Turns out,
I’m an idiot
who knows nothing and does no good.
I watch the moon go down
every couple months
to readjust my calendar
and pour my non-organic coffee from
glass pots made in emerging markets.
You may say we’re losing the world
or that the Earth should be preserved—
Fine.
I **** at the feet of your bourgeois children and their plastic, antibacterial lunchboxes.
For me there is no world to lose.

Hallelujah, I’ve found you
one I could have chosen.
Were your body pliant, capable
more slight, more saudrey
a subjectivity
easily disposed

I would be able to hold your breath, capture your voice
contemptuous, mocking and wholly undue
spending more than a half a day
being who you are would make me hate you--

But for a morning, maybe from eight to noon
I’d take on your face, look straight in you,
my mirror.
Shout out my name three times
with hope, I would appear,

without your bated breath
from jagged mirror, foggy-eyed by shower
I'd be able see me touch your body, glistening
parting your quivering lips for
myself inside, to feel your smile.

A phantasm to myself.

I want you, my significant other
my lover,
my ontological
displacement
of
milky
misfortunate
malaise.

Your substance is my fortuitous down-going.
My ship-sinking speculum.
Desire, mediated by a lack of being-there.

Klage.

Not every word is a masterpiece--
nor every strand
of beach.
alone a cabana-
canopy of sky
surrounding earth:
the atmosphere breeeeeeeeeeeeeeathes
our names into
ocean
and ******
on the ground, as
well.
with dangling-*******
clouds
brimming on the horizon;
what a glorious day!
what a shining moon-shine
standard evening
shining!
wonderment of wonders
shone a seat by flashlight
to the theater alone
alone
alone
the stars are laughing as
we point above
our cabana
and salivate.
without knowing
it
the beach shudders its
******
and we catch *******
with our eyes.

I need you
to combat dreams
I can’t control;
to keep me warm
in-between
seasons and days.
You help me see.
I’m not addicted.
I just have high ex-
pectations for my mind.
The connections
you fasten;
the faltering awareness
you calm and persuade
to remain.
I do want you here,
boiling with the pressure
of my stomach
like the worries which
brought you into me
from a cup
poured by my hand,
shaking.
While you were emptied,
I smiled, and thought of
the focus I’m gaining.
Please disperse yourself
throughout my body.
And tell the thoughts you bring
along with you to
leave me in peace
with my imaginings.

The possibilities are perched and overwhelming with their weight
the withered autumn branches of my street. Whining sinew of my mind
breaks off and flutters down, like leaves from life's misbegotten tree,
a petal or a timid accusation.
What now am I left holding here-- vulture feathers or sapling leaves?
That girl, with tufts here and there, dropped each quill as an embossed coin, effaced
by intrepid maids vacuuming my room of cloistered couches since
soiled by madam president during isolated summit which won't convene again, her golden
gown of rues has not a stitch of fabric for a single pocket more-- sloughing brittle currency under cushions
like Fall foliage under conscious footsteps striding in constraints of time.
She picks that soggy garment from the cleaners' with the sideways background ringing of
mistrust, apprehending
silenced, patient voices; detached from their seams with dis-acknowledgment--
the dress, comes by on the carousel and
fingers her feathers with its motion.
They're washed with him, her feathers and the dress-- shored up by late summertime’s ebbing
flood that year.
Each gust eddied unaccounted toward the beach our circumstance.
What held intact the branch of life and plucked that chord for dancing in the night?
The self-same vibration that severed from the soil his trunk, which was the ship's ballast, with the adz, my will, my want
and hopeful mooring --
cast and sunk, thus.
Sound waves clashing with our spinning crystal surface of wisping nodes
plunge now beneath themselves-- frail, flaxen and woven with water.
Held out near Tyre's port a scanty mast,
thought out for catching air; forfeited this vacuous, unstable mole', their bottle
poured on water to make earth, which swells as moistrous and abridged
as a musty vestule, corked and knotted in the wind.
Encased through sanction, hold and curiosity--
the tine rubbed and singeing, loosed you from me. Those brazen beads, sand percolating, lie with us.
We are now misrepresented; sniffling as sows after the trough who root.
The woman-leaves let will be known-- to dry up and disavow
their lecherous beauty by shriveling in the tepid sun of
late September. Does too, the feather-man eviscerate the model of time
in his way of losing each and every granule
that is the ground which swells with frozen rain 'til
Spring, then thaws and flies away. Or was it
their dainty, dizzied rose petal, suckling smog from sky since birth that has weather-worn
their gowns sheer silver, freshly hewn anew, by being ripped and pressed about
which came to stifle thoughtless dew?

I no longer mind
the laughter of people,
leaves falling,
sun rising—
all is destitution,
squalor,
our dirt-clod--
Earth.

Moons snicker, too
at our moon, which,
sneering at me
becomes dizzy
from its hypocrite
cycle.

Pulling tides,
the way it has
a quarter-century,
my life.

I want you
to die;
I want you all
to die before I do.
Moons, stare on.

I want to steal an abandoned air-
liner for you.

As far as possible,
I will climb toward
your towering grimaces
crashing, directly,
into the ground
without wonderment
or acknowledgment
on this Earth.

Trending topics
of the day
could not take stock of my
demise.
Shallow conversations
sit on barstools
put off
for eternity.
They showed me love
by suggesting
“change”.
I show them
love
is coming back
to earth
and lying with their putrid
bodies
against my will.

