When did things change so much?
When did I get so encapsulated
Into the world of technology?
When did I stop listening
To myself and my own thoughts
And instead add another view
To some article or YouTube video
Just to reach some spoon-fed "opinion"?

When did we stop engaging
In life and with ourselves?
When did playing video games turn to
Watching other people play them online
Numbing our brains to the world
And "filling" our social needs digitally?
When did watching television turn into
Binge-watching an entire series in one sitting?

With this much constant stimulation
It's no wonder we're bored so easily
And that no one goes outside anymore
And that I don't feel alive anymore
Because one of the first things I do
When I get home from work or the gym
Is turn on the smart tv so it can warm up
Because the apps on it take time to load
And I already know that my free time
Will be spent in front of that screen

Lately I've been nervous about
Eventually moving in with new people
Primarily because I spend a lot of my time
Passively using the television
I was concerned with how we'd balance our usage
Instead of considering changing the way I spend my time

When did I start placing my use of technology
Above my own self-care?
When I spend hours watching YouTube
But still forget to take a shower sometimes
And I truly wonder if my recent urges
To leave the state to work on a farm for a month
Are more indicative of some deep desire
To unplug and reset my energy and priorities
Than my interest in agriculture or
Learning to live off of the land

When did I start to feel the need
To take such drastic measures
To change something so simple
Something I could choose to disengage with
At the simple touch of a button?

She loves the beat,
bass so heavy
it hurts.

She loves the heat,
ecstasy,
short skirt.

In the middle
of these times,
I'm square.

I'd like to be
with New York City,
if she'd ever take
a bore like me.
But
in the middle
of her times,

I'm square.

I'd like
to hear her
digitally
repeating,

with her
lips pressed
against my ear,
soft whispers,
heavy breathing,

*they can't stop me.
No,
they can't stop me
from dreaming.

Screen time
We need to have
Essential
Moments of mandatory misery
Grasping, tugging emotions
Un-liked, ignored emoticons
The puffed-green faces of ourselves
Dot
The landscape and portraits of
Screens
Screaming at, about, into
The refined, together
Socially happy selves
That we would be, should be
If we abide broadcast expectations
Joyful, complete, happy, helpful
Free…
We are not
Not always
Precisely completed
Or so
These moments
Remind us
With beautiful
Misery

Stick with me, friend.
I’d like to make a distinction:
I revere writers but do not deify them.
My heroes and role models must be grounded,
Must have so-called feet of clay.
And there’s always something more in my craw,
Whenever I see scribblers carved in marble,
Glorified to the point of divinity and magic.
Because in my heart of hearts,
Reverence for writers,
Is an odyssey of disillusionment and

I fancy myself a man of letters,
Although “Humanoid of Keystrokes,”
Might be more apt; an appellation,
Digitally au courant.
I am a man on verbal fire,
Perhaps, I am of a Lost Generation myself.
And don’t you dare tell me to sit down, to calm down.
You stand up when you tell a story.
Even Hemingway--even when he was sitting down--knew that.
Let us go then you and I.
Moving our moveable feast to Paris,
To France, European Union, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy.
(Stick with me, Babaloo!)
Why not join Papa at a tiny table at Les Deux Magots,
Savoring the portugaises,
Working off the buzz of a good Pouilly-Fuisse
At 10:30 in the morning.
The writing: going fast and well.

Why not join that pompous windbag ******* artist?
As he tries to convince Ava Gardner,
That writers tienen cajones grandes, tambien—
Have big ***** too—just like Bullfighters,
Living their lives all the way up.
That writing requires a torero’s finesse and fearlessness.
That to be a writer is to be a real man.
A GOD MAN!
Papa is self-important at being Ernest,
(**** me: some lines cannot be resisted.)
Ava’s **** is on fire.
She can just make him out,
Can just picture him through her libidinous haze,
Leaping the corrida wall,
Setting her up for photos ops with Luis Miguel Dominguín,
And Antonio Ordóñez, his brother-in-law rival,
During that most dangerous summer of 1959.
Or, her chance to set up a *******,
With Manolete and El Cordobés,
While a really *******,
Completely defeated & destroyed 2,000-pound bull,
Bleeds out on the arena sand.

Although I revere writers,
I refuse to deify them.
A famous writer must be brought down to earth--
Forcibly if necessary--
Chained to a rock in the Caucasus,
Their liver noshed on by an eagle.
In short: the abject humiliation of mortality.
Punished, ridiculed and laughed at.
Laughing himself silly,
******* on one’s self-indulgent, egocentric universe.
If not, what hope do any of us have?

Writing for Ernie may have been a divine gift,
His daily spiritual communion and routine,
A mere sacramental taking of dictation from God,
But for most of us writing is just ******* self-torture.
The Hemingway Hero:
Whatever happened to him on the Italian-Austrian front in 1918
May have been painful but was hardly heroic.
The ******* was an ambulance driver for Christ’s sake.
Distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers,
In the trenches behind the front lines,
A far cry from actual combat.
Besides, he was only on the job for two weeks,
Before he ****** up somehow,
Driving his meat-wagon over a live artillery shell.
That BB-sized shrapnel in his legs,
Turned out to be his million-dollar wound,
A gift that kept on giving,
Putting him in line for a fortunate series of biographic details, to wit:
Time at an Italian convalescent hospital in Milano,
Staffed by ***** English nurses,
Who liked to give the teenage soldiers slurpy BJs,
Delirious ******* in the middle of the night,
Sent to Paris as a Toronto Star reporter,
******* up to that big **** Gertrude Stein,
Sweet-talking Sylvia Beach,
At Shakespeare & Company bookstore,
Hitting her up for small loans,
Manipulating and conning Scott Fitzgerald—
The Hark the Herald Jazz Age Angel—
Exploiting F. Scott’s contacts at Scribners,
To get The Sun Also Rises published.
Fitzgerald acted as his literary agent and advocate,
Even performing some crucial editing on the manuscript.
Hemingway got payback for this friendship years later,
By telling the world in A Moveable Feast,
That Zelda convinced Scott he had a small ****--
Yeah, all of it stems from those bumps & bruises,
Scrapes & scratches he got near Schio,
Along the Piave River on July 8, 1918.
Slap on an Italian Silver Medal of Valor—
An ostentatious decoration of dubious Napoleonic lineage—
40,000 of which were liberally dispensed during WWI—
And Ernie was on his way.

Was there ever a more arrogant, world-class scumbag;
A more graceless-under-pressure,
Sorry excuse of a machismo show-horse?
Look: I think Hemingway was a great writer,
But he was a gigantic gasbag,
A self-indulgent *****,
And a mean-spirited bully—
That bogus facade he put on as this writer/slash/bullfighter,
Kilimanjaro, great white hunter,
Big game Bwana,
Sport fishing, hard drinking,
Swinging-****, womanizing,
*** I-******-Ava-Gardner bragging rights—all of it—
Just made him a bigger, poorer excuse for a human being,
When the chips were finally down,
When the truth finally caught up with him,
In the early morning hours,
Of July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.
I can’t think of a more pathetic writer’s life than
Hemingway’s last few years.
Sixty electric shock treatments,
And the ******* still killed himself.

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So why am I still mesmerized by,
The whole Hemingway hero thing?
That stoicism, the grace under pressure,
That real men don’t eat quiche,
A la Norman Mailer crap?
I guess I can relate to both Hemingway the Matador,
And Hemingway the Pompous *******,
Not to mention Mailer who stabbed his second of six wives,
And threw his fourth out of a third-floor window.
One thing’s for sure: I’m living life all the way up,
Thanks to a steady supply of medical cannabis,
And some freaky chocolate chip cookies
From the Area 51--Our Products are Out of this World—Bakery
(“In compliance with CA prop 215 SE 420, Section 11362.5,
And 11362.7 of CA H.S.C. Do not drive,
Or operate heavy equipment,
While under the influence.
Keep out of reach of children,
And comedian Aziz Ansari.”)

