a bird ***** its wings in Rio and there is a tsunami in Tokyo.
there is a tsunami in Tokyo and your father takes your mother to bed, calls her beautiful, does not raise his voice at her, does not leave her alone in a ***** motel room. she unpacks her suitcases and never leaves Missouri.
you do not form in her womb and she stops screaming.
a tsunami occurs in Tokyo and you do not exist and there is a break in the violence of our bodies. you disintegrate before me and I melt back into the earth where I belong and you never stopped loving me.
we unbecome the casualty of our own flaws.
we were never here. we were never gone.
a bird becomes road **** in Rio and you crawl into the womb of your mother, you are the 7th of 7 and the cause of your mother's stress. there is no tsunami in Tokyo and your mother packs her suitcase and leaves for Texas, she unhappily marries your father and stays with him to the bitter end.
there is no tsunami in Tokyo and your mother dies of lung cancer, your father leaves you in may, does not kiss you goodbye, does not look back at you, you pack your stuff and he sends you away.
the birds in Rio do not sing, Tokyo bay does not roar to life.
you are here. you cannot leave.

Are we change makers?
Do we really influence others in a positive way?
Do we really matter to others?
Do we really care for others?

Doesn't matter what others think of us
Doesn't matter whether others care what we say
Or what we do,
We keep doing the things
Which we feel is good for the world
Good for the next generation

If they listen, good
If not, we don't stop
what we have been doing
but continue with our spirit
and commitment of
bringing some change,
however minuscule it might be

Because we are not concerned
about the publicity we get or not
we just want to bring in change
the way things are transacted
and carried out...

Because the world can not continue
doing business as usual
things are going out of hand
things are going to disintegrate..

Let us be the change-makers
even if others don't care
don't listen
time will come when what we do
is seen and appreciated..

we are the
change-makers...
you can also be ..
let us unite and work
for a common bright future...

The warm flame attracts the moth.
The moth wills itself to sacrifice its own beating wings
for a moment of the flame's eternal radiance.
If the moth knew it would be set ablaze,
Would it still seek to embrace dancing fires?
No matter their beauty, surely it would recoil,
and yet I do not.
More foolish than the moth I am.
For I know her flames burn,
yet I long to reach out.
To touch, to kiss, to hold
Her soul in disrepair.
I do not want to ache but cannot refuse her smouldering caress.
I am a moth offering my beating wings
She is the flame, slowly fading as I disintegrate.

a spilling vessel rots through the earth
tar black and cavernous.

this is the maw through which god watches overs
all his little dead children.

‘hello, god.’
god replies with an incomprehensible scream.

the young ones play break, break
it is a game where they test whether a face or a fist
disintegrates first.

it is so fun; so fun, fun, fun
everywhere the maw descends.

Nobody ever found a dead seagull.
They plan their final flight.

Nobody ever felt comfortable waiting in line.
They're too far away from the table wine.

Nobody ever got you, Rachel.
They can't chip through your glassy eyes.

Nobody ever got rid of a lie.
Their deceit  simmers into a wish.

Nobody ever married me.
They leave me for Jesus Christ and civil wars.

Nobody ever heard a juke joint singer hit a perfect note.
They applaud for black culture.

Nobody ever found a dead seagull.
Their feathers disintegrate under the ocean's weight.

Nobody ever felt comfortable at a wedding.
They sit curious about the contents under the wedding dress.

Nobody ever got you, Rachel.
They try to pull you down from your high heels.

Nobody ever got rid of their parents.
They settle for calling long distance.

Nobody ever married me.
They only nod at my longwinded history.

Nobody ever heard a fine-combed politician stutter.
They picket sign and roll their eyes.

Nobody ever found a dead seagull.
They control the waves with ghostly wings.

Nobody ever felt comfortable holding a newborn.
They look at porcelain skin like a loaded gun.

Nobody ever got you, Rachel.
They can't afford your grace.

Nobody ever got rid of a former lover.
They avert their eyes as they stroll by.

Nobody ever married me.
They complain about their fiancees.

Nobody ever heard a mother say, "Everything won't be alright."
They find out when the rent comes due.

Nobody ever found a dead seagull,
and they will never find me and you.

Beloved wanderer,
What are you running after?
your external commitment to reach crassness is taller than a benevolent Tikbalang
you are quicker than its long legs to lead a soul astray
But my beloved,
where is your soul?
your Passion is non-existent
like an ondine, all you seek is an immortal soul to waste
on your blinded fate
on the woes you continue to create
and your petty blown up mates
a thick, bold flesh they’ll never extricate
surrounding the empty stems from which they originate
My beloved,
your eyeballs were so viciously extracted and replaced
with poisonous bile
your hellhound eyes are so vile
if one stares at them twice
they’ll be seized, and they’ll be sacrificed
and their souls disintegrate
their roots begin to decay
they merge with your spirits
and they aimlessly gyrate
around in circles,
my beloved, you **** the souls
dumping their bodies in holes
indulgent in mutilating the skin around your heart
vandalising your worth and claiming it's art
but my beloved wanderer
where is your drive?
where is your start?

