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Onoma  Sep 2019
Benares
Onoma Sep 2019
in Benares

the bells ring

in a way bells

can't contain

themselves while

reverberating.

flowers heaped

beyond color but

never more bright.

as pyres forgive

the host with flames,

and yogis bathe in ash

along the Ganga.
Connor Jun 2015
Veasna Ta Kvak recording
playback
over Chinatown cafe again
while recounting recent events
to journal pages
muddled from frequent
exchanges bag to bag
(Been to Taipei airport, Bali, Vancouver, most
recently)
blind fate
blind fate
shower me with Indian daisies
and photographs of Railway
New Delhi!
Hanoi Old Quarter/
Vietnam monsoon/
evening on balcony/
Darjeeling water boiled
and filtered anti-malaria
golden drink for honeylungs and
spring-soul morningtide
under moonlight canopy
of Avalokiteśvara
the fruitful
Bodhisattva!
English lessons
and future
hourless
comely chimera
in sleep phenomenon
Benares phantasmagoria YELLOW
(near Mata Anandamai Ghat)
speaking to Aghori
prophecy
Kala Bhairava
FIERCE ILLUSORY APOCALYPSE FAMILIAR
WHERE IS YOUR NOOSE?
the Ganges is full of lice and flowers
candlewax melted into holy water
sickness
equal to
harmony & jubilant
eyeclose and mouthcurl.

The future mysteries in
Mexico City poorboy
$2 mystic orb jade green
reflective underneath
dirt now in North American
bottom white four floor house
basement suite coffee table.
Visions indivisible
from the Viridian roundly haze
but surefire in their accuracy
I'm absolute
and universally formed
for the next few cacophonous
decades!
Martin Bailes Apr 2017
Leaping & striding
comes a passing chaos
of ashen men,

adorned in chalks
of blue & grey,

glorious in cloth
of red & gold,

with a tiger-skin
glimpsed rippling
upon shoulders bare,

& as royalty
perched atop elephants,
beasts lumbering & bedecked,

ancient people
their mouths to shell & trumpet,

to announce
the moment
this late
afternoon.
Connor Apr 2015
Years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew
while I sit here in the second floor of a double decker bus affiliated with universal energies that haven't been given names, and gods which haven't yet been killed over.
Sudden Spring makes me sentimental!  I daydream with my eyes shut and sunlight repeatedly washing over my face that Im racing on some enchanted eastern express en route to Benares while Lama peak Nepal is weakened with Earthquakes. Fallen monestaries still romanticized and newly forged in my mind. A few countries North, the radical religious groups are continuing the impractical path of world decay with frequent threats and televized beheadings.  We're guaranteeing ourselves a real apocalypse to save ourselves from a fake one!

Owls in suits recently drycleaned return home,  their bedroom drapes appear ethereal veils of cruelly false night-brides twirling from wind beating fiercely at the door. Next morning the
Hong Kong tram serrates the neon
acid streets where blankface ghosts are observing the hundred thousand faded shoes and wirey laces encircling the larger paths of Chinese cities like a hollow caffeinated sterile ball of yarn thrown over by the communist Cheshire cat. Bluehue sad sickness is the largest global airborne infection we all have to worry about!

Many Summers later, Debt and debt collectors are equal hell,
I'm home and showering off the society sweat and mutual bruises of some mundane corporate copy job where I copy and jab and jib and bob my head outta the sea of slate jaws and somber smiles. Everything has become a bore! The year is 2045 I'm growing gray and I feel like it, the world feels like it, too. Why did I let go of the poems? The rebel heroes in the 1960s who fought off nuclear holocaust with rhyme and meter?
We could really use that now!
Whatever happened to the soul of India budding in my veins and making me stiff with insatiable wanderlust? My prescription needs to be renewed and my passport expired two years ago. Nobody but the dead travel anymore and they aren't getting to their destination by plane. Those greenhouse gases really ****** us for good! All the aircrafts are now modern art and all my dreams are hidden in hypothetical fallout shelters crossing their fingers they survive before the generators power down on them.

Those past inspired goals faint and lifeless carried by anchors to underwater trenches. Back when my hair was down and long. Dandelions were polished in rainwater outside Vietnam Hostels encased in zipper basket backpacks on stock with incense,  teardrop ecstasy stains and cantinas filled on liquid dharma platinum with the zen seal bottlecap. Well off they go! hearts of an aspiring mahasattva sticking to the back ends of sticker stapled scooters gliding
down to the outdoor booths in Saigon.
As was expected, even the scooters were left to fizzle away in the cyclic guyas once all oil tapped out when I was 37.

Sedative Queens have tightened their authority on all of us and I'm sleepy in the wholes of days where thoughts barely catch wind off the finish line. Nobody is a firecracker anymore. Radios no longer work in closets!
I heard they used to. Radios worked anywhere.
All sound is dead. The angry ghost of an eighteen year old watches out his  kitchen window observing the approaching storm and listening to The Velvet Underground feeling like the world is gonna conflegrate to rock & rubble from the creamy ******* skies ready to drown us out.

Hepcat hideous mangled in gradual oppression diseases!
***** teen hormoned out of homosexuality, I thought we'd gotten past that ignorant belief!
Animal axed in syringe oblivion muscles tense then loose, consciousness BLANK.
Ozone overdosed on air miles and morning commutes, they said it would never happen!
Happiness hung on air, we've been told that our experiences depend on how we choose to perceive them, so maybe all this worldly wack has been my fault!
Dragons exist behind snowy beards contrast to a blood red tie sitting up on Senate! Why'd we been told they're make belief? They're burning everything down!

