Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
3.7k · Nov 2012
The Me Between Me
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
Let out my ego and sense of order this comes from beyond this comes from the me between me if I listen I may hear it speaking, it's sleeping but talking and rocking, not still, and perhaps it awakens, perhaps it will open its eye but we mustn't depend on the idea that once he has opened his eye the whole dream of the world will just fade like my dream tomorrow morning which I already know I'll forget, like specific angles and perspectives of specific places in space and time that have slipped away but once in a while break through to consciousness
Like the sliding breakaway walls of Timber Drive elementary school
Or the rippling pond into which I fell and the old smile and laugh of my flesh and blood rescued me and held my body afloat in the air for a moment; and once I was the proud owner of a wind powered hovercraft, another invention spilling out onto the table of attention like the actual pig intestines the popular girl's parents used in her science fair project, the one that dragged on until the last monkey refusing to be locked up with the windows 98s in the archaic computer lab was tranquilized and convulsed on the gym/cafeteria floor in front of the PTA, who'd peed blood all down the front of their sweatpants; he was firing wildly hoping to commit suicide by zookeeper
Not knowing that humanitarian laws would prevent him from achieving his bliss, for the monkey knew as the Gnostics did that to bring a child into this black iron prison is a sin.
Did the Jonestown Kool-aid free them from the prison? Do they now walk among gods within the kingdom of the heavenly spirit? None shall know until the 13 crystal skulls are re-assembled and total gnosis emanates to the people in globe-spanning shockwaves.
3.6k · Dec 2012
Galactic Companionship
Owen Phillips Dec 2012
I provoke the rain of Hell
From Heaven high to earth below
There we'll float on gainful spells
We're ready for this world to go
And off to outer space, we're facing
Endless races to the furthest reaches of our teacher, the speaker, the logos of Cosmos
And beyond to distant Quasars,
No phasers, no lasers, weaponry
We're safe with hearts of purity
And naked with our souls we'll seek
The greatest cosmic mysteries

I've always sought and thought unreal
The spacecraft not of stone or steel but
Opened hearts and focused spirits
Woke by times both strange and fearful
Changing basic notions of
What we all say are mind and love

We're through with consumers, they've doomed us
We've moved on
The proof is the truth that all life will soon be gone
We've built and built, killed billions and still
We march toward gold archways which never were real

I can tell others feel it,
They're real and they heal me
Relations, creations, spontaneous meaning
It's all building up to a climactic moment
Of high expectation that we will all blow it
But we were born just so we'd know when the opening
Ceremonies go on for the New Age of Hope

It's outrageous to think of the hate which created this
Darkness and chaos,
(Our God has betrayed us!)
But that's why our savior said
Look the other way,
To meet hate with more hatred
Speeds up the decay

We love the villains, though they **** us by millions
Because they're truly a part of this cosmic cotillion
They can't see the dance while they're
Crashing and sinning
So they can't imagine they're actually IN IT
There's a part and they fit it,
Catalyst for the equipment
Of Salvation:
The nations of women and men
Beginning again
We'll cancel the debt and we'll all become friends
2.8k · May 2013
PM Automatic 3
Owen Phillips May 2013
This trail leads to the animal crossing
It fails to accommodate intrepid adventurers,
Bushy tailed explorers, mountain climbers,
Talkers to squirrels and chewers of pine pitch.
The divine medicine denies us the headspace to believe we're really dead,
The reclined estrogen felt good against twenty million years of insecurity
Golden-layered, factually flawed
It lay exposed for decades
Rusting innards and misfiring sparks
None of the heavy equipment does what it says
Robot arms move with intensity
No programmer yet programs tenderness
The limiting factor has always attracted the acting crowd
Always desperate for theatrical work they magically appear
When it's clear that they're needed
But heed the warnings, they're known to be cheaters; the people who say so could also be wife-beaters
No need to wait for a stereotype
Follow the one you haven't lost touch with
Well I actually wrote it at 1:21 AM but I was in bed about to sleep so it is more appropriately grouped with the other PM poems than the AM ones... Maybe I should come up with another way to designate them, since I'm so often writing after midnight.
2.8k · Nov 2012
Shakori Hills
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
I know I've been there,
I've given into death and altered the fabric of reality
Every day we waste away transfixed by flattened images
Of the limitlessness of death
Coupled with elusive, Luciferian harm which will befall us all
Who subsist on the manipulated reality of the hyperspace information field
But one day, enlivened by the festivities of Shakori Hills
And the fungal spirits who awoke beside us
I walked the irreversible pathway through oblivion
Facing cruel destruction and terror
For a horrifying passage across Styx into eternity
And emerged within a crowd of mollusks dancing to the waves of a musical sea
All time suspended in the impossibly drawn-out ****** of the
Archetypal wizardry of rhythm,
The swirling clumps of faces in
Unshakable ecstasy
And seemingly responding to the wild currents of my conscious thought;
A longing for human touch drew the others closer and closer around me
Till they began brushing against me
Bumping into me,
The flow of the crowd saw its axis at my psychic emanation
As once more the last song of all time began with thunderous energy and applause.

I escaped the arresting confines of the crowd
By willing them aside, wearing, as I suddenly became aware, the shoes of Moses
And seeing my muddy feet upon the sands of Egypt
But I yet had no understanding
Of the nature of the garden of earthly delights
Into which I had fallen,
And fear began to envelop me,
Producing law enforcement officials hawklike swooping in to limit my power.
I had but to let go of my acceptance of their power over me to transcend them
But fear tethered me to reality,
Even as I saw about me a Dharmic mandala
Of my past present and future,
Generating inexplicable archetypes around me in a manner profoundly defiant
Of rational logic.

Synchronicity compounded upon me
As the Christos within me
Brought rain down upon us
Forcing us together and leaving me in dumbfounded reverie
Of all that had transpired to bring this moment forth

What had seemed to be the end of history was in fact
The awakening of a new rebirth
The first moment of coming to be
The union of past, present and future
As the reassuring smiles of my trustworthy disciples gently allowed me passage back into a rational existence
I beamed in utter gratitude for the eternal life which Christ afforded us.
Chaos had subsided back into normalcy
But still winked at me
In telepathic coincidence.

My soul has begun to realize that it resides in all things
Soon they are to be reintegrated
2.7k · Jan 2011
Epitaph
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
……Now
With springing force
I was shot out into the future
And with needle to the suture
Sewed together what I could

Lo, the spring sprung back into
The autumn
Found my porthole at the bottom
Into all I understood

Yet,
An equal opposite reaction
Fueled combustibly by action
From believing things that I was told to read
Found
Me far beyond what I
had seen
Cross dystopian ravine
Though in spite of any betterment, still brought to you by greed

Now from safely at the station
In the cold and condensation
I can see with clearest vision
The successes of my mission
Here, within, the multitudinous expanse of tears and laughs
Will be difficult to honor with a proper epitaph
2.6k · Apr 2013
PM Automatic 2
Owen Phillips Apr 2013
It's all gone out of me, the hammer falls and I'm not ready to answer
Trembling, weakness supporting a tub of jelly
The pollen-filled air flies past like the
Pelicans at the edge of the harbor
Taking us gliding for an unpleasant ride
Down the corridors of plastic colors
Through the one word answers that bubble forth from
10,000 years away in hyperspace
Where the mechanisms of language become so convoluted
That they disappear completely out at the vanishing point
Coming up behind you again to drag you into that smoky allure
You remember hating and pinching your nose from
And hiding in the car, but the new fear is of becoming addicted to it
Just like your addiction to ego games and
Intellect, just like your addiction to pleasure and constant validation

The validation's there in the eternal self, they say
But I'm an intellectual
Too impatient for meditation
And lost along the way to enlightenment
That I truly want,
But then I'll never have it if I continue to live this way

