Allen, my parents stole your name and corrupted it.
An unwitting mistake, surely,
chosen at random as an epithet,
a mark of sublime distinction;
Perhaps discovered under the
head of an old bongo drum
or on the back of a gnarled
copy of Marx and Engles, a
scrawled incoherent possesion tag
somehow passed on appropriately.

Allen, i have taken your name and it's corrupted me.
The implications are pulsing
through my veins and
acid burned inside my skull.
It has led me on paths astray
and opened the flood gates
to subterranean subconscious,
eroding twin pillars ancient,
created by my forefathers against
the chill of January's night.

Thank you...i think.

Teach the children?  Well...

There is very little of substance
to be gleaned from individuals.
A process, a recitation, a
custom is customary.  Let
the young divine the marrow
from the bare bones of
their coloring books.

We, the protectors of
our future lot, laid
down the workings of
the cosmos in stark
bitonal outlines.  The
black, the white, the
small details of the
bigger picture.

Color me a spectrum of
what it means to be
alive, children.

Prognosticate between the
lines a rhyme for the
ages, transcend the
myriad of gray crayons
and begin to understand
that each shade belongs
to us all.
Draw me into your pages
of unity and division.

Color us all, children, and
learn what it is to be
alive.

In the winter i set my heart down,
making note of it in this poem.

It was heavy with ice and frost,
and i was lighter for its loss.

i wanted to pass the note along,
missing you so, to cry out to you:

PLEASE!  I LOVE YOU!!
...but you don't hear me though...

In the approaching spring you called,
and the hollow in my ribs ached;

we spoke different languages through
string-less tin can phones;

i sought out the place where my heart lies,
though i fear it cannot be found:

i had mailed you that treasure map,
and you lost it in translation.

How do you hold forever in your heart
with no hands?  Words that we utter
to ghosts are more real...

the distance between us all is the same,
living in the bubble, a thread in
the tapestry of our lives.

Promises stain our lips as they cross
boundaries.  In celebration of always
i give eternal somethings to nothings.

The summer fields are heavy with dew.
And then the blooms die, making
way for new deaths and old renewals.

This is my gift, a vignette of singularity;
a gathering of the sands of time,
granules of what we have, weathered.

i need another hole in my head,
something to let the sun in
and the evil out.
A set of beige drapes like
a wet napkin over a bowl of oatmeal.
Size: 4 by 2, color: beige, hardware:
not included.
Just big enough for a three-year-old
to reach his (her?) grubby fingers
in, uncross my wire, accessorize my
space, evaluate my feng shui.

Oh my god, is that a hole in your head?
       --one of several...--

Just an access panel, really.

i am a talented surgeon,
as seen on T.V., spreading
hope and renewal...
BEHOLD!  i have faced death
and returned to you a shaman!
Hear my words, heed my words,
i i i, cast down amongst you,
beseech you: RISE UP!
*Rejoice and tremble,
look upon the beauty that is,
despair no more in the
illusions that were past,
face illusions to come,
as real as we make them.

Every month I *** in a cup
to prove I am human.

I work for free to pay
off imaginary debts.

I get my paperwork stamped
so they know I participate.

It's all for my own good,
or so they tell me.

I can't be rehabilitated
until I am broken.

This virtual world still carries weight,
an invisible pond where words echo,
events spiral and ripple,
and we see the masks before the dark.

Evil hides beneath these still waters,
even in the light,
reflected on us all,
but never who we are.

I wasn't born to stand
on Mars, an alien
landscape of red
rocks and canyons
large enough to swallow
me up and wipe clean
this slate, still smudged
from detention.

It's quiet on the surface here,
an abstract of the greater
good that I have spread
to them when they
have all left me in
the doldrums, floating.

               (driving is a singular experience)

Youth has killed them all,
the lunatic screams,
bemoaning his plight
to all who will ignore.
those who cry for their
mothers at night,
THEY are the madmen,
whimpering and sniveling
'I don't want to be responsible'
only to realize at some point
later in life that no one
gives a **** what they
want just as long as
they keep their mouths
shut and shovel their
**** to keep the system
as one, man!
All this bull about free will
will take them all of nowhere!
The more they try to capture
youth, the older they
will get and the quicker
they will die!
Don't they see it?*

And even though he
warned himself,
he died the same way.

We are in the future now.

In the past yesterday
is tomorrow, but some of
us didn't notice.
We subdivided dreams
into half gram
servings so they wouldn't
end.  We
concentrated those into
the smallest possible dose
so we could savor every
morsel, taste every drop
of our life's Kool-Aid.
We lived sugar-free
to enhance the sweet,
and then ignored all of it.
We wrapped our fists around
excitement and squeezed its
juice out dry to ****
adrenaline cravings.

i have read enough Rimbaud
to see the symbolism.

i have read enough Hudgins
to know i, too, used to be sure.

i have read enough Petrosky
to sympathize...
       Look, i'm a bear now, too!

i was wasted enough on land
for Eliot,
as fractured as cummings,
as subversive as Ginsberg,

but in the end i settled for breathing.