Lay me down
      in those fields  
         of silken flowers
        where the buzzing
        over our heads
       whirls us into
   lightspun holy
my dress a metaphor
for loneliness
as you lift it off
and let it disintegrate
into the evening's
electric ether
your lips
    undoing the tight
       leather laces
        that have held my
     heart in place
until now
Now.
undo them
   in unfurled totality
let my feminine essence
drip, in non-verbal words
onto your fingers
let my elements
   light you up
    from within
firebrand sunset
in molten metallic sheen
indigo lip of ocean
melding into crackling
            hiss of earth
               and humming
                   under this
                dark rich loam
              tiny vibrating buds
     sprout from fossils
trilobites become
hazy with new moss
seething insects
lay eggs and spawn
feeling the bloodpulse,
that simmer of surface
in slick magnet energy
Curled stems of wild
poppies and zinnia
tie down my wrists
snake around my thighs
clasp my
tender-***** ankles
as if to open me
up even more
than I thought
            my soul
                   could go
and I do not resist
for soon they will
accompany you
as you decorate my
deepest womb
              with blossoms          
filling me with your
soul's seed
your musk-scented fervor
nestled, subaqueous
into the root of
my sweet
       deep
of  
  need

I remember the first time I discovered poetry,
bolts of electric affluenza coursing through soft fingertips
and into the skinny blue lines of fascination
meaning nothing at first, yet transforming into the spillage
of emotion, the invention of color,
the budding metamorphosis of the artist’s apprehension.


I remember telling everyone about the honey-tainted metaphors
that exhaled yellow pigment through our film noir madness
of ravaged years cementing over irises
and I remember the revelation, saucer eyes and trembling hands
after discovering the faultlessness of magic
that tore at heartstrings and furrowed brows,
the mumbled prayer of stitching entire blankets of words together
to keep our souls warm even as the frigid ice of Time
burned in desperation to freeze our heartbeats.


You are a poet
but to the world, you are wasted opportunity
you only know of words that slip through tied tongues like silk
and mending excuses to make up for heartbreak
You are a poet
but they never stop reminding you to keep your feet glued
To hollow ground, shaking
To find something that tastes of reality, the human flesh
sweat of long lost longing
You have to stop living in your head
In the spaces where you breathe life into promises
You are a poet
But that has never been enough.


The poet is used to this--
the knowledge of failure always shoved under the doormat
numbers that collect under crumpled paper,
the rotten look of misunderstanding as they wonder
where the science of living went missing
When did art decide to invade your insides,
Leaving no room to calculate meaning with mathematics?


Oh, but only the poets understand
That there is no formula to meaning
No theorem to calculate suffering,
Only words that get stuck and disintegrate into whispers
only all-consuming madness, write me a storm
That rages through afflictions
Write me an ending where
We are older, in the house we dreamed of, buried
Under blankets in the forgotten fog of Decembers
Write me an ending where my voice is steady
Instead of constantly wavering past the silence of goodbyes
hellos
heartaches


Love me
And I will love you
Lose me
And I will turn you into poetry
stretch your bones into feelings,
follow the lines in your palms into futures
Where we end up together
I will hold up your eyelids
so they will never feel heavy at the sight of destruction
I will shelter your heart to keep it beating
As we watch  as the words I could never say
flutter at your fingertips like moths
with broken wings


The world does not understand love


nor the poets that create it.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM

Moving again.
Packing and suffocating
just to hoard awhile.
Unleash and prop in the next chapter.
How many more times
will I have to revolve around the clock timer?

Displace my comfort.
Stir up and riffle my stability
just to watch for the final sunset.
Until the explanations to my pebble have to dust
out of my mouth again.

A gypsy life not for three.
So hard to handle for anyone but me.
Practice, practice, reset and stay.
It's a cycle I'm tired of.

Grown accustomed to delay and anxiety.
Longing for roots and more tomorrows.
Fly me away with wings of fire.

To disintegrate left behind memory
that's tying up my feet.
To ignite a blazed landing...

To grow from,
to be content on.

A place to be when my pebble wants to fly.


*© NDHK

There are constellations between your teeth and you have starlight wrapped around your tongue, there is moonlight in your eyes but sunlight in your smile
Every time you breath you inhale glitter and oxygen and powdered sugar, the scent of grass and strawberries and hope
Flowers bloom between your ribs and wind through the joints in your hips, your knees, your wrists
There is a whole menagerie in your stomach, butterflies and pelicans and Bengal tigers
Your skin is crushed velvet, silk and lace, encasing a skeleton of steel and iron, silver filigree
Your hands are soft as cotton, rose petals, strong as the will of all your ancestors.
When you die you will melt back into the earth, disintegrate and fall back to where you came from
You will be absorbed back into the atmosphere and the universe will swallow you up.
It will rearrange your atoms and produce something completely you but completely different.
You are one of a kind, you are the entire universe.
You will never be again, but you will never stop being.

death is coming, it is a dark point on the horizon
it will be here, sooner than expected, the planet is dying
why are you preparing for a future, the future
why are you denying it is happening, sticking your head in the sand
going about, living carefree, when your children will suffer, millions will die

do you need a quatrain, a burning bush, to see the horror racing towards us
nostradamus didn’t see it, but we did, like a slow train wreck
the air will burn your lungs, the oceans scald your flesh
by the time you react, you will have reached the point of no return
your children are an army of dead men walking
their bodies catching up to their environmental fate
it is too late to cry, it is time to die

what will we do, how will we choose, who lives, who perishes
your cozy lives will disintegrate in social chaos as individual fight for survival
our former rules and norms will vanish, as the strong and ruthless vanquish
you will witness horrors, etched into your mind, re-dreamt every night

scream and cry, it could have been avoid, such is the tragedy of the commons
complacency of the masses, mass graves of the innocent
gods will die, civilizations will fall, as you huddle, shaking in a dark corner

Love loosely -
Fight with fire -
Trust treacherously.

