang from the inherent knowledge that the man I loved lyi
ng next to me did not seem interested in holding me; not for the sake of body he
at, nor for any other reason. My soul’s ache kept me awake at night more than the
cold did.
My neighbor’s adult daughter wanted to feed me, but I wanted to wait on my husband
, knowing he would be angry if I ate without him or wasn’t hungry for whatever he
brought home. She had seen my weight plummeting since I had moved up to the mesa
. This was due in part to my chronic wasting associated with my disease, but the
real root cause was my husband.
As I said before, we had food, but it was frozen solid in their cans or needed t
o be prepared over heat. We rarely built a fire to warm ourselves and cook on. I
t was enough to drive a saint insane. My husband had made it very clear that did
n’t want me building fires or gathering wood. On this day, it had been a full 4 da
ys since I had eaten anything. I eagerly awaited his return from town because I
relished the promise of something to eat, hopefully something fresh. My optimist
ic mind salivated at the thought of a Caesar salad and some protein.
When my husband finally walked through my neighbor’s door, it was much later than
I had expected him. He tossed me a pack of the most expensive cigarettes in town
(for which I was grateful. I smoke tobacco when I have no herb to fill the gap
in meditation), and a pint of “Dr. Magillicuty’s vanilla liqueur”, which I quickly put
into my coat. He had a pack of cigarettes for himself, a 30 pack of bush beer,
2 pints of Jim Beam, and some Southern Comfort. No food. I was furious, and took
off into the night for home, not waiting for my neighbor who had offered to dri
ve us both the 0.08 miles back to our place. I had hoped that the walk would coo
l my temper. It did not.
When he came through the door, we immediately began fighting. “This is your idea o
f supplies?” I screamed at him with tears running down my face. “We cannot live on l
iquor and tobacco! Well, maybe you can, but I cannot.”
I slammed the door of the little canvas trailer as if it were the door to some g
rand house and set myself to defiantly building a fire. The bottle of vanilla li
queur was still in my jacket, and found its way to my hand. I began to drink it
thinking, “If drinking on an empty stomach were his plans for the night, who am I
do disrupt that part of it. At least tonight I intend to be warm.”
I sat outside by my fire as he and I screamed at each other long into the night.
I screamed at him about so many things that had been eating away at my broken m
y heart lately including: his refusal to be affectionate to me, him quitting wor
k over a year ago and refusing to find more work, him wanting me to stay in bed
all the time like an invalid, the bitter cold and no heat, about the hunger and
food within reach but frozen, being surrounded by sage wood that burns quickly b
ut hot and yet never having a fire to be warm near, my medicinal cannabis licens
e expiring because he would not allow me to renew my state ID and we hadn’t the mo
ney to pay the doctor’s fees, him not allowing me to get pharmaceuticals to fill i
n the gap of pain that the lack of cannabis caused. I’d had enough! I could deal w
ith all these hardships if only I felt like he loved me, but that feeling was lo
ng gone. He screamed at me about how unreasonable and irrational I was being.
I can’t remember exactly what I said, but suddenly, his 6 foot frame came out of t
he trailer, towering over my nearly 5 ft self, and knocked me to the ground. He
took the fire extinguisher, and put out my triumphant fire. Still on the ground
in shock from him knocking me down, I got up, and we continued to fight. He slap
ped me, knocked me to the ground again, and began dragging me to the road. As he
pulled my tail end through a prickly pear cactus patch I knew he was aware was
there, he said, “You are going to leave this mesa. You are going to walk out of he
re, and I don’t want you to ever show your face on this property or on this mesa e
ver again. Now get out and don’t come back!”
I limped down the road in the dark down the dirt road towards the next dirt road
. I was terrified that the coyotes would spot me in the dark and make a dinner o
ut of me. I didn’t even have my walking stick, let alone anything that would actua
lly be effective against a predator for protection. I walked up the road to the
junction with the main mesa road and maybe 2 miles up the road. I was exhausted,
and so, I sat on a kindly old rock and had a cry under the stars. I sat there i
n the dark and cold for perhaps a couple of hours. When I sat down, I thought I
would wait for dawn and then head down the mesa, but as I pondered in the night,
I decided to go back.
When I got back home, he was still awake, and the door was unlocked. I went insi
de, humbling myself and graveling begging for one more chance. After me begging
for some time, he finally relented and said, “Alright, but if we get into it one m
ore time, YOU are leaving this mesa on foot immediately.” I humbly agreed and lay
down to find sleep.
Dawn broke cold the next morning, and I was so hungry and sore after the previou
s night’s exertion. I asked if he would build a fire so I could make some breakfas
t. This began another fight. It was a minor spat compared to the previous night’s
flare. He left and headed to our other neighbor’s place. Even though it was early
morning, I knew he had gone to drink Crown Royal Bourbon. I set about clearing t
he fire extinguisher covered ashes out of the pit, so I could build a fire any w
ay and make something to eat. As I did this, I thought about the night before, a
nd about how he had been so willing to toss me to the coyotes quite literally. I
grabbed the backpack that I used as a purse, my walking stick and headed for th
e neighbor’s place where he went. Once I got there, I asked him to give me my food
stamp card, and when he came outside, I explained to him in the privacy of the
outdoors that I intended to fulfill the terms of his late night ultimatum based
on the argument the morning of December 5, 2010. There was a cruel smile on his
face of when he said, “OK, if that is what you want. I hope you are happy with you
rself.” He knew that wasn’t what I wanted, especially after last night’s begging sessi
on that got me back into the house. He also knew that I really didn’t have any pla
ce to go but homeless shelters.
I set off walking for town. I knew it was a long hike that I really had no busin
ess making with my medical issues. I stopped frequently to rest. I didn’t even hav
e any water with me. Partway down, I found an old bottle of what I thought was w
ater someone had tossed from their vehicle. I was so thirsty I took a swig, then
promptly spit it out. It was moonshine, I’d had the pleasure of drinking good whi
te lightning before, but this tasted to be dangerously bad shine at that. I dump
ed it out to save someone else from it and continued on my way. My gut was on fi
re from the alcohol I imbibed the night before, and had to get off the road seve
ral times to empty my bowels. Luckily I am a country girl and always kept some t
oilet paper in my bag. I didn’t have a shovel with me though, and was angry at mys
elf that I couldn’t bury it the way I would have liked. I kicked dirt and put rock
s over the mess at least.
I began to be concerned about dehydration. When I thought I couldn’t go any furthe
r without a drink, I found another bottle. This time it proved to actually be wa
ter. I was so grateful! I had left around 8:30 in the morning. I walked 7 of the
nearly 10 miles to town. An older Latin American man picked me up and gave me a
ride the rest of the way to town. It was so nice to have a gentleman take pity
on me and want nothing from me. By the time I got to town, it was late afternoon
. It felt like I walked 12 miles or more!
Luckily, it was the beginning of the month, so I stumbled into the little pizza
parlor and ordered a personal pizza. I ate but one slice, and my stomach was ove
r full. So full I was afraid I would loose my hard won calories. I got a to-go b
ox and walked down the street to put myself up in a hotel room for the night. De
spite my exhaustion, my body would not allow me to rest, so I treated myself to
several baths in close succession. I had so missed having water on demand and en
ough of it to soak in. My husband seemed to think 9 gallons of water a week were
enough for two adults and the dog I had given him for his birthday in November
(to replace the 3 cats the mesa predators had all claimed).
I called my husband several times, inviting him to come down and have a bath at
least. I hoped that perhaps if he got into a more comfortable setting and had a
bath that perhaps he and I could talk some sense into one another. He wanted not
hing of it. So, I had another bath, enjoyed the rest of my pizza while watching
TV, (a luxury I both missed and did not miss at the same time). I also called my
neighbor’s daughter who had just recently moved to town so it was easier on the c
hildren to get to and from school in town each day. The next morning, she took m
e into Alamosa and to the domestic violence resource who then put me up in the p
rotected part of the only shelter in town.
I had explained to both places that I have panic attacks from pain, and that som
etimes a cigarette was the best way to end that panic attack. I was assured that
if I needed to smoke in the night, I would be allowed, even though it was not e
xactly within the procedures of the shelter. Sure enough, my first night there,
the pain got out of control and I had nothing to ease it. I had a panic attack a
nd made my way down to the lower level to ask to go out to smoke. The message re
garding my needs had not been passed on to the cruel gentleman who was watching
the shelter that night. When he harshly refused me, he melted away in my panic,
and all I could see was every man who had ever hurt me. I screamed and soon the
police were called on me. I spent the night at the hospital, and left with a fir
m recommendation to continue my medical cannabis (despite not being legal to do
so) and a prescription for Lyrica to help ease the pain when I could not smoke.
The ER doctor even told me in the presence of the officers who had brought me in
that I should go buy some weed on the street to get my pain under control. The
mental health worker put me up in a hotel around 5 am. I had been assured that I
would have at least one night there. I bathed again, and went out to get my pre
scription filled and some food. When I returned, I promptly began getting calls
from the hotel to leave. They informed me that check out time had come and gone
and I was to get out. The cops were called on me again, and I ended up back at t
he same shelter I had been at the night before. I could only bear to be there on
e more night, and then left early the next morning for the bus station.
I had decided to head for Denver where I knew there were many more shelters and
many more services for the homeless. Before boarding the bus, I called my husban
d to make sure it was what he wanted. He refused to pick up the phone. It was al
ready mid afternoon when I got into Denver. I was dropped off at Union Station,
and made my way to the “tattered cover book store” on the 16th street mall. There, I
bought myself a cup of Earl Grey tea to settle my stomach and to justify to mys
elf the use of their wi-fi connection. I made contact with some people over the
internet and let them know my situation. I hadn’t been homeless in Denver since I
was a teenager and couldn’t remember all the good places. I ended up in “Writer’s Squa
re” on the 16th Street Mall. It was one of my old haunts from when I was younger,
but the vibe there had changed a lot and I was not comfortable sleeping out in t
he open air there as I once had been. I spit venom at other activists, probably
