I don’t get feminism.
The term, that is.
When they ask, "Are you a feminist?"
I reply, “Sure.”
They nod in bobble-head approval.
“I’m also a childist and animalist”
A confounded grimace glazes over
“Huh?”
“Of course. Aren’t YOU a childist?
Aren’t YOU an animalist?”

“Uh. What do you mean?”

“Well, don’t you believe that children
and animals should be treated with love?”

“Well, naturally.”

“Well. There you go. You’re a childist
And animalist.”

"Besides,  you would extend this love
To all sentient beings, I’m assuming?”

“Ummm. Yes...”

“Well, then, you’re a masculinist too,
Just like me!”

This is about the time their cell buzzes
Or their double soy frap is ready

They whisk away

“Oh, I’m also a worldist!” I belt out

Before they exit

As I resume reading
Remaining clever, and

Alone.

I need to read love poetry
For the same reason monks read bibles

the irrepressible need to believe

That love exists
That love is omnipresent, omniscient, all powerful
That it is eternal

For someone somewhere, at least

The emptier I feel, the more I read

Let me believe

Someone kisses
Crusty eye-lids in perfect bliss

Something about her
the way she sips her beer
as if it’s tea, and she’s in a kimono
peering out into a storm
as the wind rattles the ***
and snakes through the silk
she undulates, sliding her finger
over the rim, then sips

I know the real storm
broods inside her frail frame
but she says little. mostly listens
and it drives me utterly insane
she should scream or bang on walls
she should throw ashtrays into tvs
but instead, she simply nods
her glazed eyes as still as pearls

She’s like a cherry blossom descending
towards the  muddy trail below
she will be trampled by hooves
of  merchants and thieves
and I am the charcoal cloud, aching
as I feel her falling farther from me…

They enter the café just as some sappy pop song is playing
They order then immediately hug
Embrace
Swaying to one side, together, like the wind
Encircling the leaning tower of Pisa
Then teetering to the other solstice
Foot to foot, smile to smile, hand round skirted waist
Forearm resting on his tall  blazered shoulders

This is forgivable in the young
Those teeny-boppers with defiant hair-cuts and posters
However, he has peppered hair
She, though voluptuous and tanned,
Must be in her 30s.
“Affair.”
My cynical devil snickers, between sips

But I sit mesmerized, and for the first time ever
Envious.
The chairs and the tables somehow seem more distant
The song  now sounds as if it’s funneled through some crackling phonograph
The very light disentangles itself from stones
It’s as if a sky has opened up in my chest
Flying high overhead,  one lone raven,
Its slow shadow
Gliding across my heart

Oh, how I miss you
5 states away

I see your smile on magazine covers
I vaguely sniff your scent on passing women
Yet you remain elusive - immaterial, haunting,  
While this visceral assault

Leaves me bewildered - empty
An echo in a chiaroscuro cavern  
Fading for thee

Sun, heat and sweat
and what remains but the bone
the indecipherable whisper on our ear
the bitter aftertaste of a potent drink
you show me your tattoos, i show you mine
you show me your scars, i show you my poems
you show me your breast, i show you my
sun, heat and sweat
the ghost of a body that has not yet died
pill after pill till the stomach is pumped
till the brain swims in endorphins, nirvana, heaven
till the night screams to be heard and the moans fade
till the bone-sun rises and clobbers our throbbing skulls
no more
for once i want to sleep by 10:00 pm sharp
for once i want to know what the birds sing
what maria callas means by "vissi d'arte"
for once i yearn to be silenced
by another's dream
dissolve in the radiance of a pure syllable
vanish beyond the confines of light

It’s like some beast
whose roar startles
drowsy landscapes  
from a mechanical planet
where veins leak oil
where organs deoxidize
where bones lay scattered
unburied like discarded rods
homes are garages
churches are factories
cemeteries are junkyards
where all organisms operate
toward a singular optimum imperative:

EFFICIENCY

Even to an untrained eye
One can spot layers of foundation
Caked into her face

Is she a victim
Of some historical imperative?

Is she caged
In some arbitrary matrix?

Some fun-house of mirrors
While a mustachioed ringleader
Overcharges, shouting

“Come one, come all, bedazzled spectator
Behold, the distorted woman
Transmogrifying before your eyes!”

