apologies, but i will not be abstracting people
as mere pronoun users,
i know i should, but i kinda like "painting"
and giving peoeple race, and differences,
i can't really establish what pronoun-bleaching
would do to, oh i don't know,
perhaps i'd be writing this...

back when i still worked as a roofer and was doing
a project in Greenwich,
  nice try, construction industry men don't
go to the gym... what a joy to remember my roots...
anyway...
    what was i saying?
   so i commuted from north east london
this this little village...
and it really has a feel about it that it is a village...
i went into the Greenwich waterstones
bookshop and spotted something interesting...
    a j. k. huysmans trilogy (beginning with la bas)
and ending with *cathedral, or something like that,
if i knew what the internet was saying,
i'd buy all three books...
     but i did the dumb thing of buying
the first book of the trilogy, that's always in print...
anyway, no small loss...
   and there stood sideways joseph roth's
the antichrist...
              i can't compare it to nietzsche work,
even though i should, given roth was jewish...
and i figured: if the concept is not originally
jewish and greek, and anti- is a prefix much
more easily understood these days with
the existence of anti-matter...
            than say... armilus...
    well... so i was commuting day to day,
and over the course of the project probably read
two of three books, roth's was one of them,
alongside nikos kazantzakis' blockbuster...
but something weird happened when i read roth
for the first time...
     sitting in this dockland train heading south
of the thames, a group of muslim "women"
spotted that i was literate,
     they sat, about 10 metres away from me...
but the word antichrist must have prompted them,
one just said out-loud: you're satan's *****...
huh?
   there i am, reading my own book not raving
mad reading it aloud, and there she has the prank
of associating a book to a very mysterious person
who riddles the bible being completed...
      mein gott: two world wars ever since nietzsche
wrote he was the person with the title kept
sorta on a whim for nearly 2000 years...
     and then two days ago my father has a car accident
and this hijab clad woman is driving,
  but she does a Pilate and doesn't take responsibility,
the passenger that's with her jumps out
   and gives my father his details
and the woman is pristine...
     a *******, what do you call it: sacred cow?
most pedestrians in england are treated as such...
  so she phones her son and gives the phone to my father
and her son says to my father: it's against
the law to phone the police, you can't phone them...
well... hey presto! we're in Saudi Arabia!
and this is what's worrying me...
no... nope... this is what pains me...
    i had to take my ego for a walk tonight...
i had to think a lot of ******* out,
how the ego would whimper and whine like a dog...
there's your "janus" / "contronym"...
ego... dog...
   the leash? i'm thinking with it...
and suddenly, clarifty, i can pierce it's *******
narrative and think about it... as any id might...
what i experienced was an ego-dispossesion...
   i lost it, it turned into an automaton,
robotic misery... hardly the angry Frankenstein monster...
i lost the care for an ego-embodiment...
i was dispossessed by it, robbed, thief! thief!
i needed to come back home and read
heidegger's aphorisms 174 through to 178 from
the ponderings (it would help that you read the
ponderings... after reading being & time)...
the pain i felt was very much akin to being British,
even though it's something i assimilated into...
which could mean that's it's the odd bit...
should i, shouldn't i feel some sentiment for my host
culture?
word are flying around the place,
they're calling it cultural marxism...
well... i come from a culture that had stated
marxism, period, i.e. supported by an economic model,
that worked, and would have worked,
had capitalism not done what capitalism does
naturally: compete!
   i'm watching these cultural marxists and, i think,
i'm watching penguins in a zoo...
  i don't know what to make of these marxists,
who aren't even leninists...
            where's the economic model?!
  
that's the problem of going to a catholic school
in england, attempting to stress multi-culturalism,
i even ojected to being confirmed ritually,
with a bishop from Brentwood,
sorry, too much Irish around the place....
i too thought i was about to say something in Gaelic...
outer-east london: a complete ******* jungle
of biodiversity...
     so did i misplace my allegiences?
to the tongue? to faking an ethnicity?
    of course i'm pisssed off, i spent the past 2 hours
walking the most mundane of walks,
bewildered why this woman in a hijab wouldn't
own up to causing a traffic accident...
i helped him will out the police forms,
and there she is, on paper, smug like some ****** mary
because i'm the one that really doesn't think
that Islam got Project Hair wrong,
me? personally? i think that woman's hands ought to
be covered,
     in thinking terms, a woman's hands could
get me more excited than a woman's foot...
but sure... hell... why not hair?!
              the last time i checked, normal people
have an aversion toward hair...
ever see that person almost vomiting when they found
a stranger's hair in their soup?
  that **** that grows on your hair is the only silk
you've got... how about a few toenail clippings
to boot? first thing a sane would think: ****! ****!
oh, we're going to get on... just fine, just fine...
   the next time i think about encouraging
an **** ******* position's worth of prayer
i'll be a ******* cardinal.
   what's wrong with taking responsibility?
why are Islamic women so immune to the tractātus
of law? where's the jurisprudence?
   i'd call it something more than diabolical...
you can really become a vampire when you're told
the lesson: those that thirst for justice...
  lesser leech...
            who gives a **** whether it was: "but a scratch"?
woman! take responsibility!
  pampered little coconut jugglers...
   now to think of it... leave those curtains,
and this one time: she was walking with a buggy
and a small child and she unveiled herself from
a niqab before me...
           the perfect arabian nightmare i could
have ever witnessed...
             i had long hair back then...
what she revealed from under that niqab?
wait... am i writing this in the times
when the French occupied the Holy Land and had
the first thirst / idea of a colony?
  
this is me, imitating punching a brick wall...
this is me... in a boxing ring...
bashing myself...
            this is me thinking about how man
has no capacity to usher in karma,
how man's concept of law is hardly cosmic,
how man is a kniving ******* that
deserves something beyond a heaven and a hell:
rather: a return to his self...
that's what i keep telling myself:
i don't want heaven, i don't want hell...
i, just, want, to, return, to, my, self...
    yes, that's a reflection,
hence the pronoun has no compound, i.e. isn't
a reflexive understanding for the fluidity of language
expressed by the concerning compound: myself.
perhaps that's just the beginning of understanding
the noumenon / thing in itself, or rather to counter
the fluidity of the word itself, since, evidently
it self makes no sense that could ever produce
a concept akin to the noumenon...

why wouldn't this woman care to give an inkling into
her concept of right and wrong...
she's driving the ******* car, she makes a doo doo...
pauper... **** up!
            i still don't know why it was about hair...
you like a stranger's **** in a soup?
   what's with this middle eastern fetish for covering it?
hey! beginning from 1986, am i sorta automatically
involved in a cult that has a vintage of ageing from
a **** of a camel a long time ago?
  no wonder the knighthood ceremony was initiated
by slapping a newly initiated knight across the cheek,
like i said, a woman's hand is more ******
than her hair...
      i'd say: take up ye care to don gloves!
and that, i'm sure, will never happen.

it's probably the most delicate thing a woman can possess...
a hand...
the rest is what darwinism cared to provide us with:
a black widow, a mantis;
and that's talking pure earnest about the matter...

listen, i spent the past two hours having the ordeal of
an ego... which i had to anti-narrate into theory...
yes, the id was helpful, is actually told me, or rather,
interrupted the ego from the narrative
to give me this *******'s worth of profanity
(and yes, with due reason; ever fill out a police form
concerning some accident? do that, then you'll be equipped
to read Tolstoy)...

so it was ego-possessiveness,
      the ego already thinks its eternally subject...
that's one of the implants...
eternity and god are inherent in ego,
   your heart means absolutely nothing when the ego
has been given certainity that it can't shake off...
what the ego isn't given is a unit of reason
that sees past it... the id...
in relation to dualism and the much active dichotomy
as alternative to an equilibrium of dualism
i will outrightly exclude the superego
  as nothing but antithesis to the ubermann theory
of overcoming man...
  and on their shoulder they once had
the epitomes of cartoon conscience, an angel and a demon...
but thanks to the superego: they had mama
on their left shoulder, and papa on their right shoulder...

just the mere act of shutting that thing up
was enough, and it was apparent,
that writing fiction could be to blame,
   writing fiction can be rightly guessed at
for levitating a condition of medical proportion
into the realm of mythology,
    we have already depersonalised the unit
of ego to the extent that it has become polarised,
bipolar, e.g., comes from a depersonalised
gravity of ego,
we're no longer in need to write books,
we're in a dire need to write our own psyches...
and it all stems from making the basic human unit,
bound to the privacy of thought,
as needing a system that outweighs the moral
stratum,
           what can a person actually be or become
to even dream about asserting that there is
a da-sein (i.e. something, somethingness)
          "happening"?
i feel that there's something worse than a second
nakedness emerging,
         it's this incapacity to move on,
it's a mental nakedness, i am more easily prone
to dress my body in clothes
than i am able to dress my ego in thoughts,
than can correlate adequately, and peacefully...
toward something akin to a symbiosis
that can reach a = status, rather than an
   ≠ or an ≈ status... ****! Aquarius!
isn't the ≈ symbol the basis for it?
oh hell, back into the zodiac...
              
     i know my ego can be a downer,
but at least that's who i am talking about...
aphorisms no. 174 through to 178?
i do odd experiments with books,
     this is the first of its kind,
i'm actually going to rattle-******* this book out
till it feels like having wanked it 20 times
in a single day... i'll write what i "feel",
funny word, that word feel...
you never get to use it these days,
man is more about hammering in nails than
saying: ooh... that hurts...
and we all know what happened to Jesus'
teaching... forgive strangers...
     make sure your former friends are
crucified up-side down...
                 that really went far...
                      i can just see him...
an oasis of bullet-proof clauses...
              about how to handle people...
give them l.s.d. unconsciously!
         then wait for actual l.s.d. to arrive
and then worry...
when they took to their Swiss bicycles...
and writing poetry... and eating a soft-boiled
egg... given the concern for cholesterol:
a hard concept to fathom: that runny yoke...
     never ate mine with salt, i always like
that idea of legalised abortion...
                and we can be just that...
so imaginative to consolidate being mammal
that we can fathom eating chicken eggs
as easily as abortions... runny yokes have no basis
for a morality, or a compass...
they just are... runny... yummy...
             i call yokes the male version of
a woman's fascination with chocolate...
  i think egg yokes are the equivalent of cholocate
for men as chocolate is for women...
or so the advert said...

aphorism 174: as language...

          aphorism 175:
              philosophy catching up to science,
akin to theology catching up to philosophy,
both condescending extracts
that end up with both of the extreme parties
dressing up funny.

aphorism 176: such that newspapers are
the natural preservers? i.e. the idea of historical
escapism.