So getting back to Hemingway,
I return to Cuba to work on my book.
During the day--usually in the early morning hours--
When “the characters drive me up there,”
I climb to my tower room,
Stand up at my typewriter in the upstairs alcove.
I stand up to tell my story because last night,
Everyone got drunk and threw all the ******* furniture in the pool.
By the way, I’m putting together my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I can’t decide between:
“I may be defeated but I’ll never be destroyed,” or
“You can destroy me but you’ll never defeat me.”
The kind of artistic doublespeak they love in Sweden.
Maybe: “Night falls and day breaks, but no one gets hurt.”
God help me.
I need to come up with a bunch of real pithy crap soon.
Maybe I’ll just smoke a joint before the speech and,
Start riffing off the cuff about literary good taste:

“In my novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example, I had Maria tell Pilar that the earth moved, but left out the parts about Robert Jordan’s ******* and the tube of Astroglide.”

Stockholm’s only a month away,
So I’m under a lot of pressure.
Where’s Princess Grace under Pressure when I need her?
I used to work for the Kansas City Star,
Working with newspaper people who advocated:
Short sentences.
Short paragraphs.
Active verbs.
Authenticity.
Compression.
Clarity.
Immediacy.
Those were the only rules I ever learned,
For the business of writing,
But my prose tended to be a bit clipped, to wit:
A simple series,
Of simple declarative sentences,
For simpletons.
I’m told my stuff is real popular with Special-Ed kids,
And those ******* that run
The International Imitation Hemingway Competition,
AKA: The Bad Hemingway Contest.
The truth is: I always wanted to get a bit more flowery,
Especially after I found out I got paid by the word.
That’s when the *** and **** proved mighty useful.
        
I live at La Finca Vigia:
My house in San Francisco de Paula,
A Havana suburb.
My other place is in town,
Room #511 at the Hotel Ambos Mundos,
Where on a regular basis I _
(Insert simple declarative Anglo-Saxon expletive)
My guantanmera on a regular basis.
But La Finca’s the real party pad.
Fidel and Che and the rest of the Granma (aka “The Minnow”) crew
Come down from the mountains,
To use my shower and refresh themselves,
On an irregular basis.
At night we drink mojitos, daiquiris or,
The *** & coke some people call Cuba Libre.
We drink the *** and plan strategy,
Make plans for taking out Fulgencio Batista,
And his Mafia cronies,
Using the small arms and hand grenades,
We got from Allen Dulles.

Of course, after the Bay of Pigs debacle,
You had to go, Ernesto.
Kennedy had the CIA stage your suicide,
And that was all she wrote.
And all you wrote.
Never having had a chance,
To tell the 1960s Baby Boomers about class warfare in America.
Poor pathetic Papa Hemingway.
Lenin and Stalin may have ruined Marxism,
But Marx was no dummy.
Not in your book.
Or mine.

(Villanelle)


It takes patience to wait for the perfect light.
Glance away and the image can disappear.
And sometimes the background isn’t quite right.

The moment missed is like a face out of sight
That against all logic we hope will appear
From around a corner, bathed in perfect light.

Or a pause in the music on a moonlit night
When hesitating lips touch, and love leans near,
But voices whisper that something’s not right.

Technology offers consolation in its sleight
Of hand:  Digitally correct the analog here
And now, counterfeit the perfect light.

Yet we want more than the mastered byte.
We want the flash between the waiting and the souvenir,
The instant when self and spectacle fuse, reality felt right.

And so we hold on to what’s passing out of sight,
The collision between soon and too late, the sheer
Thread connecting to the perfect light
In which the background is precisely right.

In this new world so connected digitally
Online with your smartphone or desktop continuously
Every touch or click with your fingers sublimely
Connecting messaging chatting seductively
Rush of dopamine brain lives ecstatically
Bits and bytes that rise and fall emotionally
Waiting for physical touch earnestly
LDR love seem to be extraordinarily
Yet to see LDR grows into LTR eventually

i like looking up these shadow-people, the labourers
away from the spotlight, away from easy reference conclusions,
Ludovico Arrighi is among them, as is
the high jumper **** Fosbury - no belly-flop in
the competition after... after 1968 the road signs
told every jumper to expose the back and ***
when overpowering the heights -
Philippe Petit is outside the world, the ultimate
expression of solipsism, what grandeur (previous
attempts, the dyslexic source: the graphemes, æ,
previously i wrote grandeur as: grandeaur,
grandaeur, etc., somehow the syllables of only
vowels can leave you momentarily dyslexic,
when we're talking pure consonant graphemes
we have an aesthetic performed,
sheering can become šeering, whereby the diacritical
input overpowers excess spelling of graphemes,
such examples arise from what became the silent H...
or the surd H... ping-pong with the tetragrammaton...
e.g. dhal - which is said with a macron over the a:
dāl... but the trinity of spelled words gives rise
of neurosis... unless it's a word as conjunction,
the tribunal of aesthetic in keeping language beautiful
will prefer the spelling dhal or even daal rather than
what i proposed). concerning Ludovico Arrighi's
italics type... the skewed rhombus alignment /    /
is prescribed for emphasis... i need something to introduce
something that doesn't stress emphasis, but
sarcasm / ridicule... when i write something,
as i did in Christianity 2.0 (two point oh),
i'd change the direction of the ~wind, i.e. instead of
/    /    for emphasis, i'd like to stress ridicule in the
following direction:    \     .
but that's beside the point, it's like a western with
English not applying noticeable stresses...
for example the English trill, or the French hark...
they should be equipped with diacritical marks
of distinction... some sort of uniformity
of suggestion... the northerners trill (roll)
their R, the French used to, now anything but
a puddle of phlegm... but indeed, easy dyslexia from
pure vowel graphemes... cutting up graphemes
with diacritical incisions (safety, in a persistent vocabulary,
following the method of philosophical methodology -
hence my casual use of diacritics and graφemes -
i.e. when graphemes can't be constructed due
to a lacking of grapheme intention - unlike θ and φ -
supported by their alignment of a twin sound,
the Greeks would never consider applying diacritical
marks on p, t, h - unlike in Polish, where the h
is distinguished into a ch for aesthetic purposes -
e.g. chleb - bread and huj - **** -
but overpowering the vowel graphemes produced
their disappearance and the emergence of diacritical
vowels, e.g. the acute o (ó), which is a U, i treat
the diacritical mark as an incision point for the parabola,
cutting up the omicron, and that seems natural
given that the Greeks already did it without the acute
sign, i.e. the omega (the double u) - ω - again,
aesthetic reasons, the forgotten gallery of words
is there, you just have to forget Chomsky for a while.
but indeed, breaking up graphemes provides us
the necessity for diacritical marks,
the ancient Roman graphemes might have disappeared,
but they're still digitally present: mostly concerning
major words, like onomatopoeia - or encyclopaedia -
graphemes behave differently with the barbarians,
the latter encyclo- example is obviously nostalgic,
the ono- example does a reverse grapheme variation
of oe... but modernity expresses these couples
with individual distinctions - i.e. encyclopaedia
could be written utilising... well not a caron - not quiet
***, and more p'eh - the resurrection of the tetragrammaton
is necessary, i'd have inserted the variation without
minding French, i.e. grave accent on e eating away
the last vowel... or vowels... i.e. encyclopaèdia -
so avoiding the French usage that would cut off the -ia,
i'd insert it for reasons of interacting with a h, p'eh.
Joyce's Finnegan's Wake should have been written like this...
instead, it was written without noticing the diacritical
marks, and therefore made it's pompousness known
by omitting diacritical marks, therefore succumbing to
excessive spelling... or the ruin of Delmore Schwarzt -
nurse! scalpel: sch(sh /sz / š)- -wä(łä)- r(z)'t - drum-kit
wet snare tss't like in jazz.
still i need to define the R being trilled (rolling ball)
akin to the å - but of course the umlaut would do the job
likewise - but it's the aesthetic purpose that's necessary,
i guess umlaut designates an eased concept of
arithmetic included above the sound: i.e. prolonged,
count +2.

