Where have I been?
sulking 'neath the humming raving flood lights of the den
miserable beneath the beer moon under shoddy starlight of the smoke covered cavern
dismissed my troubles to the functioning of a universe that is not my own
and waving fearlessly as my legs trembled to the functioning of several dancing hopeless ones
smiling as the sounds filled my ears and all at once I saw each and every face searching for the same things
trembling as I reached for one more fix inside of the place that I have not known
and demystifying the secrets of one single forgotten truth
now back to the nest in which I take slowly one branch out each month for the purpose of forging a new home
and sad that there is no more hopeless safety in the net of youth
yet hopeful that once when the sun rises it may grant a song I have heard in dreams

Not yet healed
fated to permanently fade
and looking down
the cold, sharp, jutting memory
of when steel and flesh met
& your despair made honest
& your pain made my own
arranged in similar thought
yet carried out in separate horror

America

**** your McDonald's drive-thrus

**** your ninety-nine cent ******* hamburger, taco, pizza, salad, milkshake, hotdog, cheese, chicken and ice cream.

**** your ever-penetrating, all-enveloping television stare
-looking into every home and obscenely tucking children into bed with your poisonous, dangerous nonsense

**** your deadly highways and metal death machines

**** your educational system which affords no opportunity and disgraces the intelligent by basing self-worth on imaginary symbols

**** your restriction of information and for appointing one man to represent anybody but himself

******* for breeding such similar beings

**** your twisted hatred of change & for arresting children while cadavers dry-**** the so-called american dream

******* for losing your own soul & destroying us daily

******* for putting faces on beauty and giving such loud voices to hypnotic fantasy

**** your favorite sons and daughters

******* for the wars which can never be won

******* for advertising Jack Daniels on the freeway

******* for a pack of cigarettes - seven dollars and fifty cents

******* for making my **** hard

******* for not looking at the stars every night

******* because I am poisoned by paper

******* for the starvation of spirit & pills handed out to numb the broken minds you've made & the shattered ones you avoid

******* for the homeless prophets

**** your speech decree & for rubbing freedom in the faces of the dying

**** your holy stars & stripes

**** your hushed genocide and & torture

**** your phantom masses and empty religions

******* for providing no wholesome evenings in my rotten town

**** your signposts and support beams

You are but a word

Fairness!

vast, equal ideas that claim to propose the similarity of wave particle to the icecaps!

the relation of a quasar to a trampoline!

the formation of matter resulted solely so that sixty-seven hours of detention could be issued to retain and break the spirit of contradictory efforts!

I heard such fond words about the so-called real world!

a reality measured in it's invisibility!

measured in the lock and chain of binding expressionless touch!

Freedom!
I embrace you as a brother
your words and games fit me so snugly!
drag me into false kingdoms!

I am willing!

your vapor trails, I find intoxicating

your summers, endless

I renounce all desire to move anywhere but up and into your ever-seeing heat gaze!

whose red stare coats the sky and ground
your primitive, machine gun logic

I am pierced by your omnipotence!

you claimed my brothers, now claim me!

Awash in the light
of that widening hall
where strange passing calls
the movements of no fortune
found in languid speech

all is flux

And yet the mad logic shines
as if it were constructed
by some ancient cosmic hand

No returns to naivety

No descent for the timeless

All is wrapped in golden bows
deserving of no answer
& calling none in turn

The endless instrumentation of electric air

each chord striking beauty

the silhouette sounds deepen

soul is now sound

Children speak like poets
living in a mad, visionary world

thus, by nature,
we are all lunatics

when childish insanity comes full circle

let us proceed into vast wilderness

our compasses lost in the sun
-our minds drowned in the sea

Worry not to reach
for there is nothing there to touch

and the night lends but one favor
in weaving the racing mystery

words will do no justice,
evoke no truths

throwing off the veil of shade
I speak in silent gaze

Thy name be air
thy face be sky
I reach to apprehend the unfathomable
content simply to have vague ideas of you
Indeed, in the world of mirrors
trick and illusion are the mothers' arms

