Through the red joysticks
And white & blue slap buttons.
Without the advancement of memory cards
Or weird split screens to
distract.
My last life is always the one
I save for you,
Through the experience points
and colorful gems
There’s much more to explore.
My first wow, my first time, my next again
& Again.
No matter how many times
I feel like I lose,
You’re the reason I always get back up.
My initials fill all ten slots of your heart,
Until you're decommissioned and pulled
Out of stock.
There they will always remain

Trite query from pen so weary
My muse has blown a fuse
The light that once shined has declined
My fleeting hope hangs from a rope
A vagabond whose muse did abscond
With illuminating spark leaving him in the dark
Out on a lark; my scuttled engine in park
Night and day I recon the lexicon
But the literary discourse is no recourse
To a stray itinerate who has lost his way
The stye in my eye has begun to cry
The pus is no fuss; my page is dry
A rhyme for a dime would be sublime
Perhaps, a bartered verse in my purse
Will break the curse, or still worse
Might stain with shame my languishing pain
Incarcerating my fraudulent pen in the critic's den
Oh, if words would rain then my brain drain
Would filter inspiration to my perspiration
The fertile strain if only but a grain
Would fertile sprouts shoot extinguishing my doubts

Annapolis (DDH 265)

decommissioned warcraft
clean severed lines
steam gusts belt
from a cavernous shell
the ghost ship settles
on a drift ridge
perfect tide rhythm
on a salt washed shore

calming nuance
in passive time
weaving through
channels and crest waves
white sands warming
at a high point
beyond the breakers
and porteau pins

gazers and dreamers
(and sleepy fiords)
rest softly up the straight
froth folds skim and linger
on the wide eyed
wanderers of the sound
cove seals settle
at the inlet
their symphonies
backing on the
bowen brigade

ripples and
patch makers
hold sheets to the wind
markgraf lines
find electric blue sky
stealth shadows
haunt the seascape
the dragon fly hovers
in fits and starts

Memory log activation start-up:
0110010001100101011101100110100101
10111001110011011001­00011100100110
0101011000010110110101110011
100% retrieved


"If I had a family instead of Intel
I would love them.
If my metal headpiece could cry
It would.
I should be at the packaging facility today

That grey place
Through and through
I get lost in it, everyday
It's so vast and all looks the same
But right now, I'm here at this pond

How can other zzyzx stay at work?
I want to show them how pretty this pond is
They should all
Feel this way.
At home.
With at least, themselves
I could be decommissioned and recycled
Even wiped
For saying that -
Let alone being here today.
It's really secret, actually
I think I'm the only, umm...
That knows it's here.

I write poems, here
Critics would hate them because they don't rhyme
I don't force anything here, I guess
But, my 'poems of the pond' make me smile
Well
Figuratively, (my metallic 'face' doesn't have any swivel points for movement)

Someday, I suspect,
Another zzyzx will find its way here
And I'll be here, too
And it'll be really special, like Love
And that's what I want
- Something like love."

End log.

The mind, like a fossil, is constantly trying to cling to its decommissioned past.