A few titles
A few songs
A few artists
Combine
for compound fractures
of my consciousness

For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing
     Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,
     And day by day the fury swells aflame,
     And the woe waxes heavier day by day—
     Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows
     The former wounds of love, and curest them
     While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round
     After the freely-wandering Venus, or
     Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.

Yes, a swollen skin
fragmented bone
I walk
and flee her capture.

Today, I watched a heavy insect of
indeterminable species
repeatedly slam into the wide picture windows
of my college library’s
third story as I read a book
analyzing one poem
Teilhard de Chardin wrote
after carrying casualties
on a stretcher
all day
from a war for which no name is presented
to me.

It is inferred de Chardin's time tells of world wars,
yet his poem deals with virginity
and mothers
although of each he was in just one.

Resistance to our ****** urges
and the potency resistance drains
was compared to
minute prosperity provided by the pursuit
of retaining 'innocence'.

The book was named "Eternal Feminine"
and its author's argument functioned
as a double victory for remittance
to a cloud kingdom
and shivering loneliness
seen through invisible barriers
on earth.

Hooray!

He seemed to be
rationalizing the struggle
with sickly pleasure
from repetition of denial.

But I lost interest in his foolish, war-time words.

Watching the flying thing reverse directly,
then continuously speeding ahead
into various windows
which were thought to be bare air,
confused and jolting with every attempt
and frantically circling in my sight,
I was led to thinking of a
demolition derby
at a fairground to which
my parents brought me
each year
of childhood
in the Autumn.

I watched, fascinated
machines stave-off
self-induced decimation
until the very last collision, after which
their motive force removed itself
rushing off to pilot
some variant of bumbling insects
and stretchers
in the form of French theological poets
throughout the past
carrying bodies
into the hands of a college student
backing up determinately
to burst through, toward the one who bares
no sons, who may become warriors
or demagogues.

This kind, secular Hannah
crosses my vision
walks out
beyond frames and doors,
clothes flowing with her
body, like a
sweet corona
sweltering with unseen heat
the fading horizon
of my day.

He sees her reflection on the moon.

Now he may not see space’s vacuous expanse
while
she may not be able to touch time’s clear fabric,
although they each feel
glass’s frozen liquidity
in silence.

Each
continuously strikes their head
against motion’s transparent barriers
with force
stubbornly flapping
into matter
with passion
and wings pulsating
toward a new direction
which does not seal them off
to the outside
of a building
in which they would be swatted,
punished for what they are.

Then the moment passed
and the sun’s thousand year combustion
had reached my neck
and penetrated matter
to massage me;

for eight and a half minutes
it travelled
toward a shadow I pushed
across the table
when the sun suddenly was helpless
to tell me where I ended,
which windows I flew through.

I was on top
de Chardin’s stretcher
as he looked at me to say I shouldn’t
charge in that way,
but I fell down
when he let go
or he evaporated
when I doubted he had lived.

Pressing my cheek against the glass
I reversed my propulsion
like the flown insect
and sounded again
my body's tinging
reverberation
on every surface.

I was fading out
Searching for the horizon
Fading on... To the wind
My sheets carried ideas,
my sheets restricted flesh to flies
Eyes sailed... Did my bed
On...                 My tears
Four years... Toes tingling with numbness
Held sky... Inside this room
And that
of prior walls dooring
to that dock
I waft... Away
I waft...
After the fade
I will waft

On the Mediterranean coast of Africa
I waft
with the seeds of a Phoenician queen
in my corpuscule
her sweet fruit
being eaten
by your
heavy tongue
perverse, Moloch sun.