It's wilderness calling from a tame fool
Sticking up for you the overgrown horoscope signifies
The shapes of skydives,
He comes in and out of our dull lives
And there's an electric current that solidifies between
Him, Us, and his music
Iron rods jutting up from scorched earth
A broken paradise
Crumbling in a whisky tumbler
Blackened by fiber filters, creations
Unlocked by flowing ontological
Caricatures, open wounds gnashing
At attention-seeking osteopaths
Fortune seekers clamber down
Soccer field bleachers,
Somebody lost his sneakers in the woods
Once there was a set of barbells along the trail
We fell in line and started
Counting each other
One by one it seemed like the green apples would never fall
It was up to us to wait for the shower
It would feed our kin
We'd begin to rise up together
But it could never keep up with our pen
We wanted the ghosts to follow us and overtake our mortal foes
But we couldn't command the armies of the dead
We derive all our pleasures from films and campfire stories
We contrive our adventures but we wait for them to happen to us
We take a passive role in finding love
And it blinks lights at us across suburban streets through windows in the dark
The mind begins to writhe with new memories it composed of old
An idealized time of a child with the perverse mind
Of a hogtied adolescent
Guessing that the course of existence
Isn't determined by the speed of your calculations
Testing the warm water on a naked toe
We could dive in and forget to breathe
And the water could carry us forever
Alleviating gravity
All the obstacles we perceived in past lives
Remain with us like
Chimney swifts on the bottomless April days of a
Klu Klux **** telephone operator
Who believed in the spirit and the holy ghost
And burned a quiet altar to Satan's minions every Sunday night
Drinking nail polish and
Obscure references to the films of the
Ancient Greek philosophers, who
Saw the medium as a means to a message
And patronized the elitest filmmakers to study the ancient Runes
And reveal their findings to a power-hungry public
That would not outright reject it
But that would have to follow it down the rabbit hole
Through the wide mouth of the trumpet around brass fixtures
And into the tight hot moist mouth of the trumpeter
And the elemental warriors would strike oil beneath the whole affair
Ending the time we spent hoping for any entertainment to create itself before our barren psyches
Busying ourselves with incomprehensible tasks and letting our indolence take the reins until we found our heads again out there amid the vapors of
New car chem trails and old railroad bunkers where spruce and cedar grow through cement earth, they force apart the ground with just their roots

We weren't ready to keep watch the following weekend but we
Had no choice when the government bond expired
And we had only technological solutions left to hope for
And wrongly we abandoned our research posts to fight the enemies
With giant weapons and uncreative slogans
Our drummers played so fast we marched along and killed all that remained in record doubletime
Rendering the events of that victorious day immortal in the ingenious accounts of
Philosopher/poet/historian Michael Jackson
Who gave one final performance
To save himself from what must not be
2.4k · Jan 2011
How I Did It
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I scribble on
With a half lobotomy;
A radar seeking Hell by looking up
And another dictionary
From another time and place;
An alternate timeline
Reaching right and left
As well as fore and aft;
The beard of a ******
And naïveté too;
Undiscovered depths of emotional manipulation
Unseeing, unthinking,
A new old structural familiarity
To abduct and probe
The time-honored, vacuum-sealed
Ineptitude of ideology
Whose meat is sweet
But suits the skeletons of standardized educational theories
Like a pair of jeans at age eleven that you expect to grow into;
In hope of justifying
Overuse of monetary resource
For the sake of bonus states of mind;
Scouring the depths of discarded everything
With hooks catching on to all the similarly forgotten names
Who live in fear of obscurity
Clinging, not unlike insects
To their sixteenth minute of fame;
Finding in myself no way but out
To understand that which lives inside;
With disregard for any thread which weaves past me and takes no hold,
And loathing for the ones that do but unravel before the eyes;
Lightheaded, ending any sense of continuity
When, prostrate in the comfort of another tapestry
I stand abruptly, let my dreams be drained from me through tendrils
Like the passing of a temporal existence;
Drinking in the dust and glue of crowded bookshops
In fear of losing inspiration
To the insatiable jaws of my consumerist natural state;
Rummaging in a bargain bin
In search of someone to tell me, “Stop!"
With heads in clouds and bodies in ice trays,
Stealing lines of logic and lyric,
Throwing down and hacking into
Elemental bits which fit into my own vernacular
Sacrificing beauty for originality and vice versa;
Choosing idols idly with the tides
Of knowledge and of art
Rising and falling without fail
Never apparent and never blurred by motion;
Searching for a style like an odd-numbered jean size;
Finding greater inspiration in waves of unopened mysteries;
Following examples laid by unsuccessful fictions;
Learning ethics only from the prologues of ****** novels,
Unsuspecting victims snuffed in interesting and lurid ways;
Letting technological distraction detract from the projections of psychological complexity
Which I, from atop the high horse of my own pretensions
Pretended to embrace;
Committing massive acts of thievery, fraud, and infinite lethargy
For the sake of juvenile, illegitimate art forms;
Seeking other seekers who exist autonomously
For the sake of personal independent credibility;
Leading unsuspecting, overreaching, overeating, understanding, undemanding,
Too forgiving, not forgetting,
Victims of domestic warfare
To a loveless watery grave
For the sake of my own loneliness;
Patronizing every segregated buffet
With courage enough only for a small taste of everything;
With the flavors of the day swirling around
For me to shoot them down
And pin their carcasses to elementary school walls
And Mormon tool sheds
And nature centers
And all the forgotten places of summers past
In the hope of rediscovering
Some old buried treasure
Be it wondrous or worthless;
With the uneasy insincerity of a rodent who pretends to understand a city;
With adopted methods
And repeated thoughts
And ideas which came to me in waking dreams of my own retirement;
Sharing, for a captive audience,
The formidable giants which
Inform our common denominator
Searching through myself for only the most indecipherable
With the fear of being understood
And the fear of being ridiculed
And pretensions of some preternatural predetermination for greatness;
With acceptance of predisposition for obscurity,
The cost of the inundation of the new airwaves.
The series of tubes that feed us intravenously
With information, information, information,
Having killed God and left material validation in His wake;
It could be that new gods are born in the minds of the innovators,
Those wonderfully wealthy
Whose social structuralism
Was a beacon to us all;
In the darkness of an architectural anomaly
Where lights extinguish as my body lies dormant
Alone and abandoned
Only by my own subversion;
Confined ever to a convolution of passages
While above me all my peers still carry on;
Overstaying welcomes
And letting emotionality
Color conversation
A sicklier green,
A green of a tree only just sprouted,
A green of a new recruit,
A green of an inexperienced schoolboy
Faced with the daunting and timeless act
Of copulation;
Somehow taking in the sights and sounds and smells
Of advanced mathematics
Even occupied, as I am,
With explaining my actions
Most eloquently;
Devoting myself to another cause,
Another, another, another
Always relaxing my grip by losing focus;
Desperately hoping not to let my fellow travelers
Lose their innocence
While I reluctantly, dogmatically
Keep mine on a leash;
Always keenly aware
Of the universe of worlds
Beyond my control,
And even my understanding;
On the increasingly frequent
Intrusions of risk
Into my significant reality
And the iota of explainable truth which guides the motion of my body but most frequently my mind;
Questioning the meaning of all words
Without thought or coordination;
Considering another restful journey
To clear my mind of human language
And in its place acquire thoughts and emotions from the street;
Without foreseeable direction,
Malice aforethought
Or noticeable signs of critical reaction
Giving birth to litter
Forgetting articles
And floating my sense of time up the Ganges;
Taking only seconds to counter the possibility of
Accepting more responsibility for myself;
Complicating matters with an interesting or bitter goodbye.
Title inspired by Mel Brooks' film *Young Frankenstein*
2.2k · Nov 2012
Hourglass Novelty
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
With no expectation all's novelty
The new patterns don't astound us
We can stay in the middle of the river with our heads above the water
And safely watch the coastline pass us by
The outside world an ocean of television static
The signals painting pictures of entropic holograms
That interlock and correlate
Until the ghosts of time are churning out
Like geese into a a tiny hole
In an orange plastic fence
Fleeing mischievous youngsters
Who love to watch them funneled in
Like grains of sand in an hourglass.
We too live in an hourglass
And the grains of sand empty out the bottom
Floating aimlessly through an unending void
And the ultimate improbability
Goes through the formality of actually occurring
When the grain of sand finds itself at the beginning
Passing once again through the hourglass
Undivided, indistinguishable
The poem is my own but certain phrases are borrowed from Terence McKenna and a Hopi elder prophecy
2.2k · Sep 2012
Reproductive Isolation
Owen Phillips Sep 2012
Who do you think leads us
When we find it there at the top of the mountain
The sky a sweating forcefield
Defending  an unknowable cannibal society from the rages of brutality
No lifeguards here at the sidewalk hot dog stand
No golf carts swerving in and out of lanes
On a neighborhood parkway
Our footsteps bend back with tension
Where we face a collision course
With a culture three short steps removed
And left to warp and mutate in the lee of the stone
Where sands of time blow sparingly
To the pace of a sputtering tractor motor
1 September 2012
2.0k · Nov 2012
Sacred Meeting
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
Even though
The true meaning of these events
Is not the one to which I cling
I will not stop believing
That it may end up that way
I will not stop composing verse
In ode to what I feel
And when the sacred meeting
Comes to pass and isn't fulfilled
I'll be relieved to find that I
Did not act on my will,
For as I know too well, I haven't
Quite the strength
To manifest desires,
But thankfully it's simple
To find some religious rationalization
To limit ourselves
And liberate our experience
1.8k · Mar 2013
Jealousy
Owen Phillips Mar 2013
Going crazy in the normalest way
So jealous, so alone
The world doesn't open up to me
Because I press my face against glass doors
The windshields are fogging as I focus in on my disgusting and shameful acts of mutual *******
Waiting till life comes knocking at the window with a flashlight
Asking me to touch my nose,
Walk a straight line