trying to self destruct. Luckily, a fellow sufferer from post traumatic stress d
isorder came to my aid and helped me get my things to Samaritan House. But there
was no room for Breezy at the homeless inn. They made arrangements for me to st
ay at a shelter for women and gave me bus fare and directions to get there.
I narrowly missed my bus, and sat on the bench patiently waiting for the next on
e. Across the street from me were several of my homeless fellows bedding down fo
r the night on the street. I am not sure why, but I began to serenade them with
Christmas carols and other songs I used to preform with choir as a child. Whenev
er I stopped singing, they asked me to continue, and I did. The bus finally came
, and I left them in the cold night, perhaps a little warmer for my music. I fin
ally got to the woman’s shelter I had been directed to, was let in and given a bed
for the night.
:dammit: :bong:
then i went to Maine…. and found out my husband shot himself (a drinking buddy sho
t and killed another drinking buddy the same night……. why my hubby shot himself, i w
ill never know). He also abandoned the property and left the dog behind. I began
making my way home, but not before a run in with the law….
RE: Civil Citations #xxxxxx and #xxxxxxxxxx
given on Jan 10, 2011
by Officer Christopher M Ross
Dept :WSO Officer # 23
Your Honor:
My name is Breedheen O’Rilley Keefer. I frequently write under the Pen Name of “Bree
zy Kiefair”. I am writing to you in regards to two civil citations I received in J
anuary 2011. Those citations are numbered #xxxxxx and #xxxxxxx. I am scheduled t
o appear before you on March 22, 2011 at 0830 am. I have never received a civil
citation before, and have no legal counsel, so I apologize if I am out of line o
n any procedural issues.
On the afternoon of January 11, 2011; I 911 called for assistance. I was distrau
ght. I needed help. I had been asked to leave the house where I had been renting
a room located at XXX Belfast Road, Freedom Maine 04941. The primary renter of
this property, Mr. XXXXXXX XXXXXX asked me to leave the premises due to a petty
personal squabble. I had come to stay with Mr. XXXXXX and his family in mid Dece
mber 2010 after a domestic violence dispute with my husband on property in Color
ado that I was purchasing with my husband. When Mr. Horton asked me to leave, I
obliged. I packed my things, carried them to the end of his driveway between Bel
fast and Freedom, Maine and called 911 to come give me assistance.
As, I stated above, I was distraught. I was suicidal. I needed help. Two officer
s responded to the call, Officer Ross who signed my citations, and another offic
er. The officers wanted to search my belongings, which I allowed after providing
the officers with my expired medical marijuana license from the state of Colora
do (expired November 23, 2010), a card from one of the cannabis as a religious s
acrament churches I frequent (copies attached). , paperwork from a Colorado Doct
or recommending that I continue my medicinal cannabis use even after my license
expired (this paperwork has been lost on the road) and contact information for a
Dr. David Austin of the Dr. Lovejoy Heathcare center (7 School St, Albion, ME 0
4910 Phone: (207) 437-9388 Fax:(207) 437-2557 http://www.healthrea…82&IDPractice=4
) I had seen in Maine who knew I was using cannabis medicinally.
I informed the officers that I was carrying my sacramental cannabis pipes and th
at there may be some flake/resin on me. I also notified the officers that I was
carrying 3 pocket knives with me. The officers transported me to the hospital in
Augusta, Maine for evaluation and wrote me citations for my cannabis pipes even
though I have made public the fact that I believe in Cannabis as a religious sa
crament under the first amendment of the Constitution of the United Sates of Ame
rica. I cited the translation work of polish born anthropologist Sula Benet (htt
p://en.wikipedia….wiki/Sula_Benet) as the basis for my belief in cannabis as a rel
igious sacrament. I called Reverend Brandon Baker (307) 221-2180 (http://www.gre
enfait…m/homepage.html) of Green Faith Ministry NAC to try to have him speak with
the officers regarding my religious cannabis use. The officers refused to speak
to Reverend Baker and told me that Cannabis as a religious sacrament was not rec
ognized in the state of Maine. My sacramental pipes and “useable marijuana” were con
fiscated and citations written.
I arrived back home in Colorado after leap-frogging my way home On February 23,
2011. I am disabled and live on social security disability. As I stated before,
have no legal counsel, so I apologize if I am out of line on any procedural issu
es. I do not know how I am to answer these charges from so far away. I live on s
ocial security disability and have no way to return to Maine. I respectfully req
uest that you give me some direction on how to handle these charges. I have prov
ided the best contact information for me in this letter. I live in a very remote
area of Colorado and it takes time for messages to reach me. Email is probably
the most reliable way I can be reached. My email address is xxxxxx
Respectfully,
B
i couldnt go back and defend myself, so i cant go to maine at all until i pay th
e fines…..
i went back to my land, and tried to make the best of it….
I even had plans for a big ass birthday party that never happened…
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 11:31am
Hey Kampers,
Last night, under the full moon, I put up alcohol based tincture for my birthday
in May and realized how quickly the party is approaching. I wanted to get a lit
tle group started amongst those who think that they will be attending my week lo
ng birthday party (even if you only plan to be here a day or two). I had a thoug
ht towards classes (basic survival, alcohol based tincture making, glassware cle
aning and care, gardening, and so much more) for those attending the party, but
soon realized that I probably don’t have the strength to teach for a week.
So, I ask you all… What are your talents? Do you have something you would like to
teach the rest of us?
I’d also like to remind everyone that you will have to pull sagebrush for your cam
psite (I can tell you how to do it, I have the tools, and even my weak behind ca
n do it). I am off grid… That means that I carry water from town 10 miles away and
have no power source as my generator was stolen in March’s robbery. We DO have ra
ttlesnakes up here, but they are rarely a problem and I will give you some safet
y tips when you get here. I’d advise everyone to bring boots with high ankles. Als
o, nights up here in the high mountain desert can be chilly. Please be sure to b
ring some warm clothes.
Other items you should think about bringing:
tents, tarps and rain chutes
water (a minimum of one gallon per person, per day… plus some to wash up in)
food
wood
natural soaps
toilet paper
cameras (the scenery here is not to be missed!)
solar or car battery charging packs for batteries/computers/high tech devices (I
have no way to charge them at present)
musical instruments for jam sessions around the bonfire
your medications (no herbal medication will be provided cause Breezy’s financially
challenged)
and Anything else you can’t do without for a week (or longer if you are planning o
n staying at Mesa Kamp Kiefair for the long haul)
Cell phone service up here is spotty at best. If you are on verizion, net10, str
aight talk, or tracphone, you have a decent chance at waves of signals that get
text messages out fairly well. Voice calls are a bit more difficult, but not imp
ossible.
Watch for more updates as we move closer to party time.
May you all be blessed and send me a PM or text me at 720-280-2183 if you are in
terested in teaching the rest of us something while you are at Mesa Kamp Kiefair
.
Respectfully,
Breezy Kiefair
Founder, Mesa Kamp Kiefair
so, i just resumed my activism work as best i could….. writing reps and such like
this”
Before I even begin, I would like to apologize if my wording in this letter seem
s harsh or angry. As I write, I am very ill, consumed by pain, unable to eat, an
d barely able to leave my sick-bed. I am lucky enough to have a laptop computer
I can use in bed. I have written many letters to my representatives since Januar
y 2010 regarding HB1284. After a year and a half of fighting both my government
and my own body’s illness, I’m pretty tired of the whole mess. I am certain that my
frustration and exhaustion cannot help but come through in my writer’s voice, and
I did not want you to misunderstand and think that I am being intentionally disr
espectful. We, as a community are sick individuals with varying degrees of disab
ility. We should not HAVE to be fighting with our state government about a plant
, its use & regulation.
Every moment we spend presenting our case to the powers that be, we should have
to focus on healing from our ailments. We beg for sensibility in the Medicinal C
annabis Program written into the Constitution of our great state. On more than o
ne occasion, I have spent long hours (more than 11 hours strait on one occasion)
listening to the debates over medicinal cannabis via the web from the Colorado
House of Representatives and the State Senate. I have spent many more hours corr
esponding with my representatives on this issue so very central to my life and w
ell-being. I have spoken to the Longmont City Council on at least 2 occasions. T
his spring, I was at the capitol for a debate over additional proposed regulatio
ns (HB1250). I missed my chance to speak because it took too long to get to the
sick people’s turn to speak & I became ill. I was frustrated because I had arrived
a bit early to ensure I was near the top of the list. When my name was finally
called (it was called first), I was a few blocks away resting & listening in via
the Internet. I am very ill, even on my best days and have often exacerbated my
symptoms by working too hard on this issue. It is a sacrifice I am happy to mak
e. This plant and it’s benefits mean that much to me and I have endured many sacri
fices for it.
I have been on the Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry since June 2009. Medicina
l Cannabis was initially suggested to me in 2007 by my pain specialist at the ti
me. He did so in one of his last sessions with me before moving home to France t
o teach. He said he was tired of fighting the DEA here, tired of worrying if he
would be punished for alleviating people’s pain because he happened to write too m
any prescriptions one month. He said he was going home where he could teach youn
g minds instead of argue with old ones. He said he was tired of the pay he got f
rom treating his Medicare/Medicaid patients, but to his credit, he still saw pat
ients like me. He had a framed check for $0.02 on the wall beside his desk with
a notation in angry doctor scribble that it was payment in full for 2 different
patients office visits. He was a doctor who really cared. He never signed a medi
cal marijuana license because he was a foreign doctor and feared his license wou
ld be revoked, but he confided in me that he wished he could. He then urged me t
o seek out a doctor who could sign for my license.
He said, “It will not make the pain non-existent, but then, nothing does that for
you does it? It will help you cope with your pain in a more natural way. You can
smoke or preferably eat all that you need to and you cannot overdose, you see?”
I am telling you this because I have seen many doctors within the State of Color
ado, both before and after I received my medicinal cannabis license. There are v
ery few I have spoken with who have a negative take on the medical marijuana reg
istry. Those who did have a negative perception of medicinal cannabis almost inv
ariably ended up being cruel as well in one way or another. Most cite fear of th
e DEA as their reason for not being willing to sign for medical marijuana licens