but these are but minor points of consideration,
obviously it would take decades to implement, and knowing
human endeavours in this realm, once fixed, once
fixated, nothing will hardly change - due to the already
existing utilisation, whereby it works perfectly to segregate
people... and the fact that there's no linguistic bible to
mind... but talking about orthodoxy and meddling with
dogma, i'm still bothered about the Malachi heresy,
how could it have been implemented?
i mean, a polytheistic concept of reincarnation is the oldest
form of identity theft, isn't it?
monotheism is incompatible with the concept of reincarnation,
this is the weakest spot / the blemish in Judaism...
Malachi is the actual inventor of Christianity and Islam,
he introduced the concept of reincarnation with
the return of Elijah, as mentioned in the New Testament
where Jesus is compared with Elijah...
it's a monotheistic heresy... reincarnation has no place
in monotheism, yet there it is, glaring at everyone from
the page... it was Malachi's error that gave rise to
schism... the litmus test of a monotheism is it's inability to
succumb to schism... well, Christianity is poly-schismatic,
Islam suffered an infection of schism early on...
Jewish schism?  you either practice or don't...
you either don the full attire of a Hasidic jews or you simply
turn your opinions toward earthly matters...
and so much rigour just because they didn't care to
roll the ******* back during ***, all that much work
from snipping the *******... early intervention did the job,
snip the skin off and we have the most ridiculously
funny god in the thought of man, an entire Mongolian
horde of intellectuals have been spawned from his existence...
imagine if god intervened when plastic surgery came around...
wouldn't be so ******* funny by my count.
****! listening to the radio and standing up between sentences
then realising there's no go-back button... it's live...
sometimes the oddities of not being your own d.j. can be
petrifying, when you're working against the river-current
like a Salmon of rhythm.

lastly... i guess this is a major point, in a magazine article
some dung-heap of opinion wrote something
about poetry, in ditto:
a policeman shoots dead Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri in August 2014, Maggie Smith's poem
Good Bones goes viral, it wasn't about Ferguson,
it was about life being short and often terrible -
continues with: poetry is the language of crisis, of
profound thought and deep emotion, it may not be
much read these days, but it is certainly felt...

is that all true? is poetry the language of crisis?
i think that assertion is a load of *******...
it's a bit like using a hammer to paint the civil room's
walls (living room, i call it the civil room) -
if i'm reading poetry i'm not commuting or lying in bed,
i'm perched on the windowsill in a quasi-akimbo pose,
sipping a glass of bourbon with coca-cola and
smoking a cigarette, mindful of never wanting to
wear contact lenses or eyeglasses,
poetry is more than this idealism about it,
that you read poetry to savour the moment of critical needs,
i read poetry because newspaper articles **** me off...
poetry is like newspaper articles when those monstrous
literary ****** get going for months of necessary
attention to finish them... poetry, when drinking
bourbon, smoking a cigarette, quasi-akimbo on the windowsill,
perfect use of spacing, i bet most people who stick
to poetry will have better eyesight when they grow older.

I

Before the sea the sound of sea, before the wind a mask of wind placed on the face, before the rain the touch of rain on the cheek. The lee shore of this finger of land is a gathered turbulence of tea-coloured, leaf-curling wave upon wave, wholly irregular, turning, folding, falling. No steady crash and withdrawal hiss, but a chaos of breaking and turning over, no rhyme or reason, and far, far up the beached misted shore. There, do you see? - suddenly appearing in the waves’ turmoil a raft of concrete, metalled, appearing to disappear, the foreshore’s strategic sixty year old litter shifting and decaying slowly under the toss of water and wind.
 
II
 
From the lighthouse steps to the sea fifty yards no more: the path, a brief facing of the wind and spit of rain, then turning the back to it see the complexity of low vegetation holding its own on the shallow earth-invading sand and rolled leaves of marram grass. Sea Buckthorn is the dominant plant, not yet berried with its clustered inedible oil-rich orange fruits. The leaves, slight, barely 5cm long, but in profusion, clustering upward, splaying out and upward on thin branches, hiding the wind in its density, never more than chest high, so the eye looks down, sees the plane of the leaves, long, thin, suddenly tapered, dense, stiff, thorny.
 
III
 
You said, ‘look the door is curved.’ And it was. In the late afternoon light filtering through the oblong window 150’ into the grey sky the panelled wood was honeyed. Covered with a well-varnished frottage of swirled marks, some of the wood itself, some of gathering age and infestation, the single window’s light blazed a small white rectangle on the larger rectangle of the door. The passage outside the door too narrow for the eye to take in the whole door straight on, one has to move past and catch its form obliquely.
 
IV
 
The curve, the long four-mile curve of the finger into the afternoon mist and sea cloud. From the road: only seen the smooth ebbing tide waters retreating from the archipelagos of mud and sand and slight vegetation of rusted grass.  From the road: only heard over the marramed banks the sea’s sound of waves’ confusion and winds’ turmoil. Follow the fade of the curve’s progress in the echo of distance. It paints itself from the brush of the eye, the sea a grey resist. This spreading away is a long breath taken . . . then expelled from the lungs of looking. You can’t quite hold it all in one view so you’ll build the image in sections, assembling and projecting across two adjoining landscape sheets as if the spiral binding isn’t there. The resulting image when digitally joined will describe the negative space of sea of sky, silent and uncluttered by marks. Only the curve of the land will collect the drawn, a vertical stroke here for a lighthouse, a slight smudge for the lifeboat station.
 
V
 
From the road looking south to an invisible North Shore, the mist hiding the true horizon, there is layer upon layer of horizontal bands: of grass, of mud, of nested water around mud, wet sand, layered water, mud-black, water-grey, a dull sky-reflected white of a sheltered sea, and patterning everywhere, dots of birds near and distant. Then, in the very centre, a curlew in profile, its long downward curving bill dipping for worms into the wet sand and mud. Breeding on summer moorland, wading winter estuaries, this somewhat larger than other waders here, so distinctive with its heavy, calm stance.