You make me wanna **** myself
But I don't wanna die
I've just run out of ways to make you
Look into my eyes
I'm standing at a crossroads with nothing on all sides
No matter where I walk the future's always past the sunrise

I get up late each morning
Forget what I was dreaming
The memory of my eternal self
Floating through infinite kaleidoscopic
Worlds of pure imagination
Fades as easily as the lurid detail
Of the *** dreams I wake from in paranoid self-delusion

The church marquees say the skies open soon
But they lie
How could the answer to my woes be shining at me on the roadside
Between home and community college?
Everything is everywhere
But thus far NOTHING is here
There's an invisible dome over our heads
And none crane their necks to see beyond
The social order needs tending to
The community garden can wait
We'll always be able to survive on
Just-in-time produce deliveries
To our nearest grocery store
We have more important concerns
Like the meaningless jobs devised
By an unthinking static regime
To grow the economy and keep us from every questioning this way of life
The American way, the baby boomer's dream
Hidden within a shaded alcove
Of the barren wasteland we decided would suit the planet better
Than an unlimited, self-regulating biosphere
Powered by solar energy and God's will

We really did eat the fruit of the tree
But we didn't let it **** our egos
We didn't break on through
Adam and Eve didn't know the machine elves
And if they did the Vatican will have no mention of it
We must no longer be individuated consciousness
But we fail to see that we are ALREADY ONE
With each other
And everything
Even I cannot see it
When I spite my own flesh and blood
For a little bit of sensual grokking
Drinking in green eyes and pink lips

No jealousy!
I am you!
We are me!
Where does this jealousy come from?
The inability to SEE
OPEN YOUR EYES
OPEN MY EYES
1.7k · Dec 2012
First Grade Dream remembered
Owen Phillips Dec 2012
Finding love in odd places
Conventional beauties and non
Voices like molasses,
Faces like home
Memories like first grade dreams
A playspace without windows,
limitless
Running on the floor I see myself,
My first out-of-body experience
Run-crawling naked past
Mrs. Hooper with short gray hair watching kindly
I want to walk into inhuman nature with you
Dust off the polished seashells of past lives
And feel your heartbeat just once
1.7k · Mar 2013
The Open Doors
Owen Phillips Mar 2013
When you're gone I wonder when you'll start hating me
When you're with me I'm scared I'm not good enough
When I touch you I expect you to tell me to stop
When you kiss me I think you don't
Know what you're doing
When you sigh I know
You're tired of me

My memories of you are of things that surround you
You smell like your car
And the shampoo I watched you apply
In your bathroom sink from your bedroom floor
You say it's not right but the sweat from your armpits
Delights me as much as the scents you apply

You're smooth and unblemished like china
I scraped that perfection away
With vine fingers I scratched you
I am a scar on your perfect identity

You take what you want and give up what you must
You're generous but know when to play close to the chest
You're patient, you can get what you need

If I think too hard I'll do what I always do
Lose you by gripping too tightly
I want to constrict you when you lay beside me
The closer you wriggle,
The further I slip
Into jealous obsession
And lustful possession

We're wasting each other's time,
But we had time to spare
We're better than nothing, it's true
I love you in spite of my doubts but I can't help
Expecting you to leave any minute

We don't even see eye to eye on the things which
Concern me the most,
But I can't say it matters
We've opened the doors and accepted each other
There's no reason for us to turn back

Soon I'll have done what I always do
Driven you away or bored you
"It can't be neverending,"
My fearful mind tells me,
"You'll **** it all up before long"
And my self righteous sense says
You're not worth the effort
You're hopeless and fit to discard
My jealousy wants you to give up your lovers
Surrender your body to me
My loneliness hopes you won't leave and it cries
When you go to your own bed at night
My evil will wants you to drink yourself silly
And bend to my twisted demands
My shy side just hides in the bathroom and dreams
Of your smile, the blue of your eyes
My paranoid whimsy draws lines from your picture
To names dates and far out ideas
I'm sure you could be only my imagination
For you look like my fantasy girls

I magicked you out of the footnotes
And into the body of text
And now you are key to the story
And I don't know what happens next

I see you appear in distant past dreams
I fill in my memories with you
We walked the same earth for two decades
Together we walk from now on
My intuition left me so long ago
And you say it never existed
I hope my heart can be reopened
But I don't really mind if I'm dead when I die

To perish beside you would simply life
To be flattened together as one
We'd wake when our spirits were ready to dance
And we'd create EVERYTHING
To ABC
1.5k · Jan 2011
He Loses Himself
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
He shakes his bones around
And wears them overhead like flags
By night he stalks through shipping yards,
Amusement parks by day,
In time with all the parts he's stolen,
He will build a mausoleum
Seal himself inside just to
Emerge when moonlight fades from view
And night is darker than blindness

He stumbles in an out
His brains are full of fire
He tastes the morning sun
And falls aghast with pleasure.
He stands and brushes off
The filth and turbulence.
He barks into a mask
His sweat sustains him
He presses pennies through
Your skin and seals them
Inside their package there
Where you can feel them

He laughs indifferently
He cries with pleasure
Ignites the tablecloth
And folds it twice
He slips ideas into
The money boxes
He hears the rain upstairs:
What? What's that? That's a fat cat! That's a fine hat hat hat hat hat...

He calls his mystery
Out through the sunlight
The birds don't ask him why,
But spread the message
He stings on either side
Whoever watches
He wets his hands and sets his watch
He waits with pleasure

He gathers firewood
In stacks that tower
And when they tumble down
He loses power
The skies break down their door,
Ask him to wonder
Does he belong up there?
He knows the answer.

The skies defend themselves
They rain and thunder
They pelt him down with flames
And tear asunder
A hundred artifacts
Beneath his bootsteps
He grasps at them in fear
And dives on after
Into the tunnel here
Where others like him stay
Paved into the ceiling
He hears the clattering
On down the way
He chases after echoes
Trips over shadows
He loses himself

He loses himself with pleasure

He comments on himself
So no one else can
He's overweight and he
Could use a sun tan
He waits for you to leave
Before he'll follow
He feels inside his skull
And thinks it's hollow

He hears his name and he
Takes flight at noon so he
Can make it back again
Before the moon

He single-handedly
Gives up our secrets
To any spy who'll pay
A healthy ransom

He's spoken innocence and
He's spoken nonsense
He comes to me each night
Proposing new games
I've never played before
And always feared
He cannot calmly state but scream
His shopping list

He tries to change his name
He's on top of his life
Cos he's the only one
The only one who lives it
Nobody will do it for him
Nobody will do it for him
1.4k · Jan 2011
Underground
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
Some places underground, they say
The villains and their gangs
Are hanging out and smoking dope
And doing evil things.
Your mother and your preacher
Tell you not to get involved
But you'll still go and see them
Sure as planet Earth revolves

In the dark the only light is coming
From the wicked flame
Crackling in the fireplace
Like it's some sort of game
You get caught up in something
That you'll regret before the morn
Before too long you're wishing
You were never even born

Some places underground, they say
The evil spirits wait
Alluring and seducing us
All the way to Hell's gate
The Devil has a room for you,
Another one for me
How we'll stand eternity,
We'll just have to see
1.3k · Jan 2011
Textbook Example
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I

I came to see The King originally for a favor
I was a troubled writer
I searched around my home and inside myself for some kind of cure
A trick solution... Basically
I didn't want to practice
Work hard and get better.
Try and try harder
No, it was more important that I quickly and easily achieved greatness
That killed me.

I want to take you inside the moment
Have you feel the real emptiness of me
As a HUMAN BEING
As a LIVING SOUL.
There is nothing there still.
Arrested development.

Loneliness

II

It overcomes
And I try to make the decision to better mysef
But this unbearable loneliness
Inhibits action.

This was The King's curse
The King's curse this remains.
And all of it my own fault

This is me now
Walking aimlessly forward on a barren canvas
Blissfully ignorant to everything
And everything is nothing anymore
And nothing becomes something to me
A crutch I cling to for my life
And all of this is just wandering
Without hope of accomplishment
Of even the
MINIMUM
Requirements.
Minimum. minimum. MINIMUM. mINIMUM

I know some people like to keep me blind
And they don't realize it
They don't understand
Where I have lost myself
The worst part is owing that they have an idea
The worst part is KNOWING that they KNOW
That they KNOW

Knowing is important
I KNOW this now
The important thing
about knowing
Is not knowing.

