Advised to read and write and count,
Told by all I would amount,
Abstract knowledge was the gain,
The life you lead will be less pain.

Educate my grandpa said,
Study life until you're dead,
Critical thinking means a struggle,
Your options always will be a juggle.

So I ventured out into the world
Assuming truth would be unfurled,
And I found a madness that prevailed,
I stumbled often and usually failed.

Until one day a princess said,
Just do the next right thing instead,
And since that moment wakened me,
Being kind has set me free.

He was assertive.
And zig zag.
Urgent.

Guiding her.
His hand firmly in the middle of her back.

He wanted to touch her.
Grab the cheeks of her ***, two bags of jam and squeeze.
Slip his fingers up and under her skirt and put two in the pink.

Buck fever.
Jelly farm her.
Finger **** her.

He closed his eyes.
Aroused.
Verminescent.

Do it she whispered.

Old and retired, a fresh press of regret,
How easy it is to roam in past tense,
If only, I should have, what if, perhaps,
It's all swept behind, there's no second chance.

So I shout out to young, those flush with more time,
No matter your dream, nor how high you climb,
None of it matters if kindness and care,
Are replaced by those things that you never share.

Give away, friend, seek all those alone,
Respect others, speak calmly, be careful your tone,
No joy we will find until we believe,
Each life is a tapestry, an intricate weave.

Even I cannot find this care anymore.
I’ve run vague and dry of all moist thought,
Brittle will scores this round,
All life is best endured no more,
I will not bend to peek at joy,
Each smile a twist, all laughter ups to snort and ugly choke,
Time strides by, a hustler, a tomcat, a victim on the run.

At last the end of dreams, such bold relief.
Not more takes or edits done,
I breathe in whole, without the worry of dismal hope,
Each expectation outed now and free to fade,
I court the hours without a scheme,
Death will pace until my shift is done,
This warm friend who sentences but can’t condemn,  
Staid promise, an infinity of next for all.
Soon enough this now is gone,
Rejoice

I was sitting slingback on a bench,
Imagining the velvet taste,
And remembering the ritual
Of morning coffee with her,

When a hatch of warm sun arrived,
An eight minute escape,
Rush racing ninety-three million miles,
To find and flavour this essence of me.

Such harmony with the breeze,
These two friends called wind and warmth,
One shines, one shivers, both coaxing me to sleep,
Where once again we kiss, we cry,
Tease gently with our softest eyes,
And memories make minutes last forever.

Candy canes and caramel cookies, Christmas cards confess,
Pretty paper patterns, pleasing presents to possess,
Charming chatter, church and chamber, chomp a warm cholent,
Rest and read, recharge, reseed, rethink ,reform, repent.

Candy canes and caramel cookies, Christmas cards confess,
Pretty paper patterns, pleasing presents to possess,
Charming chatter, church and chamber, chomp a warm cholent,
Rest and read, recharge, reseed, rethink ,reform, repent.

The outside of inside has me scratching again,
Looking under my bed for lost M ‘n M’s
And terrorists without their mothers.
How silly, how serious,
How insane America has become.
War comes big time and solid.
The rust belt won’t have to worry now.
You be building caskets for millions soon.
Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist. Resist.

I was 18 and surrendered to a Van Gogh sunset,
The Aegean Sea a calm mirror,
Plato’s sun, rose-red and dying,
A shift from wind to breeze,
Each night negotiates a calm.

There were eight of us
Inside the cave,
A cathedral inside a mountain,
Our home, high upside a cliff,
The mountain shepherds unhappy
With our stake,
Until we saved the lamb.

We’d found each other,
An octad to a family formed,
Wandering, drinking, annoying the Swiss,
Our freedom dangerous,
Beyond control,
Our odd desire to just be.

Hell, we were reading Hesse,
One of their own,
Our Swiss welcome spent,
They’d had enough,
And so we left for Athens,
To dance and sing,
And tender the sad patience of the Greeks.

Eighteen hours on the ferry to Eos,
People barfed huge arcs over the railing,
Then sat down to reread the headlines for the hundredth time,
Eos was an island of no cars, sparse electricity,
An abundance of religion
And a constant flow and cask of wine.
Retsina, the barrel sealing resin of the Aleppo pine,
An odd and unmistakable taste,
It left a hangover like a warning shot,
The only cure to drink again.

