Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.

See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.

Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.

Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.

It's another mid-west, ******,
******-up freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.

So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.

The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
“*****, I am not above homicidal snickering.”

I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.

I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-***** the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,

and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.

Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –

then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”

Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.

I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.

It's two in the morning
and we find Sam still
awake, staring at the ceiling
of his cramped studio apartment.

Overhead, thumps can be heard
along with moans of squelched desire.

He rolls out of bed, gets dressed,
and begins his evening perambulations.

Don's Donuts is his destination.
Although he doesn't much
care for fried sugar bread,
it's the only place open.

He buys a  few maple bars
and takes a seat at a bench,
near his overly-intoxicated peers.

The smell of whiskey and puke
permeate the establishment,
and Sam ponders why he doesn't
succumb to the same alcoholism.

Hey, Sam.
A voice registers
in his conscious attention.

He looks left.
He looks right.
He looks up.
He looks down.

No one is paying him any mind.
Besides, he doesn't recognize
the faces otherwise.

Yeah, Sam. It's me.
The same borderline authoritative
tone echoes over the drone
of the inebriated crowd.

Sam furrows his brow
and lifts the paper plate.
A small, luminous man
about the size of Sam's thumb

sits cross-legged under the plate.
He grins and golden emanations
cascade and unfurl from his
long (relatively), tied-up hair.

It's okay, Sam. You're doing fine.
Everybody likes you more
than you think they do.
You need to stop being so ******* yourself.

I'm just here to give you some
encouragement. You've seemed
a little down in the dumps
these past few weeks.

Listen, man, I know you've had it rough,
but suffering isn't a ******* contest.
This, too, will pass.
And you'll be a better person for it.

Then maybe you can help people who
are going through the same problems.
That's all you really can do, man.
Just help the people you're around.

Sam stands up which sends the chair
skidding across the floor into an
adjacent table. He flings the paper plate
(which still has a donut-and-a-half!)

against the window and screams
in a manner which contradicts
his timid demeanor:
"Who are you? Get out of my head!"

A police officer who, before this incident,
was finishing his third bear claw of the evening
observes the outburst and intervenes.

"Say, are you okay?" The officer puts
his hand on Sam's shoulder.
"What're you on tonight?"
The officer had seen a few
Drug War soldiers
exhibit similar collapses.

Sam feels threatened, he pushes
the officer out of the way
and hurries out the door
and down the street.

The officer follows in pursuit
and shoots his taser into
Sam's back. The electric
shock causes his heart's

circuitry to become irreparably
confused. He drops to the ground,
dead as the day before conception.

I'm just a Libra love swinging high on indecision
in the throes of inebriation, permeated with all sorts of
feelings filling falling fascinations in the moment.
Fleeting while failing to carry on and then become it.

How is it that all I see and believe
isn't more than what one can conceive?
Trapped inside these bound'ries of mine,
flipping and flopping down the stream of time,
my thoughts not more than the glint of sunshine.

So I laugh! I laugh! Great boisterous humor!
To laugh and to giggle at the falseness and rumors;
to snicker and snacker  at the play of all forms;
to chortle and chuckle at deviations and norms;
I will laugh at the process as my soul transforms.

So I laugh! I laugh! Though pains may embitter!
To laugh and to giggle at all senseless chatter;
to snicker and snacker at what's caught within;
to chortle and chuckle at all that is sin;
I will laugh at the moment when nothing begins.

So join me, my friend, and forget of your fears!
We'll both laugh, together, at the grinding of gears;
we'll both giggle, together, at prophets and seers.

So join me, my friend, and forget of your aches!
Laugh with abandon at this game and its stakes;
laugh with abandon as this machinery breaks.

Mischievous How,
always looking for another
to tell you what to do.

But you've forgotten to listen;
forgotten relation to yourself.

Can you sit, silently still,
with your suffering?

Patiently, compassionately,
neither taking it nor leaving it?

Just observe it; it is there!

Error code: PXZ003-2-b:
"WAIT"

Blinking blindly,
unaware of absurd metaphysics,
the device flashes its advice.

For years now, probably; no one's sure.
The rest of the machinery's in pieces;
save this one brilliant gem of advice,

slowly sipping energy through
a dingy solar panel:

just enough to keep going

A red light blips
on the untended prophet,
yellow caution tape draping
impotently in shreds --

although there is an allure
to what fabrics conceal.

He sees none of this.
At first.

He arrives in a huff,
swearing and panting.
Pacing nervously, he lights
a spliff and throws his head back.

"I know I haven't been around much,"
he speaks in a vaguely upward direction,
"but some people say you're listening,
and that you take requests."

He laughs, flicks some ash,
and lets a sigh creep out.

"Just. Just. **** it, I don't know.
Give me a sign, anything. I'll listen."

He inhales and snuffs the roach
on his sole.
The serenity of stillness marches
in as a pallbearer with an empty casket.

A red light catches his
peripherals.

