People often proclaim it's one or the other,
but it's my honest belief that Shakespeare was really on to something
and that both Heaven and Hell are empty because all the angels and demons are here with us.

In order to ward off the darkness,
we must imagine how dark it could truly become.
In so doing, you adjust your eyes in silence
set a candle in the last corner you feel the light will suffice to illuminate the ceiling
sailing apertures of a setting star
receding like a drawbridge
being pulled to gate
until you've become
so nocturnal,
the night itself asks
that you
remember to put out its candle
and silence the silly little flame
on my chest
before falling asleep.

Remember that time we flew to the Moon,


Where the angels were angles and later was soon?



Where we dream of the stars,

We see light beyond time.

Cosmic corpses piled up

Visceral line after line

Lighting all we call space, firmament, and the night sky

and you can't help asking “why not?”

before asking “why?”


It's the way we are born

to receive and to grow,

but there's a little bit more

you're unlikely to know, so

join us


as I show how to move mountains,

to my child, in the snow;

Not all good things come easy,

but all we nurture, we grow.


I'll show you how to open Hell's Gate

With a shotgun at the devil's throat

before our emotions in emoticons

explode into a joke.

"Curiosity killed the cat."                     

What this really means

is that,

at a certain point of investigation,

anyone

can become

manipulated

by

their

  own

      curiosity.

*******....




sometimes, I just want




to smoke


from


        
         dusk



to



      dawn



until I'm nothing


but





                                                  ashes.

The clouds wisp
with shapeless form
above the jagged,
smooth, magnificent
top
of a still
and                            silent
mountain

reminding the rock
that it, to,
is a cloud.

PuLsE

pULse

because,

I mean,



dripping like a wet set of waterworks, I cry

to express my own ****** analogies

on a sidewalk where no one will

ever stop to give a ****,

unless it's in order to call

the authorities

because

it's true.

What the ****

IS going ON

?

25 years into life on this planet. A quarter of a ******* century. I've attended more friend's funerals than weddings, a sad typicality of the generation I arose in beautiful concert with.

This strange fact reminds me of the opening lines from Allen Ginsberg's Howl:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn looking for an angry fix."

I too sought this same angry fix, but removed myself from the clutter once death stalked the corners of my own addled streets. I too was destroyed by this madness, but given the gift of a second chance upon which to reform... and the guilt that stretches its legs so cavalierly, so callously, across the resting stool of my mind reminds me of this every day I do not practice sobriety as a dogma (just as I simultaneously recognize I should never accept it--or anything else--as dogma).

It's been two strange years since Anton passed, and he still haunts me as the interpersonal ghost of the relationship we had together which, with his death, has become embodied as said ghost sans the need for either of our particular presence. Perhaps this felt phantom of our collective essence will continue to waft throughout our globular strangeness we call the Earth until all observation becomes impossible for lack of any remaining observers. I loved you once, and I will love you always, and thus will always love you until "always" becomes as relative as "once upon a time."

"Early 17th century: from Greek exēgēsis, from exēgeisthai ‘interpret’, from ex- ‘out of’ + hēgeisthai ‘to guide, lead’."

I read myself and "it's" or "him's" reality like others read scripture itself.

I am neither hetero nor homosexual. I am bisexual, and many (even within the tight 'gay' community) do not understand this when I give an attempt towards a definition of a monogamous relationship, despite it's polyamorous-ness in its long-term oprative-ness, ability, and identity.

A monogo(mish) identity. Something which proves it's loyalty and is only taken in as an operative contingent of oneself thereof. Couldn't be more favor in their flavor, so this is simply a translation of my multiplicity of romances in my monetary destitution (not that anyone has to pay me for anything lol).

there really is no necessity to go on living. don't treat it like a duty, treat it as a gift. and don't for a minute think you have to take it seriously.      the point is, if you really want to check out of this experience,            

                                       you can.                    

                                        








                          
                                                      you just don't have to.

Twisting my own arms backwards,

heaving myself to the pavement

to let it all go,

let it all out

and become a

self-same sense of

sensation as sensation,

just so I can be

happy with all these

thoughts, at the very least;

it's all I'm ever

asking for.


It's all any of us

are ever

really

asking for.

Three people
stand upon
a peninsular
rock revealed
overnight from
beneath the
rolling waves
looking out
towards
Port Angeles,
each absorbed
in their smart
-phone, save

for rotating


photo opportunities



with the entire



           planet


                              itself.

Both my inner

& outer companions

cannot accompany me

any further.



Each have their

own lives

to live.

Strange artists;

even we wish

to marry the

sentiment. Marry

the "factual"

C.R.E.A.M

or "CASH

RULES EVERY

-THING AROUND

ME."


