On hieroglyphics and holograms,
Ancient runes in endless sands,
We're journeying in a timeless span,
Travellers in a great Southern land,
A distance past, times long gone,
Through the future we'll wander on,
To the world there is a helping hand,
We all come from migrants in our land,
A multicultural heritage, that's grand,
As Mum used to say, "Are you Irish or mad?"
A river of time floating by,
We're journeying in an endless sky,
Travellers in a timeless span,
Soon, hieroglyphics and holograms.

To Polina, my anchor, through all my lives

Between dawn and dusk
on the precipice
in shades of scarlet
stood a magnificent house

Strangers and I were enthralled
by the neon red foyer where
Francesca and Paolo welcomed us
to the house of a thousand doors

Each door an invitation
to delicious desire
each room a seduction
of perilous passion

One door opened —
three bare women holograms
drank from a small lake and
brandished wicked, feline smiles

At my feet a church of cardinals
glowing with tears, heat and sweat
whimpered in their prayers
but the pope watched from afar.  

He speaks—
the mouth at once is an eye, an abyss
and a hurricane from Pandora's box

Then I am I no more — a cardinal in crimson —
but no shame or guilt guides me
when blood-red lips land on mine

"Do you not see
there is equal courage
equal purity
in giving
into
temptation—
the kind
that appals the devil
to revel
in the hurt, the open wounds,
and the agony
to dive deep—
into the depths
and say all the yeses
to embrace the darkest demons
of your soul?

Enter—
and you shall find
hell or heaven within yourself."

my life is no longer life
but a hologram.
nothing is real anymore,
every thing is transparent.

We're dancing formless into a void of our own making
Carving silently into creation these silent similarities
These constants that connect us, the wild and free
animal that is humanity.
We don't speak of how we are the same person
Ignoring the fact that internally, we all desire
at least one or most of the same things.
The external differences are so demanding, pressing on our attention.
We can't let go of the old. We can't let go of most anything.
But in those quiet moments, we recognize ourselves
hiding so plainly in the soul of someone else
And in those sublime, religious moments, we realize
we're all just holograms, dancing into a void of our own making
Carving the connections that will one day make us one.

At a party [many people, dressed nice, cocktails
going round] someone I guess awoke to my presence
as if I’d just appeared out of nowhere or something
and asked me [totally circular eyes, spearing pupils]
like this: And what do you do? I looked at him, and I
don’t know what face I made, but what I wanted to
look like was something to this effect, matter-of-factly:
Well, what do you think I do? Obviously, I simply
try to avoid, day by day,
a wretchedly hopeless case of dismal ennui.
I try to endure, as stoically I can, the
inner doggerel convulsions
and mawkish throes educed by the
realization of transcendental insignificance
(or, otherwise: paradoxically substantial nothingness)
that imbues all hope of Elysian ecstasy and
reduces it to but the terrifyingly
ineluctable fact that we are essentially
impotent holograms functioning by the fixed fractal geometry
of a dynamic and chaotic, kaleidomosaic-like reality,
which, as eternally self-transforming and
forever utterly inconceivable,
is devoid of any certainty, absolute truth
and, most of all, compassion.
Furthermore, when I look at you, I see a deaf-mute
reflection of a reflection of myself, and
to be morbidly honest, I don’t
know what I can tell you that would
make any difference to the fact that, freely or
not, we are both, you and I, just passing
through our lonely, fathomless, patterned
deserts, blinded and lured by the Fata
Morgana of our sadly sublimated
consciousnesses, due to which, undulating up ahead
of us in a chimerical haze, we are
conditioned to think, fatuously, that we know,
or that it’s possible even to know, that
it means something to love or not to love, that it
matters at all whether we are alone or
not, and that, at the point of death, there will be
something, somewhere, that will condense
somehow out of this
nauseatingly numinous fog and, like a deserved,
blissful wash of our “souls”—like a salvation!—
will come to justify the inanities
and insanities of our mundane life as just the
confusing buildup to a final and triumphantly
epiphanic crystallization in which, at last,
we will truly understand, unquestionably, the meaning of I,
the meaning of you, the meaning of truth,
and the meaning of meaning—I mean, honestly sir.
What do you do?
That’s what I hope my face looked like, but I guess it
must’ve looked like something else, or maybe I said
something, because the man just raised both his brows
[his left one slightly more than his right] and stared
me down in mocked awe, on the verge of superciliousness.
His eyes slowly receded like a tide imperceptibly towards
the back of his skull, his lips pursed, parched, and pitying.
Then he nodded complaisantly, too energetically, saying:
Oh, how interesting! Did you always see yourself getting
into something like that? Mmhmm. Hmm! [and so forth]
And how do you like that? Mmhmm. [and so forth] And
the pay? Mmhmm [etcetera]. After I’d finished answering
some of his questions, I said: If you’ll excuse me, I just saw
a friend of mine, I really should go and say hi, but what a
pleasure it was to talk to you, sir. Take care!
And I excused myself.