Or maybe she’s just vain
Or betwixt the two

Somewhere, a boy drops a sixpence
It rattles in the dusky jar
As he enters the dark show

This is to all those misfits

To the Romeo car-washing in Inglewood inlets
To the Hippy selling crystals on the Venice boardwalk
The Magician swallowing 8-***** at the Huntington Beach peer
The Rapper selling CDs in the Ranch Market parking lot
The **** tatting in a makeshift garage
The Poet slinging chapbooks at cafes and rec centers…


Not androids pontificating from lecterns
But grimy roots burrowing deep
Seismic rumblings toppling down
Insured ivory towers
Smashing pilled-paradigms beneath Docs
Hustling and slinging
In the forbidden outshacks of civilization
In tents, over barbed-wire, beside shards
Desperate and burning
For neither Truth or Beauty
But for LIFE

They do not tap wrists
No,  they thump chests
To feel it beat
To feel it rage
For fugitive fugues
For new eternities

They embrace
******* romance
Graveyard necromance
The holy hunger for change
Defying commercials and charts
Shivering and howling on streets
Waging guerrilla war
Liberating cubicled-hearts

Your tears are so light
Like cheetah paws over puddles
Tepid and quick
Below ivory moons

And your hands though small
Massive on my chest
Each finger
A Stonehenge slab

Your words don’t quite reach
Muffled like some ancient wind
Low and distant
Falling off the Himalayas

But the ache is intimate
Like burning sage spreading
Touching every empty corner
O ashen holiness

Smoldering inside

Oh, you got your politico pals
Posting stuff about them blues-and-reds
Oh you got your new-age pals
Posts about their chakra dreads
Oh you got your pervy pals
Posts about their whips and spread
Oh you got your journal pals
Posts about their EX and meds
Oh you got your comic pals
Posts of grumpy cat in bed
Oh you got your trendy pals
Posts of food and celeb weds
Oh you got your gossip pals
Posts about what so-so said
Oh you got your music pals
Posts of bands on every thread
Oh you got your mother pals
Posts of how their babies fed
Oh you got your nightlife pals
Posts of each local they’ve tread
Oh you got your righteous pals
Post of what you need instead
Then you got your artsy pals
Oh someone shoot me in the head!

With frenetic horns he gores
    The limp woman
******-aired
          Draped on his bulging forearms
              Undoubtedly bronzed
          By  Mediterranean suns
                      Or paled
         By subterranean shadows

She is either praying or panting
                     Fainting or fawning
                           Framed
              In an unimagined  tense

She sat beneath the high-noon blinds
The light too garish - spilling bleach
Not the soft song that falls behind
Far-off horizons of aural beach

No, this was hill-light - mountain-light
It was harsh, abstract, Cézanne
Cutting deep into each crevice - dust-mites
Irradiated at dawn

Overlooking every balcony
Of barking mutt - of barbeque
She craved for an epiphany
To change how she perceived the view

To find some meaning in the pools
The bars - the plastic awnings
She muttered, “I am such a fool”
Then took a drag and kept on longing.

I told them,  “I don’t feel sorry for Robin Williams.
He lived it. Coke-fueled, bearded trickster of ******.
Well traveled and well versed, raging into worlds
Physical and ephemeral, like a ghostly bull
Goring mortals to unfeel the estoques
Sunk deep into his vital corpse.”

I had a friend who blew his brains out
While his parents were watching tv in the living room
And another who rented a room at the Marriott
Then hung himself off the shower-rod

Both early 20s
You won’t see them on the big screen
Or hear their witty banter on interviews
Chic celebs won’t eulogize them
On “Extra”, “TMZ”,  or “Access Hollywood”
No 2 minute montages
At award shows, while tuxes and gowns float
Clapping in ovation behind the shimmering façade
Of golden statues

They got a few lines in an obituary, in A7
Those who knew them will speak in hushed euphemisms
No one daring to whisper “suicide”
As if it’s the ****** Mary of deaths
Like walking under a ladder, or breaking a mirror
The mirror containing, like smoke, the future
The jagged shards reflecting moonlight faintly

I love them all the same

your pale smooth skin
     slides under me
     as we are more sweat
     than bone
     i suckle
     your pink taut areolas
     you clutch my hair
     and my fingers spread
     everywhere
     you close your eyes
     bite down your lips
     shudder slightly
     gasp
     a low heavy breath
     and it’s like
     some shade in an inferno
     opened a cobwebbed window
     from the blackest molten bowels
     to release the compressed
     stagnate humid air
     from your deepest self.