He walks to the device,
removes the dress,
and uncovers divinity.

How could he deny the voice of fate?
He waits.

There's some sanity
in these circumstances
that slide through my view:

"Is it possible to live like you?"
He asked without knowing what
he meant, "because I want to know."

She laughed, still hugging a stranger,
"Inside you're very busy, calculating.
Only alone-ness can give true happiness.

Create some silence within,
for silence is love; and where
there is emptiness, love can flow."

"But how can I love so much?"
He spat his snide remark.
"No love can be inexhaustible."

"For me there is no other-ness;
every one is an extension
of my Self." She smiled.

"All the love I give is returned;
every drop taken is returned to the source.
It is inexhaustible because nothing is wasted."

If this isn't good,
I don't know what is.*
I thought to myself.

It was a habit I picked up
from reading too many books;
to acknowledge the good
occurrences when they occurred.

It seems they happen more often
when you pay attention.
However, don't imagine
that the scene was perfect.

We woke up
on a hardwood floor,
hungover
and sleep-deprived.

My jacket was
the pillow,
and, luckily, someone
had draped a blanket
over us.

A cat wandered
under the blanket,
and sat down on my
naked shins,
which shook us
from our slumber.

She laughed as his tail
swooshed slowly across her leg
and pulled my arm
around her.

"I never expected
to wake up next to you."
She said,
in a whimsical way

We shooed the cat out
(he was quite stubborn)
and laughed together at the
absurdity of it all.

Later, we kissed farewell
and promised to meet again.
Now, I sit in contemplation;
recalling all I can about the night.

Moments are just that --
moments.
Parsed smaller and smaller
the further you look.

I don't need to remember each
minutiae -- how many seconds
elapsed between each breath --
only how I felt at her side.

I think this is what I'm aiming to do:
to hold each reminiscence sacred.

Three up-turned cups
pouring  from the heavens.
The maidens bicker endlessly
up-heaved in mediocre tendencies.
They lap at the droplets
evaporating slowly from the floor
towards hexagonal prisms once more.

A haggard crone from the side
while heaving a sigh
split the silence with a deafening roar.
With her eyes open wide
she called to the tide,
the pounding fury amassed at the door.

A new-found sound
erupted from the ground
spurned by the demands of the space.
Patterns of speech crowned
as they echoed around
waking the knight who was resting in place.

He unsheathed his sword
and he grasped at the words
that flung tattered through empty heads and ears.
Their guidance ignored,
stunned tired and bored,
in unrestrained bounds they fled until no one was near.

The knight escaped after
driven by incessant chatter.
He vowed that he'd return with the proper words to say.
Chased until foreverafter
beyond scoffing and laughter:
"Be wary of the number of players cast in your play."

"One for the pain,
two to make it go away."
He says as he washes
his benzos down
with whiskey.

He doesn't want to
wake up the next day,
'cause ever since twenty-seven
life's gone downhill.

A tall Japanese woman
stands beside him,
and takes the plunge, too.
Follows it with whiskey.
Always follow with whiskey.

Her marriage is
falling apart,
and ever since twenty-seven
life's gone downhill.

He tried to leave, once,
with a ****** overdose:
"That **** ***** of
a girlfriend had
to save my life."

He tattooed DNR on
both wrists
because of that *****.

He tugs on the
Japanese gal's skirt;
even looming suicide
doesn't slake his piggish lust.

She slaps his hand
and stands on the
other side of the
room, arms crossed.

"Ya know,
standing like that
makes yer ****
look bigger."

She walks into the
kitchen and drinks
more whiskey;
that *******'s the reason
for her life's steady decline.

They drive, fully hammered,
to a beach blanketed with fog.

They build, fully hammered,
a bonfire; gotta burn it all!

They sit, fully hammered,
waiting for sleep to hit;
that final slip into oblivion
with a heavy sinking lull.

He can't speak without a slur;
she can't see without a blur.

He can't stand without a wobble;
she can't stand without a topple.

His eyelids grow heavy;
his breath starts to slow.
Her breath isn't steady;
her lungs hardly grow.

Good-night, old friends.
Good-bye.

I'm in love with my imaginary friend.
Every night we go for walks
through the pines and twisted oak
and roll along the forest floor
sending ancient leaves to float.
Once, we laid on our backs,
head to head towards space
and synthesized soft new lights
which colored up the scene.
We made dragons dance
throughout the clouds,
eating fish in a serpent's kiss.
Pink and green pulsing slow
as raptured waves and overtones.
Behind that checkered skyline,
through a portal in the clouds
came to mind a severed vision
of her flaming hair and crown.
She has curled around my feet,
hearing the stories that I've told.
And I've watched her streak
across the sky, a shooting star,
a cosmic jewel to behold.
She's celestially empowered,
adorned with patient equipoise,
with Jupiter and Venus
meeting conjunct in her voice.