Sometimes, to scream seems like the only hope i have for eternal life; to scream and have the vibrations reverberate throughout the universe until it vanishes. How terrible it is that this hope is so callously dashed in the next sentence. How terrible that the universe will end. Will humans be there in the end? I suppose not. It seem we’re not very likely to make it past another generation or so. Oh well-- it wouldn’t really matter, then, if my scream did reverberate forever and the universe never ended; there wouldn’t be any humans to recognize it, analyze it and understand what it is that I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn’t even be able to explain if someone were to hear me the second I was screaming-- they probably would’t ask me either. I’ve only screamed a few times in my life. The ones i can remember were late at night on the side of desolate roads where i wouldn’t be asked to give an explanation; which was haunting. I almost wished the moon would pivot in space, reveal a mouth, two eyes and ears then ask me “now what’s all this about?” In either instance, my answer would have been alternating uncertainty about my future and loneliness. I might have even expressed discontent in my life condition. The moon might have responded “you control your own conditions,” but that’s only becase the moon represents society and the generalized other. I’m glad the moon just stayed the moon; a lifeless, crater-riddled celestial body incapable of empathy. I was jealous of it.
But here i sit now, tense and distraught. I’m not taking initiative in my life; what makes this worse is that if i were to set any goals for myself they would be social constructions of what other people value. My entire being is dependent on these others and what I think they want from me; without them, I couldn’t conceptualize myself. But, as it is, I see myself as a lonely, scared, miserable wretch. This is because I am not living up to their expectations-- or at least I assume not. My father tells me that all he expects from me is to “be happy” and “be the best you can at whatever you are,” whatever that means. I think I’d rather be expected to become a convicted felon than a “happy” person; at least felony is a definable and achievable condition. The only word more vague and meaningless than “happiness” is “love”.
So, I’m not happy-- I’m roughly the opposite, although that is a contradiction of terms. I don’t try to be happy, because I know it’s impossible. The people looking for happiness have just transposed the term onto the concept of God and made a religion of hedonism. They give offerings to their God in the form of unrealized self-disdain and misunderstood feelings of guilt, and most of them lack so much in introspection that they still attribute this to original sin, i.e. being human. They don’t even feel foolish when they worship the old gods. They don’t realize that human existence is that of God-in-Becoming; even though they relate to themselves as such.
It is this becoming God that troubles me and makes me want to scream. It is the desire to Be and to Know. Because we are conscious we cannot escape it, but we are liable to hide ourselves from this truth. Our individual-self (the Ego) only insofar as it is experienced by others. It is their reaction to this experience which enables us to make hypotheses as to our actual existence, and our behavior is the way we test these hypotheses. We are desperate to understand how others experience us because it is the closest we can come to experiencing ourselves. The only way, however, to run a successful psychological experiment is to maintain a control group, and in our private experiment, the Other (society) is seen, contrary to nature, as such. We treat it as a static monolith from which we read our name and Being. It tells us what we are and can become, but we look to individuals in our life to refute what the Other is telling us about ourselves. This is our second misstep in our search for the the true Self (Being), because we alter the random sample, deliberately or otherwise, to demonstrate not the truth, instead merely the opposite of what the Other has said. We do this out of necessity, in order to create meaning for ourselves and the only way to create meaning is by transcending the contingencies of Being and Consciousness. We use our consciousness of the Other to create our own Being and since this Self is unconscious and mute, we ask individual others to view it. Our Being thus becomes a shrine to the Becoming-God our Consciousness wants but can never realize. It is an empty shrine, where we wander until we forget the Being’s relation to the Self.
In essence, I am at the shrine of my Becoming-God tonight. And instead of lighting candles or screaming, I am wondering why I have come because I fail to recognize my Self at its alter to destroyed contingency. In the past I’ve laid down decisions I have made, actions I have taken, as so many animal sacrifices and lit them on fire. I’ve consulted my Being as to what to do and what to think about my life. Tonight I am unconcerned with this. My notion is to burn down the temple; vanquish my Being through overwhelming Consciousness. I want to deny my Self and its inevitable destruction in an unfeeling universe by destroying it through contemplation. Why should I slowly creep toward death, when it seems the only moment in life which is coherent and understandable? Why extend life? What is worth experiencing? What drives me on? The answer, again, is the illusion that I will once and for all deduce the Self from my interactions with others and recognize in it a transcendence of Being and Consciousness. I want to profess my Godhood, and in so doing enable myself to postpone death, until the final end of the Universe. I see my death as oneness and God, the gentle ebbing of all energy in the Universe into nothing, which is the ultimate meaning of life. All meaning is destroyed in the burning out of the Universe, and in my becoming-God I witness the destruction of all meaning, the only true meaning. Until that moment, the end of my human life is simply the snuffing out of a candle, or Consciousness. Forever after, my body is a waiting room to annihilation.
To destroy the shrine is to delineate nature and its synthesis with the human mind. This is not a cognitive parlor trick, but an active acknowledgment of reality using the body. I stand beside the charred ruins of what I built in my mind and am unaware of this fact as it simultaneously ceases to exist. This forgetting is impossible in death, because death is without Consciousness and there is no sense of loss. Therefore, I can only appreciate the fact that I have destroyed my Self in becoming something new while I live; a different, untested Self. I have thus oscillated to the opposite of Consciousness and become Being. I can no longer view myself and depend on others reactions to establish my new Ego. At the same time, my Consciousness is outside my Being, gathering stones for a new temple. My Being will take on the sheath of Consciousness at the entrance and commune once more in the act of becoming-God.

There is a certain moment
in a man’s life
when the *****
of ladies
around him suddenly
and irrevocably
evoke the image of
a stray feline
from his childhood.
Rigid, near the bushes
with a sharply arching back,
engorged ****
and ***** tail.

Their watchful eyes, playfully intent,
reflect
the drops of rain
falling from the naive face
of an eager boy approaching
too close.
Paws haltingly skitter-gone.

Since this observation,
the hallways of our campus
tend to sway,
like the leaves beside
my grandma’s house
with the plastic window-well covers
not yet shattered by the hail
on that spring evening
after the little league
when I nearly had one.

The windsock next door
on my father’s farm
let each subsequent summer pass,
undetected on the heals
of a breezy, desert thunderstorm.
Before it was so tattered by time
unreplaced and frayed
next to the yellow, coregated shed
where you can still see the dent
from my sister crashing that old golf cart.

Years from then, she did her small, black
Honda in Colorado
with a T-Bone
on a U-Turn.

And my dad was in the hospital that winter
but all I remember is a pointless half-time
football toss sponsored by a cola-
company during a Nebraska game.
The people, trained like chimpanzees,
to test their skill one time
and get that life-sized check.
I remember thinking
"What sunken imprint on a folding bed
does it refill?"
After Dr. Pepper's rotation had
ended.

And these books I read
are shaken branches
behind the fleeting beauty.
Their words, silent admonitions for
desire.
The invitations
from those inky bodies,
their full form and sharp curves,
are not meant for my eye.
Momentarily,
their presence ***** my head and purses
my lips,
beckoning
another species--
a life-form
less aware.

