childhood ends not with a celebration
but by the sound of an alarm clock,
with clothes laid out for you
not by your mother on your bed but on the sidewalk
by the governor / engines idling at red lights,
they never change, we never doubt,
we've been dying here for years,
isn't it strange that nobody ever gets out?
we remain in obedient slow pursuit,
we zombies of the morning commute,
we wageheads, we employable undead,
we were people once,
we listened to what the grown-ups said

we are made of railroads
atoms upon tracks
traveling predetermined routes
arriving at predictable acts
we are machines of computation
numbers within mass
solving existential equations
about leaping off the overpass

of course it's dense;
poetry is self-defence
against common sense.

me and you and god
makes three:
i asked, do you believe
in polygamy?

downpast where the divermin dont go
is an underwater sun
that casts a blackhole shadow
in to the fishes swim
but they donnot swim out
where oh where do they fishes go
after theybin drowngone in the shadow
after theybin infosucked by the blackhole
i say i dont know
but some days i think i seem them
floating on the cloud forms
as crows

a filthy habit
drying in the sun / spotted
with little bits of nun

at dawn our suns shine
sideways—not above or below
anyone; time flows,
ego rises

what if people had hearts,
and cared for one another deeply,
everyone doing his part
to improve his neighbour's condition completely,
without reward or remuneration,
only love for the entire human population?

what if cows had wings,
and buzzed above abattoirs like bees,
*******—as nectar—the skins
off the bodies of humans, fallen to their knees,
in repentance and commiseration
with the suffering of all living things?

when the last wear has withered
and the wardrobe echoes
cold memories of empty metal hangers
like falling rain
know you are not poor
undignified or old
rejoice! in the bareness of your porous skin
not hidden by the dead folds
of material—
your soul is a prism
splitting light into threads respun
by God;
every dawn you are rewoven
as the rays of a new sun

They built a lighthouse,
to warn the ships.
The ships transported the sea.
You professed your love,
with living lips.
Your lips spoke words that buried me.

Tanker ships containing water,
run aground upon the sand.
A human being becomes a monster,
by another human's hand.

The future dies within.
The past is always evaporating.

As the tanker rusts,
so I also must,
until we are but two derelict husks,
filled with nothing but regret.

Once, here was the sea,
voluminous and wet!
Once, I was me,
until the day we met.

on sunday mornings
the streets sigh
with hideous anticipation
awaiting an answer to a question—
unspoken—
is the city dead
or not yet awoken?

The British anthropologist enjoyed rare tribesmen.
But after seeing his article published in the prestigious Journal of Anthropological Research,
he kept the poor man on the coals a little longer,
thinking, "Well done, old chap."

listen to them wingmongers
circling round
squawking about how
there be tiny cities on the ground
moss barble asphalt
laid down
betwixt twig-mud megatowers
architecture of invisible sound
leaves decomposing, ants scurrying
spider weaving her web,
connecting flowers like power
lines buzzing beetles hurrying
all the way down the naturebound
highway,
off-ramps to the nine burrows
past the dead squirrel,
through the downpour
of fungal spores more
self-sustainable than any city of yours,
screech the wingmongers,
and from dirt level
i understand their song
these tiny cities will be
long past
when our civilization's long gone

The world inside / the house
is empty, and you're hanging on-
to the railing one final time,
before your father starts the engine /
you're moving out / you're gone
deep into your book, the one
you took (from the library with no
intention of giving back) so long,
childhood; so long: shadows
expanding on the lawn as you sink
into your thoughts / into the wall,
feshly painted so the house would sell,
reading: receding: what you could never tell
your parents. [ ... ]
"Let's go," your mother calls,
but you're no longer there. She doesn't
notice that you're staying / it isn't
you who is obeying, exiting the door.

someone once said,
a negative mind will never give you a positive life,
but that is itself a negative thought,
which must be the product of a negative mind,
if it is true, it's false,
and if it is false, it's true,
but what identifies a princess is not a tiara but a shoe,
or, positively said,
a negative mind will give you a positive life,
for to live uncritically
is indistinguishable from being dead

every day is a second chance
as the first is already lost,
every love is a second dance
as the first still plays in your thoughts,
every life: a second glance
at a past at present not worth its cost.

reach out ye white antler antennae
up to the succulent sky
tree teach me how to always be
growing, spreading finger branches high
teach me roots
teach me the hidden why
of the fruit of not every leaving
is to die, tree
reach out ye white antler antennae
and blossom me into life

in living we all walk toward the dawn,
through moonless nights,
through cold and touchless mist,
yet sunbirth come: only some shall carry on,
the rest remain,
in pain,
to on departed souls subsist.