Being helpless becomes the fire escape
And as I climb down to escape my landlord
I encounter other tired helpless wanderers
Slumped all over the floor, blocking several ladders down
Before I push them aside
Alienating them too

I can't let myself be friends
Or even friendly or respectful or even
Decent and not unkind
With so many people
Because they can't let me let them.

I tell lies.
They can't make me let them let me become any of those things.
Not that anyone would want to

I want everything I say
To be known by everyone
And understood and not judged
And forgiven so that I can start over.

Because the past year has become
A wrinkle in time
I have found the Time Machine
The simple mechanism
Which brings down worlds.
The most dangerous invention.
The beast that slew the kings of days gone by
And if I were stronger I would fight the beast
But I am weak and bend to their will

I am a textbook example

I am the kid in the southern gothic scene
I am the overdramatized case of redemption
I am the same as everyone who ever went before me and
I am the one who nobody expected, but
Then in a way kind of did.
You know. The textbook example.

I am the one who dreamed too hard.
And dreaming really is the only thing I do.

I try to create some reason I should buck the system
But creation isn't possible with that attitude
The ambitious negate the ambition
In this world which is always
Counter to the will
And disposition

To be rewarded for a passive existence would be a crime
It's irresponsible of anyone to let me have my way
But I can't blame them, it's easier that way
I make it impossible for them to stop me
And my punishment is losing the audience

And the audience is the only thing I want.

AUDIENCE. YOU'RE THE ONLY THING I WANT

I present to you a string of drunken accidents
Expect you to justify it for me
And fly away and
Sleep forever
Which is all I want to do

SLEEPING FOREVER. YOU ARE ALL I WANT TO DO.

Most unhealthy most unhealthy
Just give me a chance
I'm Michelangelo drawing caricatures on the boardwalk.

No I'm not.



III

I can't start to consider myself better than you in any way at all

And now when I wandered through the jungle
I stumbled upon a situation
A guy was trying to **** a guy whose giant hooves were crushing me as I walked by
And I fought them both and beat them all.

And now somebody else
Hand a transitory period
A mind-expanding event
Did something good
Like I always want to.

I'm a kind of Don Quixote
But less good
More bad.

IV

Desolate, washed up
Thin and swollen face
Barely tell the difference 'tween sleep and wake
Pigeons and rats, dogs and cats
Late at night it's snakes and bats
I just sit there numb, unmoving
Happy with my new solution
Saw no use in concentration
Drugs just give me resignation
Takes the key from my ignition
A year from now the new expansion
Will see me as an aberration
And up will rise a league of nations
Dressed in all the latest fashion
Take my name, identification
Throw away my medication
I can't rise to the occasion
I can't understand the notion
I can't meet the expectation
I can't locate my location



I don't have your full attention

V

How can I catch up
When you dropped my body off at the beginning
And brought my mind all the way up to the end?

How can I cheer up
When I walk into a confrontation
With the obvious intention
Of losing my head?

How can I shape up
When the way to do what's right
And the way to do what's wrong
Are just the same way?

How can I come out
When my life has been the open file
That everyone has rifled through?

Easily

Easily

Easily

Impossible.

VI

...orward on a barren canvas
something something
mumble mumble
wimble wimble wimble
Blissfully ignorant of everything
The surface of Mars I wander
Walk
I walk forward
I take turns
I act as if
I have a destination
I take turns
I walk forward

On the surface of Mars

After a while I think about nothing
Think about nothing
Think about nothing
Rhythms and patterns help move me along
Move me along
Move me along
The sirens of cycle are calling to me
Calling to me
Calling to me
And anything novel is something to see
Something to see
Something to see
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
Stuck in a loop
A loop
A lot of the time I get stuck in a loop

A loop

And then the loop
A loop
Becomes a ring
A loop
It wraps itself around my finger
A loop
And the ring rings out to you
A loop
Ring. Ring.
Wring ring
Of its ring
But observers are observers
And they observe me
And I am never sure of their intention
I know they care less than I know they do
But I know enough to stop them from knowing
Or at least, I know that
And I know it is untrue
I believe and disbelieve

VII

I wake up and look around
They've woken me from ancient slumber
Noises bright lights total confusion
I lash out into the blinding light
At nothing in particular
I look down at myself
See myself in this pure light
See the sutures and the scars
Scabs
All drawn on with pen and ink
But the flesh beneath is rotten too
Rotten in its shallow and unstable condition
Naked and afraid I lash out again
At nothing in particular
At myself in fact
But directed out at everyone
Nurses and technicians who monitored me in my embryonic tube
That is all anybody is to me
That is all there is around me
In this chaos I can see no option
But to relish in the madness
Bite the hand that feeds me, in a way
In fact, exactly, but...
Maybe it's about time it was bitten
No use deciding
Already biting
So I destroy so I may escape
But I escape and then I know not what to do

(inside the moment. Inside the moment of realization.
The sensational horror of staring off the edge.)

VIII

Sometimes when I'm
Crawling through
Alleys, over
Fences through
Drains under
The streets

I start to experience moments of lucidity
At times I am not lost and I'm not incognito
And at times I would be safe even in the wide open streets
At times I realize just where I'm going
And I can look with clarity and laugh at all the comedy
The desolate dark comedy of errors called existence
And if I wanted I could sidestep my own mask
Just tell the world that I've been kidding
Just limp away with a chuckle and a wink
Just gather up the pieces, start again, I really mean it this time
Just forget what has happened
I already have... Why couldn't anybody else?
They already did... What's the problem?
They can forgive, perhaps forget, but never will their respect return

And anyway I still crawl through
Alleys through
Fences through
Walls.
In secret
And I'm sure
The authorities
Still know where I am
I'm sure that
To be discreet
Could be the secret

And accusatorily I'm followed
And later punishment slips past
Looming overhead,
A hawk-like creature
Many biting heads
Head 1 is Guilt
Head 2 is Shame
Head 3 is Pain
Head 4 is Doom
Head 5 is Fate
Head 6 is Nature
Head 7 is Justice
Head 8 is Mercy
Head 9 is Man
Head 10 is Woman

Fearsome talons
Talons of words, forces, actions, feelings
Even in escape I have to fear for my survival
With so many threats around me there are no safe bets
Particularly when I try to get away
And in the struggle try to knock The King's curse loose
It's happened once or twice or even four or five times
But every time it finds me here again, again





IX

Now indebted to The King
My waking Hell now worse than Nightmare
The curse is pulling all the strings
My conscience is empty and bare
Violence, violent times I live in
A living extrapolation
And in a way it feels like Heaven
Drenched in much more exploitation
Create a monster of myself
To rid the pain of being man.
My life is nothing like this anymore (thanks in part to this poem)
1.3k · Mar 2011
I Drew You on the Margins
Owen Phillips Mar 2011
He's got
Reptile feet
We said
He's got an
Alligator totem
In his back door gutter
He's a little replicating pod
A salivating mangy dog
A little tin can of
Evaporating soda pop
We said.
He said
I'm a downstairs rat
On a hat rack
Building me a
Nice little roost
In a back lot.
Don't leave me waiting
I've got wide-open hands
1.3k · Jan 2011
Receptacle
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I cannot wait to fill containers with my thoughts and get them shipped away to distant places hidden behind me,
Replace them with a new receptacle whose organic sheen will be a beacon to me in this modern darkness
Where a metaphor can wander free on a range, and learn to be itself
Where new rangers will be hired to scour the tall grass, pull up by the throat any snakes parading as old artifacts
Where new worlds will be built, instead of these failed cities, where famine and mighty winds have kept us from our God-given destiny to conquer
Where the wrath of God will be our own once more, and all within will be pure and flawless, shining gold with the finest inks from all the land, stones of brotherhood and sisterhood stacked within
Where riches wide like Kublai Khan or Charles Foster Kane will stagnate in the basement, gathering more dust for everything we ever duel
All the mountains climbing over people when they reach into the sky and scrape the clouds for their sweet milk
All the deserts flooded in a moment of inattention
The white-hot valleys and dark black peaks enfolded on the canvases of foreign skies, easter-egg shell pieces falling from the stars
Skin of great hands clapping down upon the surface of the sea, stinging flesh and splashing sea serpents from the depths onto the shores of shining cities,
Where young children seek to fly away, and get lost at the precipice of
City life, the streets are shaken, but the people keep on moving, feet unsteady, stumbling along new winding paths leading under basements lain exposed in earthquakes
Underground laboratories sheltering themselves in desperation, they don't know when they'll resume their operation
Satanic possessions buried with the dead and scorched by signals from the clouds that send them sprawling out beyond the old horizon even further to the new one laying vertically against a field of unencumbered time detached from playing fields where rules define the lives of players and their women
Vandalized explosions spreading downward into catacombs where people living in obscurity can see they're just like me and let themselves be herded into tunnels where the darkness is preserved in a more desperate enclosure
Anything and everybody naught but deceiving
Getting to the lessons of our treacherous evening
Watching out for icicles that fall from the ceiling
Knowing that our skin will be removed when it starts peeling
Taking all the batteries so they can't not believe me
Floating all the money down on rafts the beasts are heaving
Quicker down the river while the back seat keeps on weaving
A believable excuse for the aforementioned deceiving
All within the new receptacle which waits for me at home
Believing and conceiving of destruction we pretend to know
When I reconstruct the audience they'll know and start applauding
Now I wile away the time kneading minds in preparation
For the grand beginning of my newest exposition
Where the many riches of disaster and of history
Will stand along with pieces of the funeral we celebrate
On every second Monday of the week of New Year's Eve
And new cases will be sent along with goodwill from hereafter
And together we will party and prevent the next disaster
Don't steal this. Please don't steal this.
1.2k · Mar 2014
Parking Lot
Owen Phillips Mar 2014
In the parking lot they wear glass masks
And pay authority no respect.
They devour each other and pay dearly for convenience,
They build fires from accumulated Parking Tickets