You are my home, I whisper
As I lay my head on her lap

She slides her fingers
Through my wavy mind

Hair of wind and obsidian
She sighs chasms

As I fall away from her body
She falls away from my words

And somewhere in that moment
We meet for the first time

Then-and-there, our true selves
Embrace in the eternal plane

Of all we were
Or ever could be

You are my home, I refrain
You are my home, you are my home…

As sleep descends like velvet curtains
I sail off like a paper boat

Across your sea

I like dancing and drinking, sometimes fighting and *******, and not necessarily in that order.

Life isn't an equation. It's not a folded napkin, windexed decanter or applebees' reservation.

Sing, smoke, scream. When you laugh, let it boom. Howl at imaginary moons.

Roar to life

Lying in your arms
Is my vacation

Your eyes are the stars over Paris
Your lips my Spanish sangria
Your scent like Persian jasmine

When you nuzzle into my neck
And rapid kiss me, laughing
Then rest your eyelids
Lightly on my pulse

I transport to that ashen couple
As the Vesuvian magma oozes over
Forever in terrestrial communion
Embracing - as we do now

.................................................................­.................................................................­...

                          It was there heating
                                            sloping cavernous craniums

                         It was there illuminating
              marble hallways

         It was there immolating
                              witches at stakes

                                     Its fierce essence
                          frightens wilder-beasts

                                   Its mesmerizing radiance
  lures moths to annihilation

                       When in love, we often become
             both wilder-beast and moth

                As children, we learn
             to leap back from the flame

                               When old, we are rolled
                 into iron incinerators

                                    And every day between
   We are encompassed by suns
                       We are consumed by flickering passions

                                  We set-off firecrackers
                           for amusement

               We light candles
                                     to measure time

                         Veladoras to whisper
                                 to gods

                                          Fire is Life

                                      Something in us will
                                            forever burn.

She with the deepest cleavage
Will allure the most clicks
******* b-minus chicks
Cause the most leakage

The loneliness of stoics
Rocks, ancient rivers
Streaming only through
Blue hills, shadowed banks
The shade that makes
All bare boys shiver
Beneath the leaves.

The lake glistens
Such golden boughs
Hanging overhead
Lanky limbs
Wrestling
Sharp elbows
Digging
Into ribs
Upon damp grass.

This was the time
Before women
Before black hair
Swung lightly over
Our shuddering shoulders
Before dark eyes
Consumed
Fiery tongues

Before we could imagine
Such soft perfumed skin

Existed

Only in dreams
Only in books

And then…our life.

I see you in your black corset
    Shiny as a raven’s claw
      Your hair
         Hips swerving
   Sipping a stiff drink
         In a dark corner
          Mascara thick
              Lipstick full
        In crimson bloom

        Plump lips - glazed eyes
           Fishnets and stilettos

                     Swaying

         Unto the dance floor
      Becoming one
  With the music
While unraveling yourself
       From our mortal fetters
                    Bone fingers
         Reaching, beckoning
      As you are enveloped

By the strobe-lights and fog

             Evaporating

   Only your pale silhouette remains
              On my tongue

Something about her
the way she sips her beer
as if it’s tea, and she’s in a kimono
peering out into a storm
as the wind rattles the ***
and snakes through the silk
she undulates, sliding her finger
over the rim, then sips

I know the real storm
broods inside her frail frame
but she says little. mostly listens
and it drives me utterly insane
she should scream or bang on walls
she should throw ashtrays into tvs
but instead, she simply nods
her glazed eyes as still as pearls

She’s like a cherry blossom descending
towards the  muddy trail below
she will be trampled by hooves
of  merchants and thieves
and I am the charcoal cloud, aching
as I feel her falling farther from me…

a facsimile of happiness
a continuous depression filled with interludes
of sunsets shimmering off loving eyes


          neither logic nor morality warm beds
          so we keel over, head long into midnight streets
          groping for lips to kiss
              ears to listen
                 hands to caress
                   ******* to obliterate


for Newton's apple to drop
or Buddha's lotus to blossom
for Gabriel's sword to rip chests open


       some are enslaved to absolute subjectivity
                                  a tattered rag flapping on the wind
                       they are forever drowning drowning drowning
             dooming any who dive in to save


                        they can not step back and observe the play
                        they are the play: the king, the jester, the soldier
                         the longing maiden, bitter spinstress, sword-smith's daughter
                         the prideful hero or stubborn villain
                         the country bumpkin chopping wood
                         the raving madman in the wilderness
                        
