his last gasp was quite lengthy
trying to go out with a bang as usual
a rationalist manifesto covering his face
accompanied by a cotton field work song
his grip went slack under the torrent of images
fortunes have been lost in that snapshot parlor
shook the money from the pockets
of many a surviving Siamese twin
blessed with a rugged set of mouse buttons
he pitched head first into the theocratic miasma
since a rescue by wisdom eluded his pilgrimage
and its inner parade of flailing penitents
he died to a real slow slide whistle tango
from a regrettable strangulation of debate
and terminally transparent eyelids
at least the ******* left me to my fate he mused
just as a legion of parachutists
crashed and tumbled through the roof
it was an Exist-o-Gram from my dear mother
but first a word from our sponsor
Hi there Mel Linger owner of Mel's Futon Corral
so jump in the calaboose and come on down
for a steal of a deal and a big gold tooth smile
clear and sunny in the lowland swamps
now for some traffic from overhead
fully awake after the reservoirs of hell broke loose
his mathematician’s mind calculated
how long until earthly paradise
it was a delusion but a lot of them work
time to risk the entire skin layer he fielded
searching for the trail to civilization
he shinnied up his collective unconscious
an optico semiotician on a paranormal safari
and began to read mom's holy missive
son your persistent mania for self dialog
requiring a frequent bath in statistics and terror
has left you under the juggernaut's wheels
for some fashionable occult mystery
humor him it's a mud fest in there
moms lips floated above and spoke
the Cherubs chirped and twittered
as he rowed over the spillway of oblivion
and stood before the ancient ones
boy were they ancient decrepit even
connected to great green bubbling flasks
by their bloated *** organs
apparently this made them really smart
the one labeled mom bubbled and spoke
the you you think is you is somebody else
later that day a marsh fire swept through Utopia
and a humming bird took nectar from his ear

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon

we knew capitalism had turned ugly
after the first lemonade stand drive by
children denounced their parents
when their eyes were opened
to supply side economics
and demand side criminal enterprise
plunging on in a premeditated stupor
they floated between the tables
a jackpot here a jackhammer there
a cartesian Bingo bonanza elsewhere
going on but the scantiest of gossip
it's a fill in the blank world
where a suitcase full of dead mockingbirds
found on the late bus idling at the terminal
against the smell of ***** nightmares
constituted a reunion of the ever faithful
filling the night with interrogation
we had some exceptional men in our unit
dropped into trouble spots too hot to touch
setting up sensors and detectors and bait
scholars statesmen jurists bishops
and a bent maggoty reeking poet
a sleight of hand magnum opus abuser
surrounded by the burning bodies
of everyone he ever knew
yet all is not a ham bone up the ***
I had just cleaned up my syntax and grammar
with maple syrup and golden dairy butter
so I'll put off proofing this mess for another day
too old to dig up reliable proof anyhow
my brain's already in a specimen jar
it lived a mythical fairy tale life
worth a transfer to the end of the line
to the ancient carnival of phantoms
so I sent in my manicurist security guard
from the tropical hammock islands
their scissors going snip snip snip
rattling the bones of the dead
if this is just a make believe universe
I'd hate to see the real one
but I'm pretty sure space is continuous
and spewing rhyme out of the hearts of stars
but what the hell do I know
it all sounds so fresh and dewy
assuring me that people of greater densities
the beautific the anointed the the sanctified
**** up real stupid just like we do
forgive me but my thoughts have all been stolen
the end point is eluding me as a point
as an area we'll eventually get there