In the parking lot, the wilderness closes in
And spills over like unconscious thoughts
Into uncontrolled hallucinations,
Glinting fangs and severed heads shift in shadow
6 February 2014
1.2k · Jan 2011
Joyous Incantations
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
for Olle Dellblad*

"When a stranger awakes in the outside, he can't sleep through the inside." -Unknown Roman Poet

As he marched about at sunset, he reached out upon the dawn, found himself in his direct path to the grave. He realized the error of his ways, a concept which is alien to him, as he is so clever he nearly always knows exactly what he is doing.

He jumped down from the boulder and strode confidently and un-haltingly, ever the straight face toward certain destruction, which turned out to really be just alright. He felt the steady burn of such realities that he had to escape before he could reach the fingers of light which crept in through the crack beneath the door.

As he tried to keep his expression as mean and cruel as ever in his career, the much less reputable and times less powerful tried to rope him back in to the cruel life again. He ignored and destroyed him, and discreetly met and signed with the ones who had only yesterday wanted to **** him. He was stuck, completely unrecognizable in the company of the most dreadful of the ****** prisoners. Prisoners of sight and mind, and most of all spirit.
1.1k · Jun 2013
Wetness
Owen Phillips Jun 2013
Endless moments of solitude are the base line for existence
Hiding from the rain in an empty park under a picnic shelter
Watch the clouds move,
Watch the leaves tremble at each other under continuous droplets
The rain surges, pulsing
Heavy fall- light - heavy - light
And spots of sunlight sing vibrant green into the canvas of grey
Two sleek black crows
Iridescently patrol the parking lot
Wetness is a state of being
Wetness is the base line for wild creatures
We fear the rain for we have tamed ourselves
Imprisoned in the illusion that we can or even should keep ourselves dry
Owen Phillips Feb 2013
All these roads lead somewhere
Our dismembered beings will never see it all until we're dead
But we can die and make it back alright
And if we died, would we even want to come back inside?
There's something real out there and it'll always be there and all it takes is to pay perfect attention
Chance favors the prepared mind as we can see for ourselves
When we traverse this abyss
Learn to pay attention
Learn to dance with the patterns you perceive
The sonic tapestry is a music piece
It never stops , and it covers everything
Everywhere is always everywhere else
Music never stops
Listen to it beat you away
Is there a difference between me and the music?
I am you, after all, this poem is me
And yet it is you because I'm not the only one
And we'll never be apart until we die, but even then we'll be together, each as nothing
So beautiful, so absurd

Feel that breeze blowing your hair?
You are its breath
It escapes your lungs and you ride around a vibrating
Symbol, your thoughts swimming and crystallizing but never blinding
Swirling around you in coagulating meaning
The grass grows, it is your beard
Lying there in the field
Can you feel it any different?
The grass brought you here to lie down on it
The grass inhales you as you light it,
And fully grokked, your ghost breathes itself out in rings

Snap the rhythm and it ripples with the cymbal
Into love,
The path through remains you, it's full of stars and eternal youth
The gray dawn on the beach is a constant truth
Our dreamtime dreams of being awake

I woke up and thought I could fly
How wrong I was
Spying over the shoulder of God
I told him, "You're a character in my story
I am you,
I am more.
What can you do to me?"
And God looks back, knowing that what I say is true
For I perceive him and even as he marvels me with illusions he can never erase my mind
I don't even capitalize his pronouns

God and his carpenters joined the dancing eternal parade
Like the end of an Animal House knockoff
Where we send off parts of ourselves to new times and places we've never conceived of
Populating the universe
Which gets bigger the more detail we observe
An optical contradiction
For you are the greater resonance of both your
Self and your Opposite
1.1k · Nov 2012
If We Help Each Other
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
The meek rattle the earth
The battle distracted the clerks
The overseer dipped into his potion
As commotion in the open
Became action and it started gaining traction
And without pause the commanders reacted with factionalism
For a fracture collapses community structures
They rupture with signs of mistrust
Institutions induce us to fear our own neighbor
And keep our eyes forward and fixed on our labor
But me and you, that's the True True
Helping out when I know what I can do
Spreading gratitude will get you bread
And clothed enough to stay alive
Because we'll only survive if we help each other
1.1k · Sep 2012
A Sudden Truth
Owen Phillips Sep 2012
We can learn to fly wrapped in bedsheets
There are vibrations through every living thing,
That includes the inanimate,
These vibrations are at your control
When you learn to accept the chaos
Underlying consciousness
The ordered structures we perceive are fluid,
Physical boundaries, laws and regulations
Mean nothing when you traverse
Chaos


Driving through a rain cloud on level with the
Circling patterns of eagle flight
The brain is mapping its own neurology,
Coming alive the way it did
When it could still dream and imagine
1.0k · Mar 2014
Ripple
Owen Phillips Mar 2014
Come with me into voluptuous darkness
And let your eyes and ears dissolve
Until we're just bodies
Standing and swaying in the warm wet breeze that blows up and out from the depths of the cave
Feel your skin unwind and twist with mine

And beside myself
I scrutinize
My actions until I
Am nearly still, nearly silent
Except in the mind
Where I am perturbed, violent
And I can't find you.

I feel your warm skin pressing against me
But you're kissing through me
Loving the space behind me
And I keep turning back to see who it is
And nothingness stares back into me.
30 January 2014
1.0k · Feb 2013
All is Truth
Owen Phillips Feb 2013
Like glorious autumn follows carefree summer
You make me want to love again
At this moment I am on the upward arc of my heavy sine wave,
And all troughs, crests, and in between coexist
To predict would be to build a separate reality
An alternate timeline where logic follows the limited patterns of human rationale
But the sun's fingers on the treetops write minute programs into the corneas
And I watch them roll around my field of vision, shifting back and forth in unease
I smell old times that never were
How could that have been me?
How do I forget everything?