**DAS SOFA KING,
VICTORIOUS AT LAST.

Tomorrow, my dear, i will surrender my eyes for you,
since i am blinded regardless by your senseless beauty.
i will uproot my hair and humble myself
before the face you put on and
burn incense of sage to cover
     (because you should love me).
We can shake our heads,
remember the times when we journeyed through the night
with glass walls around our auras
or spoke riddles to the walls of sound
and giggled like imps drunk on our own brand of evil
or were dragged kicking and screaming
back to our blissful misconceptions.
We chant like monks in
a wilderness of god's flesh, saying
we are not the  X  on society's forehead,
only that we were once confused
but we turned out the lights
and suddenly understood:
that sometimes life is the blue-gray
blanket we buried ourselves in once.
We get bruises on top and
hide our scars of fallen grace deep.
We time-share our creativity.
We lie down in cool summer grass with
grasshopper lullabies and drift, drift, drift
away twitching our eyelids to the
beat while we wish we were real.

I lack the words,
the syntax, to
Xerox my feels to you.

These caravan routes we walk,
in the shadows of our freight,
are just a path, a swath
of yesterdays and tomorrows
strung together by moments.

We carry these deeds,
these sins of deliverance,
to the next stop,
hawking the wares,
the smell of camels thick,
tasting the heat of the desert,
collecting its sand,
blinded by the sun,
but never by its promise.

Shielding our eyes, we
carry on in the dark,
seeking oasis, that
eventual moment in the
shade of the palms,
the emergence from the
cool waters, the
feeling of clean skin.

On the news I saw a Medal of Honor ceremony,
people I've never met getting awards for wars
that I never fought...

and yet I am still awed, tears in my eyes,
glad they carried themselves bravely forward.

I wonder about America's prisoners of war,
missing and forgotten in foreign lands.
When did they let go of their lives,
those people they loved dear?

Those they loved are prisoners too,
trapped in the cycle, waiting.

I've only ever been a prisoner of the wrong loves,
broken couplings of average Americans,
where I felt the stifling of raw tension,
the piling up of cigarette ashes , the blank
walls of shallow rhetoric which I reject.

I smear my warm ***** on the walls
of that oppression, as any
self-respecting prisoner would,
at the end of the war,
wishing they were home.

Rocketing to the moon,
USS Southbound Phoenix crew
and I, your Major Tom,
depressurized and canonized,
a cannonball of lost trajectory.

Space is the only place
appropriate for my recourse,
tracing invisible vectors across
lonely forlorn skies, dotted
flecks of paint across cold
charred canvas of night.

If god had done more than flicked
dripping fingers of existence, none can tell.

i, Major Tom, dare only to
reach my stubby arms out
of my rusty lifelike cage.
i fear no lack of oxygen
for i am breathless.
i fear no love for i
am heartless now.
The vacuum should fear
me, the hollow flight
suit of Major Tom,
stretching out to embrace
nothing in particular anymore.

While you were talking,
i found my voice.
i am not sure you will like it...

i have set my mind in motion,
flowing a river of thought,
pouring  m
                   y
                     h
                       e
                        a
                         r
                          t     over the falls
    for you.

(sigh)

Are you listening?

Do i need to break it down for you,
so you can get out of the box?

The.  Cow.  Goes.  "Moo."

That's onomatopoeia.

MOOTHERFUCKER.
(.) period.

Can you dig it?
Do you need a shovel?

Where are you going?
i am not done yet...
i need you to remember me,
like gnashing teeth on
a mouthful of tinfoil.
i need you to pick me up
by my handle and shuttle
me there and back again.
Wherever, whenever, however, whoever...
**whatever.

Am i not entertained?

Channel 2:  weather...
Channel 7:  ******...
Channel 13:  lies...
Channel 34:  murderous weather...
Channel 43:  lying murderers...
Channel 99:  murdering lying weathermen and women...

and all points in between and so on,
ad infinitum.

Am i not entertained?

There is never enough time:
     To forecast the turning of the seasons,
     stave off the influx of movement
     or the trickling of the mountain
     springs over the backs of the
     spawning masses.

There is never the right time:
     To saturate the grass with
     the musings of subtle
     fantasy lore about the
     splendor present in the
     pause of the moon cycle
     or the coming of dawn.

(the caterpillars have returned,
ushering the day when
the salt will rise from
the seas and shake the
apples down to the ground,
for harvest has finally arrived...)

If we can find the proper restraints,
i give the sign:
hold me down and crack my ribs,
tear out the disease in me,
use a microscope (telescope ?) to find my heart,
insert conscience 'A' into slot 'B'.
Peel back my skin and cover
what's left in stained velour,
complete what i have become,
scarred, barren, torn asunder.
i tore the flesh from my bones
for me, nothing more, trying to
destroy eternity, separating
molecules, better living through chemistry
(FOCUS)
There is a seed inside us all.
What will it become, what will it consume?
(FOCUSFOCUSFOCUS)
i feel the disconnect and cry
stretching wounded arms across
a chasm of my own design.
i would tear myself apart for you,
but not for me.