It's not hard to disappear
When you're already invisible.

My thoughts are heavy and loud
they make my head pound and my neck sore
my body begins to shake
Quaking in my own significance
i dont want to exist anymore
Let me go

A shred of gasoline spills
each time I give myself to you.
I continue to light my breaking limbs on fire
each time you glance at me.
The flames burn and lick and spread
each time we crash we disintegrate we exist no more.

There is something wrong
I don't know why but when
I find a mirror it becomes clear
as I become distorted
My face slowly falls apart
blood oozes out as my nose falls off
My cheek is gone and exposes
Damaged teeth held together by roofing
nails and plaster of Paris
The blood is heavier now
and my deterioration excellerates
Where did these wires and transisters
in my head come from?
I am pretty sure they were not there
before I went to bed.
I hang my mechanical zombie head
to the side...and bleed.
I wait patiently to be awake again.

Obedient
Superfluous minced rubicund aqua Phoenician
Our orphanage spills blood from picnics
Menopause conniptions lipstick
Her sons learning curve
Popstar gentleman suicide
The preschoolers last taste of Apple juice
Enola gay is soaring above the vain
Potential future poets and mathematicians
Bright eyes and innocent giggles
The souls of peace
Molecules disintegrate of wondrous dreams

Lamenting lost love
hidden behind harmonies,
(synonymous to symphony)
resonates absently.
Like making love
to a stranger.
Like you make love
to me.
Void of all passion,
like revenge of apathy.
Apathetic entirely,
the emptiness that fuels you
emphasizes decrees.
Standard-less standards
validate your need
to dismantle the mantled,
and devour the diseased,
to command and to seize,
to exploit the exploited,
and explore every scene—
every pelvis, and every scream.

How did I fall for such a—
loveless being?
Better yet,
How do I disintegrate re-memories,
Or abolish aplitic fallacies,
and survive soullessly?
(How must I do these things!?)
Here I plead
surrounded, unattentively,
summoning recognition
for the being
whom resides in me.

Resurrecting old wounds,
(chore almost seems daily)
almost seems like it’s alive,
like maybe one day
it might save me.
More likely, one day
it will concave me.  

But without knowledge
there is no upset.
And no upset means
no you and me.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

I.

He says Call me Mr. G.
G for Gore, Greed, that Green.
An atypical stoner
with hair wetter than his mouth.
With more ******* than a pound,
he says, With an understanding of
all the suffering in the global delusion
that is the Earth. Mr. G, his name.

Oily brunette, Mr. G., would smoke
Marlboro Green Blend -- menthol --
and spit shot out between stained lips
after each extracurricular exhale.
The saliva would land, tremendously,
and puddles of Rasta shooting stars
would lay, stretching across concrete galaxy.

Hazel eyes invaded and shamed him,
for he wished to be green, like life,
but only envisioned a contradiction:
death (see nature),
for which he learned to embrace, stoically,
like a shepherd of an endangered breed
meant to die among skewed perspective.

II.

This house could be mistaken
for a cinderblock purgatory;
between color and absence of,
eternal and temporary.

A raptor laughter purged the tension --
he abided by no accommodation of civility.
As smoke followed his hyena howl,
the landline lay suddenly of purpose.

Resin raided the clunky, black buttons;
a voice was whispered like a blue phantom:
*******' cheese, pineapple, pepperoni
-- no, extra ******' cheese, extra pep --
Sure, add some more pep with your driver:
he, she -- honestly, man -- they better have
pep-in-their-******-step-you-feel?

Minutes passed like sentient matchbooks
dropping towards a skeletal fire.
G threw the phone across the room
and, like a disenchanted drunk dance,
his words wobbled over each other,
I ordered a 'za, a pizza for the layman.
About thirty, probably thirty-one
minutes, that is.

Passing me the flower-stitched ****,
I ****** in one, maybe two, three,
blasts that I swore
had some sort of nano-insects
bite and burrow into the holes
of my sponge for a throat.

Wringing my rubbery neck,
watching my words leave my toothy cave,
I found out that G doesn't believe in beer.
Believes in souls but not beer,
believes in green men, not beer.

Alcoholic splash is what we all need,
at times. So I told him the obvious,
I'm going to get a case of
(Insert your ****** choice)
and I'll be back as soon as possible.

G stared at me and made a guttural noise,
Do whatcha please, I'll stay here and
protect us from vampires.
You know, blood-suckas.

Pale stoner vampires.


III.

The leather painted door was wide open
like the legs of ominous spider cave,
but the doors of a car
I had never seen before
were as closed as the lips of a VCR.
There's nothing but silence in these situations --
is this one of those situations? Grassy knoll?

Approaching the mouth of purgatory,
I entered with the hesitancy of a lost dog.
On the plastic covered couch,
two people sat atop the invisible cloud
above the patterned fabric
and above the fingers of time.

Blonde hair sprouted from her scalp,
raining down upon vanilla shoulder blades,
her chest a harbor for two pale, freshly mounds,
with crooked, beige diamonds in the center.

She trembled when G said, Meet Steph
-- can I call you Steph, Steph? --
Meet Steph, the artist formerly known as
Stephanie, holding up her licence,
Vanmeter, of 441 1/2 Locust Ave.

That's creepy, huh, Steph? Locust Ave?
Are you something that lives in the ground,
comes up every several years, making noise?
Has this been years in the making?
Are you bound to make noise in my house?