Be brave! Be brave!
I hear the cry
call sharply through
the enveloping mist;

every evening the fog settles
down atop this sleepy town.

'Though temptation bleeds
from every fractured brick!

In this mist I feel
invisible; a sprite, a specter --
an evening wisp diffusing
down streets and alleys.

The darkened smudge of
another average man.
He walks by, equally ephemeral,
and dissolves again into the haze.

So it has been until now,
even without the fog.
They always pass by,
fading again into the haze.

Although the sea may take no pity
on a stranded boat, do not give up hope!

The fog is my sea, and frosted
grays my gradient to infinity.
Vacant echoes answer my calls:
"How are you?"

Okay. I'm always okay.

Then listless lapses into silence.
I wonder if passion died with God.

If it has, you're the one who killed it.

Formless voices fill the air,
murmurs with pangs of guilt.
Growing and growing,
the dissonance turns to consonance:

Silly child, it's all in your head.*

The streets are no longer familiar,
my own hands now seem foreign.
I hasten to catch up to another soul;
someone living to help me find the ground.

Only my footsteps sound in the night.
No one else is awake at this hour.
Insomnia, alone, takes these walks with me.
All the while commenting on my folly

and the white, beckoning infinity.

A moon disc moves around in space,
beaming white with shades of time
as the pupil of a cosmic eye,
an aperture of the mind.
Its clouded iris billows,
evolving mountains in the sky
as textured fields of cirrostratus
caressing what's divine.
There's a copper sclera of diffraction,
as concentric rings of luminescence
enjoy, for tonight, partaking of this essence.

Do the pinewood teeth serrating mountains
not speak for want of a tongue?
I know they sigh sometimes with longing
when they're moved before a gale.
I hear your storm has started calling,
as the wind whispers me your tale.
The rain's a heavy harmony,
strumming straight on panes of glass,
and those rivulets of running water
walk patience to the brink
as the eddies of a circling mind
whirl cogs which make me think:

*I see your face in scattered strangers,
your form behind the rippling of skirts.
I hope your restlessness will soothe itself
and you feel at home, here on this earth.

The sharpest intellect
cannot pierce the screen;
the fabric remains
but a hair's breadth away.

To pursue
brings endless folly;
to remain
brings more of the same.

You've been atop
the highest pole.
You've stood tip-toed,
and stretched.

But can you return
to the modern world
and still maintain
your breath?

Will walked to his car, alone.
Another late night given to
that thankless, soul-stealing
excuse for employment.

As he opened his car door,
a gun being cocked
sounded behind him.

Then a voice:
"Give me the car
and your cash."

Will laughed:
"I've got nothing worth taking.
**** me and be done with it."

The hole in his belly
didn't hurt nearly as
bad as he thought it would.

A woman heard the shot,
and came running over
after the murderer had fled.

She said:
"I'm Maggie, don't worry.
Help is on the way."

Will awoke in a hospital.
He stared at Maggie,
and reasoned something like this:

"Well, I got shot; I'm probably dead.
And the silhouette of your hair
against the window looks
an awful lot like a halo."

She blushed:
"I waited all night for someone
to come visit you; to make sure
you were okay."

Then truth in reply:
"I've got no one and nothing.
You'll wait there forever if you're
looking for someone who cares."

She frowned:
"That's not true!
Clearly I care about you."

Will, in disbelief:
"So it appears.
I guess there's a first for everything."

She held his hand:
"But I've got work to go to.
I'll be back in the evening.
I'm glad you're alive."

Will nodded.
Things were certainly
changing for the better.

Maggie left.
An intern entered,
staring at a clipboard.

The intern, to herself:
"Well, 'Will' is certainly
a lot like 'Bill'.

And it's only penicillin;
what's the worst that
could happen?"

A few moments later,
Will died of a massive
allergic reaction.

Oh well.
Easy come, easy go.

Icicles dribble down the tip
of my nose as frost fogs
the humid corridors of my mind.

Tundras yawn before me
and sea-foam green ribbons
helically orbit one another.

Streaks of yellow roll between
the spiraling bows in the sky.
Stars twinkle slowly, just beyond.

An icy howl jars the halcyon
serenity as a harbinger of
hardships and blizzards.

But I am not of this.
I carry a hearth in my chest
and open my arms to embrace.

Ah, and now she steps down
from the gathering clouds;
her gown rippling as it unfurls.

Her aurichalcite eyes echo unsung
songs until I can't bare the separation.
My unstrung heart beats on, begging

for another verse from her slightly parted
-- but how much they open! --
lips lying, parabolic, atop her chin.

She meets my pleas succinctly:
her out-stretched hand offered
in tribute to another kindred soul.

My mind is fixated, not a thought
intrudes on my contemplation
of her exotic inebriation.

Does she know what she's done?
How every movement makes
me stutter, slightly, shuddering

(unavoidably)? How could she
understand this intoxication
which I don't even hope to know?

I suppose that's all man can hope for:
a single day, maybe not more than an hour,
where "love" can even be considered.