es.
I’ve personally sacrificed a lot for my medical cannabis license. Much of my famil
y found themselves unable to deal with my medicinal cannabis use and I have been
exiled from their lives for it. When I first became certified for medical canna
bis use, my husband had a decent job and made enough money that my health was ma
king great strides towards wellness. The cost was a burden to our budget even th
en, but it was a burden we were happy to take on once we began to see the result
s. I was even able to get off of more than 20 different prescription medications
at an astonishingly rapid pace. I stopped needing to see my doctor at all. I ha
d been seeing my doctor every week, or on bad weeks, several times a week with l
ate night trips to the emergency room thrown in for good measure.
My husband became unemployed in the fall of 2009. It was then that I discovered
the agony and full weight of my disease being 100% without medication due to pov
erty can brings. My situation continued to deteriorate through the following Sum
mer when the regulations of HB1284 went into effect. Up until that time, I had b
een supplementing my need for medication by doing reviews of medication I receiv
ed for free. I would record myself using the medication, say what I thought of i
t, what symptoms it is good to treat, some history on that particular species of
cannabis flower, and personal opinion on all things related to medicinal cannab
is news I was aware of. I would also post my opinion of the medication on social
media outlets such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter
along with the contact information of the compassionate party. Once the regulati
ons of HB1284 went into effect, it was almost impossible to find charity cannabi
s any more. Even from my caregiver who had begun an indigent patient program bef
ore those regulations became law.
Hours of web-crawling desperate to find aid in getting my medication had also le
d me to the spiritual cannabis community. I met Reverend Brandon Baker and learn
ed of his personal crusade to help low-income medical cannabis patients. He call
ed his church Greenfaith Ministry, and over the past year and a half or so he ha
s helped me immensely. On my first meeting with Reverend Baker in January 2009,
I had many questions for him. Being a deeply spiritual woman who had called seve
ral other “religious cannabis” organizations (who I found to be little more that on
demand sacrament dealers with a set price) I probed Reverend Baker deeply even t
hough he handed me a large quantity of medication free of charge. I asked him ab
out the basis for sacramental cannabis use in the Jewish/Christian tradition and
other religions throughout the world (even though I had done my own research in
to this topic long before). He answered my questions with articulate grace. Sinc
e that first meeting, he has shown himself to be generous even in the face of th
e ever increasing demand for medication by patients in situations similar to my
own and worse. I watched alongside him as the demand for his brand of mercy skyrocketed
after HB1284 went into effect. He was able to help me personally less a
nd less, but I knew he was helping a greater number of people than before and th
at his donations (from dispensaries) had all but dried up. Still, when my need w
as dire, he would show up. He even delivered medication to my RV when I was othe
rwise homeless and parking at night in places I knew were friendly to tourist RV
s for free (at least for a night or two). Reverend Baker has done so much more f
or me that provide pot. He has provided me with spiritual guidance when asked. H
e has provided me with food when I was hungry. He provided pillows and blankets
to make my sleeping arrangements more comfortable. He kept his eyes and ears ope
n as I searched desperately for a bit of earth to call my own. He has done so mu
ch for me that it is difficult to articulate it properly.
It became apparent to me when my husband initially lost his job that the only wa
y I could really ensure that I would have medication would be to find myself a l
ocation where I could grow my own medication. With all the uncertainty the new l
egislation brought, I thought that the only truly safe place to do that would be
on land that I owned. I searched for many months to find a piece of property th
at I knew I could pay off on my disability income. The piece of property I found
was not in any way an ideal grow location, but it was in my price range, so I t
ook it. It was a windswept 2.56 acre parcel of high mountain desert, but it was
mine. We had no choice but to sell our beloved RV and move onto the land tents.
The RV simply would not make the trip, we could not afford a rental truck to tow
it, so we sold it put out belongings into a truck rented with the money made fr
om selling the RV, and made the trip.
That was in October 2010. Winter was close on our heels as we arrived at our new
home. Luckily, someone had donated an old Coleman pop up tent-trailer (about ci
rca 1975) to one of the preachers who live up here. They gave it to us. It was w
eather rotted and made of canvas full of holes, but it was a better shelter than
the tent we’d purchased because it looked to be a 4 season tent & turned out to b
e a 1 season tent. We were grateful. Perhaps my husband was not mentally prepare
d for this harsh environment of the high mountain desert, or maybe he felt guilt
y for not being able to provide medication for a wife he knew was very ill when
he married her, whatever the truth of the reason my husband changed I do not kno
w. I will not bore you with the details of my still-in-progress divorce, but I w
ill say, that in it’s own way my medical marijuana license/activism played a part
in the events are costing me my marriage license and a friend/partner I once lov
ed dearly.
After I separated from my husband, I went on a trip cross country between Decemb
er 2010 and February 2011. I visited two other states with medicinal cannabis pr
ograms (Maine and Michigan) and one state where cannabis has been decriminalized
(Ohio). Out on the road, I dug deeper into the proceedings regarding medicinal
cannabis in other states. There I saw in practice what I knew to be true from my
research on-line. Many other states look to Colorado as an example for all MMJ
states. Our rules are often cited in their debates, sometimes as supportive of t
he movement, other times against it. As you decide this case, I ask you to consi
der the multitude of medicinal cannabis patients your decision will impact. Not
just the many cannabis patients within the State of Colorado, but also the medic
al cannabis patients of other states with programs and states considering medici
nal cannabis programs.
When I returned to my land after a the trip, I was robbed. I was staying at my n
eighbor’s house. They were away and wanted someone to watch their place. It was st
ill winter, and was bitterly cold. I was more than happy to stay in a real struc
ture for a few nights. The first night I was away, over $9,000 of survival gear
and personal property was stolen from me including: my wood-stove (meaning no he
at), my generator (meaning no electricity), my pots and pans and can opener, my
beloved pipe collection (almost all gifts made specifically for me), my cannabis
seed bank meant to produce my medicine this short grow season, my clothes and b
ible were thrown into the fire pit. They even tried to fold my trailer up and ta
ke it. I was lucky that the trailer jammed on them refusing to be folded up so i
t could be hitched to their vehicle with 4 different tires (according to the pol
ice who came up, took pictures, and forgot the entire ordeal).
I even walked to town (about 12 miles) to hand deliver a list of items stolen th
at I had tried to call in to the officer in charge of the case several times. I
was simply shocked both at the robbery and at the apathy of the officers charged
“to protect and serve”. I made the walk to town quite regularly hitchhiking as soon
as I reached the pavement with mixed results. I did this because I have no tran
sportation and I needed to take care of business. I needed to get my food stamps
reinstated after my long trip in other states and file for divorce. I budgeted
carefully and got a new doctors signature to renew my license in April 2011. It
had lapsed as a casualty of disagreements with my soon to be ex-husband in Novem
ber 2010.
Despite the fact that my sole income is around $350 a month in Social Security D
isability and the fact that I am on food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid, I was p
aid the $90 fee I should have been exempt from under the new regulations in HB12
84 (one of the few positive changes made in the bill). The problem was that I am
in the middle of a divorce and some documents say my maiden name and others say
my married name. My Colorado State ID has my maiden name on it. It has had my m
aiden name on it for the entire duration of my marriage. When I applied in June
2009, my ID said my maiden name, and my application for a medical marijuana lice
nse listed my married name. I received my card without issue (except the state d
id not process my card and mail it to me until November 2009). In April of 2011
my ID said my maiden name, my MMJ license paperwork also said my maiden name, bu
t my SSD paperwork and food-stamp paperwork all were in my married name. When th
e Colorado Department of Health complained about the difference in the names, I
sent CDPHE a copy of my birth certificate, my marriage license, the first page o
f my “Summons for Dissolution of Marriage” (to prove I was in the process of returni
ng to my maiden name), my food-stamp verifications, & my Social Security Disabil
ity paperwork, and the $90 fee to ensure I received my red card. I mailed this a
ll off certified mail, return receipt at the beginning of June. I got the proof
it was received a few days later. I have yet to receive my proper license (it is
June 30, 2011 as I write). The $90 fee to the state ate up about 38% of my inco
me for the month of June. That money came straight out of my medication budget f
or the month. Reverend Baker and Andy Shaffner (and adopted brother) joined forc
es to take some of the sting out of the expense. I will be forever grateful to t
hem both.
I am also very concerned that genetically modified organisms (GMO) is beginning
to find its way into the medicinal cannabis shops. I urge you to ban GMO cannabi
s and require that shops label their medication if it is not organically grown.
I have multiple chemical sensitivities as a sister condition to my fibromyalgia.
Respectfully,
Breedheen O’Rilley
AKA Breezy Kiefair
I am going back to michigan to stay with my sister for the winter….. I’ll continue m
y canna-fight wherever I go.
The above is intellectual property, and such is copyrighted. If I wrote it It is
copyright Breezy Kiefair 2010 all rights reserved. If I didn’t remind me to quote
my source LOL
Think I’m paranoid for copyrighting every word I say?!?!..
I’m a starving recluse writer what do you expect?
occupation: Writer, Artist, Freelance MMJ Activist/Consultant
Even more about me and medicinal cannabis on my google + profile
https://plus.google.com/108039434993096331483
~ Do all that you can to cultivate peace within yourself, that it might
shine out from you, and plant the seed of peace in other spirits, for them
to cultivate.~
{Remember… it is when we choose act on the issues that are in front of
our faces, when we choose to get involved instead of looking the other way
as our fellow man struggles, when we choose to take those small simple
little actions, working on righting little wrongs in our everyday lives that
really make change happen, those seemingly small actions are what really
make the world a better place and are a catalyst for greater social change.}
~Both quotes by Breedheen “Bree” O’Rilley Keefer~