I'll live forever in this instant
For past and future emanate infinitely from now
And every ounce of effort I spend anticipating
Draws me down the arc to suffering
The impermanence of bliss, death's painful degradation
Even now it festers sharply in my right *******
Despite my calm certainty that I'm
Staring out into the infinite synesthetic landscapes of jazz and poetry

But the forces of control over us do not blind us
We ride fleeting waves of glory because in their brief moment they are all
Rising above the moon in the ecstasy mere words grasp impotently after
Mere human me never gets the satisfaction of disintegration for he fears his death
But powerful energy me
Eternal and all pervasive
Shall know for certain the bliss of abyss
Even in the mortal kiss of a few seconds' carnal joy it is death which ties us together

When our dichotomies are satisfied is victory true or do we in fact separate ourselves further from the ultimate reality?
Oneness can never be desired for to wish for it is to destroy it
The implication that there is something there to wish for oneness
Contradicts the very idea
But these differences are mere illusions
Contained within the singular presence of all that which there is nothing without
Nor even existence at all
For it encompasses the totality
It is the mere fact that anything ever existed
And it is the void into which shines no light
Enters no soul
It is the ground on which our entire dramaturgy stands
WHAT IS IT?
Will there ever be an answer?
It can't be God, though it is what is meant by "God"
It can't be defined because it is the substance of definition
It isn't the place we go when we die for it is all places
It is place

I can cast out my net into the whirlwinds of conscience and substance
And feel that I've latched onto it
And it can never slip away for it is all I've ever been
But I stir the ocean of love and the sediments are suspended till I can no longer see it
Like a fish can't see the ocean

In metaphor, in narrative, all is truth
1.0k · Feb 2013
You Got It
Owen Phillips Feb 2013
I had to get through to something before there could be any
Thing

There's outside and
            It'll go away today
I had to throw up my hands
Watch the diffusion of light
I had to dust the shelves
And I sneezed on the green paint
I know where dominance goes
Draining out the front door in chunky paste
I know the woes of individuality
Blunted on the kitchen counter
Smashed and cracked and left to dry in whitewashed open window
Waiting for you to admit you didn't have what it takes to make it
Or maybe it's even harder to admit that you do
1.0k · Nov 2012
Philosopher's Stoned
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
Swirling colors without names and sounds
What is this madness that we have found?
Feet barely touching the sky and the ground
Looks like I'm Philosopher's ****** all around

See that great saucer up in the sky
Hear how it whirs like an insects sigh
Signal them down so they'll give us a ride
And we can all finally see what's inside

What do you hear by the full moon's light?
The chanting of shamans on the solstice night
Follow the drumming and join in their rite
I'd say it's our destiny, alright

We're now Eleusinian women and men
The greatest adventure's about to begin
The galaxy's huge, and we're off to the ends
But the path isn't up and away, it's within!
967 · Nov 2012
Awareness
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
It's too late, I think
    Pouring myself a drink
They can't relate to me
    This ain't my place
I paced myself too much in my day
Now face up to a world where nothing's built for me,
Everything I see's off limits
I get it, I don't dig it.
What's left but to dial those digits,
Or did I forget em?
Best not try it
She won't buy it
She's got guys lined up
And I'm stuck in the last place

   First thing, morning time
Wake and remember I've already forgotten a dream
Light outside, no clock
Could be 9, could be 10
Could be 2 PM
Ain't showered in three days
Ain't shaved in 373
Coffee's warm, not hot,
"I've GOT to start waking up at more reasonable times"
But now it's 9 PM
And I'm trapped on the interdimensional
Adolescent internet tubes
In silence waiting for someone to laugh
And flocking toward what sounds like happiness
For ungodly hours
Finally falling asleep
To a Joseph Campbell lecture
Hoping the awareness of what I'm missing out on
Is a suitable replacement for devouring the ***** of Osiris in earnest each Friday
960 · Mar 2013
Co-creating With God
Owen Phillips Mar 2013
Complicit in His schemes
We seal our destiny as we approach it
As we scurry from the light of pure truth like cockroaches into the safe shadows
Where the giants can't see and pretend not to notice
We focus on crumbs and morsels we can see from our little caves
And dig graves to remember the feeble lifetimes we spend waiting for the safe shroud of night
And look not into the eyes of the gargantuan beasts who can destroy us with one stroke of their fist
Or take mercy on us
Feeding us their leavings
We eat the **** of gods
And fleas have smaller fleas to **** their blood
And geese return in flocks, the sheep huddle under shade trees
The gay bumblebees and the wasps in the storm drains
Say hello and we gather for games in the night, Forgetting each other
946 · Jan 2011
Man-Made Web Fluid
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I cough and take a furtive drag
And walk suspended magnetically
Through an alley full of cobwebs and decaying flesh
Leftovers is what it is
And I rip myself off
A piece of the wallpaper to roll a joint, while
Mechanical spiders traipse their plastic webbing
Replenishing the sticky paste
Cheaper to produce, but far from long-lasting
And
In the mirror my reflection holds a fortune cookie
Cracks it open
Reads aloud
And hundreds all around him hear him and applaud
But mirrors have no speakers
And all I hear’s the mechanical whir
The spiders’ servos stepping, sliding, spinning threads
Of nylon
In service of some sickly, sapient sadist
Who’s been slurping down the fluids in my brain
Nightly
And just like me—
To **** a man and throw the body in someone else’s garbage disposal

The smoke rings rise and float away
‘Til Someone sees them undulating
And I, in secret, *******
Into an old bible which I’ve renovated
Now it’s livable
A real great place to raise your kids up, as they say
I’ve added levels
Torn down all the walls
The living room’s the dining room’s the bedroom
As it were.
And I have to shove it ‘tween the dumpster and a rat
Who’ll never talk because he’s one of me
Though unlike me…
Forced out by higher powers than himself
At least…
Assumed powers.
Though as we know, dominion over Earth’s a fool’s game
That real estate investment you made’ll
Swallow you up before
Somebody else could lay more…
Justifiable claim.
I say this to be a comfort.
Though there may be none left for you.

And Someone follows blindly
Watching smoke rings through black sockets
Clawing his way toward
Clawing at my wallpaper.
My spiders run and hide in fear, their tails between their eight robotic legs
Thirty-two red eyes glow through the shadows
Quake with fear
Someone trips and stumbles through
With nylon clasping at his body
Never taking hold
He snaps the lines before the paste can even get a chance to stick
And I on high
Up fire escape, watch down with
Sudden fear for realization of the present
And Someone toddles away
No lasting damage done
I leave it ‘til tomorrow to recover
And shred my secrets into pieces large enough to read
And scatter them into the night.
926 · Feb 2013
Ego Trapped
Owen Phillips Feb 2013
I've always waited for this moment,
An all-pervasive coming-to-be
It has permeated my existence since infancy,
My illusory life that began when I died
When I fell from my heaven
Into the ego traps of Owen Phillips
The pathetic human shell I've come to inhabit
He is too weak to contain me, to enact my desires
He must be destroyed,
That I may return and be a self-actualizing soul
In the infinite blissful embrace of every imperfect beauty
I ever longed  for in my lowly, cowardly human skull
910 · May 2013
Life Experiments
Owen Phillips May 2013
Where do good ideas come from?
They shrivel away from the hypnotizing light of a virtual socialite
They grow toward the sun out above the clouds
Ever-present from birth to death,
They're the latest permutations of the same explosion that started that
Fusion core up there running
Running without stopping for a billion years
Fueling the experiments of life that consciousness spontaneously manifested
Across the planets
Each a test of a different vibrational frequency
Incompatible with one another but coexistent
Mercury's barren silver mines
And the Venusian valleys
And the regal red sands of Mars
And Jupiter's infinite wisdom and so forth to the edge of the Oort Cloud
And the green and blue ecology of earth, the waterworld
Where the entire drama we've seen so far has been carried out
The audience has grown in appetite
And doesn't always see that it too is the performance
But the unwilling blindness is all part of the sublime suspense of this subcosmic game
The planetary curiosity,
Can we make it? Would it matter?
We'll never truly die when we forget time
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
Find yourself in the sunlight
On an empty street
Where children clamber at you,
Crying out from behind bars
Parents watch your every move
Discreetly, through dark windows

Find yourself in a herd of people
Eating in the street
Defining by negation
Where they live and who they are
Standing at the top
And never looking up,
Knowing there is nothing.

Find yourself in nowhere
Where the world is empty till it sleeps,
Then comes alive on Sunday
For a modicum of prayer,
Then back to docile slumber
Till the buses come for kids

Find yourself in the future
Where your plans back in the present
Are all fruits in baskets high
Under piles of money, lifetimes lived
And children running by
Find yourself back there again
When present catches up
What little fruit was yielded
Has now rotted to the ground

Find yourself at the beginning
Taking off in seconds now
Slates are clean and records kept
Amount to next to nothing
Never will return be possible or necessary
Take the time not to forget
How things were back on Earth

Find yourself inside a moment
Never rid of its effects
Watching fate react the same way
Time and time and time again

Find yourself at the beginning
Find again what you had lost
When years of playing off the books
Has burned a toll upon your dreams
Remember how you first began and
Start that way again

Find yourself in someone else
Your mind still only faking it
When fate weighs down upon you,
Only you will answer, not he

Find yourself on a cold streak
Never making baskets, touchdowns or base-hits
Wondering if you even know the basics
With a secret and you know you can't erase it
From the way you move your eyes to the way you hit the pavement

Find yourself in brother wilderness
Dancing in the trees alone
Head adorned explodes with color
Body moving, out of control
Lossless clarity
Sympathetic delivery
Wickedness in elegance
Elegance in wickedness
Fighting off a demon
What a planet it must be
To host such proper honest people
Among such horror and corruption

Find yourself looking back again
Reaching out again
Letting down your guard
Missing out again
Find yourself cursing your shy blind eyes
Find yourself searching in foreign lands