      (toilet paper does, much much more,
than a newspaper actually provides,
   press freedom is a bit boring to be honest,
beginning with the need for a moral agent
that's less and less moral, and more prone to
darwinism, i.e. selective, which is also said via:
what's natural, in a more and more techno-savvy culture?)

aphorism 177: only as, a rural thinker unto
a rural thinker... a case of describing a perfume
of those thinking about a day after tomorrow,
   but more precisely:
  the day before yesterday that didn't involve them...
say, on the ethnicity basis,
  the talk of being inheriting from the form
of ancestry... how we cultivate cucumbers,
tomatoes, prejudices...
   which is why i'm a slav happily talking a tongue
that's germanic, an off-shoot saxon,
and hopefuly defending it.

aphorism 178:
         "everything great wavers and wobbles,
stands in a storm. the beautiful is difficult."
   Ezra too, with the last, alas.
     but it's true... what happened in england in the second
part of the 20th century was great,
  and it did indeed wobble past the storm into
a desert of retirement...
            a peaceful coming toward terms of
a natural agreement...
   the generation preceding mine enshrined in their
psyche an england they heard over the radio...
king crimson... all such artistic expressions
found a case to take root...
     how parasites never attack a feeble creature
and only take roost in a strong symbiotic partner...
once it was said england could resemble ancient greece,
and it did, from the second part of the 20th century...
but that ended...
               it's gone, i have inherited a communist
past, a marxism with a concept of money,
and economic policy that wasn't inherently competitive,
but it also wasn't a welfare policy of the Marshall Plan,
and all i get is this freakish counter-movement
known as marxism in culture...
   that's worse than marxism in economy!

it should be heartbreaking to say this,
but coming from a monochromatic society,
watching the death of communism...
     i could say it was perfect... but then i can't
given my grandparents have a secure pension plan
that the state provides... i like that joke,
i just said it, and it makes perfect sense...
there is much more of Pilate in the history
of the peoples than there is of Jesus...
washing my hands clean, the companies said,
meaning self-employment...
     unless you have a really hungry libido
you actually do start worrying about keeping up
the numbers...
  companies don't...
      it's a bit of a bollocking...
i come from what could be imagined as a safety
economics of marxism into a marxism of culture
that i simply can't comprehend...
              well: it did give "us" a sense of pride,
and a will to rebuild warsaw without any american
money...
        the russians just said: where's your pride?
do you want to take their money and have it easy?
and when i ask that question:
i just start thinking about arabs without their oily diapers...
oil diaper... not exactly black gold:
oil diapers...
             Ahmed gonna poo poo?
              &nbsp

Leg off the table
you red face recruit!
put on the offensive
and break down
the bolted door!
you are the soul saver
the peddle maker
the calibrator
with colored handbills
and front line
rhetoric

join the masquerade
in ivy league style!
politicking with
cunning guile
invisalign smile
blackened vile
bleeding the funnel
with gold plate omega
and crocodile shoes

get on stage
and dance you fool!
you are the headline maker
the pantomime juggler
the compromised closer
pull out that 5 page review
(bullet points only please)
and polish those weathered lines!

did you give it your all?
the door tags
and pleasantries
the tidings
and clippings
the irrevocable claims
and postured blames
all those impressionable basics
put to the test?

you know the call
(straight from
those cold academics)
the pie chart gurus
and contract killers
(complete with bone in finger)
whipping their
frenzied crew
in an all night
charade

old yellar
and the gatekeeper
sure seem amused
(sharpening their inquest
behind closed doors)
firing up the shiit storm
with those hostile priicks
and a slew
of insatiable
cures

there’s laughter from the back room
the dripping nose
and wavering hand
the cut white lines
and checkpoint tales
the pipeline romance
and lacking form
(of a basic essential
character!)

soundboard
and narratives
for logging time
slouching on the
steel case
over moot points
ready to play
the 3 weight
butter card
(if need be)

might I remind you
it’s only an inquiry
(with a slight hint of concern!)
surely no
malfeasance
or deception intended
so step back from
the melt down
and cut to the chase!

headlines to breadlines
penthouse to outhouse
those immoral pursuits
have taken their toll
(haven’t they?)
madman or rogue
(you take your pick)
for the scores
and tabulations
are final

shame on you
for the foul play
the bold hypocrisy
and order desk games
the back stabbing blames
and spurious names
just sign on the dotted line ~
this banter
is killing me

With regards to Thomas Sayers Ellis*

Look at the
    Lucent lava lamps,
Dark craters
    Hiring hands.
We walked,
    Mimicking magma.
Hot, why is
    This heat?
Forget Vulcan
    And his illusion
Of kaleidoscopes,
    A rip tide
On the shore
    Of our conscious minds.
We held fire,
    Pretending to swim
Underground,
    But only out
Of pure respect.
    Some had boots
Made with
    The clippings
Of funky tripwire,
    Others wore suits
With goggles
    Clamped to their faces,
Gripping like
    Bay Area earthquakes.
One-by-one,
    Jang-strangs were
Attached to us and
    Hurled into the Pit
With rhythmic rituals,
    Waves of S and P
Flailed away
    Like flags.
One nation
    Under a new.
No one looked away
    From the fiery daze.
No one wept.

And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

Will I remember the reminder?
To turn on my brain again
I woulda thought I'd be kinder.
Dead red-eye at the day's end

Leave the silver in the sink
Let the dishes sit and soak a dream
Spot the terror in your rearview
So far closer than it may seem

Spot the drips drip dripping down
And I'm speaking like a black-white clown
Full of thoughts, but they're in your voice
Nothing better than a broken toy

This kid is churning like a big machine
Just like a cheetah on a T.V. screen
He's just an elemental, mental boy
Iguana man: search and you'll destroy

Make up a letter from the magazine
Pair of nail scissors and the short clippings
Nothing so near and dear and true to you
as how familiar smells the duct tape glue

You know nobody told the bumble-bee
And now you know that it was news to me
Strung out coyote stepping off a cliff
And he could fly except that he's scared stiff

You know I'd like to change my name
Into the curlicue, ampersand
So that I'll always stay an inkblot stain
Until the books all rot and turn to sand.
III

to exonerate the clippings
they took the back road to oswega
the tudor house rabbits
had long lost their heads
(presumably to the *****)
and what remained
of the landscape
was dead
and dry
and orange

that happy home
on the brink
of cattle loop
was now gull grey
the needles
and stragglers
from shady bay
remained (in growing numbers)
on the outskirts
of the driven back park

the once fabled town
of horse drawn tours
and dignitaries
was stone washed ~
on the back of it's
government docks
sat decrepit toppers
set against the high tide
beside the lighthouse
and its measured song

flutes and fiddlers
and acoustic sitars
ride the accompaniment
nose rings
and signage
in the hands of
staged protesters
the sickly spit strewn
with tidal run
and ocean bags

hedgerows trimmed
along the sea side
rolling hills fade
adjacent the chuck
mint juleps
and flop hats
peak on the parade
clydesdales
and royals
blinded in the back

The mug stains leapfrog a linoleum asphalt countertop, sunbathing in the breakfast nook.
A magazine proofreads a hole in a bagel. Scanning for clues to the whereabouts
Of a Jewish heart. Beads of Oolong tea archipelago from a resting kettle
All the way to the 'good ' China. A cup on a pearl, laying flat… ear to the ground.
Listening to the stories only Formica can tell. Deciphering the steam
Rising from a steep. Curling whiskers into omens, embroidered upon a shaft of light
Heaven sent. Postage dew. Gilding quaint luxuries, tucked in a cozy roost
Smelling of oak musk and slow roasted dreams, evaporating before memory may lay claim
To the riddles of Morpheus. There’s an aire of Return.  
It molts in the bacon fats hovering in the strata unique to kitchen islands lousy with active volcanoes that shuffle in stocking feet and terry cloth bathrobes. Restless and foggy minded.
Looking for the keys. And...
Chewing a thumbnail. Staring out the window. Where there used to be a car in the driveway. But the officer flagged a taxi. Explains the migraine, like a Vulcan; stoically flipping switches in a fuse box wired to a vague recollection of a soiree.
All the while holding a pitchfork and today's horoscope.
For irony and street cred.

{ But out of cream cheese. }

Concurrently... This part of the house still has the rustic naivete of a celibate beatnik picking teeth with a signature pen presenting an Hawaiian girl with a vanishing skirt; blinking in and out of Vaud-villainy, like Erwin Schrödinger’s Cat. A kind of hole in a barge with an ornate cubby; loitering with sugar cubes and a bendy plastic fern.
Like the foyer to a room, still under construction.
      A busy little metaphor, lounging around the east wing of a humble abode… like news clippings in a mason jar… it’s superfluous handle threading a ceramic eye.
Like a stainless steel joke under a refrigerator magnet, pinned to a plate in your forehead. As any lamp-shade with ambition.  
      Playing to a rough Cloud, hung over an ashtray; that has seen Better Days - envy the baroque occlusion of monotony and routine, merging a hangover - into morning traffic. Replete with modest gains.
And Horizons that stab bleary eyes that would know a gypsy
By the weight of her purse…
     When the day begins, it gains a foothold by the spine of an overdue book, reclining adjacent runcible spoons and antique kitche. As a bathroom light squeaks between a door and a frame.
As ancillary and precise as a beacon for a blindfold.