Listen:

for some reason (truly unknown)
people call me when their trips turn turbid;
when palsied limbs jitter,
and eyes (rolled-back) flitter.

Maybe I've got one of those faces.
You know, the ones that
(between forehead wrinkles
and laughter dimples)
let her know it's okay.

Maybe I've got one of those faces.
You know, the ones that
(between penny-sized pupils
and long-haired scruples)
let her know I've been there before.

I could hear, with jaws clenched,
a deep-seated anxiety born
beyond the scope of a point
or a dab; of a joint or a tab.

And I know that trepidation;
that unending uncertainty,
interlaced -- intertwined! --
intimately with self-searching.

So, I told her about the day I found myself.
I was in a cliff-side cave, at around dusk.
Conflagrant cloud-bursts bowed to the sun
and my battered being bent along with them.

Roiling waves, gnashing madly on the serrated shore,
met my gaze with an equally unnerving force.
A melancholy crimson bathed the frothing maw,
like everyday pitfalls surely lead into that jaw.

I rolled over, away from the ledge, to another surprise:
the cave in which I was laying was only a disguise.
Stars! All the stars! Spiraling macrocosms now no more
than motes of dust floating aloft and astray.

I saw the dome of the cave come unhinged at the seams
as the million billion myriad suns erupted outside, exposed.
The volcanic initiation left floes of iridescent star-shine
eddying, diffusing into a vague effulgence.

Then the moon billowed out, with her gossamer gown
flowing streams of silvered dreams behind.
And the flowers (though the fangs of winter's
bite clamped down into their nape)

bloomed in unison -- in unified exaltation -- to herald her return.
Rose buds burst, and the lilies -- the lilies, I remember the lilies!
Rose buds burst, and the lotus -- the lotus, I remember the lotus!
I saw them rise up in offering, only hoping to touch her feet.

But each, at peak perfection, could only unfurl their last petal
and fall back down, below other (faster rising) worshipers.
Again and again they rose and fell; and ebbed and flowed.
Between their birth and demise, they embraced each other

in a mesmerizing dance, around the stems of friends and older plants,
towards divinity with leaves grasping leaves, and thorns grating thorns.
Enwrapped -- enraptured-- in foliage sewn rags; enrobed -- enshrined --
in coliseums fanned with fronds and fragrance (sandal and cedar)

I found myself.

"We hardly speak any more."
I know it's true,
I hardly speak at all.

We used to often talk,
staying up late, letting
our words play their games.

She asked if I'd rather
live alone on an island --
in complete solitude --
or be trapped in an apartment,
only able to watch people walk by.

I said I'd rather watch the people walk by;
at least then  I could pretend that happy
people still existed.

Today it feels like I'm in that apartment,
watching people walk around me.
They don't seem happy.

I smile at them;
they never smile back.
I wonder if something's wrong with me.

I stopped talking when I started writing.
I already spelled everything out on paper,
and the words never crawl back into my mind.
If those words ever get back home,
I'll tell 'em all how I feel:

One:

You can't help anyone with words,
who needs something done.
A sentence about your love
means nothing when you're
twenty-seven hundred miles away.

Two:

Strangers are more alluring than
people you know closely;
that, my dear, is why I'm terrified
of getting any closer to you.
From a distance, you're so beautiful.

Three:

Sure, we spent a few weeks cuddled up
in your room; but your lifestyle is the reason
that I fled from Southern California.
I don't want things.

Four:

He's just going to end up killing you.
One instance of abuse should be enough
to send you packing. You crawled back for more.
I understand -- too well -- the lies that get you trapped.
I keep waiting for that phone call.

Five:

A woman should never be a reason
to abandon your old family;
although I see how her children
are your chance for redemption.

Six:

I wish we talked more often;
more than once every few months.
You're intelligent and articulate,
and the hour or two we spend
(not often enough)
fills me with hope for the world.

Sail away into obscurity,
leave the past the way
it may choose to be.

Untie the clever knots
of education' s reign
and the Hell it's wrought.

Travel far beyond obscenity,
and hang your hat, timidly,
to live with calm serenity.

Sail away into obscurity,
without contrived security.

Beauty is limited, the body is fleeting.
Lips, hair, ******* and thighs are misleading.
Ah, but a glance; that wordless connection!
Ah, but a gaze; that soundless confession!

I don't need a figure hand-crafted by God;
no transient physicality to poke and to ****.
Where is the person who will look in my eyes
and learn of my silence without surprise?

Words can't express the depths of existence;
but great walls will tumble with little persistence.
Sit in this quiet, serene place with me.
Look in my eyes, and see what you see.

Wednesday:

A movie theater
at around six o'clock
with beer and a movie for
only five bucks.

(Who could resist such a deal?)

As I stood in a line to
buy myself a drink,
I observed the other people.

Mostly couples.
A couple families.
Probably a few
small groups of friends.

