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.

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.

I don't need you to read my words
any more than I want to re-live the past.

This world is burning,
fanaticism is rising,
interests are separating and
this American Dream is lost.

But please, do carry on...

tell me how hard math is,
or how love isn't what you thought it,
or how you cut yourself to feel alive,
or how life isn't fair.

Fill me up with ****** nature poems.

Convince me that sacrifice is what happens
when you give your iPod away
instead of what you read in
after-action reports from Afghanistan.

Tell me it will be okay.

Write me the perfect poem.

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.

Today i give thanks, unmindful of
calendars i did not create,
mixing rare potions to elixir,
grinding clock hands and
covering eyes, a shield from the
flash of excellence, filling my cup
from the wellspring eternal.

Come, drink from the chalice with me,
it is not hemlock, it brings union
and transmutation, our lead into
the fold.

Digest this tonic and abandon
resolve, i will take unto me this
poison from the Earth, take you
as well the fruits of our evil deeds
to be no more.

Pay this homage with me, to us.

The azaleas came early this year,
flashing pink in the spring
against their own unruly green.

My dog pants heavily, bounding
across the yard, chasing his
shadow from the azaleas to
the Japanese Maple and back.

Tired, finally, he scratches his
back against the bush, scraping
against the limbs, deforming  the
bush, shaking the blooms down.

I yell at him to stop but he ignores me.

He is young.  He knows only the joy
of the moment, the scratching of that
itch.  If only he could understand that
their beauty is frail and annual...
I want to tell him, but I don't
speak dog and he doesn't listen
anyway, so I lure him inside with
a treat and leave the blossoms
until next year.

When you set out to make
an omelette, you have to break
an egg.  Now what
do you have?

A broken egg.

Unless you planned ahead
and caught it in a frying
pan.  There are other factors
at play as well.

Plans go awry.  Ask
Murphy.  It's the law.

Lawyers can't be trusted.
That's why they band
together, taking sides
like shirts and skins
in a pick-up game.
i don't like basketball.

Trust is tricky.  You
can always trust a liar.  
They always lie.  It
is what they do.  
They are junkies for
their own stories.

Stories are for humans.  
That's why dogs are
man's best friend.  Dogs
can't talk.

Humans think they are special
because they can talk, unlike
dogs.  We talk about thinking,
doing less so we can
talk about it more on
television.

Nancy Grace is running
reruns of the Natalie
Holloway case.  This is good,
it means all is right
with the world.  No other
girls have disappeared or
are presumed dead.  If
they are dead somewhere, they
live in our memories.

It isn't a circle of life,
it is a sphere of existence.  
Everything is specks of dust
floating inside a water
balloon.

And now i'm in your head.  
We are humans, and
the rent is low.

the night of the fake dead has become eternal
(i will wear Susan Lucci's face for it)

staggering through excesses unknown
and the uncertainty of this ranking system,
you tried to eat my earlobe
but lost interest in it quickly.
your scent safe in this butterfly net,
i am surrounded by the
murderous howls of your perennial
buttercups, determined to tempt
my animal ******* instincts.

     (enuma elish la nabu shamamu)
     (shapiltu ammatum shuma la zakrat)

i have tripped in the garden of Eve's desire
and felt torrents across my cheeks
of alternating salt and sugar-sweet nectar.
i have held the red locks of wort
and danced on the blossom-littered ground
in remembrance of wandered attention.

     (When in the heights heaven had not been named)
     (and below, firm ground had not been called...)

i have wept in the shadow of Adam's twin towers
and seen the rift between the continents
ebb and fall under silence's blanket.
i have leathered my skin under this star
to defend my eyes and tongue from
the bite of the turtle goddess.

i have seen the feast of the water,
devouring the naked soil of Pangea,
and tasted its salt with my eyes.
i have undertaken the toil of the shaduf,
churning mud and planting seeds for
the return of the floral messiah.

     (Amaru baur rata)
     (Shagane Ir Imshi)

i have borne the yoke of the oxen
and reaped stalks of wheat
in the summer's first harvest
i have broken bread with companions
under starlight mixed embers
glowing log light orange dynamo

     (The Flood swept thereover)
     (His heart was filled with tears)

Will you scream for me?
Can you profess the holiness
of my mission?
My name, my motif, echoes
across the ages...

Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!