You know this is a house, right?
Whatsa matter, unfamiliar due to ya
living-in-the-*******-ground
or is it because you share a house,
an apartment, Steph? Is it one of those?
Pizza deliveries ain't paying the bills?

G gets up, I, a coward, approaching him
about to say -- Hold up, brother, he says.
Not another move, pulling his hand from
behind her shaking, confused head,
a silver cannon an extension of his arm.

She's here to **** our blood,
She's here to ****. our. blood.
Whether she means to or not,
I know you don't think you want to, Steph,
I know you don't mean to,
But you're here to
drain-us-like-the-Red-Cross.

I tell G that she isn't,
What have you done, G,
You need to let her go
before this gets worse.
That cliche dialogue.
Because these things always do,
cliche or not.

Brother, you don't understand these things
-- It's impossible for a godless man
to understand the mechanisms
of something bigger, something holy --
but you need to listen, G said, You need to --
she tried to move, quickly,
but G grabbed her by her blonde strands,
pulled her back towards the couch,
She swiped at his eye, drawing blood.

There was a pause, a deathly silence,
by the hair, she was rendered motionless,
Oh, no, he echoed, Love, you shouldn't,
You ought not do those things.
Looking at me, he asked me to listen,
Always remember this wasn't your fault.
Sometimes, you can't be in control

Holstering her neck with his gun hand,
G picked her up, slamming her,
head first,
into the drug covered,
resin sprinkled
coffee table.

He dropped on top of her,
Looked at me, Remember, okay?
and beat her head with the **** of the gun,
until the cracking of a larger M&M; shell
muffled towards all eardrums,
maybe even hers.

With blood,
that could be mistaken as war paint,
swimming across his jaw and neck,
and sprinkled on his forehead,
G whispered, You are free,
and I was never sure
who he was talking about.

My feet left before I did,
I was suddenly in my car
with only the ignition
and G's voice registering.
I passed car after car,
pastel metal wagon after
metallic matte creation,
not sure if I ever saw him,
not sure if he ever existed,
if I ever existed.

IV.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

Waking up in a cavern darkness,
my dreams disintegrate from my eyes,
swirl in my headspace, evaporating to
heaven knows where.

Scattered pitter-patter
drowns midnight Seattle,
killing and washing away
cluttered, modern filth,
******* carnivorous minds
into hungrier gutters.

This is the part
where the screen of my life reveals:
SIX MONTHS LATER,
in yellow, stenciled letters.
But what it wouldn't say is
how I still feel like I'm dipped
in the ink of Ithaca, NY.

If this were the indulgent
autobiography of my life
it wouldn't say that
the distance doesn't matter,
because that'd be a lie;
I feel like I have only escaped myself.

The rain swells, sounding as
thick as blood, swishing around
the veins of the city.

Stephanie dies every night,
disappearing and reappearing
behind secret doors only she can open.

When she comes to me in sleep,
she is baptized in green, head caved,
Forget-Me-Nots sprouting
between fragmented skull
and select spots of brain soil,
the flowers singing jazz
with a different voice, every time.

One time she spoke.
With blueberry lips that belly cold,
she sounds like my mother:
I am so proud of you, she statically says.
You saved me. Remember.

V.

To be continued.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~ Maria Robinson

The story we are living,
Has ended it’s beginning,  
The ending we are nearing,
Will change if we are fearing.

The ending’s final show,
Will depend on all you know.
And everything we’ve learned,
Has been a treasure earned.

The way we shape our fate,
With our bold excess of hate,
How the pain’s inflicted,
With the way our lives conflicted.

The start has ended poorly,
But has not ruined the story.
The ****** may bring light,
Our fancies may take flight.

But somehow we all know,
That the ending’s final show,
Will be what we deserve,
Unless we cause a curve.

Our independent hate,
Should now disintegrate.
And every single conflict,
We should finally end it.

We should make our new ending,
Differ from our beginning.
By doing what is right,
The ****** brings us light.

my sadness knows no love
my sadness knows no fear
my sadness knows no pain
my sadness knows no end
my sadness knows no happy endings
my sadness knows no sleep

my sadness knows lies
my sadness knows death
my sadness knows scars
my sadness knows eulogies
my sadness knows 2am voices
my sadness knows 4am shadows

my sadness - knows how to hit every Self-Destruct button and watch me disintegrate into a million and one pieces, and then hits the buttons again

i loved you, right

a love unreturned,

unrequited

but alas, still

stoked by little miners with

hearts of brass their

iron faces grimacing at the task,

little beads of lots of sweat

dripping down their

taut frowns.

so what i meant to say is that

i love you, right,

and it’s a love that still

burns, bright, enough

to bring the boys home but

let’s be honest

it wouldn’t best the sun, but

****, it’s a terrible light,

it throws everything into a soft relief

where pretty, soft voiced sheep say

pretty, soft voiced things like

‘it’s okay to feel this way’

‘i want you to be happy’

‘she sounds amazing’

and other things that normal people

tell me mean that either

i don’t love you

or i’m moving on.

they don’t understand though,

i mean,

i love you, right,

though all that sheep **** makes it

sound as if

i’m waving you off,

smashing the celebratory champagne on your bow,

waving you off into the distance with a lacy hanky,

joyful tears cascading down my powdered cheekbones,

i’m greedy

maybe even,

needy,

a disgusting word and

even if i make pacts with myself

to the order of

‘he can do so much better’