But no one else alone,
as far as I could tell.
So I paid for my drink
and returned, alone, to my seat.

Then, just before the feature:

A woman turned my way,
as if she had something to tell me;
but instead she spoke to some guy
standing just over my shoulder:

"Oh, honey-pie, my dear!
You were almost late to the show!"

I laughed on the inside,
finished my beer,
and left.

Thursday:

Sunset in the marsh;
sitting on a bench
with a bottle of wine
to keep me company.

A woman walked by,
and couldn't bare
to look me in the eye.

She tripped over her dog
while trying to ignore my existence;
and, after apologizing to the
animal (what a human thing to do!)

she turned towards me, blushing.
I laughed and I smiled
but she grew more red in response.
Then she hurried along, leaving me alone to drink.

Are you seeking to be free
of the burden of sorrow?
Not just your sorrow,
but the sorrow of the world?

Or do you seek to languidly
laugh in eternal pleasure,
forsaking the polar regions,
because that which is bad is bad?

Do you seek originality?
Something that is beyond
the corrupting influence
of rust and moth and time?

Are you like the rest of the human
beings wandering on this world?
For what are you lusting, seeking,
hungering? In wanting experiences --

whether they are ******, intellectual,
of first and last things, within, without --
there can be no fulfillment, no completion.
Always in the background: "What next?"

Sit still, my friend, observe the horrors,
the joys, the pleasures, the pains, the wants,
the needs, and the absence of all these.
There is nothing that can be left out.

The world isn't pretty; it's messy.
Few straight lines exist in nature;
and yet you live in a box, you eat in a box,
you work in a box, you learn in a box,

and one day you will lie dead in a box.

We saw the end coming, but did nothing to stop it;
there's no room for humanity in the margins of profit.

We silenced the dissenters, all the prophets of peace.
We killed all the thinkers, and the questions soon ceased.

We did nothing! Nothing!
We got drunk, in our stupor,

with wine and cheap pleasure, and any synthetic allure.
Plastic and silicon, then anything the men would adjure.

We did nothing! Nothing!
Except create senseless rumors:

"Our God will protect us; we are his love, so pure.
Mother will correct us; she always has the cure."

So, please! Burn this empire down!
Let those ashes fertilize the ground.

Erase all our names from the textbooks we covet.
Then **** on our graves, and grow rainforests from it.

We saw the end coming, but did nothing to stop it;
there's no room for humanity in the margins of profit.

Ain't nothing the same,
my projections are to blame.
Ain't no place for peace
on these blackened, vacant streets.

I'm looking for a home;
a place to rest my weary bones.
I'm searching for a home;
a place behind the melting stones.

Oh, things can't trust
and metal gadgets turn to rust.
Oh, things can't feel
and paper money isn't real.

I'm looking for a home;
a place to rest my weary bones.
I'm searching for a home;
a place behind the melting stones.

I close my eyes to find
the patterned fabric of my mind.
I close my eyes to see
the home beyond this mystery.

I'm looking for a home;
a place to rest my weary bones.
I'm searching for a home;
a place behind the melting stones.

I want to be the last bough bending by a brook as a dozen on-lookers overstate the understood in a field of frantic fever-fighters fixated on the moon. Stop, drop, break a neck, then lay in bed and recollect the days  before the disconnect when you kept your bright eyes side-lined in complexified complacency while the golden winged effigy decayed into degen'****. Multi-state probes propelled by a whim skitter like arachnids on the surface of your skin with words like a finger pointing at the sun that stop making sense before their job lies done. Who now will step down celestially with alchemical agility just to let The Spirit flow through them with exponential intensity as imaginal orthogonality skips with divinity? When'll be best to choose to confuse and diffuse every up-tight, no-sight tool on the loose then flak shrapnel to the castle as a billion petty hassles gathered up and coalesced as interrupted innocence? 'Til then these strides keep pace with the center of the storm, just inside the whirling swarm of wailing souls abandoned and forlorn.

In a redwood forest some place along the way
where the morning light in quiet puddles lay
and the branches hung with garlands of dew
I let my thoughts kindly wander towards you.
Perhaps I fell asleep, though that's hard for me to think
because the passing time was measured with a blink.
I've seen some stranger things, but I acted first in fear
when resting on my lap was a white and golden deer.
Her fur was spun from the same fabric as the sky
which I was slowly petting as she opened up her eye.
I don't know what I thought it was that I would find
swimming in that unobstructed ocean of the mind,
but there I found a ship with sails of compassionate well-being
to the further shore, towards an existence worth believing
where everything arises in a dynamic play of harmony
always in accord with the unelaborated nature of reality.