In the end we are called upon by
stronger forces, blank expressions, glassy eyes

Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!

the cold of the world's knife,
pressed against the flesh of our selves,
unconscious rhythm heartbeat pounding
twisted sense rhumba of a thousand tiny shards

Siaynoq!
Call me to a greater purpose
Siaynoq!
Spill my blood across the sand

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.

an ode to J.
poet of great measure
fallen yet climbing
up towards sanity again
truly an artist
seldom was he not a free-thinker
nor ever one of many words
no impressions
just a red door
and don't forget the color blue
for it is the only true color
Van Gogh knew the truth
anything else is just a color
and what better to be obsessed with?
certainly not television (unless it is blue)
except possibly that oh-so-wonderful
vision maker
J. loves that stuff
he lost a little once he found it
     (well, maybe a lot)
still the same old J. though
ever-daring, never-caring
he can take on the world
     (or at least New York)
$50 and a bus ticket
what else could you need?
he met Ginsberg
can you say that?
i didn't think so.
J. the person
he's the man
pretty pictures did he draw
mainly in blue, but still
he does his best work during his Icehouse seizures
quite a sight, a mural so big
too bad its gone
sort of like J.'s mind

Mercury is retrograde,
reducing me to idioms:
life is the Cobra Kai dojo,
and we are the Pilates kids.

So *******, messenger boy.
i can still communicate,

if i need to.

i am the lyrical terrorist,
     stalking virtual grasslands
     technology fueled efficient
     #winning#unabombereatyourheartout

     IDK how 2 roboto-cize
     spiritual growth.
     YET
     IDGAF bout your FB status
     if you dont respond to mine.
     First.
     #circumcumnavigate

     the sheep are now wolves
     (lobotomized)
     preying on our weaknesses

    BRING ME ANOTHER POWER STRIP!

     See?
     so much 2 say...
     Why?

                        c
               i                   g
           r     the globe      n
               c                   i
                         l

     Word.

Wanderer, why are your feet broken?
Have they lost their will?
What of all the distant lands
yet traveled, ambled towards?
Are their soles growing dim,
forgetting the quest,
regretting the rest,
seeking a peace,
or gathering relief?
They, the betrayers,
led you into the dark...
long ago they conspired:
the left against the right,
the two against the one,
the one against the many.
Are they lost?
Are you found?
Ambushed, then discovered,
a worn sandal,
the soul survivor
of pilgrimages unknown.

Where the sea meets the sand
is the battle for the land;
a war for territory,
the everlasting story.

The tides that soak the beach
are always slightly out of reach;
Sol chases them away,
but the moon is here to stay.

So plan for the destruction
of man's every construction;
for eaten it will be,
by the hungry sea.

But forever is the sand
that marks our borderland;
eternal it will be,
unlike you and me.

Ooooooprah...
it is time for us to
have a little chat:

i have heard you say,
on video, that opposition
to Obama is based on
racism.  Haters gonna hate,
you say.

i disagree.  While surely
there are some who feel
this way, since America
is such a big and diverse
place, i think you have
discounted a much more
appropriate reason for
opposing the O:
incompetence.

If not that, how about lying?

If not that, how about hypocrisy?

There are more, but my space is limited.
Do any of the above do
anything for you, besides
racism?

Keep in mind, Oprah, that as
a percentage of population,
white folks still are the majority.
And you are now filthy
rich, thanks in part to those
same white people, some of whom
dislike the president.

So...being pro-Oprah and anti-Obama
are mutually exclusive?
An awful lot of white folks
helped you get rich, does
that mean to you that they are
race traitors?  Are you trying
not to be?

Race sure does seem really important
to you.  And yet America (even
white America) elected a black man
twice to the presidency.  It wasn't
important to most Americans what
color he was.

They are mad now because they were
duped by an incompetent lawyer.  And
now they know it for sure.

So when you, Oprah, fall back on
race instead of logic, you are
playing your last card of desperation.

It has no merit.  You know that.

In fact, Oprah, to my mind
YOU are the racist.

The only other alternative i see is
that you are ashamed of how
wrong you were supporting him,
and too prideful to admit
it.

But you certainly seem to think
that white America owes you or
the president some debt other
than our money and our
dwindling rights.

Because you think that you both
are superior.

That is called racism, Oprah.
Look it up sometime.