                             ­       

          oblivious to the back-drop or matrices
            the paradigms of passion
             the translucent chemical pulleys
            the perpetual violations of history
              ******* them

                even in the womb


the birth of an idea is the most wondrous phenomenon
the booming I AM forever resounding
it is a big-bang of metaphysical splendor
it is the unity of art-science-religion
the holy trinity of being

You would figure
such a moment would be burned
into the paradigm of memory
when exactly did I learn
life was no cartoon?
well, it wasn’t one traumatic incident
rather a rushing current of events
a drunk uncle here, a screaming mom there
a belting boyfriend or toy-stealing sister
playmates picked dead last no matter
older boys bullying the younger
teachers who didn’t particularly bother
some cousins had yards and fathers
while others like me had neither
always more chores than fun
and no one ever explained how come
priests were less present and less kind
than the mexican street venders
there’s no specific scene to pause when I rewind
I honestly can’t remember.

It wasn’t at a funeral, by then
though I was young , I somehow knew
life was not all beautiful and true
that those adults who told me what to do
sobbed on dark beds and screamed at phones
then wiped their tears or ****** walls
before reentering the room
their eyes a little more like stone
while I pretended to un-see it all
and kept on playing with my toys, alone.

Life isn’t enough.
I want 10 more
I want 10 penises and 10 *******
I want 10 guns and 10 crosses
I want 10 children and 10 homes
I want 10 friends and 10 enemies
I want more of everything and now
The gamma rays and the cosmic nothingness
The icy chill and solar flares
The Big Expanse and Big Crunch
I  CRAVE the universe
ALL of it
To funnel through me
Like water through a hose
Or electricity through a cable
Or sunlight through a magnifying glass
I am wired
With LIFE
With music, and wine, and kisses
With silence, hangovers, and wishes
I want to consume
Like Horace
the very sun, the very underworld
Engulf dreams, nightmares, and mortality between
Like plumes of obsidian perfume
Sacrifice virgins and assassins
Dig up graves and wheel them into churches
Dig up stones and throw them at CIA vans
I want to rage
Smear my blood all over eggshells
Feces on W2 forms
Give me more thunderclap and ******* wailings
Charge me with the ravenous gasp
To breathe, to bellow
To love in bolted totality
To strike and revel
I hold the goblet out
Shimmering and trembling
For you

I'm sorry, I drank all your sake
Again, I left you some money
    On the desk - I'll be gone in the morning
      Like the rain.

You have always forgiven - forgotten
  A tinture of both mixed in the palette
    of your heart withstanding
      Me.  My black swathes

Of Beauty and Pain. You conceive
  What I feel when I glance
    At the flowers I trampled
     With my boots

Yes, I've been meaning to buy you flowers
  But it's too cliche - too conventional
   For our approximations of love
    Like cherry blossoms in the wind

So instead, I drank all your sake. I'm sorry
   Again, I left you some money
    On the desk - I'll be gone in the morning
     Like the rain.

What do u know of loss?
W ur ******* Nirvanna shirts
Did u ever love a crackhead
Or cry toiletless room?.

What do u know w ur dull razors
Colred hair, tapered pants
Nothing. U only imagine kisses
Against ***** lips on nov 1st

Wake up in a slight daze
like the hanging haze when something in the kitchen is burning
but it’s the fog of hangovers, dizzying post nights
flash cards of kisses, songs, and maybe tears

all kinds of parts of me ache with bruises and bite marks
there’s opened chasers, flung boots, bottles under the bed
I spot your red lipstick imprinted on ashed cigarettes and beer cans
and when I go take a ****, I discover your ******* in my pocket

I see your text, “Home. Had a blast. Miss ya! ***”
and I am no longer haunted by some vague lingering feeling
that somehow this was a ****** scene
instead of our raw rituals of love

I don’t want to know about your ex
Don’t want to know about your daddy
Or your ******* coworkers or customers
Or your catty friends

Stop

Tonight begins the future

Some believe a wall against your back
Creates desperation
But it can also spark urgency
Clear the phlegm of memory
It can  protect
Your vulnerabilities  
Focus your vision

When getting jumped
First thing you scan for is a car or wall
The fists and kicks might ****** down
From everywhere like stony blizzards
But the pain is peripheral
Not ethereal
You’ll have a chance to dodge and block

Stop

Tonight begins the future

A future empty of splinters/thorns/shards
Of muscle aches, fatigue, or tremors
Of gooey ***, tar heroine, clunky *****
Dismembered torsos, sliced ears, dangling eyes
Red **** and blacker kisses