i have a time machine
in my head
a perk
of being human
and not yet being dead
called the default mode network
made by evolution
or by god
it tethers me to my self
in space
and engenders a temporal circumvolution
of my present place
in time
mostly the revolution's fine
but
sometimes
while in the past
i think of all my selfs that didn't last
or that never came to be
and feel a sadness
which presently cannot pass
of all the good that could
but isn't me
which the doctors call depression
and i
my own war of the austrian succession
in which the pain
of each ****** campaign
finally resolves in stalemate
of the brain
of memory and—
it's time to take the pills again:
SNRI
which stands for i no longer want to die
for now
for my dmn takes me away
to a future of everything that could still be
all the possibilities
for death for guilt for shame
is it insane
to forecast each day
a rain
of every way
to fail, and in failing stain
the sky which looms across tomorrow
or at least tomorrow as imagined
by the brain
in permanent gloom
or anxiety, the doctor's say
or weak besieged khartoum
the mahdi pounding on the walls
and we huddled starving in the dark
waiting every day for the end, violently
delayed but inevitable anyway, a massacre
of all
bodies laid one upon the other until they form a hill
their shadow paints me cold—
time for another pill:
SNRI
i no longer want to die
my time machine
my i
my perk of being human
of living and of having not yet died
time for another pill:
time travel
makes
me
ill

I saw us again in Galway,
And again it felt as if you weren't dead,
You were young,
And I was younger than today,
You had your journalist's notebook and pen,
And so many things to say,
You looked ahead,
I melted away,
Past the crowd of gathering wolves,
Through the cinnamon rain,
To the narrow road winding through the hills,
Like a fleeing possum's tail,
Never still,
A pulsing membrane,
A hospital bed,
A naked, dying flame,
The road you chose to take,
Red with sweet precipitation and pain,
I still remember when you told me you were ill,
I want to die, you said,
What I wouldn't give to know once more your head,
Where your thoughts used to play,
The way your body swayed,
When you saw life's ugliness but refused to look away,
For your spirit I yen,
Faintly remembered by the markings of your pen,
In notebooks in an attic,
Living words floating above dead eyes,
Shrouded by the spice of time,
I desire to wipe it away,
But I'm so terrified of what I might find,
In dreams, I still see your face,
What if in wakefulness, I find an emptiness in its place

cup of tea passed round and round,
two steeped plants grown in the ground,
take a drink, and taste and think,
liquid flowing down the pink
throat / sound of silence, silence of the sound
of retching and the wretched world
got drowned—curdled, and
unwound:
reality spun into a sink,
inability to blink,
plaster cracking veins, blue and green,
spores falling
beneath a peeling skin now seen
the consciousness of which our minds are but
receivers and a screen,
if I want to scream, I'll scream
if I want to end, I'll end
but on the flow will go forever and—
on my bike I ride
knowing I am not I but eye
which from up on high perceives
I and I and I
and round and round the spoked wheel spins
without / within
asking: Albert Hoffman never left,
so where has he been?

Five red haired maidens / resting symmetry
Draped in bluest sky / arranged peacefully
Interwined pink flowers / chaining togetherly
One composition / from Antiquity
Arms wilt with leisure / classically painted
Their wild thoughts blooming / a pale recreation
Seated in judgment / of time untainted
By modernity / By degradation
in eternal youth / in a single row
They sit and they watch / seasons come and go

I've got more scars than memories
but they heal just the same
I've walked too far without looking back
to find my way home again

The only thing I learned
In this ocean of stars
Is that I can drown anywhere

I am the empty space between the highways,
Abandoned strip of indirection,
Subsisting on passers-by's throw-away
food and emotions / Civic midsection /
I am a buffer / I lead nowhere and
no roads leads to me / I am the empty
nest of a bird long flown to the wetlands /
I am everyone's, cared for by the city,
I am where the bodies are buried
sometimes / I am where teenagers get high,
The lake of grass from which Charon ferries
you and your people to the other side,
I am where tall grasses sway at midnight,
Snowplowsand. Cars pass. Hourglass headlights.

Everything happens at once. The mixing
of blue-green dropping white on cold brown rocks,
a maelstrom of water sounds affixing
themselves to fine hovering mist which talks
pouring and pounding to the surroundings,
flat river interrupted; sculpted liquid
fluctuations arising / collapsing
ever-changing life depicted in mid—
crest: trough, tribulation, swirl and foam,
scented moisture feels soft over the jagged
undercurrent. A fish jumps. Water carves stone.
We are released: through spray the river flows,
exiting the eddy and peacefully home.

The red waves of an azalean sea,
Foaming in crimson and pink and ruby,
Break on the soft green grass shore before me,
Behind them / Looming / Snow capped / Mount Fuji,
Oh, how much I wish right now to be,
Surrounded by these florid waters,
To swim into the painted scene and see,
To exist as colours—in eternity.