Lauryn Hill is going to jail for not paying her taxes,
a fate that would surely befall us all if caught.

She argued to the judge that since her ancestors
were slaves, our economic system was imposed
on her against her will, invalidating her burden.

Pay your ******* taxes, you ignorant bigot.
When your ancestors started making money,
they started owing taxes.  This is a feature of
society called "equality."

Under the moon, near the groves,
grows the summer's bitter fruit,
plumping for harvest.

We are bound to them,
thirsty for their tartness.

I know nothing of farming
these lands or caring for
elderly children, lost
inside their own minds.
I am only an observer
in these fields, destined
to carry my share home.

When I left my wife I felt
the angst, but underneath it
was the overwhelming
relief that I didn't have to
pretend anymore that
two halves could ever equal one.

I watch the bitter fields,
under this moon,
only an observer,
adding up these fruits,
counting these bushels,
knowing that we've all
our own fields to tend,
serfs that we are.

William raked the leaves and dry pine needles in silence, a reverence that, to him, seemed simple and appropriate in the cemetery.  Mother was close by arranging silk flowers to place on his grandparents' graves, a festive red splash of color in celebration of the Christmas season despite the unseasonal warmth and humidity in the air.

     "Can you believe the weather," he calls out to his mother.  "Grandma and Papa would have loved this."

     "Yes, they would have," she replied.  "I'm ready if you are.  We still have some errands to run before it gets too much later."

     William bent down and scooped the loose pile of nature's molt off the graves and placed it in an old plastic shopping bag.  "I'll go throw this in the trash while you set up the flowers, that way we can get moving with the day."

     Mother set to work on the bronze vase as William walked away to the trash can ten yards distant.  He was grateful for her presence, not just for the help in maintaining the graves, but also because it reinforced to him that she was the best mom he could have ever asked for.  The graves were not those of her parents, but belonged to his father's parents.  William thought it was a great show of respect for her to help him.  Father had passed a year before either of his parents.  Not that it much mattered; William's father had seemingly forgotten both William and his own parents somewhere along the way.  Father had given all his attention to his new wife for the last few years of his life.

     "All done!  Just let me pull these last few weeds before we go," Mother said.  William nodded acknowledgement and absent-mindedly wandered the surrounding grave plots.  Unknown faces of unfamiliar names blanketed the grounds nearby.  He found himself suddenly wondering if he had even visited his father's grave.  Feeling ashamed, he began searching in earnest for the site of his father's final resting place.  He thought it was close at hand, perhaps in the vicinity of the small copse of trees a few dozen yards east of his grandparents.

     After a ten minute search, William realized he could not find it on his own.  Mom will know, I will ask her, he thought.  "Hey Mom, I know this sounds weird, but I can't find Dad's grave...where is it?"

     Mother cocked her head slightly, and after a brief pause says, "Will, your father was cremated, and your stepmother told us that she spread the ashes at sea, but we can't be sure that she really did."

     "Oh.  I forgot."

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.

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)

"I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling..."

     The mantra swirled like in tornado in Kate's mind.  The words her mother had last spoken in life as the cancer finally took her, leaving Kate alone in this cruel world.  Her father, Richard, had run off with some office **** and left her and Mommy to fend for themselves.  Mommy was already sick by then, but Richard didn't care.

     *"No one does," Kate thought.  "Except Mommy."  But where was Mommy now?  Safe in the cold beyond.

     The year following Mommy's death had been no kinder to Kate.  The eviction, the hard streets of no solace.  The bad things.  Always, around every corner, more of the bad things.  More...men.  And what they wanted.  Bad things.

     And now, seeing the fog roll in on San Francisco Bay, feeling the wind on her face, letting the salt fill up her nostrils to brine her emotions, Kate heard the lullabies of this ***** Earth calling her name in the cries of the gulls, felt its repulsion, its push, in the cold rail of the Golden Gate Bridge in her hand.  Kate had lived in the hammock Richard built over the chasm of Kate's life, and now Kate was so very sleepy.

     "I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling asleep.  I'm falling..." Kate repeated to herself as she leaned out into the night and let go of the guardrails.

     "...asleep."  Forever.

Our republic died today;
i wonder who noticed?

Very few, i am certain,
since most were busy trying
to survive in this economy,
or feed their children,
or worried about healthcare (still),
or trying to escape this reality,
but something fundamental is
different now.