http://www.scribd.com/doc/64585829/%E2%80%9CA-Long-Strange-Journey-of-1-Cannabis-Patient%E2%80%99s-Colorado-Cannabis-Activsm%E2%80%9D-or-%E2%80%9CAll-About-Breezy-Kiefair%E2%80%9D

https://sites.google.com/site/kiefairkeepsakes/giving-back

2011-11-05 “Howl” By Allen Ginsberg remixed by Breezy Kiefair with video reading

2011-11-05 “Howl” By Allen Ginsberg remixed by Breezy Kiefair Part 1

Text:

I saw the best minds of my generation valiantly struggling to destroy the madness, starving hysterical educated,

dragging themselves through the occupied streets at dawn looking for a fix to their righteous anger,

angelheaded hempsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating class warfare,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El train and saw First Nation spirit guides pale and staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with perscribed narcotic hazed eyes.. desperatley trying to conquer physical pain inside the dream of Ginsberg’s school whilst Debting Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war and peace,

whose doctors with the stroke of a pen excluded them from the academies for weak immune response & too many hospital visits and too much time off required…… and so retired to being a ghost in the machine publishing controversial essays on the benefits of cannabis therapy for the sick.

who cowered in rotten canvas tents in long dirty clothes, burning their resin, paying their land bills and heating canned goods on a candle in the absence of an indoor stove whilst listening to the Terror echoing still today and through the years,

who got busted for their sacramental pipes returning through Maine with a story of hope for Cleveland, Michigan and Colorado.

who grew fire out back of low end hotels in their RV or drank resin tincture on Paradise Mesa, dug in until death, conditions and the cold of hell in their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, cannabis and lack and endless wails,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Mexico and the whole prohibition world, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote spirits haunting the land of no halls, backyard green tree cemetery falls, canna-bliss blowing over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teapotparty joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusk’s of the valley, ashcan rantings and kind cannabis on compassion makes you light of mind,

who chained themselves to their occupation. for the endless ride from park to holy jail on love and hope until the noise of mace and sticks brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the fear light of the memory of the dead man from the Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of the capitol building and when riot police came floated out and sat through the stale beer/coffee house dawn in desolate 16th Street, reading the crack of doom scroll across their social media news feeds.

who posted information continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Twin Towers onto of the moon

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, gifts for the Sacred place just cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen horizon mirage above reality’s plane. leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of the beauty of the world.

