On the balcony,
It's pseudo-social housing,
Nothing fancy.
So I'm on the balcony,
And there's this beetle, this little beetle
And it's either high with me
Or dying with me
Just kinda flying into the ground and sorta sliding around on its head
On the still sunlit concrete.
It stops. On its back, legs flailing in the
nothingness. It rights itself.
It's sat still (well, not really sitting; it's a beetle.
but I imagine it would want to be sitting. I'm sitting).
There's a lightning bolt urge to crush its tiny carapace,
Just as quickly dashed away.
I take my last drag.
We watch the setting sun a while.
Spring is beginning to warm.
I leave the beetle to its business and go inside.
Escapes won't save me;
How terrified I am.

Last night there was a spider
Floating down from the bathroom ceiling
Tethered by an invisible silk thread
On a backdrop of powerful yellow made dingy by the incandescent light.
It was so graceful.
It looked like it was falling in slow motion.
I went to the kitchen and got a plastic cup, and came back to the spider,
Scooped it out of the air carefully, catching the thread,
Went to the living room and threw it out the balcony door,
onto the then dark concrete
(I didn't see if the beetle was still there, I didn't think to look,
I didn't care, but I assume not).
So today I was volunteering in a bookstore
(I remind myself of that old saying: charity is the pastime of those who don't care)
And as I came down the stairs
(upstairs is sorting, downstairs is selling)
There in front of me, evental,
my whole horizon, centred, unexpected:
A familiar form that had forcedly been forgotten
And an all too familiar sensation,
a chest-tightening-heart-drumming
terror
as if thunder thundered just behind my head,
Zeus piercing my heart,
His claim:
A woman who works in the coffee shop
Who a few months ago I asked out
(not the coffee shop, they don't pay their taxes)
Who has a boyfriend who would say he has her.
I think my disdain for chauvinism and possessional language
still arise from motivations chauvinistic and possessive;
I have not outgrown the oppressors in me.

La Rochefoucauld once put it: 'there are some people who would never have fallen in love
if they hadn't heard there was such a thing.'
I'm one of those people, or at least it was wanted.

We had only really spoken on that one occasion
(not me and La Rochefoucauld, he's dead; the barista)  
and briefly on that one other occasion
other than those service-consumer paradigmatic motions and incantations
In the practico-inerte, or beings-in-themselves, alienated, i don't know.
But really, it hurts to be reminded.
She hadn't yet seen me.
I had absolutely no idea what to do for a few seconds.
I say hi and timidly waddle toward her
And at first she doesn't seem to notice, but then is like, hey.
The awkwardness is peppered with short exchanges of information
And smiles that remind my soul it's alive.
I'll skip my failures in making conversation:
Turns out she draws. An artist. The knife twisting.
She's not into politics though
As if that somehow changes things.
I buy a pile of books. We leave the shop.
We're walking the same way a while.
I'm dying here but above the clouds.
She says it's nice that it's warm when she comes out of work now.
I say something weird about spring.
The laugh says it all. Baudelaire said it all:
when you walk, you dance, when you speak, you sing.
(he's dead too)
I asked if there is a lost and found at the coffee shop: there is:
I intend to retrieve a gross lame letter I wrote her
that one time I broke the symbolic order,
to my shame and undisclosed superego humiliation
(an all too familiar sensation).
Am I in the age of guilt? Was I transubstantiatiated? And hell? Pardon the details too many and too few.
The short walk had filled me with such energy
to prevent me being sad when we parted.
Back on the balcony, in another sinking sunlight
The spider scurries out of sight,
And I can see a glimmering web built onto the vertical bars.

poets
make great
stepping stones.