Like turpentine palming a brick. And Wagner.

.i'm in luck, they're selling it at under 11 quid right now,
stock dry - gone in an instant - laphroaig like -
but not as smoky - but smoked scotch it it
at £10.34 - oh the little joys of having little money to spend -
you end up less picky and less hoarder and
the junk yard.

na głowe sypano mi, tak popiół:
     popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
           popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                 popiół! a obiecano mi *****!
                  (not my words... lao che's dym)...

me, beer, cigarette, outer-suburbia -
police whizz past, silent with flare
or screaming toddler and Odysseus' 20 sirens
with wax in the ears of oaring company
akin to Ajax'ς vitality -
along the way, my neighbour (who's mother
killed my cat.. listen, i know he had
heart problems, he was on aspirin -
but kidneys, even if complicated are not
real problem, felines take longer to ****
than do the no. 2, pigeons don't have kidneys -
they're always of an **** diet of diarrhoea;
write like Aristotle sometimes,
forget the facts, be wrong, get it wrong,
never put a glass cup into the waterfall of
poetic cascades - get it wrong, be wrong -
get to know yourself - it's not that dumb
to be predictable in yourself -
if you allow self-predictability you will
see certain social events as being pointless -
you'll see friends and "friends" -
self-predictability is a verb, compounded -
i already know i'll make references to grammar
and it being missing in philosophy -
no, not coherence and appropriate arrangement -
i mean undoing the box of thing-in-itself
and the subsequent tennis with a brick wall,
to surprise yourself when something is unearthed,
a little piece of the puzzle - simulating awe,
the genesis of all that's to come, even awe from a yawn
and boredom... it's here somewhere... i'll karate
catch it with chop sticks.... (looking around)...
i don't know, might be a moth or a fly...

Antichrist: or a summary of Antisemitism - a variant of,
or at least a concentration - mainly confiscated
by Christianity - prime complaint:
a democracy of Anointed One (Messiahs) -
obviously a manifested justifiable practice of Antisemitism -
the throng of Golgotha intelligence quotient -
Jew v. Jew, and one convert from the delusional
4 x 4 (in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy
                                         spirit... hold on!
                                    i make four gestures... and make a fifth
                 with Romeo and Juliet talking -
St. Matthew-Luke-Mark-and-John... penta penta pent-up
pentagon - evidently there's a pentagrammaton somewhere:
ah! i b l i s.                       Surat no. via Rumi - 7:143 - veils and
the one - reward in heaven - more veils, gardens veils,
grapes in heaven veils - stomach a veil - hunger a veil -
rewards in heaven also veils - the poem?
praise be Jesus - and Jason and the Argonauts - and whoever
wanted a strawberry flavoured pastiche to lick tears off -
love's apocalypse, love's glory -
         well bloodhound eyes say it all - droop drool -
droop & drool... Jack & Jill... went up the hill, and passed
the Grimm Bro. baton to Hanzel und Gretyl in the 100m x4
relay of Disney Limps - then rabbinical literature to sober up -
Albotini's Sulam HaAliyah (Ladder of Ascent, formerly Jacob's
ladder - to be: Ladder of Skip-rope; Oxford, hello! yes,
can you please consider un-hyphenating what is desirably
a compound worthy word in the practice of German?          )?
is a bracket necessary anywhere and i missed it?
Antichrist - or a very strange form of antisemitism -
be like a Jew, congregate applauding in the right corner: Jesus -
in the blue corner: Crux Golgothia.
export from Portugal - the said book -
key principle (kefitzah) jumping or skipping (dilug) -
and this being applied to the one practice of mystic Judaism -
the ****** gematria; hishtavut (stoicism) -

me - is it still 20 quid for an eighth?
Sim (my neighbour) - yeah, but these days
                                       they sort of cheat,
                                       you'd get an eighth nibbled on,
                                       twenty for a tenth?!
me - ******, well, we can't expect it to not happen,
         we had coin debasement - clippings of silver
         keratin with Siliqua, third stage and
         all encoded authority is gone: Thomas and Anne
         till death and nail clippings be fraud unison in
         the depart (or when narration extinguishes
         a character, the character is worth nothing -
         the narrator wakes up - all the characters run
         like phantom-hares into nonexistence -
         phantom! thin air!
politeness said: only one **** at the wacky wee ö wee
(umlaut O / double oh, 007 - 00'7 - double u... oh!
                                 i get it!                             Jamie Oliver!)
DEI.GRA.REG.FID.DEF.
   "   (-tia) (-ina)(-ei)(-ensor) -
all that would have been clipped - authority of visage -
the courtesan only knew the mint in silver
and the mint in the flesh - hence clipping of coin
to erase the authority from the holy authority of words -
in the beginning - but once dei.gra.reg.fid.def.jpeg /
                                   dei.gra.red.fid.def.gif.

that ****** moth is here somewhere! there it is! catch it!
                                                             ­   catch it!
SLAM!          and the job is done )                                      ).
i really waiting a bus stop pretending to wait for a bus
toking on a joint - joint is mix tobacco and wee wee
and spliff is pure? i forgot the slang - haven't been
addicted to it in years.
Sim - yeah, that's how it is. work in central london -
         have to get up early in the morning.
         corporate finance - no that's a commercial firm,
         corporate finance - McDonald's, etc.
me - oh cool waiting for  ghost bus - never get paranoid
         then?
(police cars whizz by)
Sim - n'ah, a perfectly decent area, got stopped once,
          three years ago.
and the price goes to the laziest narrator in history - absolutely
no engagement with characters - it's too real, everyone's
lying - this is the second time i spoke to my neighbour properly
in the past.. ooh 2002... 14 YEARS - it's not even funny -
no amount of marijuana will make you feel comfortable -
you can mate and make Kingston handshakes and what not -
this is purity of absurdity and western isolation,
we went against the maxim: no man is an island on purpose,
not by chance like Robinson Crusoe -
at least Crusoe had a talking Friday - we have a ghost
of Michael Faraday on Friday - ******* disco blink blink -
poet... or alt.: the narrator complex - inhibitions toward
character craft and pseudo-schizoid symptom -
believing in ghosts is easy, fiction writers and their ghosts
and abortions, hardly a way to escape from that -
poetry: rebellious narration - just anything with narration,
modern fiction is read like a chess match between deep blue
and Kasparov - or Pavlov v. Jezebel playing gynaecologist.

blank.... blank... wait for the atoms trilled R to make
their toady presence felt -
the more pricier the whiskey the more pristine water,
i.e. you get drunk more easily -
anyone that smokes marijuana and thinks
they're clever are stupid; how many people are out there that are
stupid! - resounding hearsay-hooray!
drugs, ******, crack, blow, marijuana, ****, ***,
  cannabis, dope, ******, mary-jane, 13, M - herb shake -
Humphrey saying to Bogart - that joint. as said in Saudi
Arabic - a Ferrari G.T.I. and MeKubalim HaMitbodedim
                  )
                                  -chism - schism - sky - ski -
                                  cha cha, cha cha - kilo or 100th -
                                  1000 thd. - hundredth a thousandth -
                                  - where then the acute,
                                  timber from Czechs -
                                  kebab from Mesopotamia -
                                  and the Trojan horse to boot -
                                 chatter - chopper whopper -
                                 astoikism - not chew off
                                 curve into cherish but
                                 cravat chew in -
                                 Slavic mining zed - czarna
                                 ciasność - blackened claustrophobia.
a Buddhist clap
                   immersion -
left handed the right hand claps against air
                  )             )              )               )            ) ) )            )
a night at the Opera, right handed the left hand claps against air
(                       (        (            (               (          ( ( (            (
scimitar Luna - so they said, would like an audience with the
further unmentioned mention -
you're mates with neighbours who over 14 years you only
spoke to the count of thumb and index on occasion -
and thus necessarily high -
i was going to write something really important before
i finalised this draft... but i forgot what it was...
got almighty this whiskey is good...
i'm smoking salmon and pickling reindeer hooves and antennas;
a bit like practising Chinese miracle medicine with
whale blubber and Mongolian nostril hairs.

it's not about loving your enemies -
this love sinister must be invoked as: making your
enemies bearable.

i'm sure i had something concerning poetry and narration -
ah! it was... poetic compensation -
a.d.h.d. narration - attention deficit hyperactive disorder -
true - all psychiatric terms are metaphors -
at least outside the psychiatric realm -
poetry as a.d.h.d. meaning: shrapnel narration -
a custard pie of missing characters -
poetry: i.e.: the inability to believe in ghosts
or write characters - claustrophobic or agoraphobic narration?
a mix of both - poetry - the inability to conjure
Ouija fancies - poetry, the over-specialised gift for
narration, but an inability to invent characters -
poetry, the truth of the narrative, and the truth of un-invented
characters, poetry: the ability to narrate, coupled
with the inability to create characters -
fiction and the dumb narrator - poetry and the exquisite
narrator - fiction and the exciting characters -
poetry and the God - our focus is based on that vector,
or bias to that vector - fiction and the Oscars -
narrator and director - when to change from first person
to third person - again Burroughs was right -
images 50 years ahead of writing - a bit obvious,
nothing spectacular with that phrase -
lightning and the sons of thunder: 12 of them -
made the tetragrammaton less spoken and swear words
fucken-uppen censored so the crucifix and **** could
collide - a fine fine excuse - the Boeing 747 first
and later the quasi-sonic broom shoo' 'mm -
poetry as fiction disguised when fiction was given
a seance with pure narratives - splinter group:
philosophy's juggling with pronouns esp. the plural deviation
from first person as if to proper punctuation -
psychiatry and the theory of pronoun usage -
poetry and the pronoun rōnin (macron = umlaut -
count to two, or prolong - reasonable man / **** sapiens, pre-noun pro-adjective / adjective attache-noun, noun counter-noun es duo-adjective, Kellogg's sunrise cockle-doodle-dip-in-tartan-chess) -
only poetry mediates the parallel vectors of prose-fiction and philosophy - it consolidates the use of pronouns, art of poetry alone -
pure narration we're talking about,
the narrator and characters of its fancy,
philosopher and dialectical placebos (character equivalence)
with self-conscious moments, mono-pro-noun - alone i name -
the sacred squash wall of lecturing an invisible audience -
rummaging epitaphs in a graveyard along with birth dates
and live by dates - yes, that sacred we philosophers use -
an entire theatre was summoned to continue in appearing
sensible when writing without fictive apparitions -
enabling a fluidity in pronoun use, without sensible letter
writing, as in dear sir,
                                       me in reverse, thank you.

in the year 2462 those with nails protruding from their palms
will talk in ancient tongues
& sway the tribes of men to eternal love,
& endless ammunition
of the soul.

spiritus.
kin, galactic
& the golden fire.
throb the saga of man,
into hip ****** illusions and combustive color schematas.
we bury our dead in flower clippings
or skull bits.