We spent Easter high on acid,
In the back pews of a church,
A thousand years of candles
White walls black with carbon,
A priest, a chalice, the smoking thurible,
A pendulum of incense and pure thought,
The ancients practiced faith with all their senses.

On cloudy moonless nights,
We walked the miles home,
Sandals slap on a sugar sand,
The beach ours, all of it
So dark we could only hear the sea,
The rhythm of the waves like the downbeat of the earth,
We plodded to its dark measure in a line,
On return, from village, church,
Or a lover’s walk through miles of wild daisies,
Until the rediscovered goat path up to our cave,
A Sisyphean task, a find each time,
Drunk, ******, alive, young, nuclear with hope and desire,
We would change the world,
We would mend kind all the broken parts.

And in our cave,
The sounds of others making love,
Rough grunts and soft sighs, whisper kisses,
I would think and dream,
And ride the silver of those waves
Our lives like skipping stones,
Brief, beautiful, and bound.

Karla asked me why I write poetry.

At least if you wrote eulogies, she said,
You might make new friends,
Open a few doors.

Perhaps then, she said,
And this while she drank straight from the bottle,
Then, she repeated, at least then I might witness
A modicum of progress,
Within this illusion of yours,
And I might understand the purpose of
This infinite investment of your time.

And maybe, she said,
As she pulled a heavy hit from her cigar,
White nimbus rings,
Rolling, roiling perfect doughnuts,
Appeared like tricks,
Out of her o shaped mouth,
One after the other,
All perfectly constructed
As they drift and hang ghost-like
In the dull-dead New York night-time air.

Karla never rests.
And in an act of chronic defiance,
She manages to perfectly project
One smoke ring through the other,
And I slow clap until she smiles
And drinks again

Then , she continued,
Still talking about the only reason I don't **** myself-
Then, she repeated, she was more drunk than me,
When the accolades come, she said,
I could tolerate your never ending fuss  and substitution,
That masquerades as improvement.

I write verse to camouflage my despair, I said
Only poets are openly allowed to be moody,
Self centered,
Disorganized,
Angry,
Drunk,
Inconsolable,
Dishonest,
An­d still be invited to the best parties, I said,
Where, I continued, I get to the person
Everyone else is glad they are not.

Then you have achieved your goal.
Karla nodded at me and smiled,
She blew another six perfect bracelets,
Six new jelly fish floated across to me,
We watched in silence,
Before she took another
Cheek swelling swig of
Macallan's twelve year old.

http://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/scary-robot-lumberjack-makes-d.html

If you want to watch a powerful robot, see above.


I'm not against robots nor afraid of the tech future.
Headline gibberish aside and recognizing Big News will always ***** juice up every bit of info with 'fear of death drama', this video may make you ask-

In the future- what will work be?

Is it possible that we might be at
the end of work, that machines will do almost everything,
That an era of continuous leisure maybe underway?

Why not? Is work an outdated concept?
Is paradise within reach?
Maybe.

When my brother died,
I cried quietly.
Spontaneously
Efficiently.

I slumped down in my chair
And hug-held myself.
Echoes,
Memories.

Oddly, it was also the happiest day
Of my life.
Finally my warrior, my friend, my guide is pain free
After years of cancer slavery.

Safe journey Bro.
Love you.

I don't care.
I've given up.
**** it, I'll be runnerup.

The lies, the truth,
Which is worse,
Be clear almighty universe.

I'm better than you,
It says so, boo,
On the bottom of my shoe.

There is no out,
Best plop right down.
Lived my life as an angry clown.

What you think its real?
Maybe it is or maybe we forgot,
How to untie all the nots.

Yeah, I'm done,
Lived life so recklessly,
So fecklessly in constant perplexity.

No more thought or tears,
I've had my fill,
Time an enemy I could not ****.

Can an ****** be an apple,
A shiny bright red treat,
Or is a ****** all alone,
A way to calmly cheat.

Love yourself, the collective says,
Touch you own heart first,
I must have missed the understood,
Let loose with my outburst.

Is being single such a curse,
Should I dance alone at dawn,
I miss her every day, I do,
She was the one that I count on.

Bold, big and bountiful, beautiful and blue,
Morning madness mix and match, masks become milieu,
Doleful day delusions deft, distraught and due,
Sad and salty subplots, salvo, shill and spew.