Who found it better suffering sweats and bone-grindings and migraines of junk-withdrawal in an MMJ state’s bleak furnished room, with the comfort of a pipe in hand and the knowledge they could use as much of this as their pain required and not worry about an unintended death.

who wandered around and around at midnight in the occupied parks wondering where to go, and remained, leaving no broken hearts except for their own, and even it, scrawled across a bit of cardboard and peacefully expressed for all of the anger and stress madness within their breasts.

who lit hash filled cigarettes at truck-stops truck-stops truck-stops racketing through snow toward lonesome freedom Maine in grandfather night,

who studied St. Jude, astral projection, and bop kabbalah, Rastafarian, the Egyptian book of the dead, the epic of Gilgamesh, and more because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Nebraska.

who longed through the streets of Ohio seeking visionary First Nation guides who were visions themselves

who thought they were only mad when they have every right to be mad and their righteous indignation gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in pig cars on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight small-town blizzard Maine,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through ‘Mosa seeking meds or heat or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to the safety of the horse-lands,

who disappeared into the underground leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the rocks we gathered for the house and ash of my heart scattered on the land, self sustainable American dream in ashes because I cant fund it beyond the empty land, and even that is for sale for survival’s sake.

who reappeared on the East Coast investigating the medicinal cannabis programs in other states in purple pure gift scarf and with big pacifist eyes sexy in their pale skin passing out information and stories in exchange for housing like a true bard of old.

who cold turkey-ed cigarettes repeatedly protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism (and picked them back up again in PTSD coping mechanism to throw them back down again and again),

who screamed in favor of the Cannabis haze of capitalism…. who distributed Congressional Supercommittee petitions in Universal Online square weeping and exposing the secrets of their hearts while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the severe weather sirens also wailed,

who broke down crying in protest parks as if they had been left naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who used their whit to strike at detectives and shrieked with delight in police-cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and duty to protest.

who howled on their knees in the igloo and were dragged off the sidewalks waving signs and screaming valid points,

who let themselves be maced in the face, and screamed with joy for truth exposed,

who believed in equality for all, caresses and hints of unconditional love

who occupied in the morning and in the evenings and sent messages to delegation rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their opinions freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a public forum when a small & vulnerable woman came to hear their wailing song.

who lost their loves to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, (DEATH!)

Video 2 text”

who shared themselves ecstatic and insatiable and fell off the net, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate hope and prosperity eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, and a lighting a fire of self sustainability desire

who sweetened the minds of a million hearts trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the image of the sunrise, flashing truths under sad eyes and naked in the soul,

who went out traveling through Colorado in myriad stolen rides, A.G. secret hero of these poems, poet and activist of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable fingers given to censoring conformists and cigarettes shared with corrupted youth in Naropa writing work shop breaktime day. I sing to you on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside debates & especially quiet help in dreams.

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden nightmare, and picked themselves up out of heart sore despair… not drunk yet hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Wall Street’s iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their souls full of dread on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 1% to open to a room full of steamheat and and lack of worry,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appeasement of bankers of the Stock market under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build revolutions in their parks, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the acid rain skies surrounded by orange crates of theology wishing for wide open spaces,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, rambling and unpublishable without a proofreader’s eye

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for a banana,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next century,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were tortured alive in their innocent flannel suits on social security disability amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, your government docs say your too sick to work, your government says your life is worth $17.42 a day. Make that work you sick lady in the wild all on your own.

who were trapped on the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of the protests, not even one tagline

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the dream’s window, jumped in the filthy Greyhound, leaped on haters, cried all over the street, danced on broken glass pipes barefoot..

who polar bear-ed it across frozen mesa to prove a point to psychopathic husband…. smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz screamed it was 1929 again, finished the joint and still stumbled down the hall just in time for their disease to make them throw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal auditory sensitivity.

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch a widespread panic incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loaned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to the social media class,

who retired to MMJ state to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or France to teach medicine or Southern border to live cheaply or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the feds of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw Knowledge at political pundits and gave lectures on history to representatives and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous reversion to the constitution,

and who were given instead the concrete void of mainstream media, refused electricity, cold-water hydrotherapy long before the dawn, applications for protest trademark names, occupational therapy in the for of police brutality & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic table, resting briefly in catatonia as the peaceful prepare their souls for pain.

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the corruptions and small-town censorship of infanticide in the East,

Pueblo State’s mountain views and Excelsior’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with bio-family finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— yet in the mind hope still remains

ah, working class, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

whose written dreams made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel citizen in Time, unknown, yet posting here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

video 3 text

II

What Harpy of regulations bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Inequality! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Inequality! Moloch! Nightmare of Money! 1% the loveless! Mental Moloch! State controlled Media the heavy judge of men!

Class Warfare the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Super-Congress of sorrows! Wall Street whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Money for the stunned governments!

My country whose mind has become pure machinery! My Country whose blood is running money! My Country whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! My Country whose ear is an unknown and smoking tomb! My country who adopted me and is therefore my parent.

My parents whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! My parents whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! My parents whose factories dream and choke in the fog while paying down their carbon footprint as if the damage was undone! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities making my body ache!!

Moloch is My father whose love is endless oil and stone! My father whose soul is electricity and banks! My home whose poverty is the specter of genius! My home whose fate is an uncertain roller coaster based on regulations that keep shrinking my resources! Freedom’s only home now whose name is the Mind!

Moloch is My home in whom I sit lonely! My home in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Crazy Bitch in Moloch! Lacklove and friendless in My home!

Moloch who entered and attempted to own my soul early! My home, in your information superhighway I become am a consciousness not bound so much by a disabled body! My father who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! My parents I abandon! Wake up in my country! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! Corporate Persons! invincible house or representatives! granite senates! Corrupt lobbyists! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting their country to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American Dream river turned to flushing toilet!

Dreams! adoration! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of bill of rights constitutional BULLSHIT!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and revolutions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the the edge! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! Were the 99%! This is what martial law looks like! As they are beaten back but do not submit.

III

Breezy Kiefair

Occupy Together! I’m with you on Wall Street

where you’re louder than I am

I’m with you in Oakland

where you must feel strange

I’m with you in Saint Louis

where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Michigan

where you’re brother murdered a baby so you covered up the archives and put him to work as an administrative assistant.

I’m with my regulars

who pick apart and you laugh at this invisible humor

I’m with you in Denver

where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Colorado Springs

where your traveling protester’s condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in my heart

where the faculties of the skull admit the worms of the senses but only in shades of pain

I’m with you in Nederland

where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Indica

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you sell nugs with the bodies of your nurses

I’m with you in Facebookland

where I scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of actual chess of the abyss

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you bang on the catatonic newsfeed

What’s on my mind? “the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse”

I’m with you in Facebookland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we accuse our doctors of cruelty, insanity and plot the revolution against the bankers influence and unequal distribution of wealth..

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you will split the heavens and find the beauty where you are, resurrecting your living human freedoms from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Facebookland

where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the songs of their youth all saying there is hope and we rebel.