‘i am damaged goods’

and other associated half truths

i’d be a liar if i said that

i would kick you out of bed

or even rebuke the slightest of

advances, no i’d take my chances

and i cannot bear it, really

i’d touch you and whatever wholeness

whatever someone else would

parse as clean or pure or holy

wouldn’t disintegrate, no

wouldn’t tarnish, no

would most probably just implode

under the combined pressure

of emotionally-mentally-******-in-the-head-doe

(where the **** do you think the miners got all that coal)

so, yes… wait. no?

i love you, right

but just ignore it

enjoy the lights

please remember them

tell your friends and

cherish them until

they are taken by

death, drink, dementia

but i’m sure your mum,

teacher,

or television

long ago informed you that

bright lights are detrimental to vision

so think of your future and

forget now

if you’re tempted by how i look at you

remember how

sunburn seems innocuous

until you see your skin

and sunscreen pretty useless

‘til you learn the sun will win

and the best way to avoid

dainty melanoma

is

to

go

inside

and

lock

your

door

and act like you don’t know her.

Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They mused
               “How are you feeling? What it is you want, you’ve got.
               The words you scrawl on calling cards: ‘I AM – the others NOT’
               Shun wisdoms of the Seven Seas: ‘Salvation can’t be bought’ –
               Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.

               “You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
               Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
               Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

               “With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
               You lure your legions in harm’s way like giant juggernauts.
               Like Tweedle Dum your minions come (the sober and the sots,
               The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,
               The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots,
               The Japanese, the Congolese, Americans and Scots)
               To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots
               Of those who hide in bamboo huts their families, pale, distraught,
               (Their withered wives with dried up *******, their swollen babes in cots)
               Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot,
               Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts.

               “In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots,
               Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots
               Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought)
               (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots)
               And mosques, cathedrals, synagogues have blessed each new onslaught
               With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns, your rigid armed robots.

               “Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots,
               You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot,
               Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots,
               And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots,
               Then drank His blood from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts.

               “You’ve treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat,
               By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught;
               You’ve wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot,
               But when you’ve paused to preen your pride, you’ve scrubbed a scarlet blot.

               “In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought,
               The crock of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts -
               In mirrors of your lifelessness, the evils you begot.
              
               “The haunted winds strew leaves of time across a shallow plot
               Where now, beneath the frozen stones blanched bodies bathe in rot,
               Disintegrate, return to dust to feed Forget-Me-Nots
               Amidst the bane and pits of pain where broken bones lie caught.

               “In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot
               The black and withered tree of Death arises from the spot
               Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots
               Embedding doubts neath barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat.

               “While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught,
               From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought,
               Your soul, a beggar’s blanket, hangs in crazy quilted knots,
               With dangling pearls and diamond studs mid dripping crimson clots
               And gaping wounds with bulging eyes like fouling apricots,
               For wrapped in chains around your throat, the Reaper’s grim garrote.”

Yes, that’s the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught.

But that was, oh, so long ago, by now you have forgot…

This life, although startling in its brilliance,
remains confined to the electrical shadows
cast on the walls of our brains.

Do you ever feel…
no, no, no
not feel.
Well maybe feel...
or sense…
that everlasting something

sometimes off in the distance I can see…

I’d love to take my hands
and, like the meaty instruments they are, dance
sweet symphonies up and down
your body.
Your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer
to land my ***** machine
among majestic silver seas and
strange beautiful grass of green.

I would use my subtle touch to say
what I couldn’t any other way and
drag you down to the depths.

But things are not so simple
in life
as in our thoughts,
nor so rough
as our poor idiotic language.

Every hand, give me your hand.
I’ll talk to you, you wont understand.

These electrical shadows cry at the ultimate,
but our mere conception shames it.
Like the dream tigers we desperately try to craft
they continue to disintegrate
like the castles made of sands,
rocks piled on rocks
reaching for the stars.

The firmer the hold,
the quicker it slips away.
“Just try squeezing the truth from water,”
the angels sing to me in my sleep.

And it’s the love of dreams
which is so greedy for recognition
swiftly performed in the sight of all.

And it’s the waves I feel…
well maybe not feel.
And I wanna say “*******”
because I still love you.

I sense…
well maybe not sense…
And I feel
my soul being slit up as if by a razor.
frenzied but beautiful and
an awful ambiguity grinning over it all,
cackling out the Tao’s opening words,
lukewarm to the point of being
enigmatic,

“The truth that can be told, that is no eternal truth.”

I guess after the laughter, then comes the tears.

*******, Lao Tzu
and your ****** ancient wisdom.

Why you staring at my finger when I’m pointing at the moon?
I got nothing at all.
The center, unapproachable
forever.

You’re willing to die you coward
but not to live.

*Love life more than the meaning of it.