‘Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem
becomes how to set fire to fire.’
—Joshua Clover, ‘My Life in the New Millennium’

i’m back
back with a thunderclap.
no wait, scratch that.
back with a thunderous tone from the seldom seen soul
groaning lonely long sung melodies, if it please.
welcome to a kingdom of dreams
and agony.
a stone’s throw from here:
a face
Unseen.
and somewhere between(:) low
oceans rolling under the moon,
a storm approaching,
crazed wind whirling,
my sails unfurl, searching for the open seas of your gaze;
sick of being furtive;
i live and i yearn and i speak what i learn
and i know when i haven’t earned it,
too often too stern and i know you don’t deserve it,
i know everyone i know and too many more deserve so much more
and for them to have this i live and i yearn!
Justice!
for this i live and i yearn
on the turning earth that gives
no rest to the world weary
left alone
to burn out, i burn out, i burn out
i rise from the ashes
a phoenix grasping wheat and hammer in its talons,
seeking to pass out gifts and set fire
to fire itself, to sing Clover in the streets,
to render the helpless
helpless no longer.
i am (not) unbroken
like infinite waves.
friends fan the flames of my brazen heart
ablaze at three minutes to the midnight of my flagrant soul.
a toll on your life,
a tax on your poverty.
shouting: no more!
shouting: we will not settle for less than we are owed!
shouting: down with the dictatorship of the plutocrat!
shouting: down with the rich Man’s socialism!
shouting: …
in a fantasy, odiously
no more, doubt ridden,
not yet traversed nor even intraversed,
not yet reified, not quite versed;
apartheids’ unovercoming, voices atrophied,
walls rising higher, reception terse
and curse those bless’ed curses
transdescending themselves
in blessings through me!
they haven’t yet found me at my worst
so things couldn’t get worse if i hurt them.

my intentions a mess,
my effect bereft.

wake me from my slumber, let be the aching of my chest;
let the heaviness of my heart be the weight of solidarity;
let be! the political is personal to some, life and death to some:
that’s why i’m so glum, chum,
they’re killing quicker than i finish another straight ***…
****.
and on our own soil too – see, it’s partly not for oil;
blind to land grabs and assets stolen, our toil exploited – that’s what’s up.
can’t handle serfdom? physical, mental, or spiritual health problem?
abject subsistence and misread decisions not assuaged by some other ***?
unconditional basic income?—say what?
choose starvation, hypothermia, suicide, fear—
it’s a numbers game
and every loss is a ******,
it’s ****** up.
state cuts ****, zombie banks ****, transnationals ****, TTIP will ****,
our heroes are experienced
as torturous humiliators and mass murderers in other countries,
it’s ****** up.
and reactions to shock and awe, pollution, imperialism and stolen raw materials be the chorus.
and i hope the NSA and other such state ***** hear clearly what i have to say.
and always from the pools of blood,
money trickles up.
structurally omni-parasitic,
-cataclysmic, -containing
an unlucky lucky one formula;
“profits today, **** tomorrow!”;
a system of mass extinction and violence;
cultures of hate;
distain for compassion;
secret social cleansings;
privatised gain, nationalised pain;
a plaguing absence of understanding;
sanction fetishes;
rational genocides;
wages; ***; television; grumpy cat; death drive;
armies of invisible slaves and pillaged unpeoples,
and sordid crowds of visible ones in denial or denied;
and an honest and patronising pastiche poet!
to not even begin.

but a promise shall be a promise.

weeping won’t get it done.
i shall muster my forces even before four horsemen,
the long attricious charge toward a universal freedom from fear
and hierarchy shattered
under banners of equality axiomatic sworn.
my wingbeat shall be adorned with thunderous applause,
it shall disclose smokescreens and it shall cleanse you of opiates
and not just those you have in mind.
watch me soar, join these skies;
rise above the immoral laws and their warped economic concord;
be aware of where the wealth is hoarded;
don’t concern yourself with lies,
concern yourself with liars and who they’re lying for.
be wary where your desire’s from.
there’s still longer than a long way to go
but your sense of urgency is needed now.
the shadows of the Bomb and of ecological catastrophe now grow longer
than the shadow of death
in any old sad song in history
in scarcity, surrendering abundant potential for post-scarcity
to strings of the superego, demons, conductors, controllers
and orchestrated outrage!
and i know we have more to lose than our chains.
but the view from the night of Terror is of the far off tranquil stars
and the moon never brighter!
bind, unbind, entwine.
i will not leave behind only wasted time.
find yourself, find the source, give out your hand
to dance, to share, suffer, fall—
find the hand of another, there find recourse—
and consider the Call, and consider the Course.