America, you don’t need us anymore
so we’re going on vacation.

You’ve got religion to whisper in your ear
and sing you to sleep at night,
and culture of homogeneity to get you up
and going on cold Monday mornings, coffee in hand.
You’ve got plastic prophesies to keep you alive
and sick on medicines from unrhyming
peddlers of purpose.
You’ve got assumptions and science to teach the kids now
so long as the chemists abandon their really significant digits!
You’ve got calculus problems and practical things to scribble
on the back of the wornout canvasses of Monet and the recycled
papyrus of Parmenides—nothing’s changed.

You don’t need metaphorical ice cream.
You don’t need symbolism of green ideas.
You don’t need moonlight anymore.
You don’t need breezes on summer afternoons
unless they’re part of a lemonade ad.
You don’t need stars.
You don’t need hope or purpose or prosperity
that can come from the meaningless lines
of poems.
You don’t need us anymore, so we’re leaving.
That’s it.
We’re done.
Goodbye, America. It’s been
fun.

for all of us, star-seekers, feeling now alive

for those with the ghastly skill of being alone
amid crowds of people
lost in thought but ok inside

for those who see streaks of madness
fly round, illume patterns/puzzles
grasping scales celestial to infinitesimal

for those playing games with reality
snogging smug wealthy boys in stairwells
oxygen bonds breaking the sublime

for those forgotten under dirt, asphalt & spot
buried dates and dashes no splashes of memory
just naked nihilistic Precambrian bones

for those nameless from identity crises
smiling glibly through missing teeth
embarrassed by circumstance and the folly of age

for those trapped in jaunty youthful frames
lacking mind's dessert: veneration (contradiction)--still
wisdom perilously choked plus feared

for those chanceless beings fate sweeps & sooner snips
chuckling at theodicies while they still can
some soothed by snake oil--I mean Purpose--
then just dying

and we're still uplifted? we are still star-seekers.
we, divorced from form and aching for the sky's response
hear nothing, but we know

eyes' lies are all around us and inside
they wear us out and keep us moving
they are ancient dull clichés, tarnished but
they have the audacity to make us shine, aspire
they are what your grandma says to get you to behave
eyes' lies are true:

we are still star-seekers

Yellow spheres are terror to the daydreamers
whirling past faces disgraces grazing ears
Recollections of multipurpose room taunts
And Mr. Neptune's rolled eyes as he gives up

Just send me to my fortress of books n poetry
Let me slip away unnoticed and forgotten
between the blue carpet and shelves inside
Let me bang my head on the laminated particle board

I disappear in here where it's just me and three thousand years
floating historically through black & white epochs
Alone, the world is heavy but not so much as my feet
planted and feigning mobility as roots become weeds

I think how dumb it is to talk of my Soul or to sing in the shower
or my car or alone in my apartment with stereo blasting
It's strange how the red is everywhere and I can't imagine
any longer when I'll finally need to draw a line

For you are not with me as I am with me and I'm green
But I can't say if it's in my stomach or in my eyes
And despite the heaviness I feel like I could be swept away
I could flutter up like one of those winglike seeds in Spring

Heaven is no place outside either, and I suddenly remember
That this all started with a love for the color orange
And I realize the silliness of red and yellow by themselves,
still wondering if I am bathed or baked in the warmth.

When all you want is just to think and make
But like a wheel in tar ambitions slow
Create your world all full of great mistakes

To be yourself when all the smiles seem fake
Can feel as if you’ve been punched in the nose
When all you want is just to think and make

****** onward for this life is yours to take
Please wait before you walk dark paths alone
Create your world all full of great mistakes

Though all of hope may freeze in frozen state
It’s still just one foot down, one up, to go
When all you want is just to think and make

There’s never so much as you think at stake
And errors which don’t **** will make you grow
Create your world all full of great mistakes

If nothing’s left to do for heaven’s sake
Eschew the past; it is your only foe
When all you want is just to think and make
Create your world all full of great mistakes