I am glad each cat slipped past that
unread sign-post
and made it to the horse pasture.
Unlike those three moldered fur puffs
each bunny became
beneath my bed.

I hope they had their litters--
and their offspring had their litters.
And the nation of cats had its litters.
And the world of cats had its litters.
And the universe of cats had its litters.

But it must stop somewhere,
with cats.

Meandering footsteps throughout the Autumn darkness
Toward each sallow recluse of a moment
A simple ending ceaselessly beginning
With each sniff of smoldering residue from the grass
Beyond the harsh horizon of what may as well be eyelashes
And inside- yes, inside
Within the blank fortress
Is a scoundrel of a man, who
Knows not for what he’s come?
To die, dear dalliance; fickle, frolicking foal of the Frühling!
And out the pasture’s gateway
In the Autumn, in the Autumn
Unaware
Above the marshes and the moon-orb’s
Sweet icing on the water
In an eerie sort of night
Forgives the foal a mare’s ear
Silently reprising in delight
Yes, Yes it is the Autumn
And the riders are far from sight

Remnants of firecrackers litter parkgrass, splitting seams once encasing them;
exposed twine ribs attached, stretched out beneath shade like sunken reliquiae
dashed against the earth, as freedom is, withered paper husks abound.
What explosions in the sky were heard
above the quietus of patient submission?
Tracing the dotted white clouds to our horizon with thread and colored cloth,
held breath until nighttime, expelling then
-- as wind does each languishing puff of smoke--
from our lungs, sordid smells of Summer; vanquishing the past.
Isolating each other, like memories on kodak prints
we separately cling to that sleek filmy acquaintanceship of proximity and hue
-- disavowed pariahs and hearts lit anew.
Fused inside one sallow skull-box, which doubled once for holding shoes, we linger.
Ideas, impulses and infringements on the eye, until-- once--
bound, unbroken, encased and unspoken,
our ribs unwind with dew-- after,
unstitching seams outlined from heaven and inundating visions with brightness
we descend.
Violent fumes of childhood intercede amidst our shaking fuses lit.
--and BANG!

When I was younger, and chat rooms were relatively new
I would bring up the topic of suicide. Sometimes,
contemplating the reaction my death would get from others
I would lie on my bed, sobbing.
It was just a mental exercise
to soothe myself
with the thought of my own death.
I saw this internalization of conflicts as the ideal approach--
mortality, akin to a train-line I could exit at any stop.
Where you pull the chord determines context for your plot.
I try not to romanticize suicide or see it as a solution; suicide is simply a neutral alternative to life, which is full of painful and pleasurable experiences.

Abounding in delight I think I will be alone forever
I may tarry down each avenue, sordid; even longer
Dangling suspicion toward emptiness
Hold me by the tail with each imagination
I will; I do-- While I am without that
Which impetus and hostility abashed-- it’s probably true
Dangling suspicion holds me

Your subjectless Objects of capital, the agency bereft GDP drones, O! America,
They are spilled on the pavement, an upturned ice cream cone of discontent
puddled and lackadaisical, they fester beside the hydrant.
Your news agencies and malls, the damp dishrags of industry,
snagged on the nail of defenselessness and exploitation, only infect the wound.
Each mess of a person, walks through the sugary malaise of your suffering
dragging it on to the next in communal forbearing; its contagion, its disease
is so many cysts on the mind of those syrupy vacuoles for capital; the private,
malignant caverns of dewy-eyed trust in humanity, insipidly drawing the rancor to a boil,
without understanding a thing.
You pride yourself on much, without eyes for the condition of your people,
O! America.
People, shackled in your jails, are so many ideas bubbling as to the cruelty of your nature
punctured by the ignorance outside.
Draped in your obnoxious flag, the cites are as malicious as the countryside, toward life, toward knowledge.
You prop-up the price of their crops, the know-not-whys, who plunder the earth to prolong population growth and consciousness-decline.
America, you eradicate discontent with cattle cars, filled with questioning life forms, gasing our minds and burning our bodies with your arrogance.
Like a popcorn bag steaming in the microwave; you have been left alone too long, and have developed a flame-- an inextinguishable flame of reason.
You have been disavowed too LITTLE.
You must not be allowed to expand any further, lest the impoverished bag of flesh which is mankind will burst.
But still you stagnate, until your violence curdles with drones and bombs patrolling our synapses.
Our brains digest your violence against us and **** it out with an abused dialect of greed and hate.
Then you ask us only that we eat from your refuse heap of burnt kernels from the “truth” of market economy.
You taste like cancer. You rot the mouth of competent men, and satiate the anxieties of those who would turn against you-- with a refreshing ice cream cone of absentmindedness
dropped on the ground and melting.
But the stains you made will always taint the sidewalk of man.