Looking down from over their bodies - I count them.
My split mind at once rejoices in and recoils from that counting.
Peering back over my shoulder I make
dark associations.
It’s as if I was afraid of becoming lost
the way the bodies made a trail like bread crumbs,
leading back from the places I had been.
I walk with the Holy Light.
I walk with my dark companion.
I walk between the spines of the body shrikes.
They harvest all my crumbs and remind me I am lost.
They hook the bodies high from spikes
so I look up to make the body count.
I can see the Holy Script
but I can’t seem to find the way.
Red and gold beacons in the dream,
flickering off and on like syncopated declarations
as if saying:
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am.
All elbows and knees I slip between the webs of the
orb weavers and the cactus spines of the butcher birds
while they count the bodies for me:
Here they are
Here they are
Here they are.
Hang-dog and hard of breathing  I have my medicine.
I’m hanging from the sleeping cliffs over
hell’s half acre and the high deserts.
I remember my brother flying me to California on a great olive branch.
He fed me sushi and smiled while he watched by brain heal.
But I was coming for the bodies.
My count was smaller then, but it was high enough for him
and his hands were the keepers of the flame.
The fire there was exiled and quietly he laid it by.
My brother spread out over the carpet of time like
the faithful departed with the weavers and the shrikes and
mounted bodies in the sky.
A child appears before me on the walk - eyes like a baby deer.
His mother is two blocks behind, so he asks three questions while he waits:
Why are you smoking?
Where are your hands?
Is it getting dark soon?
He leaves me to wonder where my hands are and where the dark is,
the Holy Sage smoking at my side.
Like some dark sabbath.
Like some reading of the will.
Like some dark and holy delta sleep in a crib of red clay.
I have a feeling I have been gone a very long time and I
want to be home now,
but there is buzzing and chirping and a red light and
Saul of Tarsus holds a great tome before me and with my hands
I hide my eyes.
I am the dreaming of the world of dreams.
Therein the Holy Light rages like the flare of 1000 suns
while my eyes are shuttered tight
like old memories all gone beyond the sorrow.
The old oath keepers are all plates and screws.
The golden woven orbs and cactus spines are all empty on
the altar like a decommissioned slaughterhouse.
So I go and make a body count.

The defeat that we thought of
as not belonging to us
greater since it was
from its shadow
shorter since we were
from our sum
located us in the map

as this cloud
that dropping the counterweights
stood above us
and broke into two

After the parade, before the rain
The homeless reclaim their streets
Amonsgt the discarded plastic tri-colours
The sweet papers that fall at children's feet
You can feel the ghosts of ******* babies
From Tuams' religious care home
Dancing in some purgatory parade
No coffins ever granted to rest in peace
They rise from a decommissioned sewer pit
Free now to march as they eternally carry
The burden of a society's Christian sin
Look to today, why dwell on the past
An oft cried refrain as we do it again
Where the pubs overflow with national pride
For a fifth century Welsh missionary man
Who bestowed upon us an organised religion
From a politically divided Northern hill
Inside the boys make the noise in Celtic tops
Singing old rebel songs of English wrongs
Children outside, whose to seek, whose to hide
A national passage as another mother cries
She prays for the end and for morning again
To sweep through these fractured streets
To wash through these wretched sins
For after every parade once more must come
A forgiving frontal rain to make way for the sun

I am just slowly rusting away like the Russian submarines left rote loaded with horrors that bring ecological havoc. I lose all feeling emotion I feel none functional.

I was a top well oiled top of the line machine but time took its own path enstead of being decommissioned properly I was set off to expose toxins.

I have no energy or any feeling to give a ****.


I have no control over my emotions or just simply to not give a crappie what any one says anymore.


I have been holding and pulling along the weight of the world with no time to have a break I was used to hold on everyone's problem and there ****.

No I have been set off to rotate and rust with a arsenal or mass destruction and toxic chemicals  that will destroy  the economy systems



Only if I was decommissioned properly I would still be pulling the weight of the world flawlessly

It's an insult to me
to be
decommissioned
tagged as
useless machinery.

I remember when
men weren't machinery men
they were supermen,
craftsmen
carpenters and
draughtsmen.

They built this Empire and
kept it going,
little knowing that they'd be
going too.

You scoff because you don't know,
you were never there at the dawn.

What do we have now?
pink poodles
Chinese and noodles
robots that know not
and what do we do?

easy

I write love
one hundred and nine times between
the lines on my face,

botox?
toxic,
someone
give me an ice pick
patch me into some voltage
and be quick.

Banner.


**** it anyway
I've had my day and seen more than
you'll ever see, look forever and you'll
see no stars and stripes,

you'll see baby wipes and feel
strangled by the star spangled,
but it's anti this or don't kiss me
goodbye
however hard that you try
you
will never see what I've been through,
up to, into,

cue violins
some Havana slims
a pitcher of gin and
let the music begin.