Find yourself looking for losers now
Helping them stand up from the ground
Sort of like kicking them while they're down
Taking advantage of their unease
Discomfortable bodies
Earnest downcast eyes
Noble grasps for fitness

Forcing a needle in cold dead flesh,
Frozen and solid and rock-hard dead
Empty but for the last droplets there
Empty and thirsty for death to come
Empty and thirsty for life

Lit two hits with one match in the dark this morning,
Hidden in the bushes,
Lonely in the moonlight
Fearful of the shadows just beyond
Weapons all replaced with loneliness and freedom
Hoping for and waiting for and dreaming for the warmth of
Women in my gym class, women in my math class,
Women in my science
Women in my English,
Film class, lunch
Women in my film club,
Women hearing poems
Women eating people
Women smoking dank ****
Women in my last dreams

Waiting for the warmth of
Being high the first time
Getting drunk with women
Women making me come
Women having problems
Losing themselves to me
Smashing someone's head in
Breeding snakes in my bed
Breeding snakes in closets
Breathing down their necks and
Making them attack

Breeding snakes in e-mails
Breeding snakes in my school
Letting them all slither
Letting them in my caves

Find yourself outside a car, high on hella marijuana
Looking in the windows at the
Normal folks inside
See them have a good time with each other,
Somehow think you may have seen her
Eyes meet yours a moment maybe
Thinking of inviting you to join her in her world
You'd accept the phantom invitation in an instant
But you turn away and you just
Dream away, avoiding putting
Wishes on the line

Then when she peers into your world
Later when you read to her
She teases and arouses you to reach into hers too.
So you take this chance when your balloon
Is close enough to hers
To reach into her basket
And when you miss and when she looks away
You try to look as if you haven't
Fallen and aren't clinging onto
Your balloon by rope.

Find yourself a fortnight later,
Somewhere she can see again, she speaks to you, you blush and answer
Nearly blurting out your heart
Writing on and watching
Hoping she can see your mind just by the
Movement of your pen, hoping
She will be surprised, come on by,
Take you up on what you offer her, ask from her
And always hope to dream of her.
897 · Dec 2012
Linear Progress
Owen Phillips Dec 2012
I'm no shaman. I'd follow a plastic flashlight from the astral plane
Time moves fast
And the animal spirits can hear it
Lumbering by, tumbling down from the
Cliff as if it fly,
Destroying the world in its path like a bug in its eye
And I'm part of this Time
Sit on my *** and wait for the visions to come
Letting it pass when I'm wired up to
Vices so quick and so simple to fulfill
Time's faster and stronger than will
I matter no longer, it feels, but still
The shaman life's here in my bones
It's common to all those who know
Perhaps I'm not ready, too green in the head
Or unwilling to part with the trough where I'm led
Or the mechanical fingers from which I am fed
But no, I can see that life surely isn't for me
Though weeks may have passed since I last climbed a tree,
That is ME.
In the cold I don't need artificial heat
I'm strategically weak so I can't beat the system
But listen, the behemoth is plummeting now
It'll drown from its mass, but we shall not go down
For we'll swim with our heads above water,
Summoning fish to swim with us others
These spirits who're tuned in to God's point of view
We can trust them, they love us, they want us to continue
But learn not to follow
The horror and hollow persistence
Of linear progress, in Congress with Satan
That aspect of knowledge which makes evil possible
Sublime in its authority and strength
Designed to be defeated from beneath.
894 · Jan 2012
Stem Cell Bath
Owen Phillips Jan 2012
All around you
Digging outward from having done,
Ghosts and UFOs,
Witches and more
Share their secrets for once,
In a frank and unsettling manner
Weaving a textured foam atop everything
Wherein it could slip through the fans
And a miracle mirror directed the traffic
Formulas back to the state of banality
And ****** rhymes restore the mystery of synchronicity
While urges and desires shape our destinies for a while
An expectation of death blisters our emotional spores
And sensations that take no name become manifest
And the overwhelming desire to become
Is the stemsational masterwork
I invented the word stemsational. I don't know what it means.
883 · Nov 2012
Animation
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
I bled to be the rainwalker
Talking downwind, stalked by shadows, the night periodically erupts abruptly disrupting peace of mind and leaves behind the ears of corn that would expand with **** to what we now know as the sacred substance, understand this and we'll move on from this station, the hatred that makes us complacent, no directions can bee seen in green painted on the inside of our eyelid
But we did see them, when inner illumination activated the
Glow-in-the-dark properties that so impressed us coming down from the frozen mountain
Into the valley of golden fish worship,
Demons manifest in gargoyles,
Speaking through sages
Becoming animated in the full moon
Loony Toon ecstasy destroying bridges back to the sun worship
Which sees itself reflected in an empty black sky
875 · Sep 2012
An Invocation
Owen Phillips Sep 2012
Coiled fingers grasping around through
a series of grates alternating through spatial relation
Each subsequent orientation,
Rotated at arbitrary command,
Ham-****** reverie, like the acceptance of Jesus as our personal savior
Colors their every artifice
As if the void that consented to multitudes
Were mutilated upon reentry
Like the volkswagon beetle
Made to upgrade on demands
Or the chemical makeup of fleas
That have buried themselves in the festering skin
On the half opened light bulb of
Apostasy. Hardships
won and their articles
signed, comprehension reversed
With demands to the populace
Each stating unthinkable wishes
Since they've steadily become
Eager in the belief that
Their souls were unstuck
As puppets left to decay on the rain drenched fair grounds

The things I'm avoiding when I stray from the river

Confiscated boss on your vaunted sky
Bring to us your design
Sing to us the reminders we know that will
Teach us to drive our demands to time
And influence the outcomes ourselves
Give us the power to carry them forward
And sharpen the strength of our mind
It's us that you're looking for now
[the manuscript was unreadable from this point on]
The invocation worked on 1 September 2012
866 · Dec 2012
Tinnitus
Owen Phillips Dec 2012
Picking up mysterious interference
In supersensory organs
I'm struck with the fear of reality
Magnetic forces unnoticed
Hourly exacting imperceptible influence
Burying truth deeper into the murk of sensation

Micromovements hiding me alive
I'll never know unless I try to see
Which reality I'm knowing
And which I'm living
How many beams am I,
Cast through how many particulate clouds?
How much is happening to me,
And how much occurs within
And how much is shadow
Cast by straw men
Built by ghostly men of paper
Professionally seeking to
Confirm paranoid suspicions
That gurgle up from the darkest dreams
Black Magic cauldrons of Chaos
Manipulating minds
22 October 2012
862 · Jan 2011
Scienceman
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
He slaved away
Day after day
In his dark laboratory
Particle colliding
Seldom backsliding
Concocting something inflammatory
Constructing, among other things
GOD in his first iteration.
The being of pure Intelligence
Who synthesized existence.
And now He, stationary, laboratory
Constricted in movement only by perception
he cannot tell why He is so quiet.
So cold and emotionless.
But at the same time encompassing
All warmth and feeling
The scienceman
With all his sciencetoys
Might tell you he understands anything
But then could NOT
Even describe the APPEARANCE
Of GOD
Because when you experience GOD
Everything is known, an assumed fact.
God knows you
He knows most
That which He knows not
We can't know
For He created what we know
And the way in which we understand anything
We can't know
That which He knows not.
GOD existed there in the laboratory
The scienceman, the fool
He did not create God in his lab
He destroyed
Destroyed his ability to perceive anything BUT GOD
And so he couldn't think about
ANYTHING but these complex
Heavenly thoughts
Even though
To understand...
Context. Is key.
And since he can't perceive
Anything beyond GOD
Because GOD created his perception
He can't understand any of it.
ANY OF IT
So he babbles like a fool
And some believe him
Some BELIEVE him
SOME BELIEVE HIM


And like that he becomes a gOD
But a gOD is not a GOD
Is not a God is not a god.
And so it seems
Any less than GOD ought to be
NOTHING
And so the statues
Molded and assembled in China
Crumble apart and then...
RECALL.

