in loving memory of Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

We must bring the light to the darkness.
We must agitate the fire,
hunt down
conventional wisdom,
hang it upside down,
and poke it
with our abandoned dreams.

in loving memory of Maurice Sendak ...

Our cage is painted royal blue.
A computer checks the locks.
The Judge left his decision on
Our mirror drawn in chalk.

God narrates cruel calendars.
Thieves rip out the last page.
The crowd drowns in His smile,
As the Liar takes the stage.

A boy who built a ladder asks,
"What is outside over there?"
The men say, "just a parking lot."
A girl sings, "Its a dare."

Her movie light licks cave walls,
Monsters dancing drum drip seed
For forever forest's Night Kitchen,
As Mother bakes in the key.

We are wild like tears running,
Free like wind against her thigh,
Loved like rain drops on the burn,
Like lovers stretch for sky.

2012

Kindness rules Toronto,
they've institutionalized it here.
They've printed it on signs.
Socialism always breeds that slight smell of sweat spent
by the orderlies as the patients finally took over the asylum.
Victory tastes good
but the taste left over is
somehow seasoned with regret.
Full moons symbolize something similar for everyone,
something longed for,
the reach and stretch of inevitable death,
The regret of infinite moments
that might have been
if only,
the shame of an identity worn once and discarded,
The crying of the lambs
echos inside a collective mind.

so ****** in the face of it
at the end of it, your perception
on the nose of it
this feeling in my nose
this tingling wall
this numby crunchy face on my face that blocks out the light and the truth and the life .... that's how it feels .... sorta
how crazy does that read?
i'll bet it reads ugly.
i'll bet it reads sick.
it should because its a description of drugs crazy people, ie. people like me take to try to feel less crazy
they make your ******* face feel like it jumped rebellious,
eyes, ears, nose, throat, turned traitor.

Escitalopram
Buproin
Nuvigil
Lithium Carbonate
Quetiapine
Abilify
Risperdone
Harpoon IPA
Johnnie Walker Red Label blended scotch whiskey

it seems there can come a certain special kind of time in a man's life,
when he can feel weird and lonely enough
to type a few words
and call it poem.
******* Bukowski.
this is his legacy.  the possibility to do what I'm doing right now.
without that disgusting, self-centered fool
I never would have thought to try and write these weird feelings I'm feeling.

a little attention,
that's what strokes this need.
a few incidental internet readers,
to read this strangely pointless pontification
on the bits of sadness that are me.

i wish i could find an open field
and lay back comfortable
in the crisp cold air
and feel the stars shoot through me
my heart pounding in the dirt
and waiting for *** or sun or wolves or rain
or anything else you might call "love."

i wish for more death
or more life
I can't stay here.

Outside
The wrath
Turns the night
Slowly backwards.

She pumps and gushes
A heart like the river
Like black ice
Cracking
Blue steel.

The hounds of vice
Screaming salty,
Swinging wooden
Narrative.

Everybody arrested
in Brooklyn
since they built the courthouse
ends up in
'The Tombs."

These days if
you require medical attention
when they cuff
you in Brooklyn,
unless there is some sort of 911 style citywide emergency,
you end up in Woodlawn hospital,
a medical institution no one
would ever choose for themselves
let alone a loved one.

First,
it is filthy,
on at least three levels,
and I don't mean three stories of building,
it is much bigger than that.

I mean three levels of hypothetical cleanliness.
Three levels of dust, muck, grime, and microscopic disease.

Second,
there is the track record.
A few years back a big fat mentally ill woman,
died of Jesus knows,
right in the waiting room.

High security.
You can watch the video of the staff stepping around her corpse
on YouTube.

I spent thursday night at Woodlawn,
handcuffed to a bed rail.

It wasn't my first time ...

A songwriter Brooklynite friend, who I am sure wishes to remain unnamed, noted this morning, with Agape' love:
"Hipsters are people just like any other minority class.
You may not like them.
You may not want to eat in the same restaurant,
Or drink from the same fountain,
but you have to respect them."

There is a reason folks like his songs to the point of stealing from them.
He has a way of distilling the truth of the matter and pressing send while I'm still working on my second of 10 paragraphs.

I couldn't help but respond"
"I don't care if you are the King Of Shiam.
You can't close my computer (especially when I am uploading said songwriter's video),
move it,
and steal my seat when I go for a cigarette
without getting a reaction from me.
I don't care if you are the ******* Sultan of Swing
or President Obama's mama,
you are going to hear about what an ******* move that is."

But I shouldn't have broken that window.
At the very least it would have saved me some stitches.
It is rather unpleasant getting stitches on one writ while the other is cuffed.
"Just a pinch" when they inject the local right into your gaping wound.
"Just a pinch."
Yeah right.
Maybe if the pinching is done by an angry pregnant wolvererine.

And I definitely shouldn't have gone next door,
ordered another mojito,
and thrown that against the door as well.

I like mojito's
wasting them in such a manner
is a filthy sort of sacrilege.