At the end of this time with ????, I will look back on my emotions and force myself to believe they’re lies; this is in order to save me the burden of missing him but no, they’re the biggest lies I will ever force myself to tell. I think I love him. I love him like a friend. No. I love him like a…I’ve never loved someone before so I cannot make a comparison. I don’t know my limits or boundaries. Love is a limitless emotion. We have the capacity to love all with no end. I love everyone. I love ????. I want him to drown me with his presence, but I don’t want to dominate his time. I see him rarely in comparison to, most of the people that go about this relationship business- even those long-distancers with their Skype.
Whenever I do see him I want to hide in his arms, his kiss, his passion, his slumber. I want to lie on a space of grass with him, smoke and stare at the sky. We will look at the blue for so long that when we come down and look at each others faces we can see the sun circles fill our pupils. Then they will clear, revealing the space in our eyes. Unlimited life, galaxies and possibilities. We will claim we can see the future, our souls intertwined in a dance of laughter and stumbling. We ignore the stumbling, unsure of what disagreement may do to us. We debate, but on meaningless things which just spark our conversation and ends up in heated kissing.
I’m scared of his eyes. I will die in those eyes, when he inevitably leaves me for a pretty girl with a smaller **** and bigger rack. But then I see us bumping into each other in town later; he left the girl and wants someone less vapid. I giggle, he chuckles. We look at each others eyes, and like blinking back the burning sun spots we blink back our old, shared feelings. Our terrestrial sphere. Our insides whine, we ache, and we leave, part. A weeknight later I go to a party, I get drunk, I see him. Sun circles. I sit in the garden in my solitary hallucination, smoking the hell out of a pack and imploding into ash-ened lungs. I see him again, meters away, smoking. I call his name, he wanders over; and then we drink ourselves blind and make out. It starts again the same way. I worry.
I love to say his name, it’s like my tongue has turned to smoke and is floating away from my mouth in dissipating curls; I don’t say his name often. If he says my name I disintegrate, my shell chips away, my love for him increases. When he laughs and his face cracks into light, I want him. I want him to want me. I want him to think about me when I’m not around. I want to make him happy. I want him to love me. I want him to lust for me. I don’t want him to hurt.
He used to hurt himself when he was a small kid. He burned and he cut his neck. He was hospitalized a lot. He moved from Scotland when he was young. His favorite color is purple. His ex was…I just don’t want him to hurt. I ache when he tells me about everything that hurts him and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to hurt…I want him to skin me alive and use my layers as a blanket; if that means I can comfort him then, so be it. If that was the only way, I would let him, just so long as he can drown and suffocate his hurt. I will strip and hold the blade against the flesh myself if it spare him the damage. It’s such a ****** way to think, but my heart and brain agree that I would do anything to make him happy.
I would time travel, and cuddle him before he even started entertaining the thought of harming himself. I will dress up as one of the main ***** fairies from Zelda – I don’t ******* know, those fairies creep me out. If one of them told me not to hurt myself I wouldn’t out of fright towards that face. Argh those fairies faces…
...????….
You’re turning me obsessive; I smell your scent and I feel like you’re wrapping yourself around me. You’re so, so, so intelligent; I don’t care that you think you’re not…you are okay. You are the most intelligent guy I’ve ever met and ever will meet. You’re a sucker for keeping people happy, and that’s adorable as ****. You will never leave someone looking a bit sad, you will strive to make them smile and spark their inner fire. You’re a lighter. You’re someone everyone needs in their life at some point. Those who are lucky enough to share your time own the world, you are the greatest honor to accompany. I will continue to praise you because you are the embodiment of good. I would say perfect but, you’d argue against it. Why? No-ones perfect, but people are amended, think karma…yours is balanced. You’re perfect for your friends, your elders, your peers and me. I am an unrequited love for your entity. You drive me mad; mad with every emotion I can think of. I feel so happy. With you. Happy. Light. Sun circles. Usually I’m empty. Passive. What I know for sure is that, I love you.

Hungry stones line the narrows
a jagged, muddy trail
aspen trees as pharaohs
gaunt columns of massive scale

Broken wagon pieces lie
testament to treachery
splintered axles cry
hopeless dwell in reverie
only insects fly

Lonely road disintegrate
loose shades of beige and brown
fallen roadsigns instigate
nature steal the crown

Hungry stones in narrows
still are left unfed
bodies strewn with arrows
death they do not dread.

Janis, she just mocks, how they knock off every berry
And the snow on the branch, now, “Calandra, never worry.”
Seasons come, like they fall, and they spring forever weary
In the Valley of the Orchids, rare are birds unto a journey

Feeble, does he brew; with the stones, shall he marry
Corralled is the smoke, tossing hills as it carries
Fuming seas in the sky, past the bricks and the rye
Cabaret, hear him, nigh does his skin peel and fly

On an arch in a prairie in a province in a land
Where the children are told how to fear their hands
Atop smoky pine feathers that burst when they're touched
We stomp and we squeak to the air on, we march

A prison laced in reddened storms drones on mountains ever-scored
Looking north by north bygone, the test, remiss, we’ll move southward
But on the sky sits Cerise Range and all around in spheres, a cage
And then, a beak we see invade! A crash and splat; of juice we’re made

May the fly, the mayfly evade the day the children hang
The Brewer, haste has made, pours his broth, begins the day
Hide, little child, like the fly, become the blanket on the marsh
Become the stock, but don't give up, next month won't be so harsh

Jude of June, that's what she’s called, she grooms her quill and tests her ink
The One of Blue, another name, she writes for everyone to breath, she blinks,
“O small brown bird, you speak the path? Well I have ever shone on some.”
The Summer Sun, that's who she is, who waits for Janis, soon to come

Jewel in the eye, dome of peace
Returneth casts our masks beneath
Iris besets, “Berceuse, my mess.”
Sad, for slowly nights a guess.