a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy

~~~

the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none

~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”

“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”

“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word  wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life

“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
                                                         ­­ of the vaguest of dearly departed

skin is not the only mot shed,
                                                sloughing of woeful words”

“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”

The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial.  On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.

Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising

A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.

Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days

So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:

We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.

Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.

Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques

Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock

Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,  
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored

Patiently waiting for the perfect light.
Glassy lake, wind, clouds, perfection’s near
as the moment dwindles into night.

Captured moments prove that you’re alive, a height
of feeling between depths of time and fear
that living casts only imperfect light.

But the moment missed is like a face out of sight
that against all logic you hope will appear
from around a corner, framed by the night.

Technology offers consolation in its sleight
of hand:  Digitally correct the analog here
and now, counterfeit the perfect light.

Yet you want more than the remastered byte.
You want the flash between waiting and souvenir,
Self and spectacle fused, reality felt right.

And so you wait for what’s passing out of sight,
the collision between soon and too late, sheer
threads connecting to the perfect light
before the moment dwindles into night.

Eros,
whose armor wears the red fire,
Whose prodigal body lies in the deep
Carpet of the forest dreaming
Of divine things,
Here He awakens from vast sleep
In a repose of anciently wonderful
Dreams and wanders through the expansion
Of the current age of men:

"Ancient words never spoken,
Flayed hearts I feel calling in abstract
Places with dizzying geometric scales,
Man, woman, the call like the lyrical
Madness of the heart."

Formidable cement glass raised
Up by the incalculable ingenuity
Of the empty spirit of men,
Anonymously spoken messages
Without history of literature,
Pessimism reigns down upon
A heal of bones praying to
Gods on waves of cellular destruction.

Eros, fallen star
In the endlessness of time
Hath awakened to the ineptitude
Beneath half opened eyelids,
Lost girl in a tunnel of quartz
Lost in hapless energy
In the marrow of Internet's
Granite.
"Where are the hopeful lovers?
The spirit in subliminal wounds
Of passion, when the emotion pours
Like a fountain of wishes,
Where is the pillar of men who
Astonished angels with his ferocious
Love of the woman?
I remember men were passionate
Beasts, whose hearts were flames,
Whose words were psalms of red vapor
To a scarlet queen, the silence here
In a digitally martyred evocation,
Where has the romance gone?"

Eros,
He has fallen silent to the worlds
Web widened by its absolute
Unredeemable fashion,
Eros,
The dark brilliance of sadness reaches
Even your heart which is unfathomable,
You devour the passionate
And spew it among men.
The young used to live in water
And all was charged with eternity.
Men are broken in the computerized
Abyss, filled with pop up romances
In a flux of desire which points
To a disappearing saffron flecked
With sorrowing petals,
Texting the familiar calls of lust ,
Eros never though the house of
Aphrodite could disappear!

"I aim my arrow at the old man
In a moonlit patio whose heart
Calls to older things,
Like the embryonic love
In the lovers womb sparking
The mass reproduction of a
Nourished partner,
His ending commenced,
His heart nailed in hope to the sun.
There is no page for this man,
No .com could suffice as the wheel
Of days spin in a long procession,
He hopes on hope,
He does not consume himself,
But holds true as a young lover would,
The woman that lit the fire
Of his years gone but alive
In a spectral glare in his eye.
Love alive as death arrives."

Eros,
Given hope from the dying,
Fixing the world around a passionate
Moon, stilled the light in one man
And charged it to the world in age
Digitally broken of passion
And set it upon the arrows that he fired
From air and sky embarking
A new flame in a time of computerised
Tombs.

Eros, the ever hopeful.

Who Am I?

I am a boy and a man.
I am a son, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and a grand child.
I was a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband, and an in-law.
I am a bachelor.
I am surrounded and abandoned.
I am a family man and a loner.

I am a homemaker and a handyman.
I wear the apron and the tool belt.
I am a neat freak and a slob.
I am an amateur contractor and a contracted amateur.
I am a dumpster diver, a recycler, and a decadent waste.
I am a glutton, a scavenger, and a scrapper.

I am a friend and an enemy.
I am fun and an annoyance.
I am a lover and a hater.
I am creepy, cruel, and harsh.
I am tender, loving, and inviting.
I have a foul mouth and tender lips,
Drenched in jagged, soft-serve words.

I am a painter, sculptor, draftsman, sketcher, character designer, photographer, graphic designer, fashion designer, kitbasher, customizer, and crafter.
I am a reader, a writer, and a poet.
I am the Jail Baby, Ryan & Lisa, The Phoenix, The AntiFather, and The HEYMAN!
I compose symphonies of visual and intangible imagery.
I bring form to thought.
I destroy,
I create.
I am an artist.

I am a geek, nerd, freak, and otaku.
I have been punk, goth, prep, white trash, and metrosexual.
I wear glasses,
But only as a sick joke.
I am beautiful and ugly,
Clean and *****.
I am unique.
I am predictable.
I have changed, but am still the same.

I am a techie,
An electronic ******.
I am cutting edge and old school.
Digitally signed and sealed.
I am analog and obsolete.

I am an adrenaline addict.
I can chill, maybe slow,
But never relax.

I am blue collar, tradesman, and service industry.
I am peon and ****** on.
Oh, but I have done the ******* too!
I have been hired and fired,
Bought and sold.
I have worn the uniform,
I have said, “**** the man!”
I am the proletariat,
I am in charge.

I am a student, dropout, and teacher.
I am class clown and teacher’s pet.
I have learned, forgotten, and taught,
But never learned my lesson.
I don’t listen to what I’m told,
But always do what I tell.

I am a genius,
I am an idiot.
I have intelligence, but often lack the intel.
I am naïve, but wise.
I am right and wrong.

I have philosophies and ideas,
But no religion.
I have desecrated and blasphemed,
Prayed and praised.
I have lusted, envied, and coveted.
I am guilty and innocent,
Pure and soiled,
Good and bad.

I am a driver and a passenger.
I am an explorer and a shut-in.
I am wild and free,
Caged and stifled.
I was warmly wrapped in my blanket,
But burned through it.

I have rode, climbed, and conquered.
I  stood still.
I jumped in.
I have fallen and been defeated.

I have been abroad,
I have been nowhere.
I have drifted.
I have settled.
I have led and been led.
I have been in and out,
Here and there,
Around and AWOL,
On the run and trapped.
But, not everywhere.

I have applied,
I have procrastinated.
I have worked my fingers to the bone,
I have slept it off.

I have fought and fled.
I have quit.
I have endured.
I am a winner and a loser,
A champ and a chump.

I am fake,
I am real.
I have lied, cheated, and stole.
I have been honest, fair, and generous.

I am selfish and selfless.
I am a gift giver, gift wrapper, and gift taker.
I am a thief and a philanthropist.

I am insecure and confident,
Confused and absolutely sure.
I am proud and ashamed.
I am complicated and convoluted,
But simple to please.

I have blind faith and guarded suspicion
I have secrets,
But lie rarely.
I accept everyone,
I trust nothing.

I have pointed the finger,
Only to turn it on myself.
I have held grudges and forgiven.
I have trusted and misguided.
I have been Judas and Jesus.

I am a maniac,
I am sane.
I have been strong and weak.
I can keep it together,
But prefer to break it apart.

I have bled.
I have healed.
I have been abused and neglected,
Coddled and protected.

I have been kissed and punched;
Hunted, wanted, and arrested,
Ignored, overlooked, and invisible.

I have loved and lost,
Lived and learned.
I am a soldier of misfortune and opportunity.

I have blended in.
I have stood out.
I have stood up.
I have backed down.
I have been backed into a corner.
I have all the space in the world.

I have seen, interpreted, and perceived,
I have ignored, dismissed, and been blind.
I hunger, want, and need…
I am satiated and content,
But never at peace.

I have been misunderstood and underestimated.
I have been put down, put up, pushed away, and let in.
I have been known,
But never entirely.

I have raged, cried, smiled, trembled, and laughed.
I have been depressed.
I have been happy.