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon

mom was a radically insolvent
courtesan of the underpass camps
exploited by a grim and grimy past
reckless as the day is long
hosting a tourism so shameless
her own union set her on fire
to prevent further such mortifications
I advised her to talk to her real self
and got 5 blank staring minutes
basically because she didn't have one
only an extremely accurate echo
but she was a rebel and I loved her
kept her head lice population down
just so she could tell me the occasional
bedtime story on an empty stomach
hear now the legend of the Headless Man
once and a long ago
lived a lonely man with no head
one of the many stigmatized gentry
in the long forgotten social media uprising
somehow he could see hear and gesture
even though the neck was a pink nub
but he was hung like a meatloaf
making maidens titter at the village well
sighing rolling their eyes gasping flushed
um wait where was I
ah yes ... he fell in love
with the Bodiless Woman of course
knowing she could be of some use
it's a story of egregious assumptions
a belching sewer of lust and depravity
a juggernaut of rash sensual ambition
um wait where was I
ah right ... in the village below
the holy men were belled into a caucus
around Rowena’s oracle head
they came as the ancient test required
to run barefoot across the fire pit
at Detroit Jimmy's Bad to the Bone BBQ
the winner was a few inches shorter
from the igneous victory tap dance
a ritual purification of the sense of motion
accompanied by stigmatas and signs of wonder
Detroit Jimmy married Nub and Rowena
in a cabbage patch ceremony under the stars
wicked little boy went Row
on their wedding night mud bath
work me like your first bag of fries
invited Nub in a spasm of disorder
and they rode upstate in his Rocket 88
the road spreading gently
like a great pastry

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon

The rich are committing suicide
and taking us along with them
the prosthetic limbed *******
Fort Darwin tottering on fewer stilts
once the Masters of the Universe
presently picking through garbage
looking for an Icarus to pilot
some way back among the clouds
their telepathic goon squads
armed with the ******* of God
squat in the darkness of doorways
lightning strikes all around them
even their telephone poles were clairvoyant
several thousand watts went up my leg
shorting out the only attention span I own
left me perforated but far from lacy
wearing all my masks all the time
fragments of self are selves
in a bulemic deconstruction
where form and content
mud wrestle incessantly for attention
on the crazy train to 3 color 3 finger hell
apparently the ancient gods still rule
in their madhouse heaven
ambivalent petulant flatulent gods
brandishing sword point conversions
wielding gun point perversions
the protagonists the antagonists
fornicators masturbators liquidators
pariahs and unlicensed poets
preaching hellstone and brimfire
now their carcasses are steppingstones
it's psywar out there kids
better find where they hid your dossier
mesmerized of the world unite
you have nothing to lose
but your failed methods of addressing reality
said his slowly twisting tongue
struggling for ratings like any media
the soul cannot erase it can only go sightless
a phantom trapped in melancholy
when we were built to dance
with the twinkling summer stars
he finally learned to undestroy memory
being an ascended master of non sequitur
carried aloft by the wings of Mother Goose
his metabolic hurricane of why
an inferno of intrigue and  superstition
our embryo-headed UFO ruling class
have me inside their fence of skulls
an investment in diagram futures
the idiots

A lukewarm pile of fresh *****
And the scattered pieces of a broken heart
Or some other wildly clichéd dross
A vague color between green and grey
Maybe some recent cigarette butts
In it are uncomfortable memories
Immortalized vindictive shards of the past
A boot print to assert the endless shame

Nothing positive is ever in *****
It's a relief of pain and dullness
It contains the distilled essence of heartache

I haven't thrown up in years
I must have so much pent up waste in me
Waste of the self, garbage of the soul
Unholy, rancid, putrid, odorous *****
Or am I perhaps forgetting something?

There is tranquil solitude in *****
Isolated, cold, mechanical self-reflection
Representations of pathetic shame
Cruel hatred in regurgitated carrots and corn
No disgust except that which the perceiver suggests

What point is there in disgust and regret then?
The ugly and incapacitating truth escaped

Perhaps the reason I do not, is because I am!
Quetzal, the drunken ***** of the Holy Spirit
Reflecting all the disgust God hides
Transposed onto unshapely fractures
Cavities and chasms, gaping on the cloth of Eden

Become as *****, lukewarm and odorous!
The purest and cleanest reflection of God's adoration