        [skateboarding rises as the highest form of intellectual sport]

thrum and plum-*** the sewers of electric babylon.
hive city reaching past gasp and wasteland,
her lips ruinous.
cement slabs and coils of fault with
vast artistic possibilities.
these skate-lords from their heaps, their clans, augmenting
& rattling bone masks
grinding themselves into meat-bit heroics
& death.
their teeth are yellowy awoken.

this is all seen globally,
via tele-cast-com-core-mind-warp-tech.
or video.

dreams impact reality
impact dreams
in such
that the cathode cortex filter, invented circa 2222,
evolves into a demi-god, a solar charged demon of unlimited knowledge.
& it mutates the psychosphere  of our mainstream public mind
with countless projected memories.
        [streamed alternate realities]
fills the belly and the brain,
but all those unhooked are skating.
sweet meat market.
ghost harddrives.

poor leftovers called children of the once-was-men
& their poolside parties.
they leap the rubble of centuries old plastic icons,
their boards, their weapons, their seeds and spit.
they hang chains from their necks
& spew black flame from their sunshaded boot-click
lickings.
they drink from large bottlesof elixer distilled
on old flowers
& worship archaic cassettes.

cults of cyborg women with gem-tipped-blade-additions
carve wooden planks from
groves of great oaks.
great oaken powers.
their creators chew gummies and bend time
to uphold
a proposed history of perfection.
they master pong from their crystalline towers,
& hire mathematicians to write
conceptual skate-deck algorithms,
solely for fun.
non-profit.

in the somatic nervous system,
acetylcholine (ACh) stimulates skeletal muscle, causing contraction

action potentials
in the 8am physio lecture,
the biggest on campus
crammed with nursing majors,
and health science hankerers,
public health preachers,
OT saints and angels

amino acid NTs: glutamate (+) GABA (-) aspartate (+) glycine (-)

the prof wrote on a distant whiteboard
too many complained about being lost
she made a joke about feeding *******
to mice for her neuroscience research

amines: serotonin (-) dopamine (-/+) norepinephrine (+/-) epinephrine (+)

STEM-dominated
when i'm just looking
to drop my roots
and press that
good earth into
the spaces between
my toes and
under my nails

but the grounds are a garden
of biodiversity from clippings
gathered by migrant habit-clad
founders more than a century ago

the soil is fertile            it is temperate
there are water filters in most residences

there is enough here for me

in june I felt the project change
from trying charting all scenarios of your face
to looking to books to blacking out spontaneous lines in found papers
to clearly eventually
be a misneglected omen of your impending collapse.

"I would like to blame this on the weather,"
I said to the sky,
"I would like to stay."


I felt the camera flash stop taking
strobe light moments of our strobe light moments
instead slipped tape recorder in your cereal box
videotaped the tooth brush
ever scraping dead skin while you slept.

I said, "If you wake up I will know nothing."
if you call this a dream, I will shake
and shake.
I said "it is clear now that you are decomposing."
(there's only so much the heart can take.)


stopped thoughts about the bus would hit you
spent time watching the sun through your palm:
little bones will scatter light.
little scars on thumbs.
we are made up only of who puts us back together.
and I could smell the rain.

I said, "It is easier if you stay angry"
I said to the sky.
"I would like to stay."


I put the Starbucks mug on the radiator
ceased to chart your worried looks.
I knew your brow, heavy clouds as you'd undress
but made a scrapbook of frozen dinner clippings
drew a line through where you went that day.

I said, "I want to prove that you meant nothing"
I said to the sky.
"I would like to stay."
I said to the sky.


and then the rain.

Ribbons in you hair.
Diamonds in your ears.

Magazine clippings line the floor.
Pictures clutter the desk.
Friends, lovers, family.

You feel like a faked ******, unwanted.
Clinging to what you know is right
and bordering what you know is wrong.

Playing Russian roulette with fate.
Rolling the dice and raising the stakes.
Neither will save you now.

But don't forget to smile and
Bat your lashes.
For when we leave you to rest in peace.

Father, this year's jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come ...
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father's father, this commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I'll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner's cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,
here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

I’ve always been the quiet type, never one to do the speaking, just listening and observing the lives of those around me.
If I can remember correctly, I began as a light blue, sheltering a newborn baby, Conner, I was covered in wallpaper lined by teddy bears with white silk bow ties like pin stripe pants.
Those few days before his birth in ’62 were filled with anxiety and anticipation, with his parents sneaking in to gaze upon my blue coat, tears in their eyes for the gift that they were days away from receiving. However, they would soon find that the young baby spent little time in my embrace other than evening naps, otherwise his cries became loud with the longing for his mum.

Six years later the teddy bears came down from the walls along with the crib, to be replaced by a bed, the baby blue coat replaced by a loud red.
Watching him grow, I saw his good days and his bad, he was built for math, fast cars, and jubilant laughter.
He had come to me in the midst of April when the flowers outside the windows bloomed, and left for a university after they flowered a mere twelve times.
Once again, his parents visited me, with tears in their eyes as if by being with me his presence would be restored.

His father had talked of a promotion he’d dreamed of, so with more money they were off to a more luxurious home, I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy.

I was alone for a while, while the wallpaper had been striped from me and I lay bear and exposed for quite some time, only briefly being introduced to new families by a smiling woman with high heels and big hair.
A group of four moved in, Tom, Adam, Lana, and Louisa. They painted my walls a bright yellow and carpeted my wooden floors, they added filing cabinets, desks, a white board, a telephone, and a book shelf that decorated my left side.
The boys were mechanics, around thirty years at the time, and worked strenuous hours. They bent over their desks re-drawing, re-scaling, and re-shaping until perfection.
Blue prints poured from their cabinets. The two girls owned a boutique down by the grocery store, I saw them less often, but they didn’t bring home their work, only their stories and their stress. It was a short acquaintance with the group, as their hearts were set on the big city and soon their paychecks were capable of supporting that lifestyle.

I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy for them.

The following year in ’88 a family of four moved in.
John, Ali and their twin girls converted me to a gym with barbells and some odd-looking mechanism called a “Bo Flex” used for hanging up dry cleaning and attracting the dust.
By then my vibrant yellow walls had faded to beige and my beige carpet had faded to yellow.

I don’t know much about those folks, as in-home gyms are more for decoration than utilization, I guess. The girls visited on days when the heat was unbearable in the Texas sun, running in with loud laughter as they let their weight thud into the ground. They sprawled themselves out on my floors making snow angels, in my warm, worn carpet. Oh, how I loved their attention!

They also left the windows open unlike Adam and Tom, so even when they weren’t around the sunshine kept me company. After fourteen years Bailey left shortly after Annie. I rarely saw anyone for a year or so after that.
The house became too big for John and Ali, and they decided to make the move to Florida that they’d always dreamed of.

The movers came and lifted the heavy weights from my creaking floors, but I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy.

The last person that came to live among my embrace was the eldest daughter of three girls. She and I became the closest of all prior inhabitants. Perhaps it was because of the frequent lack of happiness in her eyes, it was the only time I’d had an issue with my inability to intervene in a situation and speak as opposed to listening.
She left my walls there bare color, but adorned me with newspaper clippings and photographs. I was never lonely because her sisters looked up to her, never wanting to leave me, because they never wanted to leave her.
She was more imaginative than the young boy, and more precise than the mechanics.
The music she played was constant and expansive, from Sinatra and Coltrane to A Tribe Called Quest and the Rolling stones. It all correlated with her mood, causing me great joy when the tempo was fast, and depression in times when the dark music fell upon the room.
Her life appeared to be a struggle, as she often threw herself upon the carpet crying until late hours in the night. Only to wake up before the sun rose to write lengthy accounts of the inexplicable sadness she frequently experienced.

Soon she found the help that I was unable to provide with a therapist who visited her in the privacy of her own bedroom. The kind woman encouraged her to participate in activities beyond the confines of my four walls.
She had dreamed to be a psychologist, she wanted to help people, because she knew first hand how much some really needed it. And at age eighteen, that’s exactly what she set off to become.

She moved to Boulder the university she had written about and had wanted to attend for years past.
So I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy for her.

She doesn’t rest within my walls and doesn’t watch my flowers bloom, but the sisters, they often come back to visit and roll up the blinds to let the sun shine in, practice their own talents, and fall in love with their own dreams, I am not lonely, they don’t leave me. In fact, one of them is sprawled out upon my floor now, taking over her sister’s absence with a pen and paper of her own.