I have been suicidal. I have felt death.
I have been lost and found.
I have been broken, then fixed,
Stitched, yet glitched,
Scarred, but whole.
I am alive.


I took the chance,
I let the moment slip.
I walked the straight and narrow,
I ran down the road not taken.
I dream; some whole, some shattered.
I go with the flow, but don’t let the waves take me.

I am shards and reflections,
Machinations and reactions.
I am translucent pieces and parts,
Assembled and disheveled.
I am the big picture still focused on the details.

I am the sum total of heredity and experience.
I am not,
I am more.
I am everything and nothing.
I am a walking contradiction.
I am human.

I tried to be you,
But didn’t know what that meant.
I am me,
It’s all I know.

Who are you?

I look at Sil and start to SCREAM and yell and yammer excitedly with this new idea bursting forth -  Let’s go to Sunday mass hungover, or maybe still drunk. Maybe we can puke in the pews or confess our sins to the pederast priest! Sil, always an easy read, agreed instantly so we left the watering hole in the wall, brimming with stalwart stoic sin and soaking in ***, gin and ugh…pheromones.

“fadder I puked in yer pews. How many hail Marys is dat?”

“fadder I smoked a joint in the rectory.”

“fadder I occasionally sleeps wit men.” I cry,

We see his previously shock beet red face light up.

“Wit MEN fadder wit men.  Not little boys”

Disappointed pederast priest preaching piously about the sins of drugs and alcohol and *** and ****** and y’know, pretty much everything fun ever.

“fadder I sold me mudders dentures for new headshots.”

“fadder I was in a ****” et cetera. After the pederast has a coronary we’ll steal the communion wine and dance on the church *****. You can play a sweet soft soothing melody accompanied soliloquy or Debussy’s Claire de Lune. We’ll remember better days when he could still play and cry red tears, ****** drunk. Stuck in our respective funk ruts our calls to the coronary catholic become more somber.

“fadder I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dying…I’m afraid of living.”

Rolling around on the confession booth floor now,

“fadder I want to die, fadder I tried to **** myself”

Sil shows strong salient scalpel scars that we both still remember suturing shut.

“fadder I should be in the Waterford In-patient wing”

By now we’ve revived the poor old Father…As it happens he’s a rowdy red whiskey noser. Sil’s feeling good, rambunctious and reeling secretly seething I believe.

“So fadder explain to me why it’s a sin to love another man but every other ******* week some ******’ pillar of the community cops for kiddie ****?!” His ire is up, red cheeked wide eyed boiling over.

The priest is mute silent on the subject at first, finally looking up from a leather bound book, he starts to speak in careful, measured words unfamiliar to the impatience of our generation.

“My son, I’ve never ****** any boys, nor do I hate ‘the gays’ and what’s all this about killing yourselves and Waterford Bridge Road?” I feel a lecture coming on…”What’s the allure of this demure throwaway life attitude you have, so many of you.”

This question throws a long echoing silence through the puke stained pews.  A symbol for broken, wasted, busted, beat down lost youth. Or whatever. (Say it like a valley girl honey.)

Breaking the silence I turn to him quietly, “I guess for me I really don’t see the point of any of it beyond a couple of laughs and a lot of highs. I see the corruption that I’m too stupid to fix, that I can’t realistically change.”

Sil interjects “I think generationally we just don’t really have a tether – Everyone exists superficially, digitally we don’t know how to talk to one another we just get drunk or high and crash into each other blindly praying for a little connection on those rare occasions we realize how disconnected we really are.”

“Generationally? Is that even a word?!”

“Shut up milk drinker!” Sil punches me

“Yeah everyone sitting alone in rooms or all together with a *** and coke and a cellphone silently tapping away.”

The pederast nods “you boys need family, children, religion even. You know it brings us together as a community. The ****** of the masses son” He pauses, wagging a finger “and I don’t consider that to be a pejorative.”

Taking a ridiculous swig I nod “I understand the appeal really but I prefer actual opiates  and being alone and not changing.”

After a box of communion wine, (Yes it can come in boxes, look it up) we bid farewell to the swell drunk ‘ol pederast priest, promising to return someday with Irish Mist for his thirsty Irish lips, (Is that bigotry?) the old coot.

“Sil come over and stay in my bed we can binge watch a season of Louie and drink ******’ Borises and I’ll play guitar for you an…” I stammer on

“STOP! You had me at BED” Sil yells at me belligerently as we stagger down Bully Street arms intertwined drunk walking. It’s foggy and misty, our feet soaked and my body is drained of life. Finally we knock into my front door struggling with keys, we must have dropped 5 times.

“I think yer scars are beautiful Sil” (I love it, I do) I tell her softly as I run my hand over them, feeling the slight texture change, the scar raised…We kiss and stare into eyes, not alone not for tonight.

She kept up with her housekeeping.
Typically. Very Neat. Shelves everywhere.

Today, the melon baller was out of place
and she was busy batting flies.

Actually, there was only one fly.
Senses deceived.

The humming was too loud to go undisturbed.
Attention becomes focused digitally

on enhanced minute wrecks.
Hours spent trying to get the flies.

Illusion.
One fly.

She didn't know. Suspected worst.
Kept at it.

The sexless man walked in with a tophat. Brimmed.
Asks why the dishes weren't done.

Too Busy.

Why the floor not swept.

Too Busy.

Vacuum.

There's flies to get. I'm busy.


The house is a mess. The house is a wreck.

now, I was just minding
my own business
brought up by very virtuous parents
steeped in a culture ancient and proper
and graced with divine revelations;
the lotus forever growing pure
even in muddied waters;
and so minding my own business
and vowed to matrimonial chastity in mind
never looking at another woman
and never thinking of another ever

I mean no one thought
looking at Mona Lisa
even in my younger days
was ever bad; they simply said:
Oh, Mona Lisa…what a painting!
so I went about years
chaste, pure and I think, angelic,
until these women come into art books
and now more readily in cyber-life
like Rembrandt’s Bathing Woman -
oh, how could I not look?
She, Hendrickje, more natural and
more come-here-you than
today’s airbrushed digitally enhanced beauties…
O Hendrickje, Hendrickje,
entering the water
and lifting up her dress
so it won’t get wet
but O – was that really her intention?
Or perhaps to entice Rembrandt further?
Or to look at her own reflection?
and then what about us, full-blooded men of latter-days –
O Rembrandt, what have you done?
how can I not look, and look?
and come back to look again?
and under pretence of aesthetics I trace every
limb and curve of Hendrickje, O Hendrickje –
I become a Rembrandt of sorts,
just tracing lines on her image

O these cyberspace beauties
they corrupt my high ideals
And Rembrandt says across the ages:
Remember you your traditions and virtue…
And the morally upright say:
Hey! She was Rembrandt’s woman!
And I can only quip: Yeah - she was!

and leaving it at that
with O Hendrickje, Hendrickje,
gazing at her own reflection
and I wondering what she sees –
well, after Hendrickje, O Hendrickje
am I safe? you think?
Then come the women of Japan –
for instance
A woman Applying Powder
while Hashiguchi Goyō sketched and mixed his paints -
and why? Oh why, Hashiguchi Goyō?
why do you release these sirens, these women
this Woman after her Bath
this Woman combing her hair -
O these mistresses of the arts
O why release them
on my sensitive and pure
and morally upright mind?
O why you do corrupt
such a one
such a noble mind
that centuries of spiritual values jousted one another
to produce? Such a delicate specimen as I am.
Or may be
all these women should be deleted from cyberspace
and only decent women with quizzical smiles like
Mona Lisa should prevail…
Sure, we don’t know what she’s smiling about
but at least Old Lisa’s not as dangerous
as youthful Hendrickje, O Hendrickje -
or
as the Woman Applying Powder
baring her shoulders and her Japanese *****…
I mean, how can I not look?
and come back again to look?
O my adulterous heart!
but delete them all
or black them out
or cover them all up from head to foot
(technology can do wonders nowadays)
so
I can just be minding
my own business
brought to you by very virtuous parents
steeped in a culture ancient and proper
and divine revelations
the lotus forever growing pure
even in muddied waters;
and I’ll end up in Heaven after all my Holy Days
and for my Eternal Holidays there
I’ll be given all the virgins I’ll ever want

defined as "existing or being everywhere at the same time; constantly encountered."*

_______________­


he craves online hook-ups.

...but this isn't me
or that intrepid,          
torrent trampoline
                   on wireless ether engines
zone on in  .nets & .coms
                   searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M to fantasize delights
to itch to fix
to sit transfixed as if
subliminally attached
                           umbilically