The tall young woman in a golden dress
spins a globe upon her desk and waits,
and waits till calloused finger comes to rest
upon an unknown wilderness. What spaces
lie yet undiscovered, like tabletops
to be uncovered / to be uncovered:
secret words within a foreign bookshop
under dust and under clutter—
Wiped clean! The tablecloth's pulled off! Now she
will be the first to glean their mysteries:
To see what no one else has ever seen,
To be where no one else has ever been.
Until nothing is obscured for her.
For hers is this world and she its explorer.

Flay me, shroud my body
in Saran wrap, for others to see
what you mean to me: a relief
map of live suffering,
writhing organs in a plastic bag,
a human soup to drag
behind you, sensitive to everything you do,
overflowing with formless worship,
pink, raw and dreaming
of a vicious kinship:
Open yourself and slip my parts in,
we can exist, two hideous beasts
within a single beautiful skin.

light shines through
moving leaves
like rays
of grated cheese

I am huddled in the coroner,
a little beast within a man,
And when at night he studies bodies,
I come out,
now and again.

Let's lose our minds amongst the olive trees
Labyrinth of oiled imagination
Twirl like falling leaves / falling to our knees
in unbalanced joy and veneration
of ourselves. For there is nobody else
but us; there is no other time but now,
Red flowers bloom. A blue shadow propels
a still landscape into being somehow
fluid. Timelessly we swim, wet within
each brush stroke branch and painted wave of wild
emancipation—to forget the din
of the wretched asylum. Vincent smiled:
Dive too deep and you shall go insane,
The olive grove remains the other side of the pane.

Summer's gone
Falling
            leaves upon the lawn
Summers gone
Falling,
            leaves upon the lawn
            a memory

Reading at the bar
Drinking at the library
         —Henry Chinaski

We've sailed cerulean seas to pastel shores,
Known only to the glorious few,
We have disembarked, ready to explore,
As our lone ship waits slumbering in view
of the glorious bay. Light paints daybreak
across the sky. We see the rising sun
through imagined jungle—and hesitate:
The image lingers, but it must be done,
Eyes close. Toward the interior we turn
remembering, and hoping to return.

I hold the tool. I am the blade. I drive
myself into the fertile ground. I dig
potatoes out. They were buried alive,
but in darkness they thrive. Now the old pig
will feast. When he grows fat I will slay him
to feed me and kin. I don't like killing
but when necessary it's not a sin.
I shall live another year, God willing.
I have long been on the land. I am old
but my sun is not yet setting in the
sky. When I was a child I was told once by
my father you become earth when you die.
If so, I hope my children carve my chest
with blade. I hope I'll yield a fruitful harvest.

To look up,
And see the plane flying past,
Is to conceptualize,
The distance between us.
We may sit together on the swing,
Winter slowly rolling in,
And talk,
But we speak in different temperatures.
Your words condense on me,
And drip down my body.
Shivering we see,
That we are separate seasons,
Never again to exist coincidentally.
There will always be,
The distance between us.

I've a clever little friend
who guides me to
a world of neverend
where all the twists of fate
are twine
wrapped around my compass mind
pointing north
or in
or through
an acute tangle of you
th—

The sun set over the Hamptons that night,
A golden egg cracked into the ocean,
We napped on the beach. Goose bumps. Wrapped tight,
Warm blanket. Waves. Shared ear buds. She sang
solely for us sitting so comfortably
on the precipice of forty. If only
we had known this would be the best day,
we could have begged the dripping sun to stay
afloat but then we would have always known
the sun will never rise as high or shine
as brightly as it did. Each day a slow
erosion of the New York coastline,
degradation of the mind. Please remember—
even when I don't—our summer in September.

riverside dusk
      daylight's pale remains
a sanctuary

That feeling—
Night running between tree trunks,
Bark scraping your cheeks—
Before smashing face-first into:
Goosebumps,
   Neck snapped,
      The blood leaks,
That feeling is freedom—
Before you awake unfeeling your body,
Legs useless, mouth drooling dumb,
Welcome! You're one of us now,
The obedient numb.
I can! replaced by May I?
Physical stagnation, ornamental degradation
of the soul: the will dies always
Alone.

imagination cannot be contained
with your fingertip
trace the border of the trees against the sky
now see the clouds behind
and make them mountains in your mind

If I grew wings
would you stab them
with pins
and add me
to your collection?

If I grew fins
would your interest
in me
culminate in a classroom
dissection?

If I grew muscle
would a vivisection
suffice
or would you first crush my strength
within an iron vise?

converging clouds create
a celestial ceiling
a disappearing of the sun's rays
an ominous feeling of the revealing
of the truth:
the world's been packed
into an intergalactic burlap sack,
taken—
and we are not coming back
world-napped—
never to be awakened.
kiss us, but
the prince is not handsome,
we are alone, so
no one will pay our ransom.