Forget the apprehension,
Let your clouded breath hang
On the rearview you see from
Your memories
Move in that direction
As tears
Dangle, restless, longing for solid earth
Dewy, un-coiffed grass
Emblazons today, still
Underneath can be beyond…
Above can be behind…
Shrouded horizon spins unnoticed
And all-encompassing endeavors
Bending light ‘twixt fate’s fingers
Like moments through a color-arch
Acrid rumors, sweat
Spew from our stolid, misshapen bodies
Soaring, metal box with wheels
Over holt, into the harbor
Hence comes the tide;
Hence comes the tide!
Underneath becomes beyond
Above becomes behind!
Anxious melody of air-springing
Pervades the cacophony of living
Can you forget asphyxiation,
So long
As saturated lungs keep breathing?

for fifty
dollars
you
park
your car
inside
one
of these garages.
I drive and drive and drive, knowing
that I will not have a place
outside those garages.
I spent fifty
dollars
on a purple v-neck, orange crew cut
striped shirt and ten socks;
it was my birthday money.
I’m going to go inside
restart the laundry
so it will be warm.
My apartment complex has speed
bumps before each module
to slow the traffic
and as I go over one, looking
at a darkened figure standing
in the garage, taking
a plastic bag from their trunk—face obscured by darkness--
I realize what a crude portrait
humanity is.
Trapped on this prison
planet—what was our crime?
In that moment, bobbing head
I thought of love
and how unobtainable its object is;
then I realized
only people who pursue love
are capable of murderous rampage killings.
I thought about how safe my anonymous
neighbor
was
and how lucky someone would be
to know what saints walk among them.
I forget that my bright shirts were bought
to attract someone so
I could attempt to love.

It feels better to be falsely imprisoned
--to be a saint--
than to know ****** and love
are parked inside of you.
The dark figure takes out
whatever's stopping you.

Those of like mind
Stepping down corridors
Toward blurring red signs
Each extrusion an exit
Hapless movement
Containers transported
Memories and anguish
Containers transported
Into meadows of ease
Between trees minus leaves
Nothing but a reflection
Degenerated façade
Ashes vaporized with
Consciousness, my boiling
Water

I swilled pupils behind your glass               Then sighed into the telephone.
                                                      ­      (…)
reflections of me peering out.                     /Against each felled bough
The sneering nose,                                       /blooms indignity
supports a wire                                             /swelling like vineyards
framing your visions.                                 /over sultry horizons;
Beneath                                                        /I float and stare
a satin camisole                                        /at equanimity
connected to me                                      /vanishing in undue time,
below the belly. This was our ship     /like my young grapes
taking on                                                 /dripped on your bodice
water.                                                    ­ /while you drank with no conscience.

The mornings spent running?
I hardly remember them
The afternoons, asphyxiated?
No
What I see are the absence of clouds
Between the clouds
When all earth is shattered
And the moments of happiness
Consumed
It is momentous
It is stupendous
It is callous, and hardened and reproachable
I hate thee, and thy silver charms
Mrs. So I told you so
Mrs. Goodbye forever
I hate you
And I hate this evening
Whither, whither to whom?
Goodbye

"Do you two know each other? Well, then get to know each other."

I, with my skin around the neck, your hands on my blue dress-shirt.

Yes, it's no regular dress-shirt; it's really a v-neck t-shirt.

But, girl, you don't actually have hands either.

In the normal sense, that is, you do-- of course. But not around me, or my dress-shirt
or v-neck t-shirt.

They are on your arms, by your sides and, without love, you carry them through the desert each day.

And your feet ply my shoulders-- because I am sand beneath clouds.

I am sand beneath hate, under t-shirts and under blue dress-shirts which are actually v-neck t-shirts.

I am sand, with your hands on my surface and my skin around the neck.

And sand does not find itself in the desert-- it just is.

Two shards of the same stone, eternally separated, though resting on each other.

I’m sick.
I have a fever and flu-like symptoms.
I am alone, and have been for hours,
lying on my bed
with a lavender candle pulsating
to the sound of classical music,
dancing on the darkness of my
ceiling.

I am not aroused
but, playfully,
I slide my palm
over the underside
of my hairy
behind
and begin
to gently stimulate
each hair
with near-static
force.

I occasionally push
my fingertips
into the crevice—
my crevice—
my end.

How good this feels
to be sick
and allow oneself to
feel
the emptiness too
dark
and bold
and powerful
to be contained within us.

The comforting,
soft touch
we can give ourselves
is like a loved one
holding our hand;
it almost tickles, and this sensation
although distinct
reminds me
of the pretend animals
my grandma would parade
across my back.

Beyond our view
the guillotine,
existence,
slowly begins to descend
as we lie,
holding hands with ourself
on top of the covers,
sweat pants around the ankles,
grabbing our own ***
as the steady rain
trickles from the roof
of tenement housing
and beats
on the aluminum gutter
for hours
until it’s over.

The night has fallen
like a punishment
for finding no one
and it occludes my sight;
I shiver, and cannot *******.

Existence is too dark
to allow dancing candlelight
or baroque masters
to tickle its space.


It is filled with falling heads
and clutching grasps.

each beep an hour
as i stare at this screen
the watch i forgot to deprogram tells me
what the numbers in my eyes scream
i feel my ears to listen to
the stillness between
passing cars
as the tires jolt in circles and travel
for beeps
and beeps
and it beeps
but what do we do now?
myself and who i thought i was--
unfinished projects began
to be forgotten
beep
beep-beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
­beep
beep
because the tires jolt in circles
i become impervious to beeping
******* on the carpet
is my constant state of being

Anne drew in a drag of thick, suede cigarette smoke
she turned to her lover on the pillow,
pivoting her jaw to face him
and muttered:
“I miss the way you used to
spank me, loudly proclaiming your passion
for my inner thigh and rubbing my ****
with your tongue.
I haven’t been happy
in a very long while. I sit here, each night,
waiting for you to tell me that I love you
but you hold it in, like a drag of thick, suede
cigarette smoke.”