Take your sacred space and shove it through your discontent. Drag it in the tracks you scuffed through the dirt as you played pretend and projected images in the ever-being present. Take your sacred space and use it as a rubric to grade your suffering. Grade the world around you. Judge it, score it, trap it. You think patterns define the space? The more consistent the more real?  Expound your philosophies, esoteric enigmatic illusions. Yeah, you know the words but your voice betrays your soul betrays your essence betrays the foundation you've yet to establish on validity. Cause and effect are undeniable: this arises, that becomes. Nothing exists independently. What are your origins? You are the problem, screaming about solutions but afraid to face the reality of your situation. Paint your picture on the wall with neon colors, apply symmetry and Platonic shapes. Call it sacred, a flower of life. Stand on the street, peddling your essence. I'll be by the  river contemplating a more mundane geometry.

I remember that evening
when you were love-drunk,
freely swinging in the park.
Giddy with some fantasy
or maybe you knew
with whom you were involved.
We stayed awake all night,
just two kids with nothing going on.

I remember us sneaking out.
It was much easier for me.
My dad just didn't care.
I could come and go as I pleased.
You had to do the sneaking
through your window
when the lights went out.
There was a trailer
at the bottom of your property,
our little shelter from the world.

I remember eddies of cigar smoke
whirling in the mouth of an open cave.
We sat together at the entrance.
There was an easy tranquility
with a slightly skewed view.
You wished that we could stay forever,
but I was more concerned
with heading out anew.

You saw me change in many ways
and I wonder what that did to you.

Sigh again, my dear,
--
'though it's enough
to hear you to breathe.

Sigh for the lost days
and sideways glances
that you'd rather have
never even seen.

Sigh for being wise
in another realm of fools
and I'll propose a toast.
How unlike them you are!

Sigh like the last rustle
of an autumn breeze,
and I'll imagine
the hillsides ablaze.

I'll imagine leaves
whipped up in a whirl as
a flaming tornado and,
at its center, a girl.

Her long hair tossed
askew and her face --
her rounded, demure face --
curved in contented bliss.

Her dress rippling rhythmically,
syncopated, fully, with the twirling
wind and its fiery cargo;
how she smiles amidst the movement.

Sigh again, sweet angel,
and I'll pretend I'm not in love.

What are their uses
when everyone confuses
the words I say
with the ones they think?

Fire burning on the horizon.
Rising smoke eclipsing the sun
riding on the wind without an aim.
If nothing changed, it wouldn't be the same.

How many words can you fit into your mind
telling you what you'll lose, what you'll leave behind?
You're tearing out your roots trying to find food
but it'll be much sweeter if you wait for the fruit.

How many days can you fit into your life
sitting in a sweaty room trying to stay on time?
Are you losing your days in the arms of the night?
When the stars are all shining are you bathing in the light?

How many times have you sat in reverie
rejoicing in the moment and letting it be?
Lately I've been thinking how I seem
to only be as real as the eddy of a stream.

Fire burning on the horizon.
Rising smoke eclipsing the sun
riding on the wind without an aim.
If nothing changed, it wouldn't be the same.

Rest your chin atop your opened palm
and stare out that window, keeping your vigil.
Pay no attention to the simple minds
chattering inanly over your shoulder.

I know what it is to see the rain fall,
through the glass, outside this building;
how the drops diffract the lamp's luminescence
into a shower of sparks, like galvanic dashes.

Your fingers are no longer of your body.
Pale blue lightning leaks, in arcs, from the tips,
leaping away, indiscriminately contacting your lips.
Smile, and the brilliance would stain your teeth blue.

Smile -- please! -- with your electric, beaming grin.
There's no need to speak, just turn your spotlight
in this direction, so I can reflect your radiance
and we may, for a moment, bask in it together.

If only an errant ray would land on your face,
illuminating the crystal hung behind your eyes,
painting rainbows on these drab, off-white walls;
coloring the blank expressions seated around.

You brush your bangs behind your ear
with your little finger and your rings
glint slightly in the lurid lighting.
You look down and resume your calculations.

Strange place to live, strange place to stay,
watching them on their empty way.
Strange place to be, strange place to see
such emptiness from them to me.

Wandering an empty street,
is there no one to meet?
Just empty people in an empty town,
watching an empty world spin around.

Empty faces going empty places,
running in their empty races.
Empty riches, empty pleasures
as they hold their empty treasures.

An empty brace, an empty tether --
Oh, how the emptiness holds them together!
When emptiness is all that's real,
emptiness is all they feel.

Those that fill become weighed down,
and when they sink, can only drown,
carrying along an empty frown.

An empty life, an empty death;
emptiness to the final breath.

An empty lie, an empty friend;
emptiness to the bitter end.

Draw up your skirt, O woman of temptation.
Then watch yourself flirt with no contemplation.

Attracting the slack-jawed -- the ignorant ***,
whose thinking is drawn to *** as you pass.

Set bare your breast to these "love-confessors"
and bare all your flesh to the fangs of oppressors.

Make them pay for your meals, for your wine and delight.
Then let them steal you away in the night.

Put feathers in your hair -- the peacock's vanity! --
Then watch the men stare and whisper profanity.