The Senate took away the
teeth of the filibuster today.
Simple majority rules now,
no more consensus building.

       So?  I don't care about politics or politicians.

That is a shame, because they
care about you.  In fact,
they are counting on you.

To stay distracted.
To think tyranny is only for distant lands.
To think that today's reform won't be
       tomorrow's crushing defeat.

Black America:
       What if tomorrow the House of Representatives
       passes a law to make you all slaves again?

LGBT Americans:
       What if tomorrow the House makes it a law that
       all of you be imprisoned for being who you are?

Women Americans:
       What if tomorrow the House takes away the
       abortion option, or worse?

All of you are outnumbered.

Remember...majority rules now.  The Senate won't slow it down.
Be careful who you *******.

Because debate and careful consideration
are no longer valued in this Democratic
pseudo-Utopia.
It interferes with their agenda.

Petty tyrants don't just rule in
Third World countries.
Not anymore.

They work on Capitol Hill and live in the White House.

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.

Two paths diverged in the woods,
and we bulldozed them into a
highway, didn't we comrades?
That is called progress.
Now the commute to work
is manageable, like our
limited resources.

Whenever i meet people online,
i am reminded again that at the
core we are energy.  My mind
ascribes characteristics of hidden
faces that i can't be sure
are verifiable, a blank palette
where every "Alice" looks like
the first "Alice" i ever met,
and every "Steve" like the first
"Steve" and so on...

like when Rose Tyler lost her
face to The Wire, and Doctor
Who had to reclaim it for her.
The Wire was so very hungry,
famished even.

And i am so very thirsty,
which, if you think about
it, means that The Wire
and i have nothing
in common at all.

During our last move we made
sure to pack:
all the paraphernalia, both
toothbrushes, most of our clothes,
old pictures, broken ashtrays,
tools we didn't know how to use,
the computer, both cats, commitments,
all the shot glasses, a bed,
and your unsolved Rubix cube.
It all fit in the car.

We left behind the couch that
one of the cats ****** on,
the shower curtain liner, every
working Bic lighter, your sanity,
the Monopoly game, two new
pens, one old pen (no ink)
and a bag of marshmallows,
plus one hell of a mess.

During the move we misplaced
our sense of direction, a suitcase
full of only my clothes, logic,
and a globe that doubled as a
lamp.

***** given?
Zero.

We still had both cats.

On the porch roof, in the pitch of it,
the scuttling claws of autumn leaves

               fa
                                              ll
             ­                     g
                  in
          d
                                         o
                         wn.

(the sky is falling)

Battling cigarette smoke prayers for passage
       to the great beyond,

i feel them both tingling my spine,
unfiltered.

What are these words i pen?
This ink that flows soft
and quickening?
Are they bound to the page,
as i am?
i am a metaphor for nothing,
encompassing everything:
i wring out my
tattered pineal gland
on the daily here,
photons approaching singularity,
crossing over,
destruction, creation, absolution.
Equation.
Scattered, collected,
i am scribbling.
Scrabbled.
Fractalized.
Shivering as i gain coherence,
endothermic inside,
socially exothermic.
Runed.
Indecipherably explained.

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.

The birds don't care about the internet.
Their anger is with the ground,
the place where the green goes,
the fields of the hunt and
the roots of the trees.

Their hearts pound in anticipation
of flight into the blue, a
lofting of the body high.

Their cries herald freedom,
the warm sun on soft feathers.
It is their exhilaration breaking forth,
like the promise of soft lips that
by rights are not your own,
tender in the night welcoming you.

i was going to write to you,
the reader, about joy and
its mysteries:  something sacred,
the pins and needles felt
throughout our human-shaped
boxes, the shadow where we
hide our hearts for others to steal.

i long to tell you, dear reader,
if only you can promise to
hold that secret close ...
Can you?  Can you keep this secret?

... (yes)...

So can i.

i am a fool for what i
think love should be.
If only i had been a fool
for what it truly is:
love is a melding of minds,
a handshake of like souls
across common boundaries,
an acceptance of static electricity
to complete our circuits.
A spark between fingers.

In the room the women come and go,
wishing they married Michelangelo.

Don't we all, in our ways?

Crazy love will leave you wanting.
True love does not attract until it is bound,
and not to you.

The irony of mating, exemplified.

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.