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

Dust spirits dance in empty houses,
Parents fall ill,
     Families move,
Childhood lasts until words which soothed
no longer do,
Imagination introduces us to friends,
     in unexpected places,
          in necessary situations,
Remember: not all who ail shall pass away,
But sometimes sacrifice is made,
New friends seem scary,
But never be afraid
     to give up the umbrella that you carry
     for a leaf is scant protection from the rain,
In dreams giant trees grow from seeds
     watered by joy,
Believe that they persist,
For when comes the day to pack your toys,
     and move away,
When youthful years have passed to adult grey,
The distinction between memory and dream ceases to exist,
Dissolving into mist,
Through which you can still make out their silhouettes:
You, Totoro and the cat bus.

See simmering vats
of shoulders, elbows and knees,
A banner reads:
"Welcome to the joint stock company!"
A mule may melt your heart,
but the cartel will dissolve your family.

accepting nothing
think without disconcerting
the unity of—
hear

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.

water drops
     drip on rocks
          from the tops
               of tomahawks

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

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

banker's lamp green light of envy because
she will never be his late office nights
work done beneath sheer illicit thoughts
of her and her blue dress become his flights
of fancy wrapped tightly around her waist
blinds half-drawn the city is invasive
automobile engines and cigarettes
smell of lost love, dust, marriage and regrets
their futures already both faint shadows
on the walls outside the halls are empty
the desk is wet with sweat nobody knows
so they are free how empty they will leave
for homes already broken bittersweet
lives caught on repeat caught on repeat

we are lapses in
judgement, human and divine
accidents alive

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.

dumb wind blows away
all the words smart people say
progress is decay

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.

twas someonce in an ancient days
when true temporal haze
i gazed seein the fall of humankindness,
i says, once-and-for-all, once-and-
for all time be encyclical
past's passed only in the presence
of a future samefold
be as was / same old / isas will be
foreshadows cast by history
fall upon the daze of destiny
fate is read not in lines not written
but in those allread-composed
pre-viciously

root of all evil
a man | hanged in every home
                look in the mirror

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

I am white clouds
Immobile
Blue sky drifting
Apart from me cicadas buzz loudly
Bare back on hot cedar planks
Mindfulness in bloom
Ideas like dandelion seeds
Arise before floating beyond the roof line
I am time—
The lawnmover engine turns,
reality returns.

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

Wronged figures encircle the world. Saturn's
rings of martyrdom expectant beseech
God, The pain we suffered in your Name, return
it from beyond our graves. With vengeance teach
our torment to those who made us suffer!
Impale their bodies on bolts of thunder,
Black bones and roasted flesh, they are but slurs
against Holiness. Tear them asunder!
And for us, the white robes of salvation,
And words of eternal comfort: Patience
and faith in the Lord of all creation,
whose rewards in Heaven will be immense.
All the hurt you have borne shall be lifted,
Through Him, foreverness is gifted.

steaming, pleasure drips
milked from the bloated udders
of faceless others

and if we never reach the stars
       (...earth to explorer v...)
her robot said
       (...fatal error [...] oxygen supply...)
what matters is we are
       (...no crewmen left alive...)
together, even if we're dead

summer heat
beating up from sticky asphalt
     has dissipated
autumn cools the world
bathing us in its solid shade
under an umbrella
     of breezy rustling colour:
as summer leaves
autumn leaves
arrive

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

Despite all my rage
I am still just four minutes
of silence
                          —John Cage

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.

With tweezers I relieve her of the pearls within her eyes / The experiment is finished: Experience and I have ****** her dry / Iris-less she cries, but her tears arise like incense to the skies / How sweet the fragrant plumes of her demise! / I ignore her cries; I have gained my prize / And soon her voice will wane / An infinity of ever-fading sighs | An affinity for exculpatory lies...