We chase a thing all our lives,
Hopes and dreams like butterflies,
Elusive thing we're not quite sure,
We're often close and then demure.

Sometimes we think this thing's gone by
We turn around and soft a sigh,
Send me back, we plead and cry,
Life laughs and whispers, wave goodbye.

So what to do when lost again,
A lover lies, a friend unfriends,
The gift of us by all ignored,
Our love becomes a thing we hoard.

When everything is upside down,
You feel about to quit and drown,
It helps to know we're much the same,
You're not alone, all hold this pain.

A grain of sand.

Has 48,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

One grain.

Get high, get low,
Get up, get slow.
It really doesn't matter what you know.

We are insignificant.
We are expendable.
We are footprints in the snow.

Every cut leaves a scar,
Not every wound will heal,
But when we let resentment go,
Our fears will gently kneel.

Hate is mankind's weakest link,
So easy to ferment,
But when we smile, our anger flees,
And ceases to torment.

Infinity boils my egg,
But what induces my waxy flexibility,
A catatonia of disbelief
Is the concept of nothing.

There is no such thing as nothing.
Can't be.

So when you say you feel nothing for me
I can't believe you. I won't.

I would plead for pity.
But I will settle for disgust.

I could not survive absolute zero.

How do we ever explain
The joy expressed by a soldier
As he kills a child
With a bullet to the head.

Every army is ugly.

We are a mistake.
We have nothing to offer the universe.
Our end is near.

How long can fingers grasp and hold,
The things we did, we were so bold,
Doubt was never at our door,
Each day was simply more and more.

How lucky was my search for love,
To find you there, a gift above,
We will reach our end together,
Devotion is the perfect tether.

Stare at yourself in the mirror.

Hold your gaze for 60 seconds,
All the time repeating the phrase,
I love you.

Self love is acceptance,
And all of love starts there.

I love my phone it’s my best friend,
It’s loves me too when I press send,
I know it cares cause it needs me
In every photo that it sees.

It knows my name, makes me laugh
Web page, home page, save a draft.
It sweet talks me and I talk back,
Don’t click on that, a hack attack.

My phone knows everything I know,
Press any button, it’s all aglow,
One day my phone will be my boss,
I think its gain might be my loss.

First we learn to survive.

Then we learn to accumulate.

Eventually we consider how to share.

Before we settle and vanish forever.


Life is life. Death is our gift.

Pace yourself.

Do you give a ****.
About anything.
Anything at all.

The weather, sleep, french fries,
The mental state of the person
Standing beside you on the subway,
Your last few moments,
Before the cold, frozen, forever stare.

How do we give a **** anyway.
Is that the issue.
We ******* care,
But we just don't know what to do.

Do we march, write and post,
Buy a gun?
Vote... for who?

No, it's over.
Forget about it all
There is no point in giving a ****.
You are right.

I don't give a ****.
About anything.
Anymore.

She asks me,
To calm the ocean storm inside of her.
To harbour in her fickle fears,
And quell her urge to fly or run away.

She asks me,
To silence her cacophony,
A chatter's choir, passion’s angry mob,
And I soft my fingerprints, a lover’s mark,
On the pout of her red, red lips.

Talk to me in confidence and whispers,
She purrs,
As I undo the buttons on her dress,
She says,
Tell me,
No,
Convince me
You have missed me.

She shifts her shoulders,
And
A curtain call of fabric falls free,
Her dress,
A parachute,  
Floats into a pretty bunch,
Settles round and round her ankles in a heap.

Sigh.
Sigh as if I'm your last chance to be free, she says,
Her hands in yoga pose behind her back,
Her bra disappears,
A red memory of elastic,
Tribal indents in her skin,
Temptation’s fragrance overwhelms,
Becomes a taste.

She turns her back to me.
Her thumbs hitchhike inside her *******’ waist,
She slips them down
Steps out of them,
Naked in high heels, she pirouettes,
Hands above her head,
Her *******,
Stiff and brazen buds,
They point and accuse me,
Of some premeditated crime.

Her voice in echo, hardens my intent,
She offers me a carafe of oil,
Warm wet,
Her fingers find the best of me,
Through the thin fabric of my disguise.

Make me shine she murmurs,
Make me slippery and easy to handle, she begs,
My slick hands fill with her,
And I fall fast and forward,
To slip and disappear into a passing cloud.