digitally to a electronic felatio
                                  soundtrack
yet all the while detached
                            lurking
reading pretend profiles  explicit
with ***, sexified,
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
                        tandem testimonials as if written
by a Compaq-machine-head
or Microsoftened lust
                        as now we are turning to dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists and Adams with "anything goes"
remonstrating our vicious
                           cycle - blank with un/trust

this isn't me...
where is the warmth
       of feelings, emotions,
love??
I am not that talented
          to be in two places at once,
but he has the faces
and genius of multiple personalities
facets
   of sabotage with grace.

he says it isn't him.

my anger has only one trait. two eyes.
velvet
rope-burned
limbs...

and he has too many faces
doppleganger hatreds
where  does  one

begin??

(The rubble or the sin?)

_____________

DOPpLEGANGER­ (2016)--[Rewrite]


he craves online hook-ups.


But this isn't me
nor am I that intrepid        
a torrent trampoline
                   on wireless ether engines
                   cyber silver surfin'
zone on / in  .nets & .coms
                   searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M / in-fantasized delights

an itch to fix
to sit transfixed
as if
subliminally attached
                           umbilically
digitally digitized digi-man
                            to a electronic felatio soundtrack

yet all the while detached
                            lurking duplicitly
reading pretend profiles  explicitly
for ***, sexified mind
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
                        tandem testimonials as if written
                        by a Compaq-machine-head
                        Microsoftened lust
currents electric now as we turn into dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists for Adams
status' with "anything goes"
                        remonstrating our vicious cycle
alive & blank with un/trust
gone viral...

this isn't me.

where is the warmth
       of feelings, emotions,
malleable and infallible / love??

I am not as talented
as he
          to be in two places at once,
but he
          has the many faces
and genius of multiple personalities
Cybil
facets
   of sabotage with Mommy Dearest grace.
        Beautiful strangers his acquired
              taste...

he says it was not him
(doing ****)

my rage has only one trait.
two eyes                              (once wide asleep in the lies)
and velvet-rope-burned
wrists
my feet learn to fly
my heart un-breaks
my wings reanimate...


he has too many faces
doppleganger hatred
none to care for or embrace

When did I go blind,
         and leave my many strengths?
Where do I now
again
begin??

(The rubble or the sin?)


Every night adieu
Every day anew
                                        once again...

We want answers,
And we want them now.

Generations scrolling down together, receiving
Informal lessons from sometimes qualified strangers,
Impulsively living, giving status updates,
Proudly showing the world pictures
Of all the places we’ve been -
Twittering to gain followers, digitally devoted,
But consistently losing the edge,
Heading back to Starbucks to refill.

Welcome to the 21st century,
Where life spills into the abstract,
And we consume with the click of a button.
You’re only a copy-and-paste away
From a satisfactory translation,
A GPS away from your next location,
One computer screen freeze
Away from total frustration.

Just ask a teacher, they know exactly
Where the future lies, somewhere
Between a child’s wandering eyes
And flippant commercials, there is
Utterly, complete concentration.

What’s the solution?
More time preparing
For entrance exams?
Creating more diverse
Lesson plans?
Either way, students will
Still quote Spongebob
And call you a square.

Took one step into his lonesome world.

The clouds there were peculiarly pixelated in a forgettable shade of #999999
Digitally coded water vapor condensing into dense bubbles of thought
They resembled puzzle pieces childishly misplaced
Naivety was finger-painted along the lining and edges
While other bits played a quiet game that seemed to find them wanting

I did wonder where he hid them
Or if it was someone else who ran away
Who stole the stars in his sky?
Who stole the light in his pocket?

Took another step into his lonesome world.

The wind there had a dance of it's own that seemed to trace a pattern
Oscillating at a rate of 15Hz was a low frequency partner-less sway
Similar to eyelids confused and batting their lashes
Or wiper blades clearing tears off cars during a storm
Occurring without much thought was the drizzle with each wave

I did wonder why he danced alone
Or was it someone else who simply walked off
Who turned his sky on?
Who turned his lights off?

Took a breath standing in the center of his lonesome world.

I looked up and to my surprise found the eye of his mind
Staring back at me from those ***** clouds
It was the reason to all being and the wind was it's doing
Rising high up from an endless undisturbed nap

It was;

Brighter than the Sun itself
  Bursting citrus with each blink
Bleeding pulp over my skin
  Burning like acid on my own wounds
Delightful heat dripping off my tongue
   Psychedelic spirals twisting my limbs

    And
       i danced and spun
    And
       i lost and won

Please find me somewhere in those broken memories of yours

Just hear me out,
Before you get frustrated.
Lol
One of the new most commonly used terms in a teen’s vocabulary.
***
The new starter of most sentences in a text message.
Put them together,
You have a full sentence.
Wow, magic.
Just like that!
But then you have jk jk lol.
Brb.
Ttyl.
And those don’t even scrape the beginning of “text language”
Whatever happened to the real languages?
The real conversations?
See the thing is, most of us couldn’t go a day without our electronics.
Are world is digitally ruled.
When you feel your phone buzz, what do you do?
You immediately go for it.
When you hear your ringtone, what do you do?
You go for it.
I’m sure we’re all guilty of it.
We text, we post, we call.
Our life story.
Whatever happened to going outside to play football?
Because now it can be done on Madden.
With the touch of a button,
Our whole life can be occupied, mixed, and transformed.
Cyber bullying.
Plagiarism.
Pirating.
All crimes based on technology.
Our world has turned to the future,
When maybe it should’ve stayed in the past.
It’s become like a bird, flying too fast.
It seems like our lives have begun to revolve around when the next IPhone comes out.
Did you know a girl tried to **** her own mom when she took away her phone?
There’s clearly something wrong there.
We stare at our screens,
Like we owe them respect,
But then we forget
The color of our lover’s eyes.
Video games,
The love in a teens life.
How fun it seems
To build, destroy, and plat
But we forget, what it was really like
When these things required work, and energy.
This generation has relied too much on our everyday actions.
We don’t do anything new.
We haven’t done anything new…
Except when we got the new ps4 and the new IPhone 6 plus of course.
I feel like my world has been taken over.
The tyrant is the tech.
And its trapped me for years.
Its trapped schools, workplaces.
Its trapped the world.
And I don’t know how…
Oh wait…was that my phone?
It’s taken over our banking, our transportation, even our security!
We trust our tech more than our best friend!
And it doesn’t even have a soul!
In fact, that’s how we reach most people.
Social media.
Ah there it is.
Facebook
Twitter
Snapchat
And Instagram.
The addiction is real.
We check them every day.
Every night.
Memories fade to the rapid typing and clicking.
My parents laugh
When they see something from their childhood,
That I don’t even recognize.
And I ask myself, will our children be the same?
So oblivious to everything,
Because we never bothered to see?
We text. We type.
We can do it all night.
When will our thumbs get tired?
Because when you power your phone on,
I’m trying to turn mine…off.
Hold on, I gotta take this call.

he craves online hook-ups.


But this isn't me
nor am I that intrepid        
a torrent trampoline
                   on wireless ether engines
                   cyber silver surfin'
zone on / in  .nets & .coms
                   searching fiber-optics for sight
browsing rooms of M4M / in-fantasized delights

an itch to fix
to sit transfixed
as if
subliminally attached
                           umbilically
digitally digitized digi-man
                            to a electronic felatio soundtrack

yet all the while detached
                            lurking duplicitly
reading pretend profiles  explicitly
for ***, sexified mind
dreaming up new fetishes
with misspelled texts
                        tandem testimonials as if written
                        by a Compaq-machine-head
                        Microsoftened lust
currents electric now as we turn into dust
with iBooks & faraway Dells on our laps
scrolling lists for Adams
status' with "anything goes"
                        remonstrating our vicious cycle
alive & blank with un/trust
gone viral...

this isn't me.

where is the warmth
       of feelings, emotions,
malleable and infallible / love??

I am not as talented
as he