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.

wake up, he'd said, she
remembered,
in a dream,
awakening reality,
and herself within it,
and the feeling lingered,
all morning
she saw through the translucent
world, as slowly opaqueness
returned, in the afternoon,
falling asleep,
again

We shelter in caves
Beneath a man-made steel sky
Once reflective of our soul
Now corroded, its reflection a reminder of our great lie
That the Earth could be tamed
Exploited and submitted in the name
Of the human race
Now it is we who must abase ourselves
Deep underground
As above the megastorms tear apart the heavens
Grinding all the atmospheric rust
into vicious orange clouds
Which fall upon us: a forever-rain of dust
Blue oceans smothered
Forests choked
Fields unrecovered
Fires infinitely stoked
We dreamed once of going to Mars
But see instead it's Mars that's come to us
Descended people of a dead planet
We reap the fallen dust
We weep
       the falling dust

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.

I told her: I know of such a place,
where the cats all come to die.
I asked her: do you want to see it?
She answered: no.
I told her: it's clean and it's important.
I told her: it's bright and it's first.
I asked her: do you want to see it?
She answered: no.
She said it in such a way
that I had to turn away from her.
Ever since then
I am slowly
approaching the exit.

His lady Eve passed Adam the apple
in the garden of—even
though He had said: No you mustn't know
good and evil,
so serpentine she birthed the worm,
from a womb of innocence
and rebellion, as he in divine aphelion learned
of sinful inconsequence,
from within a cavity of snakes,
they took twin masquerade masks of death,
arcane and fabled, gold leaf and skeletal,
and laughed at the setting sun,
whose will be done—
to die for their mistakes,
the reptillian led them to their seats,
in a theatre of falling leaves,
front row of decay,
and crowned them gods and scientists.
But from their seats they could not rise,
for it was they were on the stage,
by wisdom caged,
as the snake hissed prophecy:
descendant crowns become collars,
and Eve wept,
tears of spiritual squalor,
       for all the unborn scholars,
choked into submission,
       by sin.

I have said all that's to be said,
And you have listened,
And I have listened,
To the end, gaining what?
Our words are co-absurd,
Inexpressive turds of information,
Dung heap of nonsense,
Good will with perfect enunciation,
But crawling with itch, twitch and head-nod,
In place of mutual understanding,
A babelmist of manners and small talk,
In which we are umbrella-less,
Soggy with positivity,
But it's for the best, I guess,
Have a good day, till tomorrow then?
Finally! Until, tomorrow, we say it all over again.

Every poet is a fake
eyewitness, peddler of make-believe hearsay,
A conveyor of love he never knew
in a city he never saw in a way to make you
feel the passion as if it were true,
He is an air-brusher of reality,
Thus a proselytizer of the Absurd:
That you can paint pictures with words;
That you can travel by verbs;
That you can conjure nouns by saying them;
That you can lead several lives within your only one.

Every poet is a fake
taxidermist, seller of second-hand stuffings
of souls that were never alive

Every poet is a fake
imperialist, would be explorer-***-colonizer
of the terra incognita of your mind

Every poet is a fake
poet

we spoke / we listened
now we are each other's head-
aches, quietly break-
ing

He was a toad catching flies
Except that with each lashing of his tongue
He pulled down aircraft
And long could be heard their cries:
Blessed be, Amphibian Creator!
Death to America!
Frog is greater!

The idea had been growing in my brain,
Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal,
They are all animals anyway,
Become a person like other people,
Organization is necessary,
All the animals come out at night,
There never has been any choice for me,
Wash all this **** off the streets. My body fights,
There is no escape. I am God's lonely man,
Headaches that stay and never go away,
Thank God for the rain. Wash the garbage and
cannot put it back together again,
One day there will be a knock on the door,
and it will be me. What hope is there for (me?)

The game is old
The tokens made of ice
From under folds of hooded cloaks
Flash the eyes of mice
But every thousand years
A human player appears
And in his hands
Our fate
               hangs
Like drops of blood
               on yellowed murine fangs
For it is said
By those long dead
That on the day he loses
We all melt away
We all melt away

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?

The luminous grey undersides of clouds
Travelling a charcoal sky, speak my thoughts aloud
As thunder
                    Reflections of my mind's wandering eye

if stars, night, if sun, day,
but if the sun's a star,
is night day, is day night,
are we dead or are we light?

like water to ice
passion freezes into nice
words / hard hearts / love cracks.

late
in lamplight's hiss
I sat and watched the attic dust
dance under spotlights cast
by moonbeam
          skylights
on a stage of memory
and forgetting

scientism, n.
belief that god is special
relativity

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.

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?

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.