Falling
Sinking
Drowning
Redemption

Steel
Blood
Exhaustion
Black­ness

Suppose to me for a second that you ignore the cultural barrier between the man standing in front of you and yourself. This man was raised in a far away land, whose people are PECULIAR in many ways, not quite fitting into any group you have heard of. He has, in the past been referred to, sometimes affectionately and sometimes derogatorily, as an alien. He is PONDERING. You can see it on the blank, nearly expressionless face that he posits towards this unblinking world he considers void of redeeming qualities. In his land, there is a PECULIAR saying, that he keeps repeating to himself, as though it was a mantra that could somehow save him from what seems, at this point, impending. He is PONDERING this saying. The way he recites it, sometimes quietly within his mind's eye and sometimes out loud, much to the dismay of those hearing him, is "Acting with the peace of the dead." which is an approximation of the way he heard it once, when his father said it to him as a child. He is unsure what this PECULIAR phrase has been doing in his mind for the last week. He is in a tall building, on the top floor, and he considers jumping out of a window every free moment he allows himself. He has, on occasion, realized his consciousness left him during the day, only to be roused back from his PONDERINGS by the sounds of objects and people that no longer exist. He hears the voice of Him, the man who swam before him, despite not knowing how to swim. He fears that his knowledge of swimming forbids him from joining Him. He does on occasion realize that his fear of not being able to swim with Him is what some would call PECULIAR. Some would explain that he needs to let go of these foolish endeavors and let the 4514 swim along the coast, soundly. His father would have told him about the days he PONDERED the window of his tenth floor apartment as well.
He deems long enough has passed. He opens the window, and manifest before him is a bridge of RAINBOW. He steps onto the bridge and loses control of his conscious mind.

Swallowed by the dread
Swimming with the dead
The station is unmanned
The operator's ******

Let they who art one with the endless ocean
The black and glintingly specked sea of tar
Encroach you and grasp at what you hold

Let them hold you down, down under
Suffocating the life out of you
Holding your throat until you drown

Let ye, fettered traveler, join us
We are a merry lot down here
This void, this black space we inhabit
It really isn't as scary as it sounds
There is love and joy and celebration
There is camaraderie, feasts
There are memories, in many which ways
There are dreams, and no nightmares
Let ye, shackled traveler, join us
For we have sang of your exploits
For we have cried for your sorrows
For we so desire to meet with you (again)
Let ye, battered traveler, join us
We miss you.
Your hugs felt nice.
We miss seeing you grow up by our side.
Even when far apart, we would always think of you.
We love you, and we wish you were here with me.

Suppose to me for a second that you ignore the difference of corporeal worlds between the woman standing in front of you and yourself. She inhabits a world of very little LIGHT. (Though there is some.) It is the middle of the night, which she is able to infer because even though her eyesight is as SHARP as ever, there is still absolutely nothing visible in this world. Though her other senses are, for lack of a better expression, quite attuned to this world, and therefore she can easily sense her way through the room she usually wakes up in. This, however, is not that room. She stumbles immediately, and falls, to a floor that feels much different, courser to the touch. The feeling of her heart welling up the usual anxious thoughts is not as LIGHT as it was a moment ago. She is in a deep state of panic. Of paranoia. Of fright. Of terror. The darkness feels all the more encroaching, all the more terrifying, in this new, unexplored room. White specks begin to cloud her vision as she stumbles around, wounding herself constantly. Bruises, cuts, trauma. She stays down, this time. There is a distinct coldness to the floor where she lay. She gropes around, and yelps in pain. SHARP. It's a knife! She grabs the handle of it. Quite LIGHT. She decides to test out the SHARPness of this knife and stabs at the floor. Nothing happens. Her heightened feelings of panic bring back memories, unpleasant memories, similarly involving darkness, knives and unfamiliarity. She can only see one possible way out, and concurs she'd like to see LIGHT at least one more time. She falls into a deep sleep, clutching her knife at her chest and dreaming of those folks of merriment.
She wakes, still as panicked as before, but sees that specks of brightness now form around the horizon far outside her room. They don't bring any joy to her, she just wanted to see them one last time.
She deems long enough has passed. She cuts into the flesh of her body that, through the darkness, she has never seen before, and manifest before her is blood. It is a stark, crimson color, a shade she has never once beheld. Then, as her senses begin to faulter, she looks again and sees more shades, all those of a RAINBOW. She brought herself joy by managing to create color in a world with none before her. She lets herself lose control of her conscious mind.

The woman and the man meet
A clashing of two different worlds
Two different times, yet at once the same
They both open their mouths to each other
No sound comes, they stand silent

THEY PONDER THE RAINBOW, ITS PECULIAR, SHARP LIGHT.