          to be in two places at once,
but he
          has the many faces
and genius of multiple personalities
Cybil
facets
   of sabotage with Mommy Dearest grace.
        Beautiful strangers his acquired
              taste...

he says it was not him
(doing ****)

my rage has only one trait.
two eyes                              (once wide asleep in the lies)
and velvet-rope-burned
wrists
my feet learn to fly
my heart un-breaks
my wings reanimate...


he has too many faces
doppleganger hatred
none to care for or embrace

When did I go blind,
         and leave my many strengths?
Where do I now
again
begin??

(The rubble or the sin?)


Every night adieu
Every day anew
                                        once again...

put down thy pen,
it is in disrepute,
smash thy tablet,
crack its glass...

house the mouse,
don't be an ***,
genus human,
you have been
antihero morphed
anthromorprophesized,
******, simply, replaced

you poem prophecy
returned,
stamped,
Unneeded, Unread, Unheeded

you have been excused,
you have been recused,
jury, a chamber of inconclusive noises
dismissed,
the judge will digitally
write all
from now on...
submit your selected tags
for laughs,
a different poem returned to you,
by a digital "humanist"

what do I crave?
give me your youthful typos,
let me literate critique
the good, the bad, the
trite repetitive and especially
the ugly
poetry,
the kind only
humans can write

so I love or hate it,
your literacy,
with impassioned dispassion,
the kind no machine will e'er transcend

pull the plug on your random alphabet generator,
Eliot of York,
or you might find yourself
upgraded into unempoement!

The Atomic Weight of Arrogance

Politicians, self-absorbed business tycoons
super star athletes and various other baboons
have this special quality which we all endear
thinking they are above us they make it perfectly clear

they're thoughts, needs and wants are second to none
they want these important issues known to everyone
czars, kings, dictators, potentates put them in a line
actors, music stars, the schoolyard bully even comes to mind

we have all known or seen them digitally displayed publicly
holding down with tightly clenched fist if we disagree
they have been endowed with preordained magic powers  
sprinkled by their own private god's golden showers

they have always known more than mere mortal man
with more intelligence in one finger that's always been the plan
some seem confused that we don't all see them as our hero
last I checked the atomic weight of arrogance is still a whopping zero

Gomer LePoet....

In many instances my actions have been exactly
    as I've wished to receive.
             How could you expect more than what you are willing to give?
I cannot 'become' this.
                              I Am This.
This unconscious drive for all to be equal.
        What is wonderful is that is not where these actions or thoughts stem from.
Not the original purpose.
             That is just what would happen.
Almost chain reaction.
            Split second transferal of consciousness
  "Put yourself in their shoes"
Well...
             Sometimes they don't have shoes.
All this is meant to evoke is an emotional response...
           "What does this person need from me that is within my full power to give, to aid success, to ease the burden on their shoulders".
     It doesn't have to be much.
These actions rarely noticed.
                Though powerfully held,
   Radically Helpful.
Bound to ruin a day.
                                     Had you not acted.
                                        Had I not acted.
So,
      There.
                  You do have Agency.
Though rarely immediately for Self.
    When they are noticed it is extremely encouraging.
When reciprocated, mind stunningly shocked. -why?-

I want to become someone even more
    Aware of this awesome power,
                                                       To use it more forcibly,
         Controlled.
Find a larger forum.
                                 Promote positivity,
                                 Promote life,
                                               action,
           Finally treating others as you.
Not based on outward appearances
             But what my mind
and ever lofty
                      Spirit
Have to offer,
                       Are here to give.
Want nothing more than to share this
                       Simple way of living
Where it is impossible to be alone,
                             For someone to be forgotten.
To understand that friendship,
                             and family,
                             and Life
Are reciprocal.
           Sometimes you must offer before you receive.

I want to become someone who knows the difference.
      Never intentionally seeking harm.
Unavoidable when trying to attain
                     Everything in a made up world where
People in pictures are not real
               Digitally altered.
                                             No one looks like that.
Surgery the only way.
            So to get there,
                                       one must be as altered as the photo.
Acting in ways outside themselves to have
                 This. Fake. World.
   Stomping on others,
                                      Wildly avoiding most.
Crushing people everywhere to
                                    Build that sight
To have what is 'offered'.
         Has it progressed so far that the
idea of 'perfection'
                             is only gained under a knife,
                                                         through strife,
                                           Taking more than one life.

So without knowing,
                   This person has been becoming
an amazingly self-less, caring, empathetic
                            Human Being
with this forgotten knowledge that
       small actions, something that took minutes to complete,
may not have been so tiny.
                    You never know what you could inspire
   Or what would inspire you.
All you have to do is kindly offer
               The goodness of your soul,
Every skill you've honed.

Become someone that allows this to happen
      That brings memory back.
                                                   That Returns Happiness.

**Oct 14, 2013

This is a thoroughly post-modern phenomenon.

[Breathe, don't be nervous. It's fine. Wallah, you're not doing anything wrong.]

Digitally arranged meetings with ostensible strangers yet with more familiarity than our ancestors could imagine.
An arranged meeting,
a warm greeting,
a sensing,
a feeling.

“Are you Sami?”
“I am,” as I posture for a hug.

[She’s actually more beautiful than I expected. Her ample curls smell like conditioner and sunshine.]

“So you’re Kuwaiti?"
"Yea, I moved here when I was 18, to Kansas of all places."
"To be honest, I had to look up the emoji flag from your profile. My Muslim WhatsApp group helped me out.”
“Oh, okay. So you’re Muslim?”
“Yea, I was raised Muslim; my mom married a Kuwaiti in the 80s, blah blah blah.”
“What? Your mom lived in Kuwait?”
“Yea, kinda crazy, I know, but it’s a small world.”

[Small worlds make the gaps between souls smaller.
Who knew such a small place could leave such a big impact on so many lives?
Certainly neither of us.
Serendipity?
Allah y3alam.]  

“Why do lesbians discriminate against bisexuals? You’d think of all people, they wouldn’t be so judgmental.”
“You’d think, but you’d be wrong. It’s like we have a plague.” Her voice goes on, but my mind drifts off.

[Tortoise-shell glasses, beautiful lashes, manicured eyebrows that frame flickering dark eyes, encased in a forest of curls, legging laced thighs, oh my. ::Deepsigh. Pay attention to what she’s saying! Oh my, she’s my type. This is bad. No, no, hamdilah, this is good.]

“Do you want another round?” the bar keep’s inquiry snaps me back to reality. I interrupt to suggest a change of location. [Perhaps something less commercial, less public, less straight, more private, and more intimate.]
“It’s only a short walk.”
“Yea, let’s do it.”

[By short walk, I mean three doors down from the bar. The perks of suggesting the venue.]

“Shoes off?”
“Yea, it’s habit, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”

She sits, crosses her long legs, and gives me this look. My heart flutters; I remember my manners:
“Can I make you a drink? What’s your poison? Gin or *****?”
I mix our drinks and think:
[She must like me.
This is good.
I’m glad we did this digital dance to find romance.
What a treasure, finding this post-modern habibi.
Alhamdulilah,
Lucky me.]

My wife says I spend too much time writing

That I’m always on the computer or cell phone
Scribbling digitally

She says that it’s become and obsession

She says that I spend too much time writing
That it’s all I ever do anymore

She says that writing poetry
Is all I ever think about

I told her

“No, sometimes I think about leaving you,
Now which would you rather me do?”

She flipped me off
And stormed out of the room

Good

Back to writing in peace and quiet

now, I was just minding
my own business
brought up by very virtuous parents
steeped in a culture ancient and proper
and graced with divine revelations;
the lotus forever growing pure
even in muddied waters;
and so minding my own business
and vowed to matrimonial chastity in mind
never looking at another woman
and never thinking of another ever