Andrew turned to Anne and smiled broadly, saying:
“I’ve loved you since the moment I set eyes upon
you. I caught a glance of you gleaming in the moonlight
after we left the disco in separate cars, friends
surrounding everyone.
I told you then to call me, and you didn’t. But
I waited three days until I found you
at the coffee shop, alone, and said ‘hello’.”

Each sighed and dropped the pretense of knowing
what the other was seeing.
Then, they turned toward opposite directions and slowly fell
into themselves

Benedictine Warlords
Hold ceremonies in ballrooms
Tie knots in dying children’s hair
Demarking havoc to succumb
Red X-es on trees
Placating these
Monsters
These scumbags
These treasons
Against a muck they scoured
A much maligned superfluity
Of words, of thoughts
Of feelings
Of devotion
Sympathy
What of it?
You’ve heard my ideas on living
You’ve killed my attempts
Superavero
Veni
Superavero
Now go, before you learn what life is

That which would not follow you into the night
Will not be there in the morning
That which will not be there in the morning
Will be hard to find in the afternoon
And when you’re searching before the sun goes down
You’ll stumble on a log
You’ll trip and fall into a marshy wetland
And you’ll be wet
You’ll be consumed by nature
Taken into her heart
Ripped into shreds
You’ll miss her, but she won’t even think of you
You’re a part of her in the same way that her breath is
Each time she expels you
You return to her
So why should she worry?
You’re in her hands now
And she can squeeze you if she wants to
When you hold your breath
Where does it lead?
Where are your feet taking you?

I’m lying in the fetal position
at the bottom of a muddy trench dug during World War One
or
I’m queuing outside a gas chamber
skin exposed to Winter air by burlap
during World War Two

In one of these fantasies- - and that’s what they are- -
a man looks over his shoulder and asks
whether I deserve
to be alive.
“I don’t think so,” I mutter.
Then another man stands over my emaciated frame
and quanders “Have you had time
to
zink about your
life?”

I raise a muddy foot
or
adjust my weight to face
my conversation partner:
“What do you want me to say?”

I want you to say everything
(pointing to a field of shell-craters)
before you go out there
or
I want you to have a chance
(pointing to my head)
before you go in there.

Then, the vapor comes
or
it starts raining.

Words can be unsaid with contradictions
Actions dismantled by apathy
Torture is a weapon of the timid
****** is a thought that breathes

I held a man’s life in my hand
I looked him in the eyes
I spat on his face and I said
“Stop your god ****** lies”

Pity can’t describe the tone
And black is too bright
A colorless voice filled the room
Smoke circles the dry air

“Thing’s have been done for a reason, commandant,”
Orders and protocol of course,
“People have died by your words, commandant,”
His voice was tired and terse

“Battlefields are full of life, General.
Trees and shrubs and grass.
Once we drive into the city
Asphalt fills the path.
It’s concrete and it’s steel.
It’s muddy bricks and dirt.
Beneath the street lie fault lines
Of lust and greed and hurt.
We can’t abandon principle.
We can’t behave as sheep.
We must **** out all the wolves
And help protect the herd.
We must feed their minds with despair
And wet their mouths with vengeance.”

I received the order.
Pulled the string taut.
No more breathing.
No sound came out.

We left the bag on his head
And dug a shallow grave
We threw his body in the hole
Dropping dirt on top
“Here lies a victim of design,
A person with a name.
He had no reason for which to die.
We killed him just the same.”

They wiped sweat off of their brows
And turned to walk away
The sun shone down upon them all
But I turned the other way

I looked down at the grave below
Then above as if to pray
I cupped my face with my hands
It was a shade darker than grey

If you think it will stop
Don’t
Hold on to the railing
Jump
Over the edge
Onto the sidewalk
Separated from streets
Marauding, rubber tires pummel
Surveying alleyways neglected and
Trash cans brimming with disregard
It’s lonely here, as if each pebble were a
Reveler
Ambivalent toward you
Unkempt and stiff
As if petrified and disavowed at once
Ignored, timid
Apathetic discharge
Free,
Fallen
From a short, raised canopy
Of steel
And wood and
Bones and
Dust
Chalk; dried on a lesson
Conveyed
Battalions, battalions
Marching
Avid miscreants
Scurrying
The masters couldn’t paint as fast
And each trifling matter
Marches past with
Battalions
Battalions
Battalions
And Stones

Alone I sit, downtrodden

Oh **** this stupid sight

You were waving goodbye

I walked into the night



I came to a bench

The cold resonated

I gasped through my lips

Asphyxiated



What a calm fright

The moon, by clouds overtaken

An enchanting darkness

Don’t dare to stir me



A million nights I sit here now

Puzzled by  the blank distance

But really, all I’m searching for

Is sitting on this creaky bench

Cowering, we hide our faces behind capes
Salvage what we possess:
The beginnings of a yawn
Could such an unsuspecting time of year fool a person into feeling more at ease?
Treasured memories are trifles
Chewing away at our eardrums
Pricking our ears with that contentious voice
Impertinent to life
Toward starvation, the fallow, snow covered hills and untenable shacks
Sway
That which has been taken will never be returned
Nothing we can do will save our remains from being stolen by the earth
Dusty bones will dry the Summer sun as wild dogs chew at our flesh
He sits there now, knees toward bare chest
Edging near the frozen water canal
Release
A short, cautionary, nearly hopeful sigh