How to conquer the world when you are manic and preserve it when you are depressed.

I had a close friend send me a text a few weeks ago
Reminding me how to breathe and that I had to get out of bed,
I thought if she could have read my mood from the west coast
As I rotted in cotton comforters in the east, I must have been pretty obvious
Maybe it’s because we have been friends for ten years or because
I plaster every up and down online to vague audiences, I cast out my emotions
Like frayed fishing line, trying to catch even a glimpse of someone who relates.
But when this friend texted me she said something that might help balance out
The high-highs with the unbearable lows is writing how I feel when I am both.
I did my best to put the feeling of flying at 100mph upside down with wings made of silken sheets into words but the minute I did they turned into wings of concrete and I lost my focus again. And so I went to answer my friend and I said ‘here is how to conquer the world when you are manic”

I am caffeine therapy,
engulfed in energy
I am yellow, I am green
I am everything at once,
I feel everything all at once.
Did I mention?
Hey, I'm really excited to tell you
I’m gonna save the world,
All of it.
Today.
try and stop me.
I woke up at 4 this morning
Watched the sun swallow shadows
Like it was yearning for something dark
To balance itself out.
Too much light is dangerous too.
I always like to watch the sunrise before I go out to save the world, Waking up early always gives me so much more time And today I will do a lot,  I want to save the world. I hope you know I'm going to.

I am yellow, I am green. I am everything at once.
I am traffic jams spread out across freeways,
I am six trips in a row to the same store because I kept forgetting what I needed,
Music playing so loud you can’t hear anything else
I wash down amphetamines with coffee
I am now Narrow energy. I'm traveling a perfectly paved road Home to a room where I cannot see the floor, but that’s okay because I’m
Going to save the world today.
It doesn't matter how fast I'm going as long as you see me get there.
I am validation starvation in calorie counting notebooks,
I am looks from strangers whose eyes wonder loudly how I got marks on my arms or how I'm bouncing my foot like energy is spewing out my body but still have bags under mine that insinuate exhaustion I never learned how to overcome.
I am a math equation stuck inside the text book
From that semester I dropped out;
I am heat energy dancing inside shattered beakers, I am weathered worn out sneakers still being used because it’s hard to let go,
I'm kissing catalytic conversations with those I love because I need a reaction to feel like they're listening,
I am potential energy ready to become kinetic,
I am energetic and today, I have the heart to save the world.
I am off track, my bad. Its like an “ADHD starter pack” but there's no warranty or handbook.
Anyway, I started by re-enrolling in classes because I have always been good at school,
Except for when I stopped going but I have always been good at school and I can understand why everyone around me might expect me to succeed, I emit determination from my mouth when my heart feels empty, but I did sign back up because
This time I'm ready, and this  time I won’t ever feel low again, I think i beat it finally
I feel it in my bones as I cross busy streets without looking either way
I'm invincible and incredible
I am yellow I am green
I am hydro energy feeding off the
Big deep blue sea,
I am gratitude as an action
Not a trinket I can break
and today I will save the world
and tomorrow I will not be low,
And today I will conquer my fears, all 647
And tomorrow I will tell my friends I love them
And today I will remind myself that skin cells
Replace themselves every 28 days
So I only have to wear long sleeves for that many more
And tomorrow I will wake up and do my homework
And today I will surely save the world,
I will never feel so low as I have ever again
How could I when there is so much to smile for?
I’m laughing so loud my neighbors are asking,
And my friends think I’m doing better and I tell them I am. I am.
I am yellow, I am serene,
I feel it in my skin that I am better
recovery feels like Holding hands at sixteen and iced tea, And this is easy!
I am yellow, I am green.
I am yellow, I am green.
I feel everything all at once.
floating between causes, altruism is a virus, slithering through my veins, celebrating how much I will do today. Did I mention how much I will do today?
I'm going to save the world.
After signing back up for classes I spread out my day like magazine clippings I'll never put onto a “dream board” because I will most likely forget about them, my dreams make better notes in my iphone where I can see them
As I check my contacts to see who I can talk to today. Or who will listen. I wonder who will listen. Or what kind of game I will play to make someone listen.
I am yellow, I am green. It’s noon and I am flying.
Here is how else I will save the world:
I will make sure I save myself first,
I'll clean my room and go to the gym
work off three weeks of sweets with three hours on the treadmill, I forgot how good it feels to run and I know that this is the last time I will ever, ever give up.
I’m better now. I run on a track that loops back in on itself because I find comfort in knowing it will always return no matter how many times I lose sight of where I'm going, I would get lost were I to run outside because when you are everything all at once you seldom stay in place, God there is just so much to look at. I will never look back at who I was even as late as yesterday.
I get lost inside rubix cube mentalities and short lived craft store hobbies, but I'm better.
I am yellow, I am green. And today I am going to be a wildlife photographer, And an artist, and when people ask me what I want to be I tell them
I will work for the United Nations and that I am going to save the world, they believe me and ask me how I'll do it and I realize that I have yet to start saving the world.
I woke up at 4, so sure today was the day,
I felt it in my heart like the time I took two of my adderalls by mistake because I forgot that I took one that day, I felt it and it was real. Throbbing like a bump from falling but real. I lost track of that feeling for a second and now it is fleeting.
What is happening?

I am yellow, I am green.
I am yellow, i am yellow I am yellow,
Are you still listening?
I'm potential energy locked inside a pendulum
Hanging from a chemical tree that dies fast and grows slowly, Im staggered progress dressed up like empathy, I'm baggage too heavy
I am yellow, I am green.
I am fleeting energy
The kind that sparks a few times
On telephone lines turned pink infront of sunsets in july, gone before your friends can see it too.
They never really see it, too.
I am yellow, I am green

I forgot to shower every day this week but
I'm too tired to get out of bed,
What is happening? Can you remind me what I was doing?
I was supposed to save the world today
I’m sorry.
I was really going to save the world today
I'm taking in as much caffeine as I can without
Making my heart feel like it will push its way
Through my ribs out of my chest
Though being able to feel in my chest again
Might not be so bad. I’m stuffing smoke inside my cavities to fill them up, doing my best to keep feeling inside the skin I wear when I can feel it
Going numb, even it hurts at least I can feel it, I wish I could inject caffeine right into my veins,
I wish you could jump infront of moving trains without Hurting everyone on board,
I wish I felt less like this but I wish I felt more,
I reread texts from last night where transitioning
Felt like fist fighting recovery, her having one up on me,

I am crimson, I am grey, I am fleeting energy.
I’m so sorry.


I thought I said that before
And I might have but I forgot, I feel cloudy
I stumbled through steel wool tall grass to make it
Out of bed today and the weight of every single mistake I have ever made feels like it will surely break my spine Right in half, I don’t know if I will make it through today.
I wish someone would save me today.
I am crimson, I am grey.
I need someone to save my world today.

There'll be a crowd encircling you, I'm sure.
They'll nod at your every word, imperfectly mimicking
what people look like when they actually listen.
I'm sure the crowd will be people we know.
Old high school friends with real estate ventures
and gyms and multi-level marketing schemes.
Most of them will be doughier, their cheeks permanently
stained red from a decade of drinking.
Most of them will have photos of their kids on their phones,
and they'll tell you they're "sure you don't want to see them"
as they pull out their phones and show you photos of their kids.

I imagine I'll approach, stop just short of the circle, pretend to bid on an Alaskan cruise.

As you talk about redoing your floor in a faux tile that looks just like the real thing for like half the price, you'll see me.

I hope you'll think of that kiss five years ago, outside of a bar in Norman, when the world entire bent for us, when all traffic silenced for us, when all people vanished for us.

Maybe you'll think of the time we ****** in a twin-sized bed, beside a wall decorated with newspaper clippings, which I thought made me look worldly and learned. I admit now the look was less academic, more serial killer.

And maybe you'll think of the manchild fit I threw when I found out you had moved on after I moved away.

And maybe you'll be totally present. Good to see you, you'll say. You will ask about my family. We will discuss the cooler weather. We will talk about your business, your kids. We will side hug and say goodbye. We will take the same route to the same exit. There will be children coloring the sidewalk with chalk. We'll each borrow a piece. I'll outline you; you'll outline me.

You don't belong somewhere
Average.
You don't belong with someone
Ordinary.
And right now
Your life is grey and white
Not too dark and not too light
But I'm telling you, darling,
Don't let your life be newspaper clippings-
Born, Married, Died-
In cheap grey ink.
When you cut your ties and discover every color of your sunset
You won't have the patience for anything less than breathtaking.
I'm asking you not to have the fear
To settle for less anyhow.
I'm asking you to risk for you
To be selfish
To try the stormy seas instead of sitting in the harbor because
You are not a two car garage with a beige house attached
You're a castle, stained glass windows throwing rainbow cut outs of stars on all the floors.
You are not a November drizzle,
You're a summer hurricane.
Even if you never choose me
I'm begging you not to let your love be mediocre
Not to let your life be.
I'm asking you to go for what you deserve
Instead of what you fall into by accident.
You deserve the moon and the stars,
The sun and the planets.
You deserve the richest, loveliest of lives.
Please
Find your adventures, find your passion.
Just cause it's here
Doesn't mean it's good enough.
Don't let your life be newspaper clippings
In some old scrapbook under a bed.
Don't let yourself get caught in a practical, faded existence
Just because it seems like the safe thing to do.
You are not grey and white,
You are every spectrum, like a prism,
And it would be a crying shame
To let this life
Contain you.

I'm a Prisoner Trapped Inside a
Little Rectangular Marvel
Which knows, to six decimal ...'s,
My position on Earth

And the irony is that...
Electronically found,
I feel lost.

Way before we knew about
Jeep *** EssSs...
I lived 300 miles away,
In a little town called
Bettendorf, Iowa.