It feels like Summer no matter what season it is these days. Those Alaskans sure work a good tan!

All in all, years are mixing into decades like tasteless stew,

And we're running low on bowls.
Connor  Oct 2015
A Paroxysm
Connor Oct 2015
HURDLING THROUGH THE TRAFFIC NIGHTLIGHT MACROCOSM MY BUS BOPS AND DASHES LANE AND INTERSECTION
BAM GOES THE TENNIS SHOP
THE GRILL
THE SHOPPING CENTER
IT'S ALL LIGHT IT'S ALL ECSTASY
A BOILING CANDLE
RAPAPAPA-
THE WILD JAZZ
BUDDY RICH SWEATING IN MY EARS
UNRESTRAINED FRENZY
NEON BLINKING APARTMENTS WIDE IN THE DARK DISTANT ATMOSPHERE
MOHAWK MAN BOOT COLLISION ON THE COLD FLOOR
SOME LINOLEUM SOMEBODY SHUTS OFF THE LIGHTS TO HIS STALE OFFICE RETURNING TO BED DRAGGED OUT AND BEAT
BEGGING FOR SLEEP IN AN UNWASHED BED
BUZZ AND THRAP THE DRUMS AND CYMBALS SOAK ANY OTHER SOUND INTO THE
949 HYSTERICAL NIGHT
GAS STATIONS
NIGHTCLUBS
MONOLITH
CAR DEALERSHIPS
MOTELS
RADIO TOWERS
BUS DEPOTS
LIQUOR STORES
SUBWAY
UPTOWN
4 6 4 5 0
APT SUITES
DRAIN SERVICES
"STOP REQUESTED"
DISTORTED RATTLE OF THE INNER WIRING AND WHEELS SQUEAL TO A HALT IN FRONT OF EMPTY HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION
"FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE HOLD ON"
UNSPOKEN MONOLOGUE OF WOES IN EACH TIRED SKULL
CASINO
LIBRARY
DRIVE THRU
PHARMACY
VAPOR SHOP
INFLAMED EGO
RAPTURE
MORNING RAZOR WELCOME
POLICE TASER UNWELCOME
I'M PROUDLY RANTING
OF MY SURROUNDINGS
OF THIS MAYHEM MUSIC
THIS GASOLINE VESSEL
HOWLING INTO NOVEMBER
TRANSFIXED AT THE ENTIRETY OF IT ALL
OF THIS
OF THAT
OF THOSE
THE STEADY RACKETING IN MY  BRAIN CONVULSES TRAIN OF THOUGHT PURE FLAMMABLE VERSE
ELECTRIC
"GRANITE & QUARTZ"
THEATRE
THERE IS NO THEATRE
NOT HERE
DON'T BOTHER STAGING SOMETHING AS ELABORATE AS CHAOS ONLY THE WIND BIG BAND CAN BUZZ OUT A TUNE LIKE THE AFTER-HOUR MARCH OF LOOSE HEADS
POLITICAL AFTERMATH ON THE TELEVISION
DRUNKEN SUPERSTITIONS
SIDEWALK FIGHTS
RECKLESS CONSUMPTION
RAMPANT DISORDER
CLASS WEALTH IMBALANCE
CRUELTY
ABANDON
INSOMNIA
PARANOIA
THE SKY HAS SEEN EVERY WAR AND MISHAP OF US
IT SECOND HAND SMOKES EVERY
INDIA PYRE
SMOKESTACK REPETITION
MORNING COMMUTE
AFTERNOON JOYRIDE
FIREWORK
AIRPORT BACCHANAL
THE CLOUDS DO RECALL
DISTANT OLD-WORLD CASUALTIES AND THE NUCLEAR INVENTION
A LOSS OF IDENTITY
I THINK OF ALL THIS
AND THE BUS WINDS DOWN
SCREECH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'M ALMOST HOME
I'M ALMOST THERE
THE HOME THAT'S NOT MY OWN
NOT YET
IT'S EVERYPLACE
AND NOWHERE AT ALL
IT'S THE UNSEEN AND THEN SEEN
INDIVISIBLE AND TRANSPARENT REALITY
IT'S EVERY DRIVE
AND DREAM
I'M ALMOST THERE NOW I CAN TASTE ANOTHER
CATACLYSM
WHILE MIRACULOUS JAZZSOUNDS AND
TCHAIKOVSKY'S CANNONS
SILHOUETTE A CHANGE
OF PACE
IN THIS MAD PLANET
AND ALL IT'S
HABITUAL
INHABITANTS
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
I WILL CONTINUE MY MEDITATIONS
AND GET BY
TO CATCH THE BUS AGAIN
AND TO SEE INDONESIA AGAIN
AND TO LOVE AGAIN
AND TO DRINK WHISKEY BY A MERCURY BONFIRE IN SOME PASSING YEAR
AND HOLD TO HOPE AGAIN
AND HOLD
AND WRITE MORE POEMS
AND WRITE MORE POEMS IN VIETNAM
AND MORE POEMS IN BENARES
AND MORE POEMS IN SAN FRANCISCO
AND MORE POEMS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
UNTIL A BEARD KISSES MY HARDSHIPS
AND REMINDING ME I'LL ALWAYS GET PAST WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE WORST OF IT
I'LL WRITE AND WEEP AND SING
AND RACE MY OWN DEATH INEVITABLE
IT WILL BE
*E  X  P  L O  S  I  V  E
X                               V
P                                I
L                           ­     S
O                               O
S                                 L
I                                  P
V                         ­       X
E  X  P  L  O  S  I  V E

— The End —