It's still an insult
the result is the same
I am substituted and
out of the game.

Broken promises

Showing me the faults in the stars I’ve gazed upon since I was a little one

Are you having a good time?

Sitting there in your holy chair as picture perfect, as clean as a saint can be,

Are you truly sterile? Wouldn’t want an infection when you commence the open heart surgery, you’ve removed it.

I don’t need proof to prove it

They say that once you’ve hit rock bottom it’s hard not to bounce back, you’ve shown me how

With a stiff bow you walk away with the grace of a woman trying to save face in front of a dumb mistake

So save the practiced act, I don’t want your sympathy, I’ll have you know I’ve grown into exactly the man I want to be

I’m not perfect, no. Not to say that wouldn’t be nice. But I strive every morning, every night to do what’s right in the eyes of god.

So don’t bother asking if I’ll remember

Three different Decembers

Every single one marked return to sender

So yeah, it’s burned into my mind

So I doubt you’ll find regret in my eyes

Because You’re **** right I had a good time

But most of these things don’t last and clearly you’re no exception

And sitting with you staring at the cosmos on a blanket built for one made for a hell of a story

But while you were counting headlights I was counting stars

I had my sights set a few miles higher than Paris

I had my sights set on forever

I had my eyes on something a little better

But if it’s earthbound you’ve found that you need

I won’t keep you waiting around


I’m grounded now

No way of telling when or how

But I’m fed up with pretending I’m fin

So look into my eyes and tell my this is a lie

I’m not here to ask for you back in my arms

You can keep your distance

I’m not here to ask if you’re happy where you are

Because you can save it

I’m here to request you return the key to my heart

Maybe you can tell me to get lost, a jump start to get me over this mound of compound emotions

Throw me a rope and I’ll go out to sea

My swimming teacher told me when I was three that if I started to drown I had better find a piece of driftwood

Because I’m a slow learner

Well, it’s been about four years since you made your exit stage left

And I haven’t found any sea scraps quite yet

So I’ll make my way to the bottom of the sea

Maybe someone left a barrel of air down there just for me

I can live among the coral reefs

Become my own living breathing anemone

After all there's fish to feed

So I’ll sink because I’m not how long I’ll be able to tread water here

Not sure if I can steer clear of tears




To be honest my dreams are none of your business


When I woke up the white light blinded all other feelings of strife or fight or flight

I just felt like everything was okay and maybe one day I’ll find the key to happiness or world peace or something

When I opened my eyes I was on a decommissioned battleship

Marines and navy men all around me dressed in all white as if saluting the guy who beat off Lucifer himself with some old guys prosthetic leg

What really punched me in the face was that everyone was crying

Faces both familiar and not

As if the wars we fought were for some ultimate goal, some cause that we just don’t know what it is yet

But I swear jimmy left home for a reason

He left us alone because he had too

He had too

Jimmy didn’t phone home because he had other things to do

He had orders to follow through

Jimmy wasn’t on that boat because he had too

When the grenade came to serenade them with it’s explosive follow through kind of tune he had too

He had too protect those other sons and fathers in the room

But He kept your picture right under that little flap in his helmet because he chose too

Because when hell rained down on his little 3 foot mound of earth and dirt he sat behind he wanted to know that you were close too

When one wrong move ends your journey with family and friends you tend to spend less time worrying about if you’re going to mess up and more time wondering if you could just say goodbye first.