Part-time, will’o’writs she can dust
A cat's tail christened, paw in a gust
Navigating, where galleys waste strewn
The suns of Aude across its boon

Deliver us Toulmask, lost and protested
Past Bejeweled Silken in millions, nested
In Scepter where embers aroma holds on
To the sands like rocks destroying its spawn

Into the nest, deep. With Man, reborn against winds and dusk
Will best the heaps, lifespans of each, in caverns each a husk
Cut deep with scythes. The Trembling, Bellowing, Festering,
Reckoning, unending Octobering deathening, surrendering:

You! Bird, the bell rings
Brown bard, the sun sings
Sky guard, no venerate
Berried lark, thou emirate

Welcome, into ends and to makers
Watch with, admire, be your desires
Forget time, velvet rubs you and penetrates
Valley’s of orchids that start, to disintegrate

I fell in love
with a sandcastle
and when the tide came
and washed you away
I let my body drift out to sea
prayed I would disintegrate
piece by piece, particle by particle
with  yours
but I'm not like you
made of sand
my moats were useless
against waves

have you ever tried to capture a wave inside of a bucket?

that's what it was like
to love her

The Fiery Red Head

It is time to pay honor to one who doesn’t know it is do I begin from this point as all of us in a sense we
Are doing the same thing for me it is writing my way out yours is different but before I go I will have my
Say I realize I gave all my attention to her mother and father now it is time to shine the light on her
Reveal her inner and outward glory and beauty to do this and to make sense I have to lay a little ground
Work on how we met and ultimately what it meant as brief as possible I had a Simi normal life until I
Was five and my family left church you need paints from hell to paint the rest of my parents life we
Banged and stumbled along and then at twelve they divorced and all of a sudden my dad and I weren’t
A family in the eyes of those we rented from so they kicked us out and we ended up in a mine shack no
Sheet rock on the walls no ceiling no bathroom no heat after about a month the family had a meeting I
Was delivered from hell to heaven I went from sleeping under ten blankets to a sheet and light blanket at
His sister’s house what luxury then my mother bribed me by buying me a television to live with her folks
That where Judy comes in she lived down the street I already knew her because her brother and I was
Best friends but my move put me into a place ruled by two laws Willie’s law and Judy’s law I learned in
School supposedly the wave came about when you met someone long ago it was showing you had no
Weapon and that you were friendly well with Judy there was a different wave you instinctively put your
Hand behind you back feeling to see if anything would impede your escape put it this way you didn’t
Want to whirl around and run head first in to something and then fall back in her arms you heart could
Stop no problem she would scream and it would start in a hurry when you’re young your naturally stupid
Or one time I was told ignorant that means you just haven’t been taught yet anyway it sounds better but
First to show innocent stupid she and her sister Barb were pretty they sing about California girls Illinois
Isn’t full of woofers this isn’t a kennel well I was in the living room and barb goes back to her bedroom
She is back there about an hour she went back there just like always but as fate would have it I was
Moving across the floor and she walks out God she looked like she stepped out of a glamour magazine I
Didn’t know it but I was doing a Gomer impression not the aw shucks degum but I found out my mouth
Had fallen open barb looked at me and laughed and said what’s the matter I was dumbstruck Max
Factor and Barb hit a homerun that day that was good stupid but I followed my uncle in a sense he left
Home at thirteen and worked and lived with the local bootlegger I was basically on my own at fourteen I
Had to make decisions and find my way not always making the smartest moves that’s where Judy comes
In God made her with a sense of justice and what Washington doesn’t have the guts to take action she
Was never mean just for meanness sake but *****-up don’t worry I don’t know the avenging angel but I
Knew his helper people cry God is distant he is close at hand he puts people in your life so you don’t end
Up like my fiend Melvin we would listen to our dad’s story of the antics they pulled when they were
Younger this farmer the next day would try to top them he stole something from the store when the
Manager was looking at him and then chased him of the store each act of defiance made him more
Reckless worse than that it made him meaner I finally cut him loose I heard about him he walked into a
Liquor store pulled out a gun the store owner shot first he died on the operating table I had many helps
Getting to adult hood gentle souls were positioned along the way and tough ones when needed like Rex
Perry’s mom Roxanna she was a red head to but her rule was quiet and powerful midst storms for sure
But I took notice and I never forgot and there was tom’s mother another red head Elsie pretty and sweet
A true charmer I’m bring these folks up to Judy’s mind a little thrill for her special day Friday one
Last addition her neighbor Sara because of this special memory I don’t think Judy saw this I will share it
Now we were out at the end of Sara’s house snow was already falling but all of a sudden and I truly think
That if Heaven ever did disintegrate this would be the first evidence of it the flakes became big as silver
Dollars the sky filled with them they floated so softly and slow you were pulled skyward and you were
Allowed to float down with them a wonderland was forming before our eyes I said I would never forget
And I never have another precious memory from childhood and a great street just right for Christmas
Greeting and a happy birthday for a special friend thanks Jude making my life great have a great
birthday

You're irresistible.
I disintegrate.
You're beyond perfection.
I'm just there.

Everything you say comes out pure
The way you move makes it look like you own the earth
The way you smile makes me believe in angels even more
The thought of you makes uncontrollable tears pour

You're a galaxy.
I'm a star in it.
You're beyond perfection.
I'm just there.

I want to feel your comforting arms around me
I want to hear you whisper promises in my ear
I want to make lovely dreams into an unrealistic reality
I need to hear your heartbeat in your chest

You're a breathtaking ocean.
I'm a ripple.
You're beyond perfection.
I'm just there.

My need for you in incurable
My love for you is out of control
My hope for you is endless
Is yours?

You're irresistible.
I disintegrate.
You're beyond perfection.
I'm just there.

Rapid Eye Movements
cruise down the Autobahn,
driving dreams of soldiers
slaying the Beast in the East:
seeds hidden in the cuff links
that return home for the victory parade.

The victory parade of the new millennium
is a mirage: desert sand creeps
through the streets of Basra;
spray painted slogans of “Aryan Nation”
are left behind on pock-marked walls.