Wear lace and sheer clothing; hide not from their gawking.
Then listen, with loathing, to the non-sense they're talking.

Perfume yourself in myrrh, draw all senses in your direction.
Then drink in their ardour, and their misplaced affection.

Build tall your chancel with pleasure and desires;
play the distressed damsel, O great queen of liars!

You'll find soon enough the emptiness of touch.
You'll call your own bluff, and drop what you clutch.

But until then, sullen temptress, drive yourself from my door.
Leave my sight, but don't distress; I've no want for your flesh any more.

Your image keeps a silent vigil
in the hallways of my mind,
reminding me of simple beauty
that wanders 'round in time
on tip-toed feet beyond the brush,
on weightless wings without a rush,
tucked away behind a thought
for when we're old enough to know
everything that we've been taught.

He brought her along,
only wanting to get laid.

She introduced herself
as awkward, 'though
first impressions rarely
amount to truth.

I watched him flirt with her;
and watched her try to pull away.
But, it's Friday. Gotta get ****** up.
What else is there to do in life?

She drank more,
he drank more:

"Nah, guys, I'm totally cool to drive."
He slurred as he spun donuts
to impress the tipsy woman.
His hands inched to her thighs.
His eyes seized her *******;
who needs to see the road?

We made it to the birthday,
a standard college party.

She and I sat across one another
at the table. She smiled and started
small talk:
"Oh, I love Vonnegut,
have you read Sirens of Titan?"

We kept drinking as he went out
to pick up more *****.

"Of course I play video games,
they got me through high school."

He took longer than he intended
but neither of us complained.

"Isn't chemistry only
the language of biology?"

Time passed quickly, or slowly,
either way it's dead and buried.
She started to stumble,
huddled closer to me,
tried to move from him
when he returned.
She lost coherency,
she looked at me, muddied;
did she have something to say?

Had she asked,
she would have received,
but silence heralds silence
and unvoiced wants
remain unfulfilled.

He knew she was loosing interest,
that, of course, I'd gotten in the way.
He pulled me aside:
"It's time for you to leave.
I just want to get laid
and you're ******* it all up."

He drove us both home,
hand grasping her thigh,
but she didn't notice;
she was barely alive.

I suppose this is how it goes:
some nights you make friends
that you never see again.

The earth, as it is,
is not a place I have been.
What is this and what is that?
Who will cast the final act?
Where are you and where am I?
Do we live before we die?
Because there's life and then there's death
ripe with strife and short of breath.
Then there's lies and there's truth.
You better hide when they shout: "Shoot!"
Should we duck or should we run
when we're stuck before the gun?
There's fear and then there's joy.
So hold me near, don't be coy.
I'd like to love before I go.

O, bitter skies with speckled heavens!
Beyond the idle thinker’s eye --
Serenely still without impressions,
Unconcerned with passers-by.

Beneath your canopy, on high,
Pleasured moans and tortured cries
Become the same with passing time.

Such elegance, so divine!
And without a chance to make it mine --
How my soul can't help but shake.

O, Master of Fortune and Weaver of Fate!
Your will unwinds in billows and furls.
With patient breath and silent ache,
Could I but stand within those curls!

Aye, that crescent cuts the cloud
with golden slits of predilection
for the fog's encompassing shroud
and a parasol's protection.
The sun's spring-time blooming
auric light nearly blinds my eye
because that beauty's all consuming
with eulogies woven through the sky.
I contemplate the blazing fires
along the razor edge of the sword
slicing thoughts with solar spirals
eliminating the errant, straying word,
and cast back the black magic
of numbed-down confusion
while sharpening my moon sickle
on the whetstone of illusion.

Old friend, quiet lover,
a silent bond like no other,
please let me know it's alright.

For, I find something's awry!
And no matter how I might try,
my thoughts impinge on my sight.

Old friend, quiet lover,
limpid soul beyond this cover,
please give me a reason to fight.

A whisper comes across
of all the time I have lost:
"Why plead for these things, so trite?"

Alas, as I turn my attention
past this reflection --
I find it's your face, alight.

Beyond the insect hives,
with crystal hearts in hexagonal designs.
Beyond the jeweled terraces
of fractured, shifting carapaces.

Inside the mind of time's design --
this fragmented mosaic of mine.
Inside the bedroom of she
whose sole desire's the end of me.

There is but a breeze bearing a curse;
the beginning of my thoughts, undone:
"The truth behind the universe?
One does not equal one."

I went for a walk in the comforts of night,
determined to finally set all my problems right.
I got lost in a daze when I took a wrong turn.
I'm finding my way by the bridges I've burned,
and now I'm low.

I reached up for something that was just out of grasp
and I slipped when I touched it, and fell on my ***.
I was laying and praying, sprawled out on the floor
wondering what on Earth I was suffering for,
and now I'm low.

I went to the mountains to breathe the fresh air
to rejuvenate my senses with an infusion of care.
Then the avalanche came rushing, being set free.
I got caught in the glaciers crashing around me
and now I'm low.