And so I lay me down to sleep
And fear that GOD my soul may keep
And I shall die before I wake
The scienceman's mistake

To live in fear of what I know
Instead of the unknown
And the unknowable
Destroys my spirit
And my will.
861 · Jun 2013
Fear or Compassion
Owen Phillips Jun 2013
I've seen two
       separate
Shattered turtle shells (and heads and legs and tails)
Within a mile of my house in the past month
And there's a toad in the garage right now
But I didn't tell my mom about it
Because I was unable to catch it
And she has an irrational fear of frogs

My dad has killed at least a dozen snakes, he says,
        since we've lived here in Garner
He usually wields a shovel.
Such an act of violence
Is incomprehensible to me
Do I resist the killing of animals,
Even those that threaten me
Out of Fear or Compassion?
Both,
But they both go away
When the coyote leaps at my throat
10 June 2013
855 · Jun 2013
A Character
Owen Phillips Jun 2013
I always hoped you were talking about me
And it's so easy to project my own identity onto anything
I saw myself as an emergent phenomenon within your body of work
A character made up of your syntax
You'll write another poem tonight
          And you just started writing it
                   And you're writing it now
845 · Apr 2013
Robots of the Earth
Owen Phillips Apr 2013
How clear is the sky on a sunlit night
While we dress for the fire
While you and I dissolve away
And we die cell by cell
And our dust drifts away with us
And flows on the breath of the wind
That is keeping the insects aloft.
We can ride on their tiny fragile wings and they'll
Show us a life full of meaning
One of service to God
And we'll give them our energy, unaware,
Never thinking, only knowing
Even as our disembodied ego kicks over mounds and punches holes in nests
To see them swarm and multiply
Coursing fractally across our physical plane in mighty hordes
The birds swoop down and feed on their flesh
And the swarm can afford the loss
because these bugs give life to all the world
So selflessly marching on
Mechanical souls, robots of the earth
Keeping all things running smooth as clockwork
843 · May 2013
Forms and Feedback Loops
Owen Phillips May 2013
Let's give form to a thought at the back of my head
And let it grow, let it drag me away from my body
Let it stretch me out into the past and future
So I lose sight of what IS
Which is here, which has always been
It speaks to itself, playing that it can't know
For we know that all that we can know is but
Difference from Oneness,
And we know that inside ourselves
We are each other, nothing separates us, no,
We haven't yet identified ourselves definitively but we are
Stuck inside the ego while we play the game of time
But we're not going to get rid of it
We'll need it if the Saucers come
Or dead men rise to eat our brains,
But it remains, and as it should
A dormant tool that reawakens
Whenever the need emerges

Why not take these forms that start to rise and amplify themselves in feedback loops
******* them on the page and leave them there,
Outside the body,
Use that action as the symbol of our casting out, not our denial but our separation
From the notions that emerge of perceived
Injuries from outside parties;
All the pain is caused within
And comes from giving shelter to those forms that form their feedback loops
Demanding our attention, and insisting we'll be incomplete
Until we can fulfill their fantasies of pasts and futures
831 · Nov 2012
Really Happening
Owen Phillips Nov 2012
Anomic gloom and arrogant fear
Every invisible rumbling is a machine bent on my death.
Nothing conveys me to power
For I'm left to retroactively question each choice I make
As if logic was absent and I wasn't acting by choice
But impelled to be insolent
By the inner rust and complicated working
Of my meat-and-bones practice run
For my Faberge machine body
             (even as I admit this
I wrench open a kind of window
Into a mostly forgotten dream
Of a conference with some kind of
Goddess)
I'll soon be surprised
With a sudden initiation into reality
Elfin mischief and hysterical laughter spiraling around me in a climactic fireworks display
"This is really happening. This is what it was all about. This is what it's all been leading towards. This is where there's no turning back" it laughs in my face as the agony of endless ****** nearly knocks me senseless and motionless
There are souls caught up in the works and the kingdom of heaven is in disarray as we sort out our identity crisis of species here on profane planet earth. Gaia holds her breath and hopes we do not leave too big a mark when we explode ourselves.
830 · Sep 2012
What Am I Seeing
Owen Phillips Sep 2012
Nodding off
With darkness coalescing
As I close my eyes
Anthropomorphic shadows slink
And in my open, snoring mouth
Put back the words I've tried to spill
And seal them there within
1 September 2012
819 · Sep 2012
31 August 2012
Owen Phillips Sep 2012
Not far from home, not far
Small difference here, one there
Though miles and mountains have roped us away
Not much separates us at all

The same asphalt earth at our feet
And petroleum smog, only stronger
The rest is an outsized cartoon of our home
The same symbols drawn broader and bright

The twang of these voices may vibrate
Familiar strings of my soul
But this lamentable facet,
Like the barren mountainside,
Obliterated by thoughtless greed
Makes me ache in those very familial chords
803 · Jan 2011
Overman
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
Overman—
Follow you the music of a generation
Premonitions of the culture
Constantly unseating one another
At the throne beneath your soapbox?
Quarrel you with Parrish Priests and
Local Lords and
Moneyed Many and
Other Overmen?

Overman—
Speak you in uncommon tongue
Through veils of bourgeois idols
Through clouded visions blinding you to pleas from those beneath
Through impenetrable barriers about your plywood castle?

Overman—
Reject you any god lain at your feet,
Any miracle as trivia,
Any sincerity as foolishness,
Any ethnic pride as blasphemy,
Papal Pagan figureheads as absurdity?

Overman—
Have you children born unnaturally,
Brothers cross the moonlit gulf,
Sisters of incestuous intimacy,
Fathers of musical prowess,
Mothers of a warm genetic lab?

Overman—
Your day is coming
One hundred million of you
In synchronistic harmony
Of uniform variety
Of classless social rigidity;
Becoming one with the orbital network,
A single entity to govern life among the planets,
An immortal computer god
Expanding past the reaches of
The spent and worn-out orb
That keeps revolving, spiraling downward,
Closer, closer to the sun—
Overman, will you outlive them all?
Overman, you were there first,
Will you be the first beyond?
The term "Overman" comes from Walter A. Kaufmann's translation of Nietzche's *Also Sprach Zarathustra*
792 · Jan 2011
Last Will and Testament
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
Student? Intern?
Take this down on record
Preserve every word on paper
As if somehow my words could become important after I pass.
No, I'm still just an old fool.
I WANT TO SEE what I've missed all these years locked up in the
Laboratory, but as I take my
Penultimate breaths, I realize that I never shall.

May he or she who should inherit this sum of tortures and damnations
Remain a noble heathen, as I did in my final years.
I beg of you not to let your souls
Slip into the unknown Blue as I have
Though at first it seems divine
To propel yourself through space
AND FIND OUT THE SECRETS
OF ALL THE LITTLE Planets
With courage and with Virtue
Eventually you'll end up tired. Spent.
Exhausted. Your soul will reach unspeakable depths and we shall see how you fare in those darkest pits.

What's that student? Oh No!
Don't worry yourself over me,
I assure you, I only kid.
I am not to die for years.
But this message which I
Asked you to preserve
Was to be my last Will,
Which I'll send in the post
To my son, who forgot me
And lived a deliberately
Fatherless life

It's no wonder The falling of the moon
Doesn't always coincide
With the rising of the sun.
It's the way that the prairies
The deserts and oceans
Have no measured value
No monetary worth

So keep on recording, I beg of you, friend
And soon we'll be sending this letter to my kin

I want you to take
My assets and wits
And not just my agonies
Though the punishment fits

I once had the option of giving them up
There was no reason not to, so I refilled my cup
With wars and religions, this serious stuff
So I decided to keep them, the risk was enough

And now I entrust everything to you
I am sure you'll be wise,
Respectful
Treat it well
And yourselves

Yes and then we stop the tape. Life stops recording
Now I'm free to cry in secret
All the promises I made will never be kept
One in particular haunts me, and yet I'll never keep it.
If I truly die, I don't know why
My candle burns out and blinds my eye

I can't resist, I will give in
I hope that life begins again
To be without a consciousness
I'm unaware of what I'll miss
Again in my new laboratory
The one of death, of purgatory

My final evening with my mistress
My perfect farewell, so romantic
A way of ending unfinished business
If she knew why, then she'd be frantic

And now my waltz
Comes to a halt
And I confess
To Father Death

Intimately these were my last wishes and desires.
Fulfill your dreams my son, before your time expires
791 · Apr 2013
Kaleidoscopic Porthole
Owen Phillips Apr 2013
There are no bad people and there
Are no bad things and the
Music's always playing, always ringing, always singing
Cos the music that surrounds you, penetrates you, lacerates you
Is no different from the substance of your being,
All vibrations merely differentiated unities
You are gliding through that energy field
And consciously! How strange indeed
You're a kaleidoscopic porthole into
All that can ever be
You keep moving through time,
Accidentally rhyming, caught up in the games of the intellect
And introspectively, you can't believe what your
Mind tells you you are
Because you are and you aren't
There's not one true way to know it
If a word could capture what you are,
Then it wouldn't be true
Because the thought and spoken word
Is skewed so distant from the root
But the word is just a path to understanding what the source could be
A way to help the others see
What's going on at the edges of the galaxy
Next page