High level terror alerts
scroll across the Fear o' Dome,
breeding paranoid glances
from commercial-class passengers
while they fly above fenced camps
where centralized secret service agents
watch the unloading of another train.

"Son, do you forget the sacrifices?
Have you lost all your respect?
Okay, it’s possible that the Feds
were influenced by the Purebreds—
a minor repercussion
of maintaining our national security.

It isn’t even about racial purity—
you are all mixed now, anyway.
Whether female, black, jew, or gay,
we must unite together as a nation;
raise its flag with pride,
and fight against a common enemy!
This enemy is trying to disintegrate
the cornerstone of our free society!

Son, can you not see! Not see-notsee-notsea-notsi-notzi-natzi-****-natzi-notzi-notsi-notsea­-notsee-not see!"
_


—cold sweat.

I awaken to remnants of nightmarish images
sifting through my mind:
flocks of carnivorous sheep
with invisible shepherds.

The dream had felt real—
solid, like flesh-out reality.

I rush out of bed,
just to make sure.
From my bedroom window,
I see the neighbour’s Iron Eagle weathervane
goose-stepping towards the west.
A lawnmower growls in the background.

Everything appears normal here
on the corner of 4th Reichstag Blvd.



2016 Neu Berlin Remix, July 13th, 2016
(original version was written on March 29th, 2010)

I am the cushion that life first rests in,
The crib meticulously created layer by layer,
The soft bed of flowers, glistening like blood,
The protector of all beings, the seat of care

My love is fuelled by the silver calmness
I gently extract from the first lunar night,
When the moon emerges from its dark sabbatical,
Armed with tales it gathered from the other side

Each day, its luminosity deepens, its stories
Turn more vivid, more wrenching, more morose,
I soak it all in- the pain, the suffering, the injustice,
And colour myself, in the darkest shade of rose

My red is no ordinary red, it is the
Culmination of every sister's deep cry,
It is the crimson of anger that can only be felt,
By the cradle entrusted with preservation of life

I am full and brimming, with pangs too strong
And hues of vermilion too dark to contain,
I rock back and forth, my cot full of stories,
Twisting, flailing and writhing in pain

And then I burst out and let freely flow,
The dam I created with laments of loss and love
Painted with conversations lasting until twilight,
With my cratered friend in the skies above

Petal by petal, as I lose my form and disintegrate,
She is connected to each woman's cry that I assimilate,
Flexed at the pelvis, helpless yet so strong, she listens,
And understands the lore I sing about, every twenty-eighth.

these are not monsters. there are no monsters here.
these feel like love, and when they enter you
they feel like something that was once missing is finally home.
how could monsters make such pretty girls?
such pretty girls,
such pretty skinny girls,
they look like the most glamorous parts of life. like everything
that is wonderful about being alive,
like diet cokes
and pictures of hip bones on a sunny, sandy day at the beach
here i am and all i’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails
and these not monsters
can make you beautiful too.

you’ll learn to make jokes about why you’re cutting
the banana you brought for lunch
(and breakfast, and dinner)
into thirty-five pieces.
bringing the tiny pieces to your mouth from
folded napkin with exquisite fingers
to tentative tongue
and when the jokes become too unmanageable,
and taste too much like sustenance,
like letting go, like pleasure,
learn to put a stand hold to lunch,
forget what it means and
by the end of your senior year
you’ll know every spot in that school of yours
where no one will ask where your peers are
and why you look so tired,
and so sad


the not monsters
will tell you all their secrets.
you’ll learn that toothpick thin bones, when crushed
into ashes and stirred into
the twenty, thirty, forty glasses of water you planned on drinking today
taste like sweet, sweet lemonade
and you can drink it
for only the cost of the rest of your waking life spent praising
the feeling of emptiness
looking up number after number
and dead girl after number
you, too, can spend the rest
of your day smelling of what
you just had to flush down the
bathroom toilet.

go, they will tell you,
boney shaking hands, bottle cap wrists
make sure to memorize menus and all the lies you will have to tell
spend hours at the grocery store obsessing and counting
fifty
one hundred
two hundred
no more than three, of course
or else your thighs begin to blow up like the balloons
from all the parties you could never go to
you will learn to avoid celebration
because celebration means food
cake, chips, soda, foods you simply cannot consume
you will spend christmas day
dreaming about burying
your dissolving teeth into your knuckles and biting at your shirt
until your heart stops.

the not monsters
will feed you your first cigarette
and your second, and your tenth.
they will leave your once healthy and shiny hair
in a clump
on your pillowcase, just for you.
in your friends hand, while being braided.

and when your body gets too frail,
it starts to fall apart,
but where sick breaks skin
flowers will grow.
an entire garden will rise and grow
itself from your empty, malnourished stomach
rippling out your mouth and you’ll choke on the flowers
but you’ll be joyous
because at least you’re not consuming calories.
you’ll disintegrate
until you cannot be seen differently
from all the skeletons that are currently
living in your closet
don’t you just wish you could shrink
don’t you wish you could have that control
don’t you just wish you could make nobody know about this
because they just don't get why you’d do this
you don’t get why you’d do this
you’re so so smart but you just googled
how many calories are in mouth wash
the pretty girls
pretty skinny girls
pretty dying girls
pretty dead girls
the parasite can be restrained but it cannot not destroyed.
but it does not even matter.
it’s a beautiful thing to be made of porcelain. to be fragile. delicate. beautiful.
the picture of your hip bones at the beach was worth it.