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By Adam Engel

9/17/07

Call me Plantman. Don Quixote was a Plantman. Kafka was a closet Plantman. Crazy Horse, Black Elk, Lame Deer, Chief Joseph were Plantmen.

Friday midtown. Friday payday.

“CEO Tobacconists.” Quality, overpriced cigars. Walk-in humidor. Air-conditioned smoking room. Customers relax. Smoke. Wide-screen TV.

Recite the Smoker’s Ode:

green gone
brown dead
resurrection fire
leaf life
tumors bloom
like tulips
or teeth
oh wet pink lungs

Musty humidor. Fat, sticky Maduro. Smoking room television tuned to The War. Cigar store crowd. Executives Young, Middle-Aged, Old. Shiny black shoes. Gray Summer suits.

And me, “Plantman,” the indoor landscaper, the horticultural technician, keeper of the City’s Office Flora, in denim and Topiary Techniques t-shirt. Smoked the darkest, most potent, if not largest cigar in the room. Maduro. Double-Corona. Sweet.

Television: Siren Air Strike Siren Air Strike Air Strike Air Strike Air Strike

Older men their war. Middle-aged their own. Younger Executives had not known war, cognizant of men their age in combat even as Young Executives ordered cigars. Senior Executives. Executives. Junior Executives. Vice-presidents. Managing Directors. Directors. Managing managers directing directors to be still

Older wars superior to new, according to geezers. More skill more man-to-man hand-to-hand. None of this push-button never see the hell you kill, play it like a video arcade, fish in a barrel, no thrill glory, no blood-scent, you see.

Middle-aged nightmares recalled: guerilla warfare, jungle rot, defoliants, lack moral such such such.

Arguments went so. Young men red-eared silent. Watched The War through smoke: planes tanks missiles blasting righteous wrath smite cities hammered eerie jigsaw puzzles of indignity, pain, confusion.

(Listen to the footage sound-track closely, said an executive who inadvertently recorded it while taping TV War Footage, you’ll hear a baby, sounding far-away, sleepy, probably in shock, calling for its mama or papa or someone — the executive couldn’t tell).

Out the window Sol’s slow-mo plunge. Sticky-sweet Maduro rhythm concentrated puff-exhale. Still Life With Plantman Under Cobalt Sky. I reached the cream of cigar, the final third, blend of saliva with juices latent in the leaf. Each puff damp with gray-blue ether of myself.

Young Executives had known no war but repetitious anecdotes of old warriors. Bosses, Mentors. They watched television commentators steady thick of mayhem slaughter. Prime action for the folks back home. Gory talk. The Old Executive/Warriors explicit, baleful, tedious.

Discussion shifted to cigars. Executives in the Smoking Room of CEO Cigars. Representatives of several companies gathering informally. Enemies after all. Smoking. Sharing life histories. Business anecdotes — a different kind of war. Cigar

ritual. Initiation. Not afraid to stink. Hah-hah-hah to up-turned noses of trim health-loving wives.

“Straight talk.”

Not afraid among men. But what if…the office…reveal what’s hidden…known among the women…at the office?

“Won’t get laid that way,” said one Senior Executive. “Women like strong men with big cigars. We’ve got nothing to hide here. Not in this room, at any rate.”

Laughter.

Ceremony. Pause. Executive Light-Up. Sucking flames. Wood matchsticks. Bad light, uneven burn? Catastrophic waste of a Cigar. Bad show. Really bad.

“Cigar, gift of the Indian,” one waxed poetic. “Cylinder of mellowness and virtue.”

Cigarette not a cigar like shot of rye not a snifter of fine cognac. Life ripened goes to smoke. Lifts spirits. Anguish up in smoke of stink leaf. Curing process: green origins ripen under sun.

Natural processes. Living systems. Green embalmed brown. Like raisins. Curing thought. Tumors like mushroom caps.

Exploded lungs of the unfortunate. Up in smoke. Bombs felled Enemy cities. Commentators explained: significance, explosions; shock, desire, fear, attack.

I studied bright burning buildings, imagined lives inside. Entered thoughts and situations, captured visions. Ten million minds became one mind, my cigar their locus. Ten-million thoughts became no thought - steady puff-exhale - and peace. Maduro of the Cosmic One – Mind. But on the screen and in the Cigar Room: smoke, fire, ashes, ashes.

Fire eye of my cigar wept ashes. Smoke everywhere, everywhere smoke and talk.

by Adam Engel, Plantman.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

“And George, Governor Death, President selected by a narrow margin of 5 to 4, man-child who’s always been given everything always and always managed to wreck it all, your nihilistic, narcissistic, narrow mind is rivaled on this sad planet only by your fellow spoiled brat brother of Thanatos (or secret alias? or — pardon the pun – “beard?”), Bin Laden. “

by Adam Engel

9/16/07

I was almost a hero, once.

