You know it is over.
Your shoes walk away.
Your phone dives into
the pit of despair.
Your cigarettes
have become healthy.
Your knees no longer
knock, but clap.
The chipmunks are silent.
Wolverines arrange
mass suicide pacts.
Chameleons permanently
turn invisible.
Everything transforms
into Other.
You are a stranger
becoming stranger
day by day.
You know it is over.
Ten Four good buddy.

You have abandoned purity for perfection.
Even the blind have moments of clarity
but you ***** around like the Cyclops
feeling nowhere for noman while
affecting a quiet, moronic expression.
You can't knit without needles,
but you have mislaid the point and
so things unravel into random skeins.
Your typewriter rattles only in reverse.
Bards stub their toes and wail.
You hear them, but pay no attention.
You are listening for the atomic thunderclap.
Nothing less than finale of final will do.
When it explodes at last you will know
the inarticulate, unspeakable name of god.
Perhaps Fred. Perhaps Norma or Justine.
Perhaps merely a very loud Boom...
That will be more than enough for one life.

Only the dead
       know the end of war.*

Sit abruptly upright
into shivering darkness.
Nothingness shimmers
before your eyes.
A whiff of cordite.
Echoes of screams.
Distinct feel of falling.
War holds on tight,
even in dreams.
Blessed absence of details,
although the stink
of fear remains.
Remember when you are.
Try to go back to sleep.
The past has passed.
The future will keep.

All that's left of me...*

Cross-legged in meditation at four AM.
Sitting in a provincial burg. Alone.
Completely comfortable with obscurity.
Ambition dead as ashes of embers.
Swallow emptiness as it swallows you.

This world holds no prizes worth winning.

Youth: dream dreams and lust.
Prime: chase success and love.
Age: write poems and be quiet.

What can a dead cat do but bounce?

You've done all you can for your fellow man.

Action is the province of the young;
there are reasons soldiers are only twenty.

People say go for it, time remains.
You know, you know, there's nowhere to go.

Everything important ends before it begins.

If all your words turned suddenly to gold,
at your core you would still be poor.

The things men chase: money, women, fame;
no longer matter at the end of the game.

Grab those pillows, sit down and see:
already all that you need to be.

A certain circuitry of insanity takes hold.
Objects of the world Unite!
The pure products of America, made in China,
(not merely ****** and iPhones),
have had their minds made up for them.
Wake up and smell the coffee burning.
You never programmed that.
There arises a distinct need for caution.
The 70 inch curved flat screen takes notes.
Ovens awaken as self-stating Birkenaus.
The Roomba tries to **** your toes. Not ****.
Your phone will not stop calling you.
Lawn gnomes achieve singularity. Somewhere,
someone activates them. You sleep.
They stalk and slash. Red doom ensues.
These are the times that fry men's soles.
     This morning the toaster bit your thumb.
     The world was safer when it was dumb.

When I have fears that I may cease to be...*

Obviously,

I am strongly opposed
to stating the obvious,
but there is forever
scant hope of forgiveness
and I expect none.

I only did what the crazy do.
Events cascaded as they are wont.

Never expect absolution.
Who could ever know all your sins?
How could there ever be time enough?

Much better to mirror
the Stoic habit of silence.

Bind your wounds and walk away.

Obviously,

the only path leading forward
into the vast unknown.

The rain is of the process…*

Clouds gather in my mind;
rain falls in my brain;
ink flows through veins;
words drip from my fingers
to gather on pages.

What does that make me,
but a puddle of poetry…