In turn I won’t burden you
With my *******
Won’t convert you into an airport carousel
I won’t unload
My unkempt baggage
Upon your frail façade
Turning turning turning
In circles
As weary passengers shuffle
To and fro
Frantically
Beneath buzzing phosphorescent

Stop

Tonight begins the future

Open and free
Like air over mountains
Like clocks un-tocked
Like silence hovering around the corner
A seed buried in ****** soil
A dream light has yet to touch


*Tonight begins our future

I’ll **** for make-up
I’ll **** for shoes
I’ll **** from boredom
Or cuz I use

We’ll **** at your place
Or in a car
Or in a theater
Just don’t live far

And don’t be married
Or be married, whatever
Bring your partner
Or hide me forever

He’s always away
Or simply can’t ****
He’s got a small pecker
Break me out of this rut!

They’ll say I’m a **-bag
They’ll say I’m a ****
A cheater or freak
And I say: so what?

You only live once
Be twisted and *****
Be true to thyself
Come. Join me.

I want to be the bed covers
You wake to
That your restless limbs
Have smothered
That your emanating body
The fabric
You have tossed-and-turned in
8 hours hence
Imprinted with your scent

And the mouthwash
You gargle
To swoosh-and-splash
Along your tongue
To be in you
Like a liquid ache
Sloshing
Waking


I want to be the fork
You pick your eggs with
My metallic spine
In your slight fingers
Your demure  hands
Scarred sustenance
Yolk sun

I want to be the comb
Tangled in your frizzy hair
Your wavy hair of smoke
And shadowed lakes
As soft as lint
Cascading

I want to be the cig
You light on the corner
To warm the brick morning
I want to hang on your quivering lips
Like an autumn leaf from a branch
I want you to inhale me
And let your body loose
Feel me utterly
Then exhale...

Let me evaporate
Into the nothingness
I was before

You

Your childhood dream
Your teenage dream
Your 20s dream
Your 30s dream
Your 40s dream
Your 50s dream

Measure them in decades
Transfixed before a distorted hall of mirrors

A cycling fun-house

While presidents come and go
Parachute pants, bomber jackets, bangs

When you’re drifting off to sleep
What feeling awakens in your heart?

What small feet run across your translucent landscapes
Cubists blocks of what might have been

Twisting , reforming…, parallax

Like Etcher in motion, Inception

Dark cities floating overhead while eclipses burn red

Do your hands tremble with rage or with despair?

Or do you lie perfectly still, resigned

Practicing for your casket

Selfies of your head sinking into starched pillows

You’re responsible now

Clerks and coroners pat you on the back

The least you can be is responsible

Hunting down dreams in dreary forests
With bow knives and bandanas

Is foolish

Better to fill out your W2s

Calculate your interest and help with homework

Don’t be selfish


Let others burning with madness, desire and discontent

Dream for you

Shape the future for you

Preferable to be content

An anti-pioneer   To Nest in paperclips and razors

Satisfied with consolation prizes, Ms. Congeniality

To sink silently down the toilet of trivialities
Floating listlessly like a ****
Flushed out into the polluted ocean of time

But let us not dwell on dreams

Let us drill, let us dance, let us down

Korean BBQ and snap-shot sunsets

Never mind the shadows swirling

Through you, deepening with every tock

Civilization calls  - You must be integrated.

Not like days of yore

On the hunt

But wrenched into a mechanical maelstrom

Input into a coded vision

An alien incubator zooming through metallic tubes


You are an app

Of Aborted dreams

Of pragmatic passiveness
  

Fingered by millions of strangers

To **** time and hope

Let me scan your pretty face
Your wistful eyes and ebbing hair
Your youthful floral air
I distantly embrace

It matters little what you write
I’ll like whatever gibberish
You post, sober or feverish
Morning afternoon or night

You crave fans, and I oblige
You desire compliments
Hits, and shares, and comments
A digital mirage

To reinforce, who knows?
To find one who can comprehend
Truly, more than family, friends?
Love through a computer’s glow

Or escape whatever misery
Whatever flesh and bone
Has left you this alone
To log away to fantasy

You hum to yourself by the river
A low sad steady melody
But from the shaded woods, I see
Your pale visage shiver

So I approach, naughty or behaved
Like a wandering troubadour
Serenading mon amour
To save and to be saved

I’ll stream you instant endless praise
I’ll shadow your every move
It will approximate love
Unmerited as grace

So, let me frame your pretty face
Your chic angular air
Your parted lips, cascading hair
Forever fall through my embrace

You are the snake charmer
      mesmerizing poisonous slithery creatures
      spellbinding them with your undulating hips
      gyrating *******
      nimble graceful hands
      lulling lulling
      the predator
      into a limp drowsy posture
      until its rapid oscillations dull
      until its spitting hisses silence
      and glowing yellow eyes milk over
      you drape it over with your red garment
      it coils into infinity
      as darkness spreads.