Early Summer of 2001 I was hustling for the last shards of the dot.com boom and secured an interview with a banking corporation that bears the name of a famous American Robber Baron who sowed the seeds of his first fortune on the bloodlefilth of the Civil War. He sold defective arms to Union Soldiers, (or was it Confederate soldiers? Possibly both). Some called this Johnny-Bad-Apple-Seed a war profiteer; others said he was merely planting heroes.

It was supposed to be a three-to-six month gig writing ad-copy, business documents, executive speeches and other corporate propaganda. Thing was, they wanted me to wear a suit and tie. I told the woman at Human Resources that I didn’t sport such garb, particularly not in hot weather. Sorry, no suit, no gig, she said politely.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

By Abdul Basit

9/8/07

Despite the vast research and debates about solutions to global warming and climate change, most of these solutions are confined to science and scientific research. The recent developments in the field of bio-fuels, solar energy, wind energy, Geo Engineering and other fields have indeed provided solutions in reducing the carbon emission. But we have to go beyond the greenhouse carbon emissions and address the environmental issues in totality. Over the past few years, we have come across many new vocabularies due to climate change like Ozone hole depletion, Global warming, CO 2 Emission, acid rain, tsunamis, bush fires, soil erosion and others, most of which were unheard of to the generations prior to that of ours.

Science only deals with the immediate issues and does not see the whole picture. Here we have to take into account the possible natural and man made tipping points and the chain reactions that will follow. So only addressing greenhouse gas emissions without taking into account the total environmental crisis will complicate problems further and will only add new terms to the ever increasing vocabulary of environmental problems.

So the important question is whether the search for solutions should be confined only to science or is a concern beyond the realm of science alone.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

“More cruel and more angry, and more addicted to the illusory benefits of a technology that actually has created a dependency on mechanical solutions to even basic problems, and has generated a psychic prison of adumbrated personal choice. When Bush says “they” hate us because of our freedoms, the hidden meaning is that there is a fear “they” will someday have to suffer these same *freedoms*.”

By John Steppling

9/8/07

You know, one of the things that has been interesting about our long dialogue here is that you are *there* and I am *not*. I forget, I think, what it must be like to live in the middle of the madness, of the vast necropolis of the mighty empire. Someone asked me recently if I didn’t miss the US, and in particular Los Angeles (my birthplace). I thought about it and said, “no, I don’t”. And it’s true, I don’t. I miss small things of the culture; Mexican food, good Bar B Q, and of course a lot of my old friends. But I DO NOT miss anything else. Burroughs once said, many many years ago, that whenever he left the US he felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

The sense of constant selling is overwhelming. My last visit to the States was several years ago, and the most vivid impression I had was of a populace addicted to buying what they don’t need, arrogance, intellectual hypertrophy, and obesity. The other most vivid impression was that of American television. Let me post this link to Scott Ritter’s latest:

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

by Adam Engel

9/3/07

Dr. PLUTO
Turned me on
Turned me on

Dr. PLUTO
Turned me on
Turned me on

To Nicorette
And Percocette
And Plastic
Marijuanna

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By Vi Ransel

9/1/07

It’s an ancient tradition derived
from the scapegoat of Leviticus
whereby the wrongs of others
are transferred to an innocent

who’s then sent out alone to die
symbolically bearing others’ sins,
absolving from greed, lust, pride and hate
the community that condemned him.

A corpse is laid out, sin eater employed
to eat bread and salt from its belly
thereby absorbing the corpse’s sins
for the wages of just a few pennies.

Relegated to the wrong side of the tracks
in housing fallen to disrepair
destitute even of hope
a place one stumbles only in error.

The poor clean the toilets, wait the tables,
kill the meat and mow the lawns,
raise the children of the “Upper” Class,
walk their pampered dogs and park their cars.

They assemble the latest electronics,
sew our blue jeans and our wedding gowns.
When we buy cheap Chinese goods at Wal-mart
they’re the “associates” who check us out.

The poor care for other people’s parents
left alone and sad in nursing homes.
They’re the receptionists in upscale spas,
the charming girls in nail salons.

They’re dishwashers who scrape half-full plates
left by those who can afford to go out to eat.
They stock store shelves and work in warehouses
where corporations ship and receive.

They empty bed pans and wipe up vomit.
They’re janitors and maintainence men.
And a lot of them help to build the jails
they’re disproportionately incarcerated in.

The people they serve hardly speak to them
though they provide indispensible services
because they’re living proof of a “lower” calss,
which makes most Americans nervous.