Few days after last
Christmas.
I made the journey
Back. To the
Former.
Place I existed, survived,
Lived, thrived (albeit briefly)

I took my family with me.
Or, I went with my family.
The four of us in the same vehicle,
Anyhow.
300 miles in December.
There was snow everywhere
Else. Not on the road, thank
You.

You leave bits and pieces of
Yourself in the place that is
The home for your feet, blistered
And toe-stubbing sidewalks and
Your hands grasping frozen Gym-
Door handles on Minus 10 Saturdays
When you bundle up and slog 1.3 miles
To play Dodgeball all Saturday afternoon.
(And returning it's twice as cold and dark is
Edging its fangs over the dim, muted horizon)

You sweat in the summer. Profusely,
Drops of the stuff watering brown
Grass. You bleed in the snow,
Stark red on even pastier
White, though it feels
Painful only in the abstract.
Sometimes numbness is better
Than painness.

You get blisters from raking leaves
In that season that seems
To have gone palavering somewhere
East of here.

These fringes of leavings, like
The tiny toenail clippings you spy
As you use a foreign bathroom, balefully
Eyeballing someone else's Medicine
Cabinet of Curiosities.

So we went to the place
Formerly known as home.

You can travel a linear or
Non-line-like distance back
To the place where you cut
Your teeth on life, and life cut
Its own bicuspids on you, but fading,
Fading,
Only the shimmering
Ephemeral memory of an
Equally diaphanous memory
Of those teethmarks exist.

Or, succinctly put:
The past is dead.
Long live the passed!
(But not the vaporous
Kind)

Still, we pine for the earlier
Times, younger and much,
Much more innocent, gull-
Able, even: When time had
Not yet painted and varnished
Us so much, the years piling on
Our faces deeply and thickly,
Lined canyons of worry criss-
Crossing our brows, the feet
Of those ****** crows nestling
Where our eyes end in points;
The sagging, the
Lowering of once springly,
Spritely flesh. 3 chins.
Since when do I need two
Extra chins?
**** you, Gravity!
**** you to Heck!

We travel back on new
Roads over the great
Old ones that used to be
Concave asphalt trips to
Anywhere and Nowhere
Special, they all were, even
The ones that led to hilarious
Dead ends.

Wow! There used to be a
(Insert memory here)
But hey! Lookit that!
A Yarn Barn. Hmm.

And oh! I lost my
(Insert memory here)
In that very back parking
Lots of Tots? What kinda name
Is that for a Pre-School!
Open on CHRISTMAS? Whaaaat?
My hometown has lost
Its mind.

And then silence, as the
future that passed us by
Reasserts itself so strongly-
It might as well be screaming
At us from useless billboards
Selling crap we don't need.

This place is a foreign
Country to me. I don't know
When it stopped being home
And now, I really don't care.
Let's do this thing, family, this
Familial obligation, and then kick
The stupid dust from this town
Off our tailpipes.
Go, Bettendorf!
Go, Bulldogs!
Go, next-town-over!
Go on with your bad
Selves.
Because, people of these
Towns, in 30, or 25, or 12, or
4 years, you'll blink, and find
That you no longer recognize
The place you can't call
Home any longer.

Your name
is every piece
of headline
on every tabloid:

****,
car crash,
champagne,
******—

*You are the beautiful
blooming disaster
that I want to witness.

I still listen to music with words
When I am writing words

Sunlight streams through the window
Trees sway outside, with branches scratching the glass window
-
I smell fresh coffee beans
Starbucks, from the Philippines

A piece of paper flutters down
I look at it with a frown.
-
And one thing I suddenly recall,
It gives me an idea, a reason to stall

From what I am doing, (hummingbird mind, my friend.)
And I went into an imaginary glen.

With only my pen and my notes
For company, then my mind began to float.


He wrote in the most perfect handwriting
Compared to my scatterbrained black scribbling

He strummed a chord on my heartstrings
Without him even knowing


His name sounded like
the gold-tipped wings
of angels.
While mine sat on the
brown earth,
dreaming to the skies.


Though, once we'd meet once a week
And I would smile in the hallways
looking like a freak

There was always something idiotic
the way his teeth stuck out like a bunny's
He reminded me of Ishaan from Taare Zameen Par
A dyslexic student, great artist, had a smile so sunny.


I'm playing Owl City on my mp3
That's our secret anthem

Tears were there
The melody from the speakers
I wished I could've sat beside you
When your fingers waltzed over the black-and-white keys
Now I'm sitting all alone by myself
Tapping on black-and-white letters on the Mac


Even though I play the violin
I can't accompany you
My bow screeching against the strings
Just doesn't do your mesmerising piano justice

What I can only do is write
And draw with a cheap ballpen from a meeting hall
I will draw your eyes and your crooked grin.
And my dreams of you that remain unfulfilled.

I finish the poem
Rip the page out of my notebook
And tape it to the wall with my other works
and newspaper clippings, oh just look.

Tomorrow I take it down again
Slip it into an envelope
Wonder if I should buy a stamp.
Maybe mail it overseas with forlorn hope.

A month passes by,
The envelope gathers dust under my bed.
Oh my darling, oh my darling
The chances with you are hanging by a thread

We're going to fly back home once more
So I decide to get you a keepsake from here.
A wooden owl, carved by hand
I slip the poem inside, thinking what you'd think when it appears…

Active motion
act in motion
spark the plug
and speak with love                  smalltown rain
occasional clouds                       bus stop lights out
hazy thoughts                             sway your imagination back and forth with
                                                      violin­ and incessant heartbeats

I adore you saxophone
and appreciate the pattern of your voice
there's a little something for everybody here.

(at least for those that act on their own
volition!!)

existential essays among
the Spanish backpackers belongings (Camus' Myth of Sisyphus)
the sound is dazzled with itself/
my attention wanders to the distant mountains
where snow still sits meditating on
my dreams and your dreams.

(The more we get together the happier we'll be!)

In a flash the coffee shops close and large homes from decades ago
are physically moved to other lots
and cranes observe the night
a little ways down my street
across from the Apartment I lived in around 2002
(My cousin Rachel came over while I was sick with summer fever)

EVERY STRANGER SLEEPS
I WONDER WHAT THEY DREAM
I WONDER IF THEY ARE DREAMING RIGHT NOW

painted animals wait idly in the fields of parched grass
for another bomb to go off
and I've forgotten the static of the TV
I once saw them in

May day May
day
I can't believe how hot it's been outside!
I'm forcing myself to be confident enough to wear a T shirt
(ah) at the line in the grocery store the woman ringing thru my
soon-to-be plastic bags
she's a child of her cigarettes and a mother
of her ashes. Her hair salted and her face like tired glass
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry that love is hard sometimes
(and o so soft)

I was at the sleepy supermarket once
(in an imaginary place)
and a child was with her parents and noticed the expiry on a 2% milk
she asked
"What does this mean?"
her mom looked down at her to what she was pointing to and replied
"That's when the milk goes bad. When you can't use it anymore"

They continued down the aisles and she asked
"Do people go bad too?"
I don't know what caused her to think this so early
it's such a shame dear,
her mom frowns in that way when you're trying to hide it.

"Yes, you gotta drink the milk fast, but some people drink up life too slow and it leaves them sour"

and upon leaving back to my mattress
I never saw which direction they went or where I wound up
after accepting that my heroes would never appear.

PASSING the elementary school I once attended
during a windstorm
throwing tantrums during assemblies and making
friends with car accidents.
I try to remember names and only Sean, Alexis, Daniel and Dean
come to mind...

..So long to childhood vagueness in
days deceased to
trashcan calendars
it was nice to see you
but I really must be going now.

                   (TODAY IS A UNIQUE SHADE OF YELLOW)

Tattoos covering a man that speaks of his soul
A dog with a playful heart and loving tongue
Miles of dandelion covered fields and poison ivy infested forest
Mud covered boots and worn out running shoes
Smoke rising from a chimney and an open door lifestyle
Swings swaying in the wind connected to a cat-**** infested sandbox
A pond with fishing poles in the dirt and a splintery dock
Paint stripped basketball hoop without its net ripped and torn
Rocks and logs surrounding an overused fire pit
A lush garden with every kind of bug and animal
Another dog with his wise years found spotted on his nose
An old, leathery glove with its seams falling out
Scratched and scorned arms from 4th of July bottle rockets
Mom and dad a quick walk just a mile down the road
A 1962 Corvette Stingray parked next to the dusty van
Two cats sleeping the day away on the porch
A trampoline with rusted springs and a sprinkler underneath
The grill cooling from an afternoon of burgers and hotdogs
The brother flying in from Colorado after a week on the slopes
Rock and roll blasting from the house that can be heard for miles
All the windows open to take in the summer air
Every pillow and blanket carefully positioned to make an epic fort
Bikes hanging in the garage next to the bin with every ball you can think of
An over used washer and dryer next to the hallway with endless pictures
Half finished schoolwork on the table surrounded by the crust of a PB&Js;
Rooms with unmade beds and works of art mixed in with stuffed animals
A sister biking in from the town just beyond the nature reserve
Wrinkled hands and dirt filled nails contrasted by a gold ring
Nerf bullets covering the floor, windows, and fridge in the kitchen
Chalk covered black top from the garage to the street
Lego towns and spaceships covering the coffee table
A whiteboard with math equations and tic-tac-toe fighting for whitespace
A wall full of board games missing a die here or a figuring there
Newspaper clippings, pictures of nephews and nieces, and report cards on the fridge
Coffee *** half gone, cereal bowls in the sink, and the oven on for some reason
Bike ramps with caution tape and under construction signs scattered in the garage
Firefly nights that have to compete with the millions of the stars in the sky
Flashlight filled ghost stories in the family tent with mallows and chocolate bars
Lazy afternoons with a good book ending with an even better nap
And a mailbox, surrounded by tulips, on my little patch of heaven.