So **** when you're naked,
Too hot when you dress up,

Flirtatious on a Friday night,
You stop to ask wassup.

Taunt me, tempt me, tease me,
Retake me with your smile.

Sleepy eyes and sunrise sighs,
A lust so versatile.

Carla,
Whom I love and regret in equal measure,
Told me to talk less and think only in the morning.
It’s unfair, she said, for someone with your demons,
To obsess past mid day.
You will only exhaust yourself,
Become dizzy from looking over your shoulder.

It’s the sparrow’s lunch you eat, she said
Afterwards you think only of suicide,
It’s your pathetic answer to everything.

You have a propensity, an absolute need to confess, Carla advised me,
You see sin as an obligation,
As a necessity to fuel your ridiculous notion of salvation,
Repentance is a shell game,
No sooner have you apologized for being yourself,
Than you begin sinning all over again.
Your quest for innocence is a self-selected Sisyphean task.

I told her I had no idea what she was talking about,
And that if she wanted to save me she had to speak in simpler terms.

Quit looking for the meaning in things, Carla said,
Life is lived on the surface,
What we really fear is not that we will die,
But how we will die,
I mean good god,
The insane Christians
Have us picturing death
With nails driven through our hands and feet,
Hanging from a crucifix,
Can you imagine the indignity,
While some low level centurion,
Stabs at us with a sword,
I mean really,
Hauling crosses up mountainsides
Being laughed at and scorned in our weakest moment,
The drama is laughable,
When the absolute truth is most of us
Will die peacefully in our sleep,
Gone without even knowing the party is over.  

Replace your metaphysics with a game of chess, Carla told me,
At least do psilocybin once in awhile
And have a genuine spiritual experience,
And she held up her hand for two more glasses of scotch,
Neat,
And lit her cigar.

To understand happiness,
I sit calmly on a park bench,
And watch children play.

There is an  abundance of joy,
In their laughter and their tears.

I hate the first few minutes of waking up.
It feels like I've been tricked.
Conned.
Duped.
My escape thwarted.

The band was exhausted,
Fall down tired and sweat happy.
But still on track,
Eye flirting and sending secret messages
To every girl they coaxed up
Onto the sandy wood plank dance floor,

But after six hours and 100 songs.
And now at 2:30 a.m. and the lights all up
A bit too drunk,
And way too tired to search out the tempo of the blues,
The drummer,
Buddha on his toadstool,
His shirt soaked with rhythm and stained dark green
From a steady sweat,
His boot, a robot after all these years,
Still tapped the bass drum lightly
As he dreamt of pizza,
Pizza in bed served by naked twenty somethings,
Who don't believe love has to hurt.


They, Bill and Sheila,the music gone
Continued to slow dance,
The beat replaced by the random ****** of shot glasses
Loaded by hand onto the top shelf
Of the dishwasher...
And to the scratch
Of the one armed bus boy with a push broom but no deadline.
The full moon had finally risen out of the sea,
Or was it the sun too tired to shine and begging for a day off.

Her arms were a tight hoop around his neck,
She knew how to hang onto love,
Her cheek to his chest, to his heart.
She'd kicked off her sandals and stepped onto his boots,
Her full weight a reminder that they weren't dead yet.

He'd always known how to lead and carried her with ease.
'Is this the end', Sheila asked him
And looked around at the nearly empty room,
'Not as long as we keep dancing' he said
And kissed her with a full tongue.

How do we justify the glee of soldiers killing children.
How ugly every army is.
How grotesque to observe the twisted human mind,
As it celebrates the death of a child with a bullet to the head.
We like  to ****. We enjoy it. We do not care.
We have nothing to add to this universe.
We are a mistake.

Love is asylum.
Friendship is courage.
Money is sanctuary.
Faith is dependence.
Conviction is hope.
Music is magic.

What has life taught me?

To eat my vegetables.
To kiss like I'm eating an ice cream cone.
To make others laugh.

Snort.

Isn't it odd
That a man named Jobs,
Created so many.

And so one day we pass.
Our suffering joy departs at last,
We drool, we mutter,
Our eyelids shutter,
We gasp, we moan,
We kneel alone,
We beg, one final plea-
To whomever, please come for me.
Our fingers slip,
We ease our grip,
Thin lipped and frail,
One sharp inhale,
A heart beat fails,
And we let go.
How bad can it be?
A quick dunk in an icy lake,
A needle *****,
A fiery scorch,
Why fear so much, our lives shaped so,
By this simple passing of a single torch.