The fact that they exist at all is a slap
in the face of the American polity,
so they’re treated like a shameful excresence
on the ass of American society.

But like the ghetto homelands of South Africa,
America has embarrassing pockets of poverty.
And the economic apartheid we practice,
makes the poor exiles in their own country.

And when the poor are all used up, having been
consumed by predatory corporations,
they’re discarded like so much garbage
for being too old, too sick or disabled.

These castoffs through no fault of their own
are condemned by the corporate supremacists
who looted their pensions and 401Ks
to eke out a long and miserable existence.

It’s gone on so long it seems normal,
and corporate-owned media report it that way.
It’s as if poverty were invsible
and America’s conscience had been mislaid.

So the sin eaters continue to scramble
for scraps from the CORPSE-porations’ table,
bearing the burden of unpardonable sin,
our homegrown, American scapegoats.

And treating the poor as if this is their fault
hides the fact that it is America’s decision
to absolve the criminal perpetrator
and blame the sin-eating victim.

So you’ll never see a T-shirt that says
“Poor and Proud in the U.S.A.”
because in the United States of America
the P.I.A. are M.I.A.

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

By Abdul Basit

8/29/07

As natural calamities like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and droughts continue ceaselessly on one hand while endless and inconclusive debates about the reasons for Climate Change take place on the other, the time for firm action to counter Climate Change is getting shorter and the options for slowing the impact of Global Warming are getting fewer.

Expounding upon my article ‘Manifesto to counter global warming and climate change’, in which I stressed the importance of sustainable development, I would like to further address some of the challenges and hurdles that are slowing the implementation of policies and programs to counter Climate Change.

Sponsored Intellectuals

One of the main hindrances to Climate Change resolution is the frequent dissemination of specious reports by Climate Change deniers sponsored by certain oil corporations which are creating confusion among the general public. These sponsored intellectuals of the establishment and the corporatocracy are trying to find new reasons to prevent actions to counter Climate Change, seldom realizing that by their action they are endangering the very existence of mankind for meager monetary inducements. Some of the most common arguments of these sponsored intellectuals are that these natural disasters are part of the cyclical process and all measures to counter it are futile.

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By Jonathan Lenglain

8/29/07

Power and property is concentrating in ever fewer hands, and things are beginning to hurt us in a way that we seek to wrest that power from the bloodlines of the privileged few. Poor Americans are numb and discouraged. Everywhere they hear that they live in a free country where they call the shots, yet their political agenda never comes close to the president’s desk. Every day, Congress deals directly with the concerns of big business lobbyists camping on the floors of Congress, while the White House brokers deals with contractors in Iraq or Afghanistan. Never mind sweeping reforms improving the health care, housing, and tax systems, which are on the agenda of America’s poor. And now that we’ve witnessed the most flamboyant series of illegal activities committed by our government at home and abroad in the name of anti-terrorism, are we finally ready for action?

It seems that things are in such a state that even Alexander Hamilton, the great conservative antagonist to the men we love to quote so much (like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry,) would be on our side. He would be at the forefront of movements to tear things down, and rebuild something new.

Of course, this is the Hamilton credited with building the current economic system almost single-handedly. The man who wanted big government under the patronage of the wealthy, who thought a Bill of Rights was stupid, and whose last words were “Our real disease is DEMOCRACY.”

But Hamilton was a real Genius in a Mozartian sense, and so his flamboyant failings are colorful reminders that this master nation-builder was just human after all. Hamilton was also a slave-abolitionist, a prolific writer devoted to a free-press, and an honorable gentleman who hated corruption, greed, and especially incompetent government.

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By Adam Engel

8/28/07

The Possessed Man is not a bad man, nor a good one. He is terrified. Alone among friends and family, he “works” to support his family, but is not exactly sure of what he does. He “administrates creative product strategies,” according to the Job Description on file at Human Resources.

The Health Insurance covers his wife and two kids, both under seven years of age and subject to all manner of illness and disease. Then there were the pregnancies themselves, and the drugs he must take daily to function at his job without drinking, or veering into violence, or bursting into tears. He’s covered by the company plan, but loopholes open and money falls through. Deductibles. Co-payments.

He is no longer interested in his friends, the few that he still has, or in having friends at all. What good are they, except to drink with, and he’s not supposed to drink while on his pills — though he does anyway. And don’t think this is all confidential, that they don’t know, the ‘they’ at the company, whoever they might be, that he sees a head-drugger to stay on top of things.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

By Jason Miller

8/27/07

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”

–Malcolm X

Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.

With dutiful efforts, heavily sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity, we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions—the hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out.

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