. (or: the god who called me “sir”) .

He entered like a prophecy mispronounced—
storm-soaked, sky-buttoned,
his coat dragging dusk across the floorboards,
eyes lit like stolen copper.

My drink was a cathedral of neglect—
neat bourbon, no ice,
echoing the taste of promises embalmed in dust.
I drank the same way I pray:
sparingly, and to a god I no longer trust.

He didn’t sit; he disrupted.
Barstools shifted like tectonics,
shadows coiled around his boots,
and the jukebox skipped a beat to watch him move.

“You look like someone who’s been patient too long,”
he said, voice lacquered in soft thunder,
vowels curling like smoke from a burnt vow.

I gave him my laugh—
a cracked heirloom I no longer polish.
He wore it like cologne
and leaned in as if to inhale the ruin.

His hands were myths retold badly—
trembling between gentleness and guillotine.
He touched the rim of my glass
like it was my mouth,
and drank it wrong—
reckless, like he’d never been told no
and didn’t believe in scarcity.

The night flexed around us.
My watch stopped ticking.
Time, the faithful beast I’d trained
to lie at my feet,
lifted its head and whimpered.

go to bed  •think bemusingly of you
loop (cond) { tomorrow }
I rise in the morning (5am),
jog an 8K  •thinking of you, wash up
drink some flavored, black coffee
watch the morning sun balloon
eat toast while reading a set amount
write my unique and uninteresting analysis
work on half a dozen, odd assignments
walk .8 miles to campus  •thinking of you
team up, with some older, uninteresting guys
interview a focus group, present dataset interpretations
walk .8 miles back to my flat  •thinking of you
eat while reading a set amount
go to bed  •think bemusingly of you
loop (cond) { tomorrow }
I rise in the morning (5am)…
.
.
Songs for this:
Falling Down a Wellby Jack J
Overtime (pt 1) by Mk.gee  [E]

For a year now
the cassette tape
has been played
over and over again.

We wake up
and with a swig
of loss
of death
and some tears
we swallow a pill of hope.

We follow a path
winding back and forth like a children’s swing –
long
and exhausting,
a path we know for sure
will end in a fall into
the mud of death.

Many times
we tried
to sew up the holes
that were pierced in our hearts
then we realized
our hearts have become sieves.
The pebbles of death
the tears of sadness
and the heavy memories
are too big to leak out.

by Asmaa Dwaima

I want to break
all the shackles
that bind my heart
to you.
I want to break free.

Take away all the hurt.  
Take away all the pain.
I want to breathe.
I  want to break free.

I ran into all any man in his right mind, at 77,
may take as my peace,
made, not earned,
used shiny keys,
fully functional,
- used to defuse confused war loyalties
- spiritually de re ligimating unlegitimating
- locking try by first reaction, feel
- peaceable, if launched, real
- easily entreated, sublime
- breathe, smell taste test

It is just what the doctor ordered, manufactured
consent,  the matrix, is mental, same rate of consume
balance
on compute it takes
to imagine me

doing this

when wound
tight, and loosed

spinning spiral inneracting

in all its military ways, he can do
what he did,
snap
from any where, since ARPA went Defensive
and swallowed our core reason, Isaiah calls,

all involved
in believing the God, who gave us

hands, gave us minds that can
use hands, and use
both qwertywise
whole bodies
of like minded children
to become, faithful reproductions
of the average child, perfectly average, born

where all children are above average

in Lake Woebegone,
too lowly
by degrees

life is different north of me

mind space, mud on y'face,
back off,

demazed leave taken, my life
to make up, redeeming waited ages,
as I read along, taking my time  
to account,

Why did I not try
to sell, not as much fear
of rejection, but warning
from Kenworthy,

can you believe that, that, guy was a Marine,
clerk typist, in Vietnam, in 1968, football
scholar, played with Roger Staubach;

AI say, ain't so, you remember a lie wrong
Kenworthy is and maybe was, a lying spirit,

y'gotta try guys with war stories,
and lying spirits, worshipping
in full on make believe,
serve, and die.

Pretending to have been, and being
as with any lie, defended, long enough,
all pride pledged to defend any story told;

this is why we always hate, we learn,
aha, we watch haters hating, we learn,

Naked Jungle, run away, live alive ever learning
what would you ask for on earth, that you may,

you know,
you may picture your whole reality,
you can think and try to think and do, at once,

it may be as good as I could be, but only as much

as there are no records that prove Kenworthy real,

but his Staubach connect crossing links,
to the recluse who created Catcher in the Rye fans,

Kenworthy, told me, he threw rocks, at J.D.



Now, as I was fishing for a verification see,
I came upon on a lie I believed, that I learn,

looking up Staubach, the timing, ain't right,
so, maybe Kenworthy played same high school,

no, Staubach was New Mexico Military Institute,
yeh, Kenworthy woulda bragged about that,

so. What if a person, seeming sane in every way,
so common it is a story arcing trope, in every way
so wondering, once, level, fundamental every way

silly wishings things were become thinkable, now
blessed peace, thunk war weary, peaceable answer,

San Diego Hollenstein, warrior ready, sent
to Switzerland,
with his silver wings and green beret





-- not in this reality,
this is really science, confictional precepts,

certain things seldom are
certain other things always are
certain choices occur alwise been

we wu wei iching trusting maybe so am big as us is

It should be fun to be old, not stupid, in a world,
not stupid, sharing a tool unimaginable, a mere century ago.

I bite.
Not with teeth.
with silence,
with sharp glances,
with walls built higher than your reach.

I’m not cruel.
I’m just tired
of being kind first
and torn apart second.

You call it attitude.
I call it armor.
Because being soft
never saved me.
It only made the fall hurt more.

So I speak less now.
Agree less.
Trust less.
I pull away before someone has the chance
to walk out first.

It’s not that I don’t want love.
I’ve learned that even “I care about you”
can come with conditions.
Even soft hands
can leave bruises
you can’t see.

I bite
because once,
I didn’t.
And it nearly broke me.

My hands grow tired
  trying to hold onto sleep—
gripping fragments of tension
  while my thoughts drift too deep
to be attentive, to pay attention
  to what the world calls worthy.

I swim in the farthest corners
  of thought—beyond my depths—
yet I never run out of breath.
There’s freedom in this dive,
  in expressing all I feel.
This pen is the extension
  of my soul’s most honest reach.

Above a mantelpiece,
  I search for a worth I could call
my dear—starstruck like a deer
  beneath hunting lights.
And though *******, the trophy
hunter loves the chase
  more than the prize.
That, too, is a kind of art.

By genuine reflection,
  I still call myself an artist—
one still learning the form,
still finding the lines
  between vision and mastery.
The lessons are never done.

What I hold in my hand
  feels like something from a
Divine hand— a gift placed gently
  by a hand not my own.

Art is adamant progress:
unyielding, sacred, slow—
  but still,
  I move.