But if it truly

rules over us,

which, in fact,

it does,

then let's call

its neurotically

quantified

condescension

for

what it is:

"The Divine Right

of Kings."


And we already

beat the living

legitimately-validated

****

out of that narrative

a long, long while

ago.


"Hello? Are you

human & have

you been listening

for the past

100,000 years?"


Rhetorical

question.

Yes,

you have.

Solvent catechisms

dripping thru the ashes

of complacency,

like a burnt-out cosmos

weren't enough to convince

a high-ender like me

not to dance along

to the beat

of my own

sordid

drum.

Collecting lonely moments

while not technically "alone,"

a recipe for bite-the-bullet recovery

from on high.


The bonds between I & "Other"

seem to strain

to the point that they

ALMOST snap...

whether in collapsing disconnection

or the simple anxious pulse

of "all" in disassociation,

like identity

was nothing more

than a summer lawn

adorned in trampolines,

with ideas of ID's

bouncing up & down

like an ambivalent parade

of helium balloons.

this town is a skin

I thought I shed

like a snake

in the grass.


But sitting above

my old haunts

as if a vault

of old remembrances

dipped in a soft coat

of nostalgia

has made me find

it is much deeper than that:

it still sits in my

muscles, my irises,

and burrows

down

into

my

bones.

someone once told me

to purify fire, one must

wash the flame

and sit in darkness, thinking:

"finally, it's the Brand New Testament

                                              I'm reading."

Tell me everything,

but—hey, wait!!—as you do

start way back at nothing,

*** it's still 'something' too.

AS IF
the curvature
of the
earth
were enough
to let me know
there were another side
to this great continental shore,
a side
long
distant
at which you will soon
find yourself
clasping
the base
of infant trees
and gnawing them
deep
into the soil floor
as if finally
wage-labor
employed its own services
to stave off
the further destruction
of our single biosphere.

"Does distance
make the heart
grow fonder,
or
does distance
cause the heart
to wander?"

All I can say to this is:
I hope that while your body wanders,
my heart will be beating
alongside yours
beneath
the soft blemished skin
of your chest
and as
they hold each other close
below your rib-cage,
you will hold
mine close
as you freeze
and ache
at the end
of an abandoned
back-wood
workday
as if

we can


never



truly leave


each other's

orbit


so

long

as



gravity



persists.

having a seizure
is like
having the rug
of
basic familiarity
in life
entirely
tugged out
from beneath
your mental footing

as your perceptions
whittle themselves
into
sharp
sensitivities
and a
strange penchant
to mistake
the place
you find
yourself
in

for
... another ...


or start
mixing memories
and
perceptions thereof
as if both
must
have always been
one
and the
same

(which,

granted,

perhaps they are.)

This proves
there really is
no difference between
the observer
of the universe
and
what is actually observed

...except relative to the ubiquitously shared
sobriety of the
rest
of the
human race
reinforcing
its own
cognitive-perceptive bias
through a never-ending
feedback loop
leashed and tagged
with a label that reads:

'Radio Normativity.'

"Tune in to have your bias confirmed!"

so everlasting love was what we wanted,
a universe that sank into a
self-same
observation
of itself
like a child
into the pages
of a
well-written book.

but in wanting it,
we admitted to our
great
                    collective
                                               dissonance:

we didn't have it.

and so,
as we sought,
the copious

bLeEt-ing

of our
sheep-like

humanities

repeated

the very same
angry

mantra:

"   serendipity
                                          has really got me
                                                                                          by the *****.   "

there was never much left for me to say,
insofar as I didn't know how to articulate it or,
if I did, I no longer possessed the energy to do so.

Hope comes stranded, like a helium balloon
left to wander the skies once released
at a city parade.

A child not yet wise to the knowledge
that helium
is lighter
than air
imagines she can let go
to weave her little shoes
into secure knots with
both hands,
so by the time she looks up to find this renegade bulb,
it's nothing more than one of what could be
ninety-nine red balloons
floating in the summer sky.

In this sense,
it could be said hope comes
from all angles,
regardless of whether this
little drip of serendipity
is gifted by accident,
intention,
or
simple curiosity.

Existence always hurts.
But it's our challenge to choose
how it hurts:
will it be a chronic sickness unto death,
inspiring moroseness and jaded apathy?
Or will it feel like gym pain,
as if liquid gold has pooled
into every open crevice
of bone marrow
so the ache is nothing
but
a
friendly reminder
of our living vitality
through having
expended
the body,
mind
and soul
in satisfaction?