Somethin' about an empty room, depending on how the light asks to be let in on its edges.
An empty room don’t expect you to do nothin' whatever. And its floor responds in this kinda lilting relief when you tap-dance barefoot upon it.
If you sit in all its corners, with your eyeballs (try it!) you can trace the refractions and suggestions on the wall, 'specially the places where paint and odd plaster stick up like little men and cast shadows all their own.
You can spend hours doing this.
You, the impressionable film upon which the world's projected herself—you turn the world upside down and make sense of the image in this empty box.
You
Make art here.
Shout here! Run and kick and punch through the walls and
Love them as you do so, kid.
Something about emptiness itself, gets a lot of flack, you think,
cast as grave.
Hell!
Emptiness: potential,
Emptiness: casting being in sharp distinction.
Emptiness: sensual, like breath before the
action of the human magnetic.
You: the one alive in this your empty room and therefore acutely aware of
what you chose to project in such vibrant relief.
Today, it is newspapers and magazine clippings and a notebook and a blue pen and a book by Susan Sontag.
Today you lie on the woody floor, supine, eyes wide
and become part of it
your lungs breathe life into this ancient emptiness. And the air between its walls vibrates, and sighs, nascent, ‘thank you.’

The summer had come and gone,
And tomorrow, she was leaving,
Going back to the city to wait
The warming spring's returning.

At 88, she had decided it best,
Husband gone four years,
Two hips healed, but stiffening;
Ice forming on the ground
To keep her from walking;
Time to go back to the city to rest,
Hopefully to return when whooping cranes
V'eed north again in spring.

She'd packed her things
In two suitcases yesterday:
Simple clothes,
Her Bible,
A pair of shoes, or two;
Not much now,
No need.

She wondered if he'd do one thing
Before they drove away.

"My nails need a trim."

So, here he was,
Bent low to hold each foot,
To trim his mother's nails...

Memory, returned then,
Reversed four years
To this same chair,
In this same house,
His father struggling for air,
Needing help to dress.

He saw again his father's feet,
Frail and white and cool,
The nails long and needing care.

Embarrassed, the old man,
Despite the lack of breath,
Wheezed he couldn't bend
To reach his feet.

And the son had bowed then
To trim his father's nails,
And dressed him before
The three of them began the journey
From which only two returned.

And now, the week before Christmas,
The mother and her son,
Focused on the nail clipping,
Knowing certain chores,
However poignant,
Must be done.

The garbage in my room
Smells like embarrassment
It’s the hot Cheetos bag that sits in my desk
It’s the q-tips with earwax
The ideas that float around in my head
And my roommates toenail clippings

The garbage in my room
Clutters the free space
Taking up room that it should not take
The shopping bags and boxes
That held beautiful things
Now empty and cumbersome

The garbage in my room
Takes up my memory
Forgotten blog posts and poems
Fill the hard drive in my brain
Silly thoughts and quips
Only attempt to clear it out

The garbage in my room
Sits in the can
Thinking of ways to grow
Out of proportion
Waiting to spill out onto the floor
And start crawling up the walls

The garbage in my room
Needs to be taken out.

Concept:
youlovemeback.

The ingredients of cleanse
make their way
to your house.

There is

a

strobe,
two stones portioned off
a Ziggurat,
a present thing —
like wheels,
a teardrop,
nail clippings.

My father
would trim his nails
and bury them —
as seeds.

Stared
at that ***
all days and evenings.
Monsoons and
summer heat echoed.
Time circled back and forth.

Sometimes,

I would gargle
father’s beer and
spit into the ***.
Maybe it needed
Acrid, it needed
Strong. It needed
Disgusting,
Toxic. It wanted

wrong.

I turn 22.
The ***
Disappears. My father
too. Militants
took him away,
or so the chatter goes.
He wore Chinos, sun-dried
eyes, a hat.
Mice ate
the matchsticks
used for kindling.
The Queen Termite
Gave birth to more
hungry little ones
under the sink.
Dark, musty,
collapsing.
Memory, time,
fingertips. Thyme
rhymes

with mime,

I copy my father.
Trims nails.
Plants.
Waters.

Concept:
trytounderstand

This was only the nourish
he could give. It was
a copy of the nourish
his father could give —
Or so

The chatter goes.

Gather the stones.
Get the strobe.
Pound the nail clippings
and

an enzyme flows
Through, like tape recorders whirring
as they wind back to
play recorded confessions
one more time.

Free baptismals
at the church service
for hurried teens.
Free shirts for
the Insufficient.
Free lessons for
the young boy
who can’t read women.

Free at long, long last.

Concept:
fixtheheart

You put your face up right next to mine
and scream out a list of rights I don't have:
the right to make tea in the morning
the right to stay up past 9 pm
to carry mouthwash with me
to use my own soap
to hang my coat in my closet
to spend more than eight hours away from home each day
to change plans when away from you without telling you
(no matter how small the change)
to open my windows or back door without permission
to open the back gate at all
to speak when you are not present

I want to write a ******* autobiography someday
and have more than a chapter
and that chapter ain't even here:
If I sit and think about my life,
I have no real memories with you.
The memories that count are the ones spent away from you

Playing on the playground
of the apartments by the mill with two friends
(both of which are now ******* druggies)
or sitting in the back of his aunt's station wagon
when one of em backs into the mailboxes
(at the age of six)

Building forts in the woods at four corners.
Bonfires, frog catching and golf at Anne's.
Wandering trails while camping with them.

Running through the woods with ubie
building forts from old tires, grass clippings and sticks
and playing endless games of fetch with her.
Some days we'd walk the creek back to the fern grove
some days we'd skip rocks by the "waterfall"
and some days we'd slip under the barbed wire to visit the neighbors.

The old **** lab in Carlsborg
which we labeled as "the barn" since it was one-
had plenty of small passageways that we'd play  hide and seek in.
But some days we'd get bored
so we'd go past the church to the rock quarry and climb the hills
or we'd walk the trail as far as we were willing to go
or climb over the abandoned canopy into the neighboring field
and walk over to visit the horses and goats.

Port Angeles was long walks for me,
trails dark and ominous that always led to the park
or roads that always continued on forever,
until I found that one house that I used as an anchor.
Ryland was born there
So was me, not I, but me, the beginning of ME

Then there was Taylor cutoff-
A mile back in the woods
by a junkyard
and a quarter mile from the Dungeness.
I would walk the river most days,
past the farms near the hatchery,
where the power lines always crackled
and the abandoned barns called my name.
some days I'd take the bus to Sequim, others to PA.

Dabob was a trailer that we packed full of memories-
Pulling hoses up long hills to water small trees.
loading up the truck with wood chips for the yard.
rolling boulders into trees with the tractor.
Taking Ryland to the ER for croup.
And fitting three people into a five by ten room to sleep.
not to mention:
bonfires, fireworks, bobcats, mountain lions, 3 cults and *** farmers

This is the ****** though, Edmonds-
city life, and I'm ******* loving it.
I want to write myself a life, father
and I know where to do it
and how
and it ain't here under your oppression.

Three months and the story changes

Memory of your mother
rolling pastry
and you watching

her hands
and the rolling pin
and the way the pastry

was pushed down
and out
and then she took

the pastry
and put it over a dish
and spooned in

the cooked beef
and onions
and then placed another

rolled out piece
of pastry on top
and forked down

the edges of the pastry
and she said
do you want

the end clippings?
and you said
sure why not

and she gave you
the clipped off pasty
raw in your hands

and you began to eat  
noticing how red
and raw and worn

her fingers
and hands were
and how tired

her eyes looked
and wiping hair
from her eyes

with the back
of her floured hand
she pushed out a sigh

and you saw there
how a thousand dreams
of young girls die.

watching as my mother is dragged up the stairs
by her arms and hair

I get pushed down them for my efforts to try and stop him,
she is shouting screams into the wall -

they go into the bathroom ,
on the other side of the locked door, my blood runs cold.
next to me my siblings and aunt cry.

only screams and whimpers escape under the crack in the door
words of : “please stop”
“help”

      “no - you are hurting me”

he said “ i just wanna talk to you” . then my memory stops until the police are inside the house

Question them both. My mother in the kitchen  -
he is .. i don’t remember , it doesn’t matter....
i sit on the stairs that he painted white not that long ago , where my friends and i had stuck mirrors on each step , making the stairs look like they are floating.. kinda... i do not feel.

The cops stick around for less than 20 mins , arrest my step-dad.
As they take him away , i run upstairs watch from the window. It is a grey london day , they duck his head into the car and drive.

i do not feel.
the downstairs bathroom with stone + aqua tiles , collage of posters , family photos , newspaper clippings, postcards and play pamphlets become’s my hole in the wall for the next few hours. i cry. it is rain, matching the growing darkness outside.
i feel bad for letting the police take him away without saying anything.
i do not feel.

the shouting arguments
heard whilst i try to fall asleep , night
after night had been hiding the extent of unhappiness
of sadness expressed as anger in them both. At the time i could only smell fear
on their breath.
The next time there would be a yellow green bruise on her face and
screams at 4am.

11 year old me
has few memories of home.

The silent planet of crystallized dreams

Nebula clouds emitting translucency

Nothing is ever what is seems

With God’s touch and delicacy



The song that remains and forever played

Amongst the promised womb before

The mother goddess loved and swayed

While the child watches from the hallway door



“Mother and father copulating with the door open.”

Read the words on the off-white typewriter paper

The boy tedious and tired, working and hoping

His work be acclaimed before meeting his maker



Telling stories of psychopath magicians in Long Island

Or Chicago lawyers fighting underground matches in drag

“A disturbing, fantastic point-of-view, from a ****** man”

Said one critic before nitpicking as reading a greasy pulp mag



Countless images worth their weight in gold

Majestic ballrooms ravishing supple choirs

Groping masked ballerinas with a urge so bold

Witty fops and serving props aiding proper sires

Sir Xavier proclaiming the night as a celebration

Showing sharpened teeth behind his mask

The shadows merging and demonstrating mutilation

With enough wine to soak, bathe and bask



The man breathed in exhaustion. He cracked his fingers and wrote:



“Circles of Blood, of **** and pain.