I mean no one thought
looking at Mona Lisa
even in my younger days
was ever bad; they simply said:
Oh, Mona Lisa…what a painting!
so I went about years
chaste, pure and I think, angelic,
until these women come into art books
and now more readily in cyber-life
like Rembrandt’s Bathing Woman -
oh, how could I not look?
She, Hendrickje, more natural and
more come-here-you than
today’s airbrushed digitally enhanced beauties…
O Hendrickje, Hendrickje,
entering the water
and lifting up her dress
so it won’t get wet
but O – was that really her intention?
Or perhaps to entice Rembrandt further?
Or to look at her own reflection?
and then what about us, full-blooded men of latter-days –
O Rembrandt, what have you done?
how can I not look, and look?
and come back to look again?
and under pretence of aesthetics I trace every
limb and curve of Hendrickje, O Hendrickje –
I become a Rembrandt of sorts,
just tracing lines on her image

O these cyberspace beauties
they corrupt my high ideals
And Rembrandt says across the ages:
“Remember you your traditions and virtue…”
And the morally upright say:
“Hey! She was Rembrandt’s woman!”
And I can only quip: “Yeah - she was!”

and leaving it at that
with O Hendrickje, Hendrickje,
gazing at her own reflection
and I wondering what she sees –
well, after Hendrickje, O Hendrickje
am I safe? you think?
Then come the women of Japan –
for instance
A woman Applying Powder
while Hashiguchi Goyō sketched and mixed his paints -
and why? Oh why, Hashiguchi Goyō?
why do you release these sirens, these women
this Woman after her Bath
this Woman combing her hair -
O these mistresses of the arts
O why release them
on my sensitive and pure
and morally upright mind?
O why you do corrupt
such a one
such a noble mind
that centuries of spiritual values jousted one another
to produce? Such a delicate specimen as I am.
Or may be
all these women should be deleted from cyberspace
and only decent women with quizzical smiles like
Mona Lisa should prevail…
Sure, we don’t know what she’s smiling about
but at least Old Lisa’s not as dangerous
as youthful Hendrickje, O Hendrickje -
or
as the Woman Applying Powder
baring her shoulders and her Japanese *****…
I mean, how can I not look?
and come back again to look?
O my adulterous heart!
but delete them all
or black them out
or cover them all up from head to foot
(technology can do wonders nowadays)
so
I can just be minding
my own business
brought to you by very virtuous parents
steeped in a culture ancient and proper
and divine revelations
the lotus forever growing pure
even in muddied waters;
and I’ll end up in Heaven after all my Holy Days
and for my Eternal Holidays there
I’ll be given all the virgins I’ll ever want

you take a chance
and you say man
here my digits,
now shared,
here is my Rx,
call me as needed

weeks months later
a phone rings
at 2:30am

and one poet says it's me,
I am the living soul
of words you have appreciated

and the other says,
I'm glad you called brother,
how did you know I'd be awake?

and he laughs and says
I read your stuff,
you write best tween
midnite and dawn,
so the probabilities were favorable
that I would find you awake and capable

and you walk and talk and roam
roads and oaths that black and write
screen letters
can't full convey,
till one says **** man look at the time
and both laugh,
knowing a poem
had just been writ in
true voices
shared

and that kids,
is the chance some make,
when first your words you take
and the poetry you proffer
is product of genuine flesh,
beyond mere in vitro digitally fertilized

It's good until it's bad and when it's bad it gets worse. I noticed the car, butterfly, car, butterfly, caught in the engine. Curling fumes and smoke and drip drip clip clop clipping of the pipe outside the window. It's all just sounds.

I transfer the days and the seasons, Winter as Summer and Summer as Fall. The seasons all come late, after all. And the days get shorter and the nights get longer and the air grows colder but our teeth get stronger. These are the months, this is the decade. This will be my year.

But as the seconds tick and the nines get closer, I wonder about the holes in the floor. Where will we go if it collapses? What does the center of the Earth hold for us? I don't buy all that heat. It's just friction, all the tension. The hand-wringing and the nerves. The butterflies. The awkward sidestep. The silence.

In my head, it all made sense. I would do what I wanted to do now, let the reflections continue digitally until the next time I had the opportunity. But my ego is large and I trip over it on the daily. And I confuse with my circles and expect and inspect and continue, move forward into a tangled mess of dubstep and electro and Tom Waits. Breath sweet like ecstasy and Ritalin framed by clouds and clouds of *** smoke. So uh, we need to get going now, right?

Carve me a square in that floor, carpet and curtain me up. Send me to the dance floor deep in the fog. Maybe that will quiet the butterflies.

She was like a force of nature
Manipulative, dangerous and beautiful.
Without even looking at you
she could make you feel insignificant
She made you feel pathetic
But when she looked at you it was worse,
those cold, bitter eyes fixed on yours
and she saw so deeply into your mind
that your security leeched
out of your fingertips
like spilt milk.
Those soft, harsh lips would twitch,
and her eyes would mock you.
She oozed feline contemptuousness.
But you were hooked,
from the word go, you needed her.
She was your ******
And without even knowing it you were hers.
There was something delicious about her
something refreshingly suffocating,
like a rib tightening power-cut shower.  
She lovingly despised you,
couldn’t bear the beautiful sight of you,
and pinched the backs of your arms with violent affection.
When the text came through my world jolted,
something shifted as the realisation
of a different existence slotted into place.
In only a few digitally transported words
of no deliberation,
the person I required most had stopped my heart.

Just the smallest speck  -
A mote of red, reminder
That bare hands aren't best
Used to wipe at shards of glass.
Funny we use something as
Delicate to cover a photo,
As if there beneath rests
Something so precious
It can be protected
By crystal fragility.
Yet paper's still intact -
Even were it not,
Image is stored digitally.
There could be hundreds more
If they're what we'd want,
Enhanced to erase blemishes
Unwanted age, pasted ersatz
Smiles upon our faces,
A window into a past
That probably never existed -
I don't remember anymore.
Perhaps plastic covers
From now will be best.
I prefer the sound acrylic
Makes when it strikes.
Dull thuds die easily -
No sounds of permanence,
Nor as hard to clean, either.
Though, picture's stained,
Shouldn't have touched.
Then, frame wasn't the aim
Of all that rage, was it?

Making love languid on a sunny afternoon
if you are holiday spend your money release yourself
The Big Hush
Astronology and people
advice on self-decapitation
walking through a graveyard
fantasising about having your head chopped off
when when when
crazy as the new normal
normal as the new whip
existentialist crap in my head
the analyst must save some money for the state
he sits there digitally ticking a spread sheet
looks at me and says
'these mental problems
are they all in your head?'
I say no they are in my feet
you have a sense of humour he says
you cannot be depressed
so
time to start busking in the streets

I got this idea I would write you a poem,
One you could read sitting safely at home,
Or keep with you out and about while you roam.

A poem about all of the memories I held sacred,
Laughing, singing, kissing, and cuddling in bed,
One to remind you our time wasn't wasted.

So I laced up my heart and I shrugged on my soul,
I popped open my noggin and I went for a stroll,
Right down Memory Lane and left at the Rabbit Hole.

I kept on goin' 'til I hit a velvet rope with posts of brass,
But I musta gotten too close to the bulletproof glass,
Cause a big grumpy guard threw me out on my...

I realized, still rolling, it's all one massive museum,
Motionless memories mummified so I can keep 'em,
Lined up and locked away, as if someone would steal 'em.

Arduously ordered, organized for instant access,
A mental palace fit to make even Sherlock jealous,
That Dewey Decimal dude don't got nothin' on this.

The slide shows replay every minute on the minute,
Time-compressed and Tetrised-in so each moment fits,
Bio-digitally encoded on neurode and inked onto skin.

Tear-rusty gears grind waterlogged cogs in reverse,
This melancholy machine made to reflect you in verse,
Is a planetarium perpetually projecting my universe.

A black and white X-ray I couldn't afford
clear and perfect, digitally presented with scientific precision
A tumor.  
Inside your small fuzzy belly
Your skeleton is perfect, little street cat
We met over twelve years ago on a beach in Haifa
You were crying out, abandoned, starving
I took you in and loved you
We've been together, long after my bond with that male human ended
I wish he'd care now to hear of your plight
I don't want you to leave me, please don't go
You were with me through all the trauma and fear of divorce
You were flown across the world to me, to hide under a blanket
In your California home, a new citizen, without papers
I couldn't afford that, either
I can't afford to lose you
I love you and I always will, feline companion