Far too often the past few years I've felt as if I were C3PO dragging my robot-feet through the parched, endless dunes of the Tatooine deserts in the opening salvos to A New Hope.

"Oh R2, it seems be our lot in life to suffer."

The past 2 years, though it would be impossible to say each and every contiguous moment was terrible, has, in the aggregate evaluation of retrospect, been the worst 2 of my life so far. Two good friends have lapsed into the realm of death as a result of drug overdoses, I've slogged through episodic epilepsy which has precipitated a full return of my anxiety and major depressive disorder, seen the end of the longest relationship I've ever been in after 3 and a half years following which my ex-girlfriend (probably legally a civil-union 'spouse' by the point of departure) immediately leap-frogged into the newly committed arms of someone I thought to be a best friend less than 2 weeks after our termination as a couple, my compression-of-self to manically pursue academic ends, some of which would never reach fruition regardless of my best efforts, Donald Trump's election to the highest office of political authority in the United States and all that is contingent on this terribly seminal event, my manifest inability to accept that I am perhaps affected heavier by the loss of these two said friends than I often actively feel myself to be within any given moment, aaannnd.... where has it all lead?

This is perhaps the $64,000 question. I feel it is most certainly the reason I write today.

I have been, on many levels, classically defeated by forces of life known to human experience since the beginning of time. I am emotionally, intellectually, and physiologically exhausted.
I desire nothing more than the ability to take a period of hiatus, to retreat and regroup for a few months, let all bleed to paper, a catharsis permitted as energy levels allow. But I'm afraid because I don't have the money to support such a retreat despite my knowing exactly what I need. Rent will still rear its ugly head to guillotine my unprepared neck and truly substantiate a hard, physical contrast between the 'body' and 'mind.' This being said, it is only the dissonant forces of economy which maintain this illusion as a practical necessity.

If economy can't let go of me so I can let my soul soar to express, I often begin to contemplate yet again the only third option between a rock and a hard place: that of suicide, the ultimate and final release. The 'greatest' final "Great Escape."

Just let me go, or I'll do it for me.

Please, convention. Give me the space I need. Because I know, I know, I know I need it.

Castles in the sand, or
Castles in the sky.

There's a whisper of tentative potentials
wafting thru the air like mill smoke.

It keeps us withered and wondering,
starstruck, mutilated in spirit & empowered
in mind.

We chant, "I don't mind. Terror
is an error but no error stems from
a terrified wolf," simply reacting
to the terrain like a Ghost
losing the ghost of its mind
in these very same whispers
as they morph into a melody,
a whistle, a beautiful problem
ready to be solved.

(ready to be solvent.)

Test the prefix, nasty "the,"

"the end," "the task," "the mannequin's

freakishly piercing magenta gaze";

What's the MaTtEr?

is matter the MaTtEr?


Don't twist my arm

like a twist-off beer cap,

twist & shout, perhaps

because the void needs us

to scream.


We exist as the amplified feedback

of the Universe-At-Large,

& if sound isn't made,

there can't be consciousness,

or confusion

without the screeching feedback

loop of time.

If only there was a way
to explode into an aperture
of terminal ecstasy, massing
an army too small for invasion
at the borders of a conflagration
far larger than our individual bodies
crafted of flesh, bone, and water. Sort
of like oatmeal rising with the addition
of a liquid, expanding to become the last
thought you'd imagine you'd ever hear
spoken aloud in a busy thoroughfare strip
mall lost in the sprawl of cityscape snowed
over in light sprinkles like icing sugar across
the soft top part of our holiday muffin.

Location,
location, location!

Look at those palisades
of rock, ice, and tree,
evergreen (  maybe

FOREVERgreen   )

Soak the fire!
we're all about
to spot a light
at tunnel's
end.

Flashlights off.

Eyes closed.

And with your
eyes closed, close
your eyes
tightly.

-  -  -

*Thank u
for the
chance
to
once
again
dream
big

(again).

The wind is a slack freeze billowing
across the low structures of the ferry
as it floats indelibly towards the coastal
island landmass once known as Quadra
and Vancouver's Island, now maintaining
only the former prefix as if either dub of
the landscape was a 'fix' at all. There is a
Canadian flag tangling with itself in the cold,
wound around a metal cable wire on the top sun
deck reserved for smokers avoiding the crisp air
for the formaldehyde devil they already know.

Waves ripple through the fabric flag above and
the fabric water below, both tossed by the same
heavenly forces forever wafting throughout the
globe as if all the steam ever boiled never truly
left the biosphere nor converted back into liquid
but instead became yet another one of many
unforeseen
byproducts
of our
oh-so human
participation
in
existence;

yet another
one of many
unforeseen
consequences
left to ring in
our ears til we
cease as observers,
thus ceasing to
observe.