    Audacious institutions praising the Goat Head of Fame

                    Vicious clowns of chains and leather sought to cleanse the mind

                             The flesh and struggle that was kindled at the discovery of Gabriel’s find

                                      Stiffening, hardening clay over roots and glands

                                      The skin of earth ravaged from birth

                                      Yes men and polished conveyor belt twins

                                      Nodding, prodding and smirking

                                      Evicting and molesting the commonwealth

                                      The taxpayers and voters

                                      The people, new and old

                             Sewing fishing line into us

                   Like strings to puppets

          Severing wings

Denying us flight

          Expecting us to fight

                   With blank expressions

                             And

                   Collective motives

                             Because we should all think the same

                                      While in the jungles of Vietnam

                                                The cities of Korea

                                                          Deserts of Iraq

                                                                   Caves of Afghanistan

                                                                             Or

                                                                   Anyplace our leaders

                                                          Mispronounce

                                                What is to gain if not

                                      Something profitable?

                                                Thieves condemning thieves  

                                                Murders judging murders

                                                Psychopaths killed for killing

                                      Women ***** and thrown into a

    guilt trip for not keeping a child that

    was forced into them, saying the

    will of God is infallible.

    Children without homes suffer for what they are

              While more populate the world with their own

              Before helping the needy


The names of the world

          The foundations built upon on another

The empires envisioned and dreamt

          Destined for glory and prosperity

Then torn down in the cataclysmic volley of change

          Then the cycle, the circle, is repeated again

          This is how the world functions

In the name of one

Or many

Or God

Or even the Gods

The Circles, the rings and arena.”





The man wrote with the typewriter on top of books and clippings

Watching riots outside his window, bottle of liquid fire exploding

Screams of terror, of revolt and damnation drippings

Calling out for all to see, the fury and loathing



What the man wanted to write was a simply story to tell

But his rising emotions took hold of his fingers

Instead, he told a story of malicious passivity in living hell

Where in his room the fumes of gas lingers



What if on other places in space

Where we’ve discovered other Earth-like planets

God Created different forms of humans

And watched how they grew

In their own way

Eliminating one previous flaw from the next

Till there was no conflict



If he did and kept doing that

Till he had the perfect human

Then there would be no more

And just God again.

Mystic moons and puppy dragon tales
Silver oceans with crystal silk sails

Frozen lakes above the stone angel choir

Marble pianos soothed by fingers of fire

So smile for the camera,
Leave your compassion on the hook in the hall.
Sit down, catch the call,
Brush my biggest fear right off your lap,
Over your shoulder,
Pretend not to notice it fall.
It’s just another day
In some fool’s paradise,
A paradise lost, but-
Brother, my brother,
In the end,
The very, very end,
How much will this cost?

A wolf in a wolf’s own expensive suit
Can go out on the town,
And he’ll take it on down.
And he’ll prowl through the
Half-lit neighborhoods
In which the other half sleeps:
On Newspaper clippings
In a cardboard box,
On a gusty day on a city block,
Spotted, once and again,
Through melted landscapes,
Through Mother’s old stained and
Pink-and-Spotted drapes…
There’s shallow eyes with beat-down spark,
In each and every lined and dusty face,
Whose strength is gone without a trace.
But, there remains
A yellow, crooked grin…
Some slight reminder of happiness,
But such happiness
Is a disgusting, foul-smelling sin.
He’ll check his hat, his jet-black coat,
His sympathy, at the door,
And he’ll block that door,
As it all comes to a close,
And your life is no more.
Your fate is held in the palm of some
Cold, undeserving, and ***** hand,
A beast of a man.
And then,
A wolf on the town
Is no different than
A snarling and rabid
Dog in the pound.

Suddenly, your tongue is no longer tired.
Suddenly, this precious world is on a tether,
And it’s slowly on fire.
The wolf, he tosses it around, but-
Brother, my brother,
In the end,
In the very, very end,
When can I play?
You’re uncomfortably silent,
You dare not say.
But we’re about to be through,
Brother, my brother,
For it’s getting hard to defend you,
You awful,
Grotesque,
Stereotype, you.
Someday, even your own kind
Won’t bother with you.
So beware, bully,
You are out of your place.
This is no tether ball,
No half-eaten game;
It’s nothing but a covered case.
It’s a ******* arms race.

You are no better
Than us, or the stains on
Our blistered, aching feet.
Your face is no more loving
Than the blood
Soaking the foreign, sandy streets.
So forget it all,
Run away, lest it turn against you,
And never look back.
Don’t dare for a round two.
Consider us your children,
Coming of age, and
Putting a price on your back,
For you are no better
Than that
God-forsaken Father
Who leaves,
And never comes back.

a google-whack for the ultimate news reel: #jigo'hudami.

and not another Shakespeare to come, #blues,
and not another Milton to come, #blues,
and not another Beckett to come, #blues,
an not another unforced Bukowski to come, #blues,
and not another papa Ginsberg to come, #blues,
and not another fusion of poetry and jazz, #blues -
not another, the lost interest in jazz,
the it's been done, and only in America, #blues -
and not another Dostoyevsky to come, #blues,
and no one is digging digital trenches like at Ypres
             capitalising on the gambling of
giving it all, even if it means giving it for nothing
imagining daymares of homelessness, #blues -
and no more fusion worked from the stale juggernauts
of voice in the wilderness, or voice among aghast silence -
and no one is writing intoxicated odes in a Dionysian
woodland shade naked or at least half naked - #blues,
and no one new knows how having voyeuristic eyes
not looking at your poetry on the internet feels like,
before the broadband hyper super hyper mega tron
optic wires before the ancient tee p p **** dial to
connect - rotary dial telephones and aesthetic patience -
dial-a-meaning now, collect, appropriate, discard -
super-communicative efficiency like the Chinese
but in lesser number - lesser number - a moment to
unwind - choose a graphic for the front-cover -
Dali? really? quote: morbid and dark and a surrealist?
surrealists wrote their poetry at the beginning of the
20th century - again, what a treat, cook up a 21st century
manifesto - overshoot the mark - the macabre non-Gothic,
and so no angel with a sword near the chapel entrance
but a gargoyle - a gargantuan bore - agreed...
and not another william blake to come, #blues,
and not another richard brautigan to come, #blues,
dual citizen of the world - from one underworld to another,
Morse code typescript, or telegram poetry -
poetry telegramic - the reinvention of the cut-up technique,
but less paper clippings of single words shoved in
a hat like someone about to wear latex gloves and write
a ransom letter - telegramic poetry - the cut up is more
linear, less word from newspapers cut and then picked
at random, hoping for the big winner - conscious of
the river course - telegram! - opening page from
l'Étranger (e.g.):
mother died - - - - - - - telegram - - - - - - - at Marengo - - -
2 days leave - - - - - absurd already, apologies for death -
- - - - - (yes, a reader, not the narrator, and not - - - - - - - -
explicitly like a telegram) - - - - (self-explanatory auto-) -
- exactly, at every turn some excuse, but what a grand
excuse, god's turn, excuses after the fashionable 15 minutes -
nothing prior - - - - lunch at Céleste’s restaurant - - - - -
starting to look anti-autobigraphical (i.e. written much too
late, not day-by-day, *Kronos Witold Gombrowicz) - - -
calls Emmanuel to be lent a black tie - - - joke, karate - -
not so funny - - - d'uh, belt - - - mourning band - - - - - - -
with a white ******* rotated 45° from that famous
re-interpretation - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - good something -
running for the bus - - - soldier's shoulder, sleep - - - - -
warden absent, waiting with a chatty doorman - - - - - - - -.
well it could work -this telegram style, it's the easiest style
to read, the Nova Express proves it, the Soft Machine
proves it, Naked Lunch proves it - the incoherent distraction,
well, coherently incoherent - sometimes you want to
see a tornado rather than an open stretch of road in a desert -
a ****** tornado - whirling and whirling with Loki
playing a flute - and something about the great milkman
being choked by a marshmallow monster in the sky -
or, of course, with the sensible people - an Ikea assembly
manual for a chair - with one but the most crucial ***** missing:
metaphor for the 10% books, that's 10% in, 20% up on sales
of audiobooks - hyper-readers, ages: 18-24 - 24-35 (21%) -
and then thick mud ahead, an opera of yawns and a gym
membership one tier above the no-fun zone of sometimes
an index wet and a judo flick of the page - or any other
comparison - but on the plus - and not another Walt Whitman
to come - #bangersandmash, and not another Pound
to come - #blues - in with the pretentious you say out
with the feral? maybe... maybe not - but all of this for only
one sentence: to be nervous over ethnicity and vocabulary -
shouldn't exist - to pursue active censorship of a person's
vocabulary is to undermine them completely -
when corporations copyright words because they're logos
i can understand - but people copyright words something's
obviously wrong, somehow i imagine corporate influence
at having taught this lesson - it should exist - or... in what tone?
but already, people what inoffensive and frail - they
want cushions but don't want stones - and it's every single
time - where once words flowed freely no words stumble
against everyone being politicised - it's hard to do your job
these days, whatever it might be - some would say once
the figurehead a throng of courtesans and you knew of importance,
you were so far away from the seat of power you enjoyed
one sq. mile rather than daydreaming about if you ruled
the world - cost-effective inefficiency of politics -
life? unaffected - and it's not even some glorious technique
behind it - the same children that lied have simply
learned to evolve lying into negation - ah, whatever, #blues,
#Rakı.