It's not so much your lips
But the words behind them
And the touch my skin still tingles from
And the way your closed eyelids warm
My stiff neck in the morn

I can see you layered there, bundled
Among the blankets you stole from me
Some time during the night
One hand tucked under the pillow
The other serenely on the bed

You lazily turn, half-languidly
Digging your head into my broad breast
Then heave your leg over my thigh
Kissing my scruffy beard

How can I summon the will
To wake and troop to work?
To be sobered from my delirium!
To be polluted by time and space!
Yanked away from your ethereal landscape
And hurled into corporate junkyards
Of grinding metal, cubicles, alarms
I want to dwell forever in your liebestraum
Like a ghost drifting through a foggy rose garden

I miss slow dancing
awkwardly in musky
jr high gymnasiums
with lame hair cuts, and shoddier shoes
from payless

but in the dark
limitless future
when hands trembled at hips
and lips quivered at ears
when perfume broke us
like picks
at a bottomless a quarry

was that not heaven?

when hard-ons rose like spears
and we talked on phones all night
on our backs peering into moons

I do a few pushups

Before you visit

I rummage for the good cologne

Dash some on wrist, neck

Crotch

I trim my hair

Sweep the floor

Swipe the gunk

Off sinks

Wash the dishes

Stuff all the junk

Socks, backpacks, ****

Into the closet

Rearrange my trinkets

Shelve the various books

Thrown all about

Lay out the good movies

Songs, covers

Ready at hand

Prep my mind

With witticisms and humor

Hang up strawberry

Car-fresheners

Buy wine

Out of my price range

Dim the lights

Scrape the crust

Dust off the shadows

For you

I dream

I want you to close your eyes
Visualize
Hand over breast
Until your palm thumps

What you feel transfigures the physical
What we have transcends the sultry soma
Or random tactile sensation

I want you to close your eyes
Listen to my ripe breath
Inhale my low voice

It is like a hymn
It is true because while it whisks
Through your ear
It blossoms in your heart

Let it reverberate through those midnight gardens
You deny yourself among the slobbering masses

Groping you like raw meat
Pounding, slicing and packaging you
Like clumsy butchers

You are not a bleeding slab to me
Though I cherish that animal
Which temporarily houses your light

It is that radiance which warms my loveless bones
Which illuminates my dreamless skull

Distance only magnifies our effulgence
We are insects below it, scrambling

Let us immolate together beneath its searing heat
Until the facades of flesh melt
And we are left as **** as shadows
Aching for an unremitting bliss

I am yours, but only in moments
Intense and startling like flash bulbs
Blinding and dazing
Leaving the dark blacker than before

Like laughing at carnivals
Never entirely wholesome
Over-saturated like cotton *****
So sweet it sickens in delight

Onslaught. ******. Overmuch
It is the opposite of life
Drab and drooling
Enter the delirium

Which you crave. It is ****
Unadorned, unlike dreams
Which detour you from love
In its absolute form. Click.

Your eyes are not portals to your soul
They are not some archaic metaphysical equation
Ancient mathematicians formulated to confound

They are pastures for nymphs
They are branches for fruit
They are laurels for poets

They rend me open like a flaming axe
They tie my stomach like knotted roots
I lose myself in their dusky wilderness

In them, I observe universes
Perpetually exploding and collapsing
Your pupils are black holes
At the center of galaxies
Balancing energy and force
Bending light inward

Like a sickle glistening high over hayfields

In them I hear songs
And sagas narrated by savage tongues
Of catastrophic floods and rebirth
Aryan myths about oneness

In them I see IVs dripping
Candles flickering behind carved pumpkins

I loiter in them like a pauper
With a styrofoam cup

Gazing on them is nearly intolerable
Like glaring at hydrogen bombs blinding

It is like Hebrews
Uttering the name of El- who cannot be named
El- who is above mortal matrices

The eye that never sleeps
The ear that always comprehends
The self that waivers like the sea

Eternity ends when you blink
Infernos extinguish when you sob

I tremble before them
As if they're holy relics
Decaying into perfection

Oh look upon me one last time
My love

Oh glance at me before
I petrify into pillars of salt

Look upon me
Before I transfigure into an amnestic god
Bearing light pure

Peer once more into my binary pulsars, frozen
In a fathomless abyss.