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and whose problems won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ chemtrails roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop censorship bombs the digital hospital illuminates itself   imaginary walls collapse   O skinny legions run outside   O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here   O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Facebookland

in my dreams you drive from the story of your-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night to build a life here with me away from such woe.

 read source poem in its entirety and more edits here 

https://breedheenorilleykeefer.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/america-and-howl-by-allen-ginsberg-updated-for-the-occupation/

And now the master reading his own work…

Tea Partying With the Freak Brothers By: Steve Bass

http://hipgnosis21.blogspot.com/2012/01/tea-partying-with-freak-brothers.html

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012

Tea Partying With the Freak Brothers

BY: Steve Bass

Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paulsupporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “AstroTurf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are  in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that  end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either.  We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our headsAnd the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tomei’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to  the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane,  is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divineThing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.

We live right here. We have no choice but  to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and  less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur there without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.

POSTED BY AT 10:45 AM

“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation

Howl

Updated by Breezy Kiefair

For my friends, fans, and fiends

I

I saw the best minds of my generation valiantly struggling to destroy the madness, starving hysterical educated,

dragging themselves through the occupied streets at dawn looking for a fix to their righteous anger,

angelheaded hempsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating class warfare,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El train and saw First Nation spirit guides pale and staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with perscribed narcotic hazed eyes.. desperatley trying to conquer physical pain inside the dream of Ginsberg’s school whilst Debting Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war and peace,

whose doctors with the stroke of a pen excluded them from the academies for weak immune response & too many hospital visits and too much time off required…… and so retired to being a ghost in the machine publishing controversial essays on the benefits of cannabis therapy for the sick.

who cowered in rotten canvas tents in long dirty clothes, burning their resin, paying their land bills and heating canned goods on a candle in the absence of an indoor stove whilst listening to the Terror echoing still today and through the years,

who got busted for their sacramental pipes returning through Maine with a story of hope for Cleveland, Michigan and Colorado.

who grew fire out back of low end hotels in their RV or drank resin tincture on Paradise Mesa, dug in until death, conditions and the cold of hell in their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, cannabis and lack and endless wails,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Mexico and the whole prohibition world, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote spirits haunting the land of no halls, backyard green tree cemetery falls, canna-bliss blowing over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teapotparty joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusk’s of the valley, ashcan rantings and kind cannabis on compassion makes you light of mind,

who chained themselves to their occupation. for the endless ride from park to holy jail on love and hope until the noise of mace and sticks brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the fear light of the memory of the dead man from the Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of the capitol building and when riot police came floated out and sat through the stale beer/coffee house dawn in desolate 16th Street, reading the crack of doom scroll across their social media news feeds.

who posted information continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Twin Towers onto of the moon

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, gifts for the Sacred place just cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen horizon mirage above reality’s plane. leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of the beauty of the world.

Who found it better suffering sweats and bone-grindings and migraines of junk-withdrawal in an MMJ state’s bleak furnished room, with the comfort of a pipe in hand and the knowledge they could use as much of this as their pain required and not worry about an unintended death.

who wandered around and around at midnight in the occupied parks wondering where to go, and remained, leaving no broken hearts except for their own, and even it, scrawled across a bit of cardboard and peacefully expressed for all of the anger and stress madness within their breasts.

who lit hash filled cigarettes at truck-stops truck-stops truck-stops racketing through snow toward lonesome freedom Maine in grandfather night,

who studied St. Jude, astral projection, and bop kabbalah, Rastafarian, the Egyptian book of the dead, the epic of Gilgamesh, and more because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Nebraska.

who longed through the streets of Ohio seeking visionary First Nation guides who were visions themselves

who thought they were only mad when they have every right to be mad and their righteous indignation gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in pig cars on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight small-town blizzard Maine,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through ‘Mosa seeking meds or heat or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to the safety of the horse-lands,

who disappeared into the underground leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the rocks we gathered for the house and ash of my heart scattered on the land, self sustainable American dream in ashes because I cant fund it beyond the empty land, and even that is for sale for survival’s sake.

who reappeared on the East Coast investigating the medicinal cannabis programs in other states in purple pure gift scarf and with big pacifist eyes sexy in their pale skin passing out information and stories in exchange for housing like a true bard of old.

who cold turkey-ed cigarettes repeatedly protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism (and picked them back up again in PTSD coping mechanism to throw them back down again and again),

who screamed in favor of the Cannabis haze of capitalism…. who distributed Congressional Supercommittee petitions in Universal Online square weeping and exposing the secrets of their hearts while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the severe weather sirens also wailed,

who broke down crying in protest parks as if they had been left naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who used their whit to strike at detectives and shrieked with delight in police-cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and duty to protest.

who howled on their knees in the igloo and were dragged off the sidewalks waving signs and screaming valid points,

who let themselves be maced in the face, and screamed with joy for truth exposed,

who believed in equality for all, caresses and hints of unconditional love

who occupied in the morning and in the evenings and sent messages to delegation rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their opinions freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a public forum when a small & vulnerable woman came to hear their wailing song.

who lost their loves to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who shared themselves ecstatic and insatiable and fell off the net, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate hope and prosperity eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, and a lighting a fire of self sustainability desire

who sweetened the minds of a million hearts trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the image of the sunrise, flashing truths under sad eyes and naked in the soul,

who went out traveling through Colorado in myriad stolen rides, A.G. secret hero of these poems, poet and activist of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable fingers given to censoring conformists and cigarettes shared with corrupted youth in Naropa writing work shop breaktime day. I sing to you on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside debates & especially quiet help in dreams.

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden nightmare, and picked themselves up out of heart sore despair… not drunk yet hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Wall Street’s iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their souls full of dread on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 1% to open to a room full of steamheat and and lack of worry,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appeasement of bankers of the Stock market under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build revolutions in their parks, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the acid rain skies surrounded by orange crates of theology wishing for wide open spaces,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, rambling and unpublishable without a proofreader’s eye

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for a banana,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next century,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were tortured alive in their innocent flannel suits on social security disability amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, your government docs say your too sick to work, your government says your life is worth $17.42 a day. Make that work you sick lady in the wild all on your own.

who were trapped on the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of the protests, not even one tagline

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the dream’s window, jumped in the filthy Greyhound, leaped on haters, cried all over the street, danced on broken glass pipes barefoot..

who polar bear-ed it across frozen mesa to prove a point to psychopathic husband…. smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz screamed it was 1929 again, finished the joint and still stumbled down the hall just in time for their disease to make them throw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal auditory sensitivity.

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch a widespread panic incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loaned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to the social media class,

who retired to MMJ state to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or France to teach medicine or Southern border to live cheaply or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the feds of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw Knowledge at political pundits and gave lectures on history to representatives and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous reversion to the constitution,

and who were given instead the concrete void of mainstream media, refused electricity, cold-water hydrotherapy long before the dawn, applications for protest trademark names, occupational therapy in the for of police brutality & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic table, resting briefly in catatonia as the peaceful prepare their souls for pain.

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the corruptions and small-town censorship of infanticide in the East,

Pueblo State’s mountain views and Excelsior’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with bio-family finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— yet in the mind hope still remains

ah, working class, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

whose written dreams made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel citizen in Time, unknown, yet posting here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

Howl

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II

Breezy Kiefair

What Harpy of regulations bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Inequality! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Inequality! Moloch! Nightmare of Money! 1% the loveless! Mental Moloch! State controlled Media the heavy judge of men!

Class Warfare the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Super-Congress of sorrows! Wall Street whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Money for the stunned governments!

My country whose mind has become pure machinery! My Country whose blood is running money! My Country whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! My Country whose ear is an unknown and smoking tomb! My country who adopted me and is therefore my parent.

My parents whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! My parents whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! My parents whose factories dream and choke in the fog while paying down their carbon footprint as if the damage was undone! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities making my body ache!!

Moloch is My father whose love is endless oil and stone! My father whose soul is electricity and banks! My home whose poverty is the specter of genius! My home whose fate is an uncertain roller coaster based on regulations that keep shrinking my resources! Freedom’s only home now whose name is the Mind!

Moloch is My home in whom I sit lonely! My home in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Crazy Bitch in Moloch! Lacklove and friendless in My home!