They stand together in the space that the choir mentioned in passing previously. Waves crash against them both, yet they stand unflinching, trying and failing to scream, yell, shout, anything that would make the other one understand. Their duality frightens them both, as though they know something the other doesn't. Finally, a voice booms, it is both of theirs and yet it is not. It asks the question that they both mean to phrase:
"I'm very happy to finally be here, but... where is everyone?"

No tomb like the present
A suffocating fact
I shan't see the crescent
A summer with no tact

There is a distinct, quiet suffering
That plagues the air every which summer
Though out there, the world is rapidly expanding
The smell of rot is the one that catches my nostril
As for what rots, I am not sure
Perhaps the trouble lies within myself
But in these days, I am slower, less responsive
And my conversations get more unhinged
With the entities in my living space
As for whether they are hallucinated
Or it's me yelling at bugs that have entered
I honestly would not be able to say

The air is thick, thicker than milky fog
And this thickness hurts the purity
Pure, white snow falls from my eyes
And cold, piercing winds from my throat
Icicles grow upon my fingertips
And my hair is made of frozen grass
I am the late autumn and early winter, I am
My stark and hailing demeanor freezes the weak
I am the very definition of an ice queen
Or at the very least I definitely pretend to be
Even though it's a charade everyone ignores

Have you ever sat in the back seat, while a parent drove?
You might even feel a bit of affection from them
So it is not so bad, not quite as impersonable
Not as horrifying as the passenger's seat
You are at risk but you are not the operative word
I am currently in the passenger's seat of my life
Have you ever felt similarly? Like you lost control?
My interactions are pure instincts and pheromones
My preferences are base level urges in all cases
Even the music I so enjoy, I entrust not to myself
But to the almighty, for their hand is far more sturdy
I shake, like an autumn leaf in a hurricane
Barely holding on the driver, which is always them
I will never learn how to drive a car

I often get called an adept storyteller
Some people call me vivid or imaginative, even
So I suppose I might as well ask the people in my head
To help me conjure up some short tales for you;
This one is of a young girl, dreaming

In some dreams she finds herself in a rancid, green room
There with her is another girl, a cynical kind
The two of them may have loved each other once, but
That time has long since passed
Acts of carnal urges and violence come to pass
Mold grows on the walls and ceilings
The camera slowly pans away from them, *******
To show the director and the audience

In some dreams, she finds herself in a small Japanese home
Discussing the fate of that infamous 100 ryo
"You'll never get it back" says the cynical girl
She vows to get it back and leaves the room
Most of the scene is silent, save for cicadas
In the night she returns, scars all over her face
She brutally dismembers the cynical girl
She simply was not meant to be a ronin

In some dreams she finds herself in a police station
The cynical woman is on the other ends of the desk
"We've got you by the *****, ****" she says
The girl answers only with a scoff and a crooked smile
"If you had me by the *****, this would be more enjoyable"
The cynical girl seems embarrassed, upset
The director shouts "More emotion, you dimwits, more!"
The camera zooms in, with shaking motion, towards the girl

In some dreams she finds herself alone, it's snowing inside
The cynical girl left. Surely something far more important.
She begins to draw a mural, in the style of Basquiat
A funky little guy, baby blue, bright orange, neon pink lines
Once done, she hears a voice: "It's been a while, babes"
Finally, he was back! It was the mural, speaking
Or in some sense, the very walls of the room spoke to her
"What's groovy, baby?" he asks, with his usual cheer

There's many more dreams to share, like the one where they reminisce
Or the one where they're janissaries, stationed in Serbia
Or the one where they're communists, in a bar during the Great War
Or the one where space has been conquered and they stayed back at home
Or the one where the mural learns to play drums, and the shadowy figure joins
I didn't even talk about the shadowy figure, even though he's a major character!
I mean hell, even I joined them occasionally, once they asked
They figured out I didn't know everything, and talked to me, what a lovely bunch
But obviously at one point, spunky little girls have to wake up

In this dream, she finds herself alone again, in a regular room
The heat of the scorching sun has been illuminating her abode all day
She remembers that in this reality, she plays improvised music
And yet, in such horrid weather, it'd be suicide to go play right now
She is sluggish, unconcerned, seemingly in another world already
No tomb like the present, she thinks and repeats, like a mantric chant
"No time! You keep saying the phrase all wrong!" a voice reprimands her
She knows and she deems it an unfit day to have yet more drama
"I know... I just thought the pun was amusing..."
She says in retort to herself, in order to pass the time.

