I got an award
For being the stupidest young boy
With a wax soul
And impressionable.

I thought I'd find something
Nestled here amidst the trees
And I did,
But in no halls but the hall of god
Speaking to me
Dancing between the leaves
Singing with every whispered breeze
And yet when I stepped
Past the threshold and into the
"real world"
I was sold
A maniac of utter delinquency.

Everybody there
Waiting for their turn
Auditioning for the favor of hearts
They'll never win
Can't see
Laughing and wondering
Reading without comprehension
Sticking their *** in the face of the classics
Lap dogs licking the milk from
Professed *******
Thinking they'll be next

Its not resentment--
Is it fair to be bent
Towards dollars that've never been spent?

All those silly parks
Divided from the civilized lands
Frontiers of the past
Left to be little staging areas
For that invisible hand

Kids go on spring break
Take pictures between the towns
Maybe a stop along
On the way
To Vegas
Deep in the desert where it'd **** any other day

I cannot escape the unfathomable beauty of that place,
Living off the world in a way God said
To toil and love the pain
In a way nobody does

I am guilty of pride and
Stuffed like a pie full of anger
Cooking it into solid joy
And trying hard to scrape the cancerous crust away
All the dark sides we avoid

But screaming the heat away is good
Thermal induction is the name of the game
Entropic fizzlements like bubbles in the wind
Sublimating all that ever stood.

Yet soon enough I'll be born anew
And what I leave behind
Lifted up
Nautoloid shell
With a sparkling abalone interior
Someone will place on their shelf
And think,

"I wonder where that thing had been."

True tangled Gordian thoughts entwine
Amid labyrinthine paths that wind
Sliding sledding serpentine
To assay value and extent
Braid a mind a shoreward end
Seeking weeping thrashing send
Infused with knowledge deep and sound
A consciousness cogitabund
Within the portals self confined
Disconnected judgements breed
Diffuse journeys often made
To darkened places
Where no light
Of vision lucid sparkling bright
Will penetrate and seem so safe
Writhing heavy leaden womb
Elusive dissolute abound
Reclusive and so moribund
But in the darkened space there seems
A distant tendril sparkling white
A reaching focal point to strive
To make that leap
Great grasping bound
Wrapping arms so safe around
Clasping forgone lines abandoned
Sublimating impasse upward
Strength of purpose
Welling forward
Great eruption spewing outwards
Lava flowed eureka moment
Spreading outwards
Flowing downwards
Cogent sentient live born
Brewed in darkness
Drinks the bright
With clarity and strength unite
Dazzling brilliant shining moment
Cleft asunder glorious light  ....!

drag my helpless body down the hallway
where it is dark and hidden from everyone,
a place too eerie that ghosts yearn to dwell and linger
—my purpose is quite the same after all.

compelled to conceal myself in the shadows,
sublimating to an unnoticeable presence
like speck of dust upon a quaint furniture
that no matter how meticulous and kind
the hands that care for me,
i cannot be wiped clean.

a miniscule of being that i am
only has a slight chance to be found.
to be known.

Saturn’s rings
are disintegrating

and Jupiter’s great red spot
is shrinking

and the ice caps on Mars
are sublimating

and our very own Moon
is slowly untethering itself
from Earth’s gravity.

In eight billion years,
the Sun will turn red and swell up

like a toddler on the verge of tears,
and incinerate

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—
all of our histories and fossils,

our legends and loves,
our monuments and our ruins.

You and I will be long gone by then, of course—
nonexistent to the extent

that we’re not even aware of our own
nonexistence.

Some people may think of death
as an inky void,

but it must be far more final than that—
an inky void would be copious by comparison.

What if there is simply nothing
on the other side of the curtain?

Perhaps it would be for the best.

For I never was able to avert my gaze
while driving past a smoldering wreck,

and you never could build up the courage to take a look.

Facile flirtations
Sighs and sorrows
The depth of brevity
Sonorously sinking
Rising slowly
Washed by the rain
Drifting
The swollen ocean
Rolling, pounding
An avalanche of sound
Cascading, sublimating.

I salute my sublimation.
tackle my monsters
with pen and paper,
Die in my art, you beasts.

all my characters are myself.
different shades
textures of my complexity
a palette of my entity

Im the protaganist
the underdog
idealistic dreamer
with a happy ending

I'm the antagonist
the enemy
cynical pessimist
with doom impending.

I scrape down on paper
these pages of me.

Sublimating aching
intermission from tragedy.

Isn't it great
Never catching a break
and reaping what you sow
Even when you feel you're
denying what you know
My lips are sealed
but my throat is exposed

-cj

Hate what’s mediocre and banal too.
Despise them both and take the two to task.
Their infection consumes flight of fancy,
Hidden behind a bland and facile mask.

Please write your tale to help disarm the pair.
Together we can speed up their demise.
Although there are greater forces at work,
Much more than most, the same do they despise.

It is still so, but the hatred makes way,
For the flight of our thoughts, thus creating,
Works of beauty; wondrous to minds of men.
What’s hated, in truth is sublimating.

The platitude “Thinking outside the box”,
A phrase by those whom ignorantly use,
Lead astray by these bland meaningless masks,
Fall short of honing tools with which to prove.

To begin with, there is a strong feeling,
An analogy in a nutshell which,
Is presented to aid understanding,
Curtailing a cerebral glitch.

Then a comparison to the flip side,
Passionately pervading all angles,
Adding anticipation and power to,
The carroty denouement that dangles.

I wandered blackout drunk lost
trading cigarettes for directions
from crustpunks who took swigs
from bottles of cheap plasticsugar alcohol

Muttering to myself in selfdefense
sublimating the toxic fire in my eyes
into soundwave echoes
bouncing off of plywood windows
and abandoned stolen cars

Angry limping at breakleg pace
down the heroinblessed streets
of yet another vibrant American slum.

The frame has blurred away \ Fever death arising like burst glass || mangled spines \ This is the age of fact | where the violent insertion of cancer cells into animals is applauded by scientists across the globe \ Objectivity is the new face of barbarism | death god // sublimating existence for truth \ Raw data filters from the rot of deformed limbs | tweezers crush the heads living fish // guts spill | formaldehyde fixes the flesh of squirming insects | spliced genes splay the spines of mewling mice \ There’s no doubt || biology is the practice of death \ Animals without niches \ Organs without bodies \ Cells without hosts \ An aperture maw | red // yellow // black // white | leaking nervous tissue over an absent whole \ Reality has been atomised // brutalised // banalised \ Objective knowledge replacing all critical thought << [[Muscle // nerve // fat // blood // bone ]] Experience nothing \ [[The germ cell cycles every 28 days ]] Know nothing \ [[The average lifespan of a lab rat is three years ]] Feel nothing \ [[Over one hundred million are killed yearly ]] Science saves \ Biospace severed // prescription drugs fall // epistemic // into clean white bottles \

there's a lot to feel looking over this sight.
you're so high up and so far down that
here, the sky is a formality and the concrete
might be invisible to your eyes.
like this, something seems to hover in the air.
what it might be and what it would be—
i wonder perhaps if i should care.
as i peer over the edge of the world's bed sheet,
i can see it, yes, the depth i would fall:
six feet under ground, sublimating like alcohol.