Moloch who entered and attempted to own my soul early! My home, in your information superhighway I become am a consciousness not bound so much by a disabled body! My father who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! My parents I abandon! Wake up in my country! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! Corporate Persons! invincible house or representatives! granite senates! Corrupt lobbyists! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting their country to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American Dream river turned to flushing toilet!

Dreams! adoration! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of bill of rights constitutional BULLSHIT!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and revolutions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the the edge! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! Were the 99%! This is what martial law looks like! As they are beaten back but do not submit.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III
Breezy Kiefair
Occupy Together! I’m with you on Wall Street

where you’re louder than I am

I’m with you in Oakland

where you must feel strange

I’m with you in Saint Louis

where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Michigan

where you’re brother murdered a baby so you covered up the archives and put him to work as an administrative assistant.

I’m with my regulars

who pick apart and you laugh at this invisible humor

I’m with you in Denver

where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Colorado Springs

where your traveling protester’s condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in my heart

where the faculties of the skull admit the worms of the senses but only in shades of pain

I’m with you in Nederland

where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Indica

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you sell nugs with the bodies of your nurses

I’m with you in Facebookland

where I scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of actual chess of the abyss

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you bang on the catatonic newsfeed

What’s on my mind? “the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse”

I’m with you in Facebookland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we accuse our doctors of cruelty, insanity and plot the revolution against the bankers influence and unequal distribution of wealth..

I’m with you in Facebookland

where you will split the heavens and find the beauty where you are, resurrecting your living human freedoms from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Facebookland

where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the songs of their youth all saying there is hope and we rebel.

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and whose problems won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Facebookland

where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ chemtrails roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop censorship bombs the digital hospital illuminates itself   imaginary walls collapse   O skinny legions run outside   O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here   O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Facebookland

in my dreams you drive from the story of your-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night to build a life here with me away from such woe.

III

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland

where you’re madder than I am

I’m with you in Rockland

where you must feel strange

I’m with you in Rockland

where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Rockland

where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries

I’m with you in Rockland

where you laugh at this invisible humour

I’m with you in Rockland

where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Rockland

where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in Rockland

where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I’m with you in Rockland

where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I’m with you in Rockland

where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I’m with you in Rockland

where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyss

I’m with you in Rockland

where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I’m with you in Rockland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Rockland

where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I’m with you in Rockland

where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Rockland

where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I’m with you in Rockland

where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Rockland

where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself   imaginary walls collapse   O skinny legions run outside   O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here   O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Rockland

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Footnote To Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an
angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-
sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-
ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!

“America” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation (with Ballad of the skeletons)

America” and “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg updated for the Occupation and “Ballad of the Skeletons” as he wrote it”

October 28, 2011

America

Breezy Kiefair

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America seventeen dollars and forty two cents October 28, 2011.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?

go fuck yourself with your atom bomb, homeland security and martial law.
Go fuck yourself with your patriot act oppressing true patriots.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till my muse gives me the words.
America when will you return and be angelic? This world I live in is like a twilight zone episode of America’s greatness of yore
When will you take the wool off of your eyes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?

When will you open your eyes to the sick and dying? When will you see that we have value too? When will you correct the stress that kills disabled and working class alike?
When will you be worthy of your 99%
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you transform your spending from defense of oil to your peoples survival?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the dispensaries and get the effective medication I chose over narcotic poison with the same money Uncle Sam is happy to spend on things that make me more ill & could kill me?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.

Your human histories made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
My husband has gone underground I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the wild horses let me in their circle, seems horses understand me better than people.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, I can’t afford the subscriptions and everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. It just reminds me of my murdered kid and justice miscarried..
America I feel sentimental about wildlife and national parks.
America I used to be an nerd when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. While reading the free library that is the internet and sharing it with the world.
When I go to town I get supplies and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me eating libraries.
My psychoanalyst thought my logic is perfectly sound and advised me to trust it.
I WILL say whatever prayer I feel like wherever I feel like saying it. Cannabis IS a religious sacrament and a valid use of my first amendment freedom of speech and religion America the constitution is beautiful with a built in process of beautiful change.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. I am not ashamed.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Grandpa John after he came home from ‘Nam

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by the mainstream media?
I’m obsessed by the mainstream media.
I read it every day.
Its pages stare at me every time I open my computer to get some human connection.
I read it in the homeless shelters, in the basement of the Tattered Cover Bookstore,

in the basement of the NYC Greyhound station,

in social clubs for the insane in Maine,

In the greyhound station of Cleveland,

in Michigan Libraries

and on back to Denver,

to Union Station.

And I read it still out here in the wild.

Surrounded by nature at the roof of the world where I feel a bit more safe..
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Bankers are serious. Businessmen are serious. Lobbyists are serious. Movie producers are serious. Comedians are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

My country is rising against me.
I haven’t got a unemployed person’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of minds
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
99%’ers occupying my the ground.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the medicines that don’t work for me, and the GMO foods are next to go..
My ambition is to contribute to society despite the doctors saying I’m too sick for anything..

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my thoughts are as individual as his
automobiles more so if we planted hemp and made hemp oil returning to his original engine design we could stop worrying about oil.
America I will sell you all that I have just to survive.
America free Marc Emery
America save the Medical Marijuana Community & legalize
America we execute innocent too often they must not die.
America I am the 99%.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad terrorists
Them terrorists them terrorists and them North Koreans. And them Terrorists.
The al Queda wants to eat us alive. The Al Queda‘s power mad. They wants to take
our cars from out our garages.

Oh my precious oil, must protect the precious oil…

when we can grow an oil far better on the land that is ours & should be so free.

They wants to squash Denver. They needs a edu-ma-cation. Ther wants our
auto plants to go to Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh.. Uncle Sam need big strong workmen at a wage guaranteed to make you weak..
Hah. Them make us all work massive overtime with no overtime pay as I watched my friend get laid off today. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking at the net and social media posts of your people.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts in factories,

I tried factory work already, I’m nearsighted,chronically ill and psychologically unstable anyway.
America I’m putting my bisexual artists research obsessed shoulder to the wheel.

America

Allen Ginsberg

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they’re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don’re really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Ballad Of The Skeletons Lyrics by: Allen Ginsberg

Said the Presidential Skeleton 

I won’t sign the bill 

Said the Speaker skeleton 

Yes you will 

Said the Representative Skeleton 

I object 

Said the Supreme Court skeleton 

Whaddya expect 

Said the Miltary skeleton 

Buy Star Bombs 

Said the Upperclass Skeleton 

Starve unmarried moms 

Said the Yahoo Skeleton 

Stop dirty art 

Said the Right Wing skeleton 

Forget about yr heart 

Said the Gnostic Skeleton 

The Human Form’s divine 

Said the Moral Majority skeleton 

No it’s not it’s mine 

Said the Buddha Skeleton 

Compassion is wealth 

Said the Corporate skeleton 

It’s bad for your health 

Said the Old Christ skeleton 

Care for the Poor 

Said the Son of God skeleton 

AIDS needs cure 

Said the Homophobe skeleton 

Gay folk suck 

Said the Heritage Policy skeleton 

Blacks’re outa luck 

Said the Macho skeleton 

Women in their place 

Said the Fundamentalist skeleton 

Increase human race 

Said the Right-to-Life skeleton 

Foetus has a soul 

Said Pro Choice skeleton 

Shove it up your hole 

Said the Downsized skeleton 

Robots got my job 

Said the Tough-on-Crime skeleton 

Tear gas the mob 

Said the Governor skeleton 

Cut school lunch 

Said the Mayor skeleton 

Eat the budget crunch 

Said the Neo Conservative skeleton 

Homeless off the street! 

Said the Free Market skeleton 

Use ’em up for meat 

Said the Think Tank skeleton 

Free Market’s the way 

Said the Saving & Loan skeleton 

Make the State pay 

Said the Chrysler skeleton 

Pay for you & me 

Said the Nuke Power skeleton 

& me & me & me 

Said the Ecologic skeleton 

Keep Skies blue 

Said the Multinational skeleton 

What’s it worth to you? 