This perpetual summer engulfs me,
bathes me in its dew, and
deafens me with its hum.

I thought the winter had put
these feelings down, trampled
these blades flat.
I was fine with that,
but the sun comes again,
and the promise of rain.

Now the blades grow again,
unchecked in this
perpetual summer.
They move me once more,
and I croak my response
from afar, under the
weight of this dew,
waiting for the rain.

Freedom.
Equality.
Opportunity.
Crisis.
Hope.
Identity.
Security.­
Legit.
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Justice.

Ever onward we hurtle,
across time and through space.

Lonely mutant animals, joyful
thoughtful, gleefully cruel.
Our pets fling poo and
maul child and elder the same.

We know they underachieve:
We water our gardens with
the souls of our enemies' children.

We twist alphabet knives
betwixt the ribs of the betrothed.
We turn seeing eyes away
and blind eyes towards,
ever onward.

We wander lost in
perfection's labyrinth,
****** pulse of fear
beating beating beating
brains driven fear driving:
ever onward.

Watching the student of hate
become the teacher of fear
is only one variable in the equation.
Not all students sit at the
front of the class, some view
the world from behind the
couch, pulling a blanket
over the eyes to ward off
extermination.

It all comes down to
reading the word problem,
insofar as words matter
and how you read them.

Classrooms are so very much
the same as rollercoasters,
multiple rows for
multiple views.

i am the ghost of the giant,
haunting these same streets,
invisible in the daylight,
moved on from the world,
yet here in spirit.
All these things i knew
were blooms of the dark
annual flowers, here and gone,
droplets in a river,
bounding over the falls.

Now when i drive the streets
i see the fleeting beauty of
unknown women, laughing,
shopping, smiling for someone.
i remember these simple things,
from afar, invisible,
bounding over the falls.

To all the women i
have loved before:
you are welcome.

For me leaving, i mean.

Some of you got what you wanted.
Some of you did not.

None of us got what we bargained for.
Who ever does these days?

To all the women i
have yet to love:
don't crowd.

There is enough of me to disappoint you all.

One at a time or all at once.
It makes no difference to me.

Love and fear are all we know.

Love:  the longing for unity,
           the comfort of the constant
           companion, the inner
           peace in a sea of discord.

Fear:   howls of derision, the
           emotional clothing shielding
           our true selves, the
           hesitance at opportunity's knock.

Every moment of your life is an ****,
an echo chamber of desire, a festival of
potential love, waiting for your surrender.
Reach out to it; strip off your garments
of fear, reap the love before you,
or carry the regret in your pocket.

The women on campus walk by,
short and tall,
radiant youth in hipster dress,
chattering on their way to class.

What are their intentions?
Saving the world?
Healing the sick?

i am unconsciously judging
their ****** prowess...

Around a corner one's stare
catches my own briefly:

i look at her looking at me
looking at her looking...

it never ends, this watching,
beyond the eyes.

Tail-less lizard
run for your life
cat toy

i have to stop watching the news.
The only politics i want to hear
about is the politics of dancing.
At least then i might get lucky.

The government says i am a criminal.
i made them prove it, and they did.

Shut up and take the money...

i know how much the
government hates competition.

Let us have a footrace to Scotland...
don't worry, you will probably win.
i am pacing myself.

It doesn't matter which path
either of us take: i know
i was high for the first half of the race.

Am i lost?  Who knows?
But i will find my way.
This is how our stories go.

So hurry up, buttercup.
You might win, and then crowd watch.
but if i lose i will still find the Scotch.

i don't like love songs.
They fill you with the joy of others,
often serving only to remind
     they do not apply to you.
And all the banter and clever friendships
stay seated while you go home.
Not to say they've no meaning,
but the pulse is still slow,
and all the dreams dreamt
wind down till they creep by,
and, reading the fine print,
you see that it really was what
it seemed at first glance,
and nothing more.

another tree frog
pushes its luck on my porch
dislodges hairball

Cold rivers flow through us all at times.
The colors change occasionally,
sometimes red, sometimes green,
seldom white;
i can't stand this cold,
drives me pure and shivering
up to the soggy grass and
i lay there naked for hours,
basking in warm, pale
sunlight of the thousand tears
of my desires;
i pluck (razor sharp) blades of the grass,
and muse to myself that i am the
bringer of the fauna's armageddon,
but i would become the cruel
ruler of an off-white gray world;
i don't like the color gray, so
i get dressed and go home.

small tree frog
stalked by kitty
leaps to freedom

i can hear the crickets again:
chirping chirps,
deafening me, a silent sound
bears them unbidden to me,
supplicant, bathing darkness
across my skin.

you are thinking about me, again.

i am certain of it,
why else would you be so silent?

Give me your tongue for Christmas:
it is of no use to you.
i will give you the fingers
of my left hand,
so useless to me.
It is a fair trade, no doubt.
Then we will both have
nothing of value.

i am so broke,
i can't even afford to pay attention...*

We know, America.
We are too.

Stop making sense,
it isn't helping.