Tell me your secrets,
So hidden from view,
Each mystery a jewel,
I'll search for my clue.

I love to dance naked,
Perhaps so do you,
So share me your secrets,
And we'll rendezvous.

There are over 2 trillion galaxies in the small bit of the universe,
We can observe.

Each galaxy has a billion stars, probably more.
And yet the night sky is dark. Why?

Because most of the universe is empty, void.
A quiet vacuum of unoccupied space.

We are not alone.

My mother told me she spent all of her life with the wrong person, He said to her casually.

Your father, She replied with her eyebrows raised.

No, herself, He responded and finished putting the groceries away.

Fight
For peace,

Surrender,
To the confederates within.

Take up arms,
And bravely manifest the truce.

Contradict,
For clarity.

Ask,
So that you may give.

Write,
So that the whole world might read.

Lie,
And demonstrate your honesty.

Die,
In order to be born.

Laugh,
While the sweet and sour tears adorn.

Fear quietly,
Your bravery will soar,

You have one life.
And an infinite number of possibilities.

You be you. Nothing more or less will do.

How withered, worn and weathered spent,
My love a broken heart event,
I miss us more than you or me,
Something special now set free.

We ate oatmeal and blueberries,
Out of hand made clay bowls,
Zoom chatted naked,
And with a spoon as a prop
She started to dance.

I felt ****** immediately.
Until I remembered
I was already ******.
After all it was past 11 a.m.
On a pandemic Tuesday.

She said I'm your gift today,
I will do anything you want me to do,
I said I'd like to watch her
Eat peanut butter out of the jar,
With a spoon.

She laughed out loud and left the screen,
Returning with transparent scarves
Wrapped around her ******* and waist,
A ****** jar of Skippy with it foil freshly off,
A wink, a shoulder role, a show.

I know her intimately and not at all,
Her fragrance infiltrates, chases me,
A whiff off the tips of my fingers,
The smell of her is hunger,
It makes me wont to wolf and devour,
Her flush on the flat of my tongue,
Her angel whisper,
Our quiet choir a pleasure,
A harmony,
A crescendo until we seed and mute.
Between us,
Our damp swap,
A no man’s land,
A moist design,
The map of lust.
The art of love is always,
In its stains.

To laugh is to love,
So start with a smile,
A memory, a friend,
The birth of a child.

Yes sadness and worry,
Death comes in a hurry,
But courage must stand,
And laughter commands

How fortunate to have failed young,
To have lost my way and early stung.

At twenty we still think in grey,
Not too afraid to have lost our way.

Still, one life lesson and it is brilliant
Lose everything but your resilience.

Lemon lipstick, cherry cheeks,
Rainbow eyes, she plays for keeps,

She's not afraid and not a fool,
Head held high, she's knows she's cool,

Purple hair, skulls on nails,
Tight skirt short, she never fails.

Girl's got game, girl's a chica,
Dance sweet lina, so magnika

There is a difference between,
Lost and not wanting to be found.

Lost is eating fruit loops in the park
While people step over you.

Not found in under the stairs,
Inside the trunk full of dead people's clothes
Counting five seconds between each breath,
So you can listen for mice and postmen.

How crooked my hands,
Gnarled knuckles and bone,
Fingers bent forward,
Palms carved out of stone.

Yes I'm a beggar,
How well my part played,
My hand out in hope
Of a penny mislaid.

How many times,
Can you avert and walk by,
Yes,I'm homeless and helpless
And I also ask why.

Talk to strangers
Eye contact, a smile, a nod.

Be brave and confident,
Other people are not dangerous.

I know your story is fascinating,
Tell it with gusto, a laugh a tear.

Talk to strangers,
You have absolutely nothing to fear.

Look ahead.
We are at the end of work.
Everything we need or want,
Will be produced by technology.

Food, medicine, law, therapy, things.
All done without us. For us.

So what will you do?

Talk to strangers.
It's ok.
We need answers.

I walk head up, with shoulders back,
A stride with pride, bold eye contact,
Don't ever doubt my will or flair,
I have no fear and I will not scare.

**** me now, I bear my thoughts,
Threaten me, take your best shot,
I will not bend to hate or shame,
Each is equal, each the same.