“It is above as it is below”
and
“there is no difference between
the observer and the observed.”
Not my thoughts, nor I doubt
anyone's thoughts
in particular.

Snow dusts the caressed peaks,
valleys, and crevices of the
Pacific Coastal mountain range,
each geological mound standing
shoulder-to-shoulder looking
across the withered liquid mounds
in quicker motion atop the Georgia
Strait below as if watching a child
relative playing with new toys
received on
Christmas morning.

I have no words
adequate enough
to express all this
beauty.

All I can do
is help you
read my mind
and hope
my
wordless words
equal
poetic telepathy.


The wind is still a slack freeze as I exit the ferry.
There's no one here but all of us,
*hello!

I did nothing today as pertains
academia. I AM  a mess of a
man. a mess of a manly manly
man. not that I need to be a manly
manly man, but I would like to be
at least moderately successful in my
ventures (I have too many dreams to
hold silent in a space as small as this
skull of mine). Dance with me in this
awfulness, like a she-wolf lone in the
wilderness with nothing but a collar
to tell it that it was once a dog. Tell me
your wrongs and I'll tell you mine.
Together, we'll make it
"right."

Together, as I said, we will make it
write.

Lost in an unmapped maze, we are
forced to draw our own from the
narrow chinks in our particular
caverns. Unique in amazement
and pain. Unique in the colors
our blood takes when converted
to paint. Unique in the ways we
slowly **** ourselves. Unique in
the ways we slowly work to build
life's very meaning from nothing
but a blank canvas always declaring
that "tomorrow never comes."
But I think you understand
as well as I do:
**this was the point all along.

bird **** plummets onto the roadway pavement as pedestrian traffic moves through the crosswalk intersecting Johnson and Douglas, vaguely luminescent from the bright of the sun until they transit beneath the awning shadowed canopy of a downtown tree planted on the sidewalk and disappear around the sight-block of an old redbrick corner building now refitted to host a Burger King, its windows grimey with human sweat grease and fast-food fast-life apathy.....

// // ... // // ... . and as I open my eyes, I realize it for the visceral memory it is; a waking memory-dream of the job I once held at a smoke-shop downtown. A job obtusely abandoned with no more than a crisis-ridden "sorry-goodbye-so-sorry-*******-goodbye." These strange internal replicas of days spent in hours sitting, waiting, small-talk drenched in my own irrational impatience at everything-at-once, habitually referencing death as a way out from the hollow auditorium in the back of my head where all my thoughts lose themselves amongst their own reflections in an endless hall of mirrors. These are the only souvenirs I possess from the end of an era.

Life has simultaneously come and gone. Death and birth manifest in every moment. Dapper conventions leave a framework in place while I peep through the wide open margins where walls and windows should be, wondering if the jig is finally up.  

Long before both my birth and the birth of Christ, Heraclitus wrote:
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
and just as it is in life experienced, so it is in the grand rivers and overlooked tributary streams of memory quite the same.

And though it may not be the same river nor I the same man, the flow of both is contiguous with all. This I know for certain.

whoever said you can't find love on Tinder
has obviously never found a needle in a haystack.

There isn't anything to blame in such a deficit,
but when you're shuffling through the wires
of
hay-grass
seeking nothing in particular
only to ***** your finger to bleed
blood
red
love,
the fact you found it in the hay
should be no reason to discard its beauty.

In an internet casino of loveless *****
and gambled encounters,
where the rest of the hay is a pale green or pale gold in color,
I would have been blind had I missed the sheen
from the tips
of your bluebird feathers
as you perched just as curiously
and just as confusedly as I did.

We wrung the slot machine's lever
one
more
time
and found one another
gazing into our eyes
like we'd known each other
for longer
than a millennium
could ever claim
to measure.

as the air slithers thru my barely-opened window,
and the lisdexamphetamine begins its pulsing thru
my veins, I think of my abrogation of poetry for
manic intellectual pursuit at the highest academic
degree. The pace of an angry, deletrious, passionate
mad gift of insanity that will always leave me with
un-relieved pressure in the mind, migrated to the
solar plexus, where it builds and builds and builds
until the steam must exit lest I explode in the trapped
heat and experience a heat-death perhaps not unlike
that predicted for our universe, billions of years from now.

And I asked myself a question I recognize someone has
already asked and answered for me.

"What is a poet?"

Hello?

I asked, "What is a poet?"

Soren Kierkegaard glances up from his study in the office
I've established for him in my mind. He repeats the question
for clarification, and declares:

*“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”