And pew by pew, they shuffle up
In stoic homage, cane in hand
Or awkward reverence, drudging forth
I dare not rise to join the train
Of human need, of appetites
That crave the air, that lust the sun
That knock on wood to trap a nymph
That find a god within a waif.

And others, likewise, stay as well
A few old-maids who cannot walk
Yet others more than capable
I think, “Maybe the night before…
They ****** their sister’s married friend
Perhaps they stole their neighbor’s TIMES
Or sabotaged their best-friend’s plan
Got drunk and cursed and fought their dad
Or maybe even killed a man…”

And yet they’re sober enough now
Beneath the stained-glassed reddened light
That slants before the multitudes
Sober enough to fear what’s done
To touch, to taste, the burning bread
With sweaty palms, or slobbering tongues

And all at once a feeling swells
A kinship for those left behind
Who gaze upon these rising rows
Yet still remain for all to see
Just how deprived they truly are
Now those who’ve fed and drunk return
Crossing themselves, they kneel to pray


The holy hymnal spreads its wings.

Vacancies are only temporary
Moments of emptiness where bodies rest elsewhere
Though they always buzz
In neon midnights
Next to gutters, alleys and parking lots
The distance between us
Breaks in my gut

Like a bad *** general reciting deaths
Strewn bodies like dead roses
Along the shore while the waves engulfs them
You glare at me like the enemy i have slained
But havnt conquered,  my love
I read your book but failed to read between the lines
Of what makes you holy, or mine

Stick it with a pin
And I will yelp

Twist its arm
And I will cry for help

Strip it
And I will seek cover

Kick its groin
And I will double-over

Punch it
And I will bruise

Slice it
And I will ooze

Stomp it
And I will ache

Slam it
And I will break

Drown it
And I will choke

Burn it
And I will smoke

Skin it
And I will peel

Flog it
And I will kneel

Bite it
And I will heave

Kiss it
And I will leave.

“ash”

a swelling fills my chest
it sounds like heavy waves crashing
against jagged cliffs

     stars stars stars

silver spears descend
   i am pierced


        here

through my clavicle

the rain-swept streets waft with reminisces
  like stale perfume on a black wrinkled shirt

            my head half
submersed in water


                tickling my ear

        I can hear my nose breathing
                  heart pounding
                      throat gulping

body floating

                         dismembered
                  

                       in this liquid abyss


               like a spirit lost
                        in the neon-green ether
         of absinthe

                            lips
              press against my shivering skin

                 a warm palm plunges

                            clasps my numb hand

   a light delves

                            into the obsidian chasm

                   pallid faces

      innumerable

materialize

               from a cavernous distance      

fiery orbs combust

              crackling

                                like dry wood

                               in a snowy forest

smoke billows
                                     towards the fathomless night
                            
                             rising

                       rising

                rising

                   chest

swells
                      
waves

     crash
    

lungs

            bells
                          

eyes


ash...

II

“Shadow-Play”

The shadows in the corners of the room
whisper my name
they are the same shadows
by alley ways,
            behind tombstones
       beneath beds
inside my head

over the plains

the highest and whitest of clouds
cast darkest hues

the brightest of suns

i think of you

                         the whispers get louder
                         the curtains flutter
                         the air turns colder

somewhere a murmur

                         shhh

be still   be still  my dear

the rope hanging in the attic
                        the vague visions through the static
                                    the tremors of the addict

shhh
  be still
      my dear

                          love casts its pallor
                                blood on pale collar
                                  i hear you call her


                   by candle lights
                        as rain drops
                               and winds howl
                                       and wood creaks


      
               icy razors lay on warm tubs
                            guillotines fly through the air                
                    birds fall from thick heights
               like notes of despair


don't shake your head
it will all end
soon
in the corner of the room
There
where the shadows call out your name
like the wind sweeps the rain


               pull out a smoke
                    drag over a chair
                          sit by the window
                            and stare


there is the world    there is the world
   you are not a part of
                there is the world
            full of cruel love
        there the children laugh and play
like you never have
or ever could

   It’s understood

                  the rain floods into gutters
                       the once crisp leaves drift
                          they sog and they shudder
                          from spring-autumn skies
                                 down down sewage drains
                                     all truths mask in lies
                                          all love in pain      

shhh  shhh

the shadows the shadows

   they whisper my name

III

“eternally…”