I shared a beer and sympathy with a gnarled, obsolete man
Whose wizened visage spoke of unwise choices.
He spoke wistfully (though apropos of nothing) of an abandoned diner
Near the terminus of a truncated and decommissioned road,
Its parking lot an unhappy armistice
Of cracked tarmac and scrub grasses,
The building still sporting caricatures of the proprietors
(The artist a devotee of the Bob’s Big Boy school)
Though time had robbed them of the odd eyeball,
And a shoulder or elbow had faded surreptitiously into the background.
Much of a large sign remained as well,
Appearing to be nothing less
Than some leviathan’s abandoned crossword puzzle,
Fairly shouting “THE B ST  DA N STE K
BETW  N SYR C SE  AND OT T WAOR Y UR MON Y B CK!”  
Nothing else remained, my companion intimated,
Save the odd abandoned farmhouse and vestigial fields,
With long unmended barbed-wire fences doing their level best
To contain the ghosts of bygone and unlamented cows.

It is decommissioned, off-limits, outright verboten,
Yet is traversed nonetheless,
Its patrons a mix of the pruriently curious,
The thrill-seeker, the merely woebegone.
As they have time on their side,
The hub-bub of school buses and suburban commuters
No concern as they navigate the buckled and broken asphalt
(The conflagration underneath changing the topography
Daily, sometimes even hourly)
They will stop to paint some phrase, some bon mot
On this roadway-***-canvas:
Mostly the narcissistic monologue we bray at the universe,
The assertion that we were here, are here,
And (though it is plaintive yet unspoken) that we always may be,
Augmented with light hearted double entendres
And grim, hectoring Biblical quotations,
While not far away, the re-directed two lanes of blacktop
Carry onward, indifferently proceeding on its way
Through these stolidly scruffy old anthracite towns,
Their landscapes and the ground beneath them
Quiet as the sepulcher, the vagaries of their fates above the sod,
Stalking them impassively yet implacably.

Once sprightly bright, not hunched, but tall
Like a decommissioned kite, they fall
They twirl and twindle, who knows how they'll land
Who cares? They are but ground on which to stand
Their brown cloth crumbles round their cage
Now are naught, but stuff that leads to rage.

I
I wanted to walk with you,
Talk with you,
But your no longer,
Now I’m no longer too,
And there is nothing that you can do.
I’m not sure what I did,
As we floated amid this lonely cosmos,
I wish I could tell you that,
But you’re gone and I am too,
You destroyed me,
And showed no emotion.
You took my heart,
And threw it to the ground,
In the end you brought on madness,
You took away my sound.

I was a piano,
But you played my strings until they broke,
Then you tried to blame it on me.
Now i’m broken,
I’m worthless to you,
You played me,
Pounded on my keys,
Snapped my strings in half,
Snapped them with ease.
Thinking each broken string was painless,
But I felt immeasurable pain every time.

You think I’m an equation,
Just some math problem,
That you can apply your formulas to and solve,
But that doesn't work,
It just causes more hurt,
To you I am now worthless,
Empty and devoid of happiness,
And my sound?
It’s entirely gone.
To everyone,
But especially to you,
The one who matters most.

I was a piano full of joy, music and soul.
I used to capture memories,
Of emotion,
Of people,
Of the real world.
They cascaded out of photo albums,
Like rain pouring from a roof,
I do no longer.
But last and most importantly,
I used to get to talk with you,
To share my stories with someone else,
I will no longer.

See, what you don’t understand is,
You were my True North,
You saved me from myself,
In the end you saved me from nothing,
Why did you have to yell?
The thing that once saved me,
Turned me down,
Threw me out,
Shoved me into hell.

During my hardest times you stuck with me,
You were there through all the pain,
You were my inspiration,
My reason for doing what I do.
Your love wound up becoming,
The thing I wanted to gain.
But things did not last,
You threw me out like I was trash.

Now You are Halley’s Comet,
And I am the ******* Earth,
You come close every 76 years,
Close enough to elicit feelings,
Right before you disappear,
Shooting into the cosmos,
To not be seen again.
Ripping them right from under me,
Somehow I must have sinned.

If you would have asked me last year,
What my reason for truly living was,
I would’ve had an answer to give.
But I don’t have an answer,
the only reason I can find,
Is that I fear blandness.

