What does it mean to be human?
Does it mean that your body is flesh and bone?
My body is made of plastic.
What are you made of?
What makes a person whole?
Is it fulfillment? Happiness? Soul?
Whatever the case, I am not whole.
Are you?
Are humans intelligent or ignorant?
I am both.
Which one are you?
Are humans kind or wicked?
I do not know which one I am.
Do you know?
Do humans get to choose who they are?
I have tried to mould myself as best I can, into the person I want to be
Have you?
Are you human?
I am, decidedly, not human.
I am that which I do not know of
I am that which I do not wish to discover
I hope never to know who I am.
Who are you?

a dark place,
dingy and cobwebbed:
the forlorn basement
below an unfinished house;
there is no hope
of an HGTV house-flip
or a makeover
or the sort of boring/heartwarming story
where some nice white family
—or conveniently diverse—
sets up shop,
smash-cuts through a renovation
and gets their dream home.

no,
the house will remain gloomy,
this basement filled with emptiness;
no one desires
to come through the door,
no one except the tweakers
and the vagabonds
and the runaways,
the ****** and the pimps,
the celebrities and psychiatrists,
the demons and the ghosts,
the preachers and their seething
congregations of judgmental ******
that live across the street,
and the ***** teenagers
hunting for a place to try out ***.

no cleaning crew
or maid service
or organize-your-life guru
or even the most experienced
of all the world’s janitors
could enter this house and clean it
or beautify this basement
or disenfranchise the squatters within;
the neighbors just try
and demolish it
every chance they get,
to rid their sparkling, spotless community
of this disgusting eyesore.

A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

I lie on my back at midnight
hearing the marvelous strange chime
of the clocks, and know it's mid-
night and in that instant the whole
world swims into sight for me
in the form of beautiful swarm-
ing m u t t a worlds-
everything is happening, shining
Buhudda-lands,
bhuti

blazing in faith, I know I'm
forever right & all's I got to
do (as I hear the ordinary
extant voices of ladies talking
in some kitchen at midnight
oilcloth cups of cocoa
cardore to mump the
rinnegain in his
darlin drain-) i will write
it, all the talk of the world
everywhere in this morning, leav-
ing open parentheses sections
for my own accompanying inner
thoughts-with roars of me
all brain-all world
roaring-vibrating-I put
it down, swiftly, 1,000 words
(of pages) compressed into one second
of time-I'll be long
robed & long gold haired in
the famous Greek afternoon
of some Greek City
Fame Immortal & they'll
have to find me where they find
the t h n u p f t of my
shroud bags flying
flag yagging Lucien
Midnight back in their
mouths-Gore Vidal'll
be amazed, annoyed-
my words'll be writ in gold
& preserved in libraries like
Finnegans Wake & Visions of Neal

The wheel of the quivering meat
conception
Turns in the void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits,
Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan
Racinghorses, poxy bucolic pigtics,
Horrible unnameable lice of vultures,
Murderous attacking dog-armies
Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the
jungle,
Vast boars and huge gigantic bull
Elephants, rams, eagles, condors,
Pones and Porcupines and Pills-
All the endless conception of living
beings
Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness
Throughout the ten directions of space
Occupying all the quarters in & out,
From supermicroscopic no-bug
To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell
Illuminating the sky of one Mind-

Poor!
I wish I was free
of that slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead.

Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -

America's
trying to control the uncontrollable Forest fires, Vice

The essential smile In the essential sleep Of the children Of the essential mind

I'm
all thru playing the American
Now I'm going to live a good quiet life

The
world should be built for foot walkers

Oily
rivers Of spiney Nevady

I
am Jake Cake
Rake
Write like Blake

The
horse is not pleased Sight of his
gorgeous finery
in the dust Its silken
nostrils
did disgust

Cats
arent kind Kiddies anent sweet

April
in Nevada - Investigating Dismal Cheyenne Where the war parties
In fields
of straw
Aimed over oxen At Indian Chiefs
In wild headdress Pouring thru
the gap
In Wyoming plain
To make the settlers
Eat more dust than dust
was eaten In the States From East at Seacoast Where wagons made up To dreadful
Plains
Of clazer vup

Saltry
settlers
Anxious to ******* The Mongol Sea (I'm too tired in Cheyenne -
No sleep in 4 nights now, & 2 to go)