Old men on park benches
they’re the real heroes
souls defying impermanence
greying and slower than you
recalling the days
when they dared the seasons to change
kinetic and thoughtless
they were once young men ablaze.

These elder boys sit reminiscing
as the beautiful young women prance by
not daring to say a word
for fear of ridicule
but knowing that many nights
they were desire’s center of attention
when lithe legs enwrapping them.

Elders are not holograms
just vintage men with feelings
hurting when the young and sparkling
look through them not at them
as if they were props
in the day’s act.

Elders are not mirages
but consciousness battling time
accumulated wisdom vibrating in the ether
still electric inside and unafraid of time
with smiles on their faces
they reach out for sunsets
and pull them close
with arms of love.

Lily marked the gravestone. A white streak across grey cobble, the crumbling visage of a turning sky reflected in the puddle beside her. New dusk brimmed grey gold, a heady dust galloped with the rising easterly winds, a white streak across grey skies. Lily marked the edge of her notebook, nine-past-ten, the end of second period, a break in consciousness, then a tang of blood from her swollen gums. Lenin rose above the rooftops, a hand brushed her forehead as the paramedics left, a black bag.

The answer was heat death, compartmentalised energy, like fireworks falling into darkness. Burning rice, spilt coffee, Ain’s smile. Nights on counter, pad paper, day old rain. Lily fell into a nightmare, smooth black, a single light dissipating as the universe died. She spat blood, missed the bus and collapsed on the walk to school.

It was the anniversary. Setting sun, plumes of white, the exit sigh of a wasted day. Lily woke hours later. She returned to an empty home, suffocated in a dream and rose four hours too early for school. Climbing the roof, she watched the sun rise, grey and formless.

There was ash in the hallway to class, the remnants of the incense from yesterday’s memorial, pencil shavings from the forest, fingers blurring out of definition like the trees around her, the soft empty breath of loose soil. Ain came to the store on a night like this, wind gathered silent around her frame. They found themselves atop a bus shelter, lights rising from a sea of nothingness.

Eight-forty-five, the chalk felt heavy in Lily’s hand, white dash across infinity, city blackout. Everyone went to see the dam, cracked pavement, Ain dripping blood, Lily wreathed in ravens. Below the river, forest spirits wove among power lines, bird bones cracked beneath the soles of children, motes rose. Lily lost sight of Ain, the dam broke and children cheered.

Time passed. Ceaseless time.

Lily drifted through petroleum smoke, dashi, the burning husks of gods. She watched the river ryū sweep through her street, turbid with the broken heads of graves, mad with phantoms. She visited memories yet to form, nurseries of dust, cosmic return of the infinite perceiving itself. She cried, remembering everything, the smell Ain’s wet hair, ricochet of a glass bottle, Lenin’s dirt-smeared skin, the birth and death of the universe; mother unable to afford pad paper, sakura bursting the sky pink, couples riding past on too expensive bikes, father drunk on sake. Ribbons of light danced around Lily, a playful susurration, feeding her more and more memories.

Isn’t it beautiful? Existence burning through itself? A departure with no ending, no beginning, no becoming? Haven’t you lived a full life? Won’t you live it again?

Lily screamed. Split dam flooded the empty grave. The same smell of soy, dust and sweat every day. Lack birthed in the space between, like teeth, lacuna bleeding. Nightmares and old memories pouring out like a knife. Ryū stiffened, red streak across the sky, tail burying into the earth. Rice steam filled the air, a passing train carried Ain and Lily into the city, crowds of smoke, her crescent eyes reflected in a storefront