I went to the valley and I looked in the stream
and I saw my reflection staring back at me,
saying "What is that you are running from
that has you so beaten, so rough and so glum
and now you're low.

I wish there was something I could do or say,
but everyone has to make their own way.
What were you doing, in God's holy name,
juggling matches in a world made of flame?
And now you're low.

Get out of your pity, get out of your mind.
The future's uncertain. It could end up fine.
Get back to your work and don't ever stop
'til you've filled your being back to the top
and you're not low."

Grind it up, pack it down, fill it up to the brim.
Light it up, burn it down, all I can do is grin.
Happy smoke, pleasant scenes, filling my mind with peace.
Lazy smoke, hazy dreams, flowing out on the breeze.

Circles all spinning in front of my eyes.
Circles just spinning unveiling the wise.
When suddenly, to my surprise,
Maya stepped out from behind her disguise.

Shimmering rays falling off of her face.
Glimmering rays shining out of her grace.
Calling me forward, away from this place.
Away from my body, towards the light I race.

Grind it up, pack it down, fill it up to the brim.
Light it up, burn it down, all I can do is grin.
Happy smoke, pleasant scenes, filling my mind with peace.
Lazy smoke, hazy dreams, flowing out on the breeze.

For the years still ahead, aching to achieve,
can you proceed enmirthed and jolly
as you gracefully make your leave?
Or will pangs of old uncertainty
heave waves of manic sighs
while depressive undertows
keep your fears always alive?
The mirror may scream obscenity
or whisper doubt into your cheer
with gloomy cover cast to dull
the ways you hold yourself as dear,
but don't let the voice you hear
be an empty echo of the words
that others crafted to appear
as something more believable
than a charlatan on the pier.

When form and formless fall away,
there is no path from which to stray.
Yet, still I find these words I say
mean less and less each passing day.

When I and you become each one,
it's only then this game's begun.
Let us laugh and enjoy this fun;
let us laugh 'til this work is done.

Who can speak without even sound?
All we know is grown for the ground;
and yet, all we know weighs not a pound --
ah, fungus and grain and secrets we've found.

Bright shining light in the darkness of night;
Shapeless transcendence comes billowing out,
Filling my head with six figures of peace.

What could I call you, if your name's my own?
Tracing the silence and words leading home,
I stepped out the door and wandered alone.

But this bright shining light in the farness of sight
Unties my wings so my thoughts can take flight
And beckons me on with dreams ever more.

What could I call you if my thoughts didn't soar?
Facing the waters, embracing the shore,
I stepped off the moor and wandered alone.

But this bright shining light on the horizon,
I beg you to tell me who I am
for then I may know who you are.

I'm not asking for forever.
I'd settle for a moment
or two.

I don't want to hide
from inevitability.
I'm aware all things
tend to fade.

There's no need to
pretend we're immortal,
and I'm happy we'll never
get the chance to be so.

I've thought about what it'd be like --
to live forever, with myself.

I imagine it'd be like a new city
every weekend.
I imagine I'd see the same people,
just a new arrangement of faces.

I'd know all the pitfalls and say, quietly:
"Ya know, I've seen this before.
Maybe you shouldn't do that."
But I don't speak loud enough.

Oh well. New week, new town.

Then I think of all the farewells.
I'd probably become numb to good-bye
and forget to ever say hello.

I'd get stuck in my head
and know the story of every person
without ever speaking to them.

Watching them walk, I'd make
up their stories for laughs.

She wanted to be an art history major
but prudential planning interrupted her thoughts;
now she studies biology, or chemistry, or physics.
She isn't happy at all.

I can tell by the shoes that she wears.

He wanted to be born as a peasant,
unaware of money or cars or the lot.
He thinks people are happier like that.

I can tell by the shades that he wears.

She wants to be a trophy wife.
He wishes that he never had kids.
She thinks she's too good for manual labor.
He once lit a bag of cats on fire.

I'd laugh at the stories unfolding before me.
After a few generations, I'd know every
story combination that ever could be.

So, I'd turn my gaze to myself
and find another lonely man
making stories in his head
without ever asking if they're true.

I don't think I could handle forever.
Sometimes today doesn't end soon enough.

He escaped from the zoo, hatchet in hand,
to sow seeds of desire throughout the land.
Oh, he grinned a wicked, feverish grin
and called on the secrets resting within.

He spoke with a sigh, and laughed with a wink,
while making lazy riddles in the bathroom sink.
He built a house of mirrors out on the front lawn,
to hide his sulking head from the beautiful dawn.

He keeps it all a-running with some oil and grease,
never stopping for a moment to find some peace.
He just spends all his time with lies and deceit,
and keeps all his pleasures stuck on repeat.

This can't be right; I can see through his plight,
as he hides from the light, just out of sight.

This can't be true! Has he gotten to you?
Bah, I can't even see! Has he gotten to me?