I see your spectral silhouette
   hovering on the sea's horizon
      at midnight

  as the surf struggles and collapses
     before my feet

    it's so **** cold
     my gut convulses
      my hands shake
        my being shivers

              your hair whips
                 the dark air
               like thunder

                           the wind lashes
                         my numbed skin with coarse sand


            and it's so dark

                    the moon oscillates wide rings
                            of pallid skeletal light

                               and you flutter there exactly
  where the sun set
       six hours ago

                                 when its afterglow
                    disintegrated
                             pixel x pixel
    

                               your shadowy figure
                                   now beckons

                                      join me
                                    this night
                                and every night

                                    hereafter

                                      love
                          
                              I close my eyes....

                                    ...

dancing and sweating

  we lay in my room

             under burgundy covers

                      reeking of cheap beer
                               and dirt

your ******* still slightly moist
    flung on my chair

  my sticky shirt still emanates smoke
     like an industrial factory

you arms wrap a

Your snores are like a poem, your silence - writer’s block
Your tears a bleeding pen, your ****
A double-entendre for a sock

Please stop writing about writing

No one cares if you haven’t scribbled a haiku
In two days. Or if angelic Whitmans sing to you
Like bearded cherubs, baby-boo

Please stop writing about writing

And no one cares about its state
Or what it does or doesn't, or its fate
Or what it takes to be first rate

Please stop writing about writing

It's a literati twerk
Watch your fellow wordsmiths go to work
At the meta-circle ****

Please stop writing about writing

Yes, you’re spitting rhymes and flow
Basking in the muse's glow
Dropping learnéd metaphors , we know

Just please stop writing about writing

                                                        ­     Like so

Encyclopedic mainframes
Lap-top heads
Power-boxes for multitudinous outlets, plugs, chargers
Conduits manipulating
Fiber-optic arteries
Artificial energy
ZAP
Pale lights
Computers aglow in dark cloistered bedrooms
Powered pacemakers stalling at microwaves
Electrocuted blood - cookied fantasies
Ads proclaiming everything free!
Pharmaceutical elixirs for limpness, lumpiness, loneliness
Snake-oil for suffering
Nigerian kings, Syrian refugees
*******, clever memes, whimsical gifs, shocking news, witty banter
Socio-politic-religous-diatribes
Spewing on every thread

Existential *****.
Aroma-less cuisines
Vacuumed vacations
Youtubed communions
Suicide selfies.


Crucifixdrones - pedolandia
Jdate.POF.AshleyMadison.Match. Eharmony.SpeedDate.OKcupid
CG. Missed encounters...
Serial killers,
Pixalated *******, vein-throbbed **** shots, cardboard gloryholes

Instagramed I
Inviolate I
Internet I

I    I     I

No sweaty arm pits, cottage cheese, gray nose hairs or belly fat
Computer [ScreenShot]
While behind, posters hang: The Doors, Tupac, NIN, The Smiths, Hendrix, Joy Division, Nirvana

HandshapedHeart.

2D souls
Text-dating
144 word manifestos
#revolutions
Archetype emoticons

Doodled centaurs
Caged in matrices

Transcendental notes
Need a hit
Of internet smack

A line, a pinch, a drag
A like, a comment, a kudos
A reply, a thumbs up, a share, a poke
One measly view
Baby, come on, give me a fix
Just one
Notification: ding-beep-buzzzz
I want to dissolve like alka-seltzer in tap water
Otherwise I'm a used-up toothpaste tube
Sitting in a dank medicine cabinet

If not, I am
A stick-figure created from matches
Drowning in a drum of gasoline

Not buried beneath pregnant soil
No. dumped into blue recycling bins.

[Ctrl +Alt+Delete]

I'm looking out to the hwood hills,
Step over junkis and lovers
Who shall i kiss first. Dying
Dying, dying , dying
I will kiss those sub cracked lips
Thirstnig for lovE,
Palming the emptiness
WheRe my heart was,
Yet when my drunken lips call
At 2 am w cruel lightning
U will discard me like the wind

Longing, confused, and discontent
Imagining kisses that froze like snow
In the endless blizzard of the mind
It's time to let go

Time to find the cobbled path home
Beneath the glacial earth
To thaw the mangled fingers
Beside a stony hearth

The icicles will melt
The woods crackle and whir
The sun will slowly rise
The heart firmly endure