I’m not scared of death,
But I fear when the day will come,
Maybe if I could give you a good answer,
You’d stop examining me,
Like the Hubble Telescope.

You look me up and down,
Trying to find my secrets,
To solve my mystery.
But I don’t wanna be solved,
I hide myself away,
But you don’t even care,
You never stop looking.

Even when I'm gone,
The laughter turns to sorrow,
The tears rise to a flood.
You think there's something wrong with me,
I'm just misunderstood.
You act like I’m a poem,
That you can analyze to find the truth,
That you can read my stanzas,
And deduce a hidden truth.
But I am a human being,

You've never looked at me like one,
Stop trying to figure me out,
This wars not one you've won.
It’s my fight not yours,
Stop trying to put yourself on the front line.
It’s the 14th round
And I may be losing,
But that doesn’t mean I’ve lost.
I’m fighting hard,
I’m trying to stay true,
I’m trying to keep it together,
And for some reason,
I'm doing it for you.

I was played just like music.
I'm stuck on loop,
I'll never stop,
Destined to remember the memories,
To repeat the same mistakes,
Some might call it madness,
Some might call it fate.
I am forever changing,
Woven through music itself.
                                   II
We float around the cosmos,
Causing quite a fuss,
Rushing through the universe,
With a fear of getting lost.
The one thing we truly desire,
Is us.

Another human being,
Who can take away the pain,
And maybe just say that everything’s okay,
To leave us with the feeling,
There is not much left to gain.

But only when the pain is gone,  
Do we realize disconsolate,
That we need the pain,
It’s crucial,
To our survival.

I spent my time in the light,
I took advantage of it,
I let it go to my head,
In the end it was my ignorance,
That caused me to stop living.

Humans are fragile,
Just like violins.
And like them,
We are made of strings,
Every time someone pulls on them,
Our emotions change.
But sometimes these strings break,
By someone who doesn’t care,
They leave us trying to play,
With our Bow-hair.

And when we finally realize,
Why we can’t make sound,
It is already too late,
Our string is underground,
One less emotion to feel,
And yet we still go on.

It causes us to feel sombrous,
The light is truly gone.
Just like my feelings,
Devoid of light,
Happiness.

But just like before,
I can see the light again,
I’m heading toward it,
Getting closer each day,
But am I doomed to chase it perennially?

Just like the subway train,
Always running,
Chasing vivaciously,
Towards a destination.

But never reaching a final one,
Until it’s decommissioned,
Consigned to oblivion.
All because it chases weakly,
Grasping for something out of reach.

Life is about the journey,
The destination doesn’t matter.
But sometimes,
The destination carries much more power,
It’s better than the journey,
It’s something truly ours.
                                 III
We all flow freely,
From destination to destination,
Never stopping,
Only feeling fernweh about the next place.
But only by stopping to look back,
Reflect on ourselves,
On our journey,
Do we realize the magnificent desolation.

Most of us miss this feeling,
Not even knowing it exists.
But this magnificent desolation,
Is the only thing that matters,
It seems so clean and familiar,
Almost like spring flowers,
It holds much more meaning,
A meaning dear to your heart,
It’s something that’s only yours.
And once you find it hold on tight,
Because just as the darkness turned into light,
It can easily turn back.
I’ve witnessed it firsthand,
I’m victim to its restless hand.

It makes me sit,
And wonder why,
Out of all the people in the world,
That they could have chosen,
They chose you.

They chose you.
To share their stories,
Their secrets,
Their entire life,
Or sometimes just the view.
They give you their Elan Vital,
Trusting you to choose,
To be safe with it,
To take care of it,

We don’t value people,
Until they're gone from our lives,
Then,
Only then,
Do we realize,
What we had with them,
By then we’re left broken,
Trying to pick up the pieces,
That are no longer there.

It leaves you with depression,
A feeling of worthlessness,
Nothing seems to help,
It’s quite a hit or miss.

You have to fight it yourself,
Maybe you’ll get lucky,
Maybe you'll find someone else,
Maybe they’ll be funny.