If you were here
--as I would like that you were
we’d take this bath
that I've prepared
you'd wash my genitals, which
need soap and soft moisture
from your sponge and dimpled
thighs
I hold apart

Yes, when you're not here
I’m a bit putrid
The water is cold
and I'm afraid to go in
thinking of the black ocean
bottom
that's as many miles away
as you

Ja, er hat dich gekuesst-- aber ich auch
wenn er nicht da waere-- wer sonst?
Ich bin ohne dich geflogen, und wohin?
Keine Frage der Zeit, Schlampe
ich bin's

Ich bin's der bei dir sonst waere-- ich bin's, bist du wirklich so bloed?
Wieso fragst du >>WER?<<
Du bist ne Schlampe, und das erkenn' ich schon
aber das macht mir nichts, ich bin alleine geflogen

Und all die Menschen die ueber mich sassen
haben es gewusst und wollten mich kaum antasten
Sie sind ohnehin weiter-- immer weiter-- gegangen
und, ohne dich, Schlampe, bin ich heruntergefangen

Mit den Hunden und Paeckchen diese Leute staendig nach- duersten und mitbring'
Lag ich
Bin ich auch zu ueberfluessig um oben drinzusitzen?
Schlampe, willst du dass ich wein', so ohne Wasser
im Dunkel, in Einsamkeit, im Gefaengniss der Lust?

Am Kartenkasse drueckte ich 'eins-Plus!'

Vergiss dich, Schlampe-- ich hab' fuer dich kein Benutz
Du bist nicht wer ist, das bin ich
Tschuess.
---------------------------------------
Yes, he has kissed you-- but I too
if he weren't there-- who else?
I have flown without you, and where to?
No question of time, *****
I am the one

I am the one that would be by you otherwise-- I am the one, are you really so stupid?
Why do you ask "WHO?"
You are a *****, and I recognize that already
But that doesn't make a difference to me, I have flown by myself

And all the humans that sat over me
have known it and hardly wanted to touch me
they have regardless further-- always further-- gone
and, without you, *****, am I caught under here

With the dogs and little packages these people constantly thirst after and bring with
I lay
Am I indeed too superfluous to sit inside, above?
*****, do you want for me to cry, this way without water
in the dark, in isolation, in the prison of passion?

At the ticket counter I pressed "one-Plus!"

Forget you, *****-- for you have I no use
You are not he who is, that is I.
Goodbye.

We’re
Red
                                Gree
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eee­eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen


Yellow; dot. dot. -- lines:

Unendless; Beginningful.
Every evening sunrise awash in morning
                            rush-tide
sea-gates creaming
              streams flew into
                                            serenades remorse
what of every beaten vessel on the concrete highway ribbon
That crashed down beneath the overpass
That splashes
                       That ebbing
Of sirocco heart valves and
attitude.---------------------------------------Whoa!
       ­         snap through
                ****** palms, exit ramps
like reigns.

Dreams of boats and dinosaurs
eschewing everyone
without weapons and rafts;
green, tangled pieces of iron lie
dying
beside rickety picnic tables below.
We’ll likely die here, as well.
In Florida; the hot meridian sun
heating everything.
Our perpetual youth is embodied in
dilapidated buildings
and war memorials.

Past empty,
we walk. Gas stations and burning hotels
all blaring radios or alarm-clocks
set to Spanish polka.
No maids to listen to them here.
Or to turn the sheets and place
chocolates.
The sun laps up the flood now
exposing
rusty iron tools
or fossils.

Maybe blood is like oil or soda
removes wine stains.
Snapping open mortgages is brutal at first
-- like oysters halved and
emptied on a plate.
But they must
stop
hurting, eventually,
after we boil them.

Two ninety-nine in hand can purchase
Straight razor, cream and means
To hide the relics of the human race
Within trimmed hedges and metal gates

Although nature’s Peter Principle
Took man to somewhere new
Various climes and unsteady minds
Allowed life to break through

Then contrary to our instincts
In one morning’s moistened grass
We see reflected what we could be
As foreboding clouds float past

The haggard beast within seeps virtue
From holy soles and weary eyes
With will to vanquish and to end you
In order to avoid this banal strife

His trash-sifting gastronomy
Beyond your view and mine
Contrasts with this frightful luxury
In which we for adventure pine

Though he’s the savage, king of Uruk
Never you, much less me
What he’s seen and what he’s been through
Are what we strive to be

It is ok to be
not
what you are
still
becoming. She said
"you're not special." Grinding teeth and sodden rails. My car is exhausted--
downwind, held in the air like branches of birches and pines
humming with each blatant engine-stroke
which fall onto that bleakening
icedock and curl-- culled passengers tossed to sea;
unavoidably
sharp veer left, beyond surreptitious and frantic spectators
and through a once-pearl snowdrift straying into my mind.
M
C
M
L
V
Turtlenecks can't keep us warm and soup can't clear my throat.
I choke on
sliced rubber, seatbelts cut halfway-- from
Spring. pluck us like cattails
amongst my marshy solubles.
Exposes my larynx she-- ubiquitous sonnet spews forth.
What contrite aberration, wears Kalapodi temple dress
made of rose petals blown in beneath love's column
and presses with her thighs my vision?
There is nothing more to say-- meals served
raw on Winter holidays. Steaming
spoonfuls dried up on her palate--
Special in the way I left you there.
Special in being the same as I should have been.
And I, no-- I!
I can not talk any longer! The clouds I thought to taste
won't allow me to
rain
be-- once dangling from the ceiling, my dripping prevented
with a pale, cotton daub.
You see
the paramedics
even as they sheath my torso
and hold your head with thorped sieves:
The driver steered his vessel wrong
an action which robbed his passenger's breath.