Said the NAFTA skeleton 

Get rich, Free Trade, 

Said the Maquiladora skeleton 

Sweat shops, low paid 

Said the rich GATT skeleton 

One world, high tech 

Said the Underclass skeleton 

Get it in the neck 

Said the World Bank skeleton 

Cut down your trees 

Said the I.M.F. skeleton 

Buy American cheese 

Said the Underdeveloped skeleton 

We want rice 

Said Developed Nations’ skeleton 

Sell your bones for dice 

Said the Ayatollah skeleton 

Die writer die 

Said Joe Stalin’s skeleton 

That’s no lie 

Said the Middle Kingdom skeleton 

We swallowed Tibet 

Said the Dalai Lama skeleton 

Indigestion’s whatcha get 

Said the World Chorus skeleton 

That’s their fate 

Said the U.S.A. skeleton 

Gotta save Kuwait 

Said the Petrochemical skeleton 

Roar Bombers roar! 

Said the Psychedelic skeleton 

Smoke a dinosaur 

Said Nancy’s skeleton 

Just say No 

Said the Rasta skeleton 

Blow Nancy Blow 

Said Demagogue skeleton 

Don’t smoke Pot 

Said Alcoholic skeleton 

Let your liver rot 

Said the Junkie skeleton 

Can’t we get a fix? 

Said the Big Brother skeleton 

Jail the dirty pricks 

Said the Mirror skeleton 

Hey good looking 

Said the Electric Chair skeleton 

Hey what’s cooking? 

Said the Talkshow skeleton 

Fuck you in the face 

Said the Family Values skeleton 

My family values mace 

Said the NY Times skeleton 

That’s not fit to print 

Said the CIA skeleton 

Cantcha take a hint? 

Said the Network skeleton 

Believe my lies 

Said the Advertising skeleton 

Don’t get wise! 

Said the Media skeleton 

Believe you me 

Said the Couch-potato skeleton 

What me worry? 

Said the TV skeleton 

Eat sound bites 

Said the Newscast skeleton 

That’s all Goodnight

 

The October 2011 Activism Activities of Breezy Kiefair

THIS BLOG TO REPLACE DELETED http://breezykiefair.wordpress.com/

Breezy deleted her old blog a few months ago. After several requests from friends for a new blog, and lots of activism news, I decided to bow to the request and open a new blog.

SO…. if you had been following http://breezykiefair.wordpress.com/

this: https://breedheenorilleykeefer.wordpress.com/

is your new source for content from the same source.

Below, you will find links to other online content.

Links for breezy’s involvement in the occupation in solidarity with OCCYPY WALL STREET

San Luis Valley Information
ALAMOSA OCCUPY TOGETHER meetup page

http://www.meetup.com/occupytogether/Alamosa-CO/

FB Planning Event
Time
Sunday, October 23 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Location

The Large Hospice Del Valle Meeting Room (Its a Potluck so please bring a something to share. Enter by the rear door of the building, off the parking lots behind the building. Feel free to bring friends)

More Info
SOLIDIFY WALL STREET
JOBS NOT CUTS – MAKE THEM PAY
 
PLANNING  MEETING  FOR  A  MAJOR DEMONSTRATION
Sunday, October 23, 2011
6:00 PM
It’s a pot luck, bring something to share.
 
Hospice Del Valle, 514 Main Street, Alamosa, CO 81101
Park in the lots behind the building.
Enter Hospice through the rear door.
Phone 719-227-9899 or email: VGail gforcevsa@yahoo.com
FB discussion group 
A MESSAGE FROM:

VGail  Vonderweidt
San Luis Valley Regional Organizer

I am VGail  Vonderweidt, Regional Organizer for Rebuild the American Dream, MoveOn.org. While we are strongly supporting the OWS movement it is important that you know that the Rebuild Movement strongly supports itself here in Alamosa and all across the country.
Early this past summer I attended a house meeting set up by MoveOn.org where hundreds of other house meetings across the country were gathering people together to develop a plan to fight the growing surge of the Republican and Tea Party to stall any actions of President Obama in restoring the economy. In fact, those groups are determined to destroy our country just to get this President out of office.
From those house meetings, many thousands of solutions were submitted to MoveOn.org who reached out to other peace loving organizations to refine all the submissions. The refinement ultimately resulted in the Contract for the American Dream. The ten solutions rang incredibly true for me. You can read all of these by typing in Google: Contract for the American Dream. And, I urge you to sign the Contract yourself. Over 300,000 Americans have already signed it.
I decided then that leaders were needed to generate interest and action by more and more people because it takes people like us to bring about change in our government. I have sent out a blanket request to the 84 members of our movement asking for someone to offer you a ride to the Sunday meeting.
Thank you for expressing an interest in the Rebuild the American Dream movement.

P R E S S  R E L E A S E

“SOLIDIFY OCCUPY WALL STREET” EVENT PLANNING MEETING
at Hospice Del Valle in Alamosa, Main Street, Alamosa
on Sunday, October 23rd, 2011, at 6:00 PM
Support the OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT across the country, MAKE WALL STREET PAY. The San Luis Valley Rebuild the American Dream Alamosa Council is holding a potluck EVENT PLANNING MEETING for an upcoming rally scheduled for November 5th, 2011. The NATIONAL ‘Rebuild the American Dream’ movement is working toward something bigger than last Friday’s JOBS NOT CUTS RALLY on Route 160!
      This Sunday’s meeting will be held on 10/23 and also on 10/26 if needed. Join us at 6:00 PM in the large Hospice Del Valle Meeting Room, located at 514 Main St., Alamosa CO 81101. Its a Potluck so please bring a something to share. Enter by the rear door of the building, off the parking lots behind the building. Feel free to bring friends. It was great fun last Friday and we’ll be planning more fun for November 5th. We are building momentum!
For more information telephone VGail Vonderweidt, 719-227-9899 or email her at gforcevsa@yahoo.com


VGail  Vonderweidt
San Luis Valley Regional Organizer
Rebuild the American Dream Movement
MoveOn.org
gforcevsa@yahoo.com
719-227-9899

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE54993C30203A992

Occupy Alamosa Video content from youtube at above link^^^^^^^^

Sample video from playlist:

******Note on the video playlists, I will update them as necessary to include new content. please email any links I missed to btokeefer@gmail.com or  denveroccupied@gmail.com ******

OCCUPY DENVER/DENVER OCCUPIED INFO
Police Brutality Inverview: https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/10-15-2011-occupy-denver-arrests-the-story-you-probably-werent-told

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9E91E44F59D6806E

Occupy Denver Video content from youtube at above link^^^^^^^^^^^

sample video from playlist

Map to Protest Location in denver
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=208166375239080501990.0004ae1710b88e0ce043d

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/occupy-denver-protest-pics

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/occupy-denver-videos

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/10-15-2011-occupy-denver-arrests-the-story-you-probably-werent-told

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/news-from-occupy-colorado-springs

https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home/contact-us

denver occupied email addy denveroccupied@gmail.com

denver occupied website
https://sites.google.com/site/denveroccupied/home
fb page http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002962468730

links about Breezy Kiefair
Parts of old blog preserved here
http://misshightimes.com/users/breezykiefair
Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mr8MrsKiefAir?feature=mhsn

playlist of videos created by breezy kiefair:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDDE36959E6DC0055

sample videos from playlist:

~ Do all that you can to cultivate peace within yourself, that it might
shine out from you, and plant the seed of peace in other spirits, for them
to cultivate.~

{Remember… it is when we choose act on the issues that are in front of
our faces, when we choose to get involved instead of looking the other way
as our fellow man struggles, when we choose to take those small simple
little actions, working on righting little wrongs in our everyday lives that
really make change happen, those seemingly small actions are what really
make the world a better place and are a catalyst for greater social change.}
~Both quotes by Breedheen “Bree” O’Rilley Keefer~