There's comfort in discomfort
And love in being lost
There's thinking and there's knowing
There's fire in the frost

I find myself at the end of a short journey
Most everyday, these days, if I'm honest
And I find I don't remember the journey
Soon, I won't remember it happened
Even forgetting the ending to it
A journey to my friend's house or the store
It's all sand that was washed away
By the ever-forming tides in my brain

I wish the tides were more effective, obviously
Wash me away as a whole entity, cleanse the world
They say there's pain in forgetting
Which I guess would explain why I'm like this
I have a friend who used to say they were a cancer
It was when we were younger and I didn't get it
Maybe it was because of their zodiac, I thought
But now I'm older and now I get it

After about a week of deliberation, I see it now
This, in a sense, is a song or a tale
That, if you look closely, debates the ocean
A frightening and dark depth of immeasurability
Would it be a pop culture reference now;
If I were to say I'd see for myself
Or would it simply be a pretentious reiteration
Made in the poorest of tastes?

My best years are behind me, I tell myself always
Thinking "oh, how I've wasted my time upon time"
But I've been telling myself this for my whole life
So when the **** were my best years, really?
I am perhaps the most attuned I have ever been
Rather than a teen singing opera in the streets
I am an adult screaming into metal tubes
Pretending that one day it will make me a living
Stretching my body thin and disappearing under pools
Pools of sweat, blood and tears, in a manner of dramaticness
The sun burns my skin off and the salt in the waves irritates the exposed muscle

That previous line was too long and it didn't fit the scheme
But I think that sort of helps with the deranged nature of the prose I present
I say to myself as I keep writing lines that are almost as long as that one

What the **** is rock music?
People tell me "oh I don't follow what goes on with rock music"
Or they ask me "what kind of rock music do you enjoy?"
But then we're counting Elvis Presley and Les Rallizes Dénudés as the same genre

Rambling on as usual, which presents a conundrum, do I finish the poem yet?
Or do I expose more of the thoughts with no connection?
I guess the connection is these are the things that keep me awake in the dead of night
And these are also the ones that I wake up for
Here's another one: Why do I love?
It comes so quick and stays so long and pains me to say that it churns my stomach
It makes no sense and though it's an impulse I cannot control I wish I had some modicum of understanding
And there's an even longer line, to show how strongly I feel about this!

You know, the reason I switched subject materials (or maybe I didn't even do so)
is partially because I forgot I was writing this, which fits in with the subject to begin with
It comes and goes in waves and threes, triumvirates of pathetic hasty fugazi deliberation
Ill-considered and hazardously conceived, murdered at birth
In a video game, that'd be called "spawn camping", and I for some reason felt the need to point this out

The time I tried killing myself (or succumbing to these waves, if you will)
It was the very waves that prevented me from it
I stood, perched, completely naked but for a pair of underwear, on my desk, looking out my open window
I felt the need to jump and I didn't even think about who might miss me on that day, I could think of no one
But then I kept thinking and things came up, musical concepts or scenes from films or random thoughts about historical figures
And before I knew it, I was sitting.
And though I'd felt it just as strongly as before, I could somehow even procrastinate suicide
Now if that isn't a superpower, I don't know what is!

The waves, they crashed against my open skull and my exposed brain matter
And before I knew it, I faced both the predicament of pebbles and skin
My amygdala and hippocampus were both as flat and smooth as the skin of a newborn
And yet as wrinkly and terrifying as Willem Dafoe in the Lighthouse
And there I was, a trembling infant, wracked with grief, paranoia and the shivers
And there I was still yet, I was Methuselah and I forgot what made me so

If I have to be honest with you, frank and earnest, as vulnerable as I always am...
I forgot why I wrote this by the time it was completed
But that is not the only thing I've lost
I look in the mirror and I see an ocean, formless, unending, ceaseless, hurdling ever toward
Toward, toward, toward
What is your identity, oh great one of the waves?