I can’t think
Because I hear the noise
And the noise interrupts my thoughts
So I play music
To cover up the noise
And the music creates more noise
In my head
I’m not safe
From my thoughts
With all this noise
I will never hear them coming

ashtrays, mugs and
moments: rattle within, outside their place.
our brittle, needy bones
support head,
appetite-shorn body: Bouldering.
Walking. |Wicking. Mushing bridges
churning-over water, tide.
High-regard neighbor’s children re-
move plastic decorations while that grandpa
hangs-- alive,
stayed-- in unused gutters, -o! Wind and
snow-flaked, grassy yardstomps lead us
with body-**** coats to-
doors, somedays-ies and happenstance
below mortuaries, toe-
tags, dangling shoe-string,
draping clothes'-
line our spindly, warrowed hallways
between blankets, sweaty
feelers lie, their
harrowed, heaving trunks hold night-trees/
palms aloft and hopeful.

a glint, a chance, a something.
wicker furniture, lace.
a bed, a "yes." Please,
a you.

My high school ethics class taught me so much
For example, the fact it is completely fictional
Reminds me that I shouldn’t care
About the world we inhabit or our gaseous air
Why worry that we’re ****** every single resource?
Why worry about dying breeds of animals or melting polar caps?
Should we bother helping honey bees, or consider our affect on bats?
Would it be ok to take a person’s land then tell them what to grow?
When we took the land from natives, was it generous to tell them where to go?
Have you wondered why people living even now think it is ok to **** like Pol?
Or why some think we’re better off to be completely baffled by the genome?
When do embryos become humans, and what does that mean?
Is it ok to grind up cows in machines, or change their names to “Beef”?
Should we ignore terrorists sincere qualms?
Or refute their “strife” with nuclear bombs?
Are we making the planet a more peaceful place?
What a success my education has been!
Apparently school district officials were just challenging me
Because I would have found a purpose
If I knew there were so many chances for improvement
And I guess I should be thankful
That my dawdled years were not interrupted by concern
That one philosophy teacher might create
Because the way of life they placate
May just be in jeopardy
The day we learn that ignorance is greed

Words hissing through links of spine
Shake his skull’s base
Plunge into a pool of melancholy
So vacuous and contemptible
That’s been
Flooded by nihilism and avarice
Her dead notion gestating
Open case indefinitely
You chose this,
Sinking
In my shallow waters
Displacing fondness
Evaporating on the banks
In serotonin’s stolid drought
Crinkled blueprints for what might have been
Were trembling lips adverse to apathy
And chances had been taken

Perpetuousity of Motive is a
need, not everlasting but maintained
by highest virtue or a desire that is
lacking-- a kind word, halved and
suffixed with an E D
tame paliative of meaning reminds
us all that time's not one, but rather
two things: we reach out for it and
Sense it, but with our mind it is reborn like
each and every thought and deed's encased
in placenta unshorn-- the mind that
holds the key to life rotates what is
worn and evens out the treads below
the tires as we soar; that is, time
is body, time is mind. Two things in one.
More importantly and with impetus: time
IS
What has
Become.
Time is ending and beginning, hence your
time is old yet young.

The birds sing like it is Spring, but it’s just March.
Are they confused, or is it me?
I hold my hand out on my porch and breathe in--
believing, if they land on me, Seasons will change.
They snicker at this, the birds, knowing for them
the change was long ago decided.
I want to join them
almost as much as I want to smoke a cigarette
and pretend to be 17 again
or lose my virginity while remaining friends
and travel to Germany without searching for that kiss.
I want to sit in a tree and sing
imagining that March is Spring.

I’d like to hold my head beneath the water of youth
Drown myself as the chloranic waves washed over
Burning my throat
Tingling
Happiness, and the effervescent smell of sunscreen
Luscious, half forgotten years
Water of innocence
Water of peace
Cleansing me with its toxic malnourishment
Of hope, forgiveness
Love
Trifling and deliberate
Half forgotten, half begotten
Aimless
Timeless
Harlequin sunshine

Each song is like a bookmark for the book of your life’s memories.

Each thumping bass line, each crescendo and every change in voice tone of the singer makes you cognizant of a time in the past during which you identified at some level with the musician.

To some degree, the words are clearer now than they ever were; in other aspects it’s like viewing a piece of art with younger eyes.

Likely, upon first hearing the song you did not completely empathize with the message.

Maybe you envisioned yourself in their place, wondering what you would feel or do.

Often times, upon hearing a favorite song from days past anew, our cumulative experiences since last hearing the song have made it possible for us to appreciate the meaning.

Sometimes we’ve actually been through the same thing as the singer.

At this point it’s almost like having a psychiatrist there asking you how the situation made you feel.

It compels you to think back to the incident and contemplate the momentousness of the occasion.

It allows you to grieve alongside the artist, to work through the problems which persist in your life as a result and hopefully, under the right circumstances listening to music can allow us to remove the bookmark and turn to the next page.