To be free, to let go to heavenly air
relinquishing all thought to be known
in this way,
we are reborn to truth

The habitual morning nicotine ritual - exercising rites of many bored day runs for marijuana seekers in the combustible wheel-turning mechanisms of search and by no means of excellence - speaking simplistic languages - concerned with being full

full of joy, full of joy, full of joy

Determined to the final goodbye, the doldrums of steam-heat villages

Walking casually - robbed of daydreaming spectacle
twenty years to outer space, inner space - diving up like water bobbing air pockets

Tasting the Big Sky - delighting in just one event - and everyone's correct opinion concerning all as it is and as it used to stand - it changed- watch it change- the ebbing and flowing pinpricks pulse with time & desensitizing imagery

Going home - to the mists of the attic

Father/mother/son - a question of relation

Naming the precise, exact moment when the abstract word becomes idea - thought - turning - mind rebounding off the word - the principles - ideas - underlying reason - implications - emotional offense and nonsense

Experimental words used in secret societies by kids whose faces come sweeping in like electric-neon firelight, all aglow with the hard sheen of imperfection, flawed souls and humor

humor of the eyes and lips
humor of movements and behavior
humor of inherited traits

Mindful declarations of impartial feelings
reflecting deep, subterranean pools

Which may not exist-may only be self-perception

Who can tell? Where is truth?

Must it come through the reducing valve in increments or flooding through the forehead, unstable and insane

Certainly not in here, the realm of language and symbolic computer reality-building & the evolution of empty space

Taking headforms & nameless expanses
-from which galaxies of what in the corners of all looks right

Practices of the unknown, unthought
-bending the unbendable, pushing further on the boundless, frozen horizon

The setting was stately

Overweight, stationary, smoking
she was totally content

unaware of the vibrations
which to me, were uncomfortable

television droned

I wished it were turned off, unplugged

But she did not know

She was dead to vibrations

Coming upon the supposed realism of the place
in all it's artificial glory - shining like polished plastic

Where in the glass cage; them without eyes sit, motionless
& tapping on the base of the spine - handing judgment
shouting their mad disease into the air

In the contamination of the surrounding, nameless faces
barking out for what they think they need

They scream for food, food, food!

Food and the televised delivery of words
the milky film of burned retinas
staring out as if it see anything shining with the famous names
& the electric screens all around, reinforcing their stride

& fatten them with words

Mothers, fathers and children - all young
misplaced and arguing painfully
about who is where - how they are - & acting

No relief from the bombardment
& stark reality of those people
glossing over magazine covers - top row - never bottom
& system of image delivery

Serving only in the false world
where all is hideously pretty & cold

Walking in a state of transformation
Metamorphosis in the perpetual death & rebirth cycle
-every moment dying and a new birth springing from the grave of holding
Retention of the dead self
This breath, this moment, gone as it is marked
The thought born, the even long past as if it never was
If not for phantom memories surrounding
-ghostly, striding straight through me

After the final collapse of the old, transitory soul
& the resurrection of the void-wind nature's mouth

long after virtues are lost in a swirl of constant fluxing destruction which stabs the longing eyes

Tracing the lines of the invisible, unmistakable force of relation to that which is interpreted through the senses
& which creeps out of unrecalled dreams - the reinforced born-into mistake, set in stone language to seem holy

symbols to feel normal
- yet never seeking solace in instinct
or beaten down for sensing the eternal question

a pluck of the heartstrings to instigate confusion
to investigate breath, to regulate the settling of mercury within the vibrating dome of one single bleeding dollar
- stamped over the heel of Achilles

With good conscience beating the air - to celebrate the holy day that came from somewhere concocted over midnight's back

The grass turns the hours - endless
Eyes though deceitful, lend us
The courage to find beauty in anything
Or in bending shades of light