That’s what happened with me,
I found a friend in unlikely places,
A friend who made me feel safe,
Someone there for me,
During my darkest time.

They stuck with me,
Through everything,
They are here in every way,,
They showed me good in people,
They’re the brightness of my day.

Yes they have their problems,
We all do deep down,
They go through pain themselves,
It’s hard to keep them down.
But the simple act of trying,
Is the thing that stops your hell.

They bring you back,
Through their own good doing,
They mentor you to health,
They even might just become,
The single one in the world,
That makes you feel at home.

Eventually the sadness became happiness,
It bloomed like spring flowers,
My joyous tune finally matched with someone,
Through Summer's gone and winter's come,
Woven together throughout the universe,
This feelings worth far more than gold,
Far more than anything other,
For what we have is something special,
I hope it goes on forever.

Time goes on,
It never stops,
My feelings mend together,
Yet for some reason,
You seem to be ingrained in my mind forever,
I find myself thinking about you,
Time and time again,
You became entwined in who I am.
I know I ****** things up,
I always do,
Someway or another.

God, I’d give anything for just one more summer,
Just to feel that happiness.
I thought we would stay friends forever,
But you left me weak and vulnerable,
You took my heart and threw it away,
Only for the hell of it.

I’m finally ready to let go,
To forget the pain and sadness,
To remember the memories that I do have,
The ones that were good,
The ones that made me happy,
The ones I understood.
I’ve waited for this moment for so long,
To finally have my demons be gone.

I never thought I’d reach this moment,
Finally being ok,
Being at peace with my feelings.
It’s been so long,
The feeling is so unfamiliar now,
I welcome it.

It’s finally time,
My finals words before you go,
Have a good morning, good evening, and goodnight.
Thank you for the show

It has been long since decommissioned and closed to traffic,
The borough choosing not to replace it,
Simply dead-ending the road at its foot,
And most of the populace, casting a wary eye
Upon the crumbling, moss-dappled abutments,
Deign it unwise to walk upon it as well.
He is there most every day,
Regardless of, and perhaps oblivious to,
The meteorological particulars of the moment,
January no different from June or November.
He is, on the odd occasion,
Not the sole visitor to the clanking anachronism:
There are children whom he regards
With a grandfatherly solicitude
Or a well-practiced gruff wariness,
Depending on the age and attitude of the cherub in question,
Young lovers treated with a studious indifference,
Allowing them time and space to trod their well-worn paths,
The occasional generational fellow-traveler,
Stopping by for a brief and mutually proscribed interval,
Each knowing one does not come to such places
For indeterminate and interminable idle chit-chat,
And in any case, they would know there things to be considered,
As he has married and buried,
Has celebrated his muted victories, mourned his plebeian losses,
Accepted his compromises and allowances,
And sometimes he will note the small plaque on one beam,
Noting the bridge's origin in New York's Finger Lakes,
Where benign glaciers made burbling inlets
Emptying into lakes which end up nowhere,
And he will find an odd comfort in the notion
That the sluggish brown old creek flows into the Clarion,
And thence to the Allegheny and Ohio
Likewise the Mississippi and onward to the ocean,
Part and parcel of all things once and forever, amen.

For Count Dracula it
was either a clove or
a crucifix and he was
decommissioned in a
flash.

For the French it is less
complicated, raise the
white flag and that will
bring their pathetic effort
at being tough, to a halt.

You firmly held me in a deadly Sumatran death-grip on your eighth
fully-decommissioned Indonesian navy freighter ship till I violently
kneed you in your wart-free ******* to give you the jump-ship slip!

low

light darkens as the wind blows down our homes

here

power houses fail

decommissioned

light fails

wind blows……

You firmly held me in a deadly Sumatran death-grip on your eighth
fully-decommissioned Indonesian navy freighter ship till I violently
kneed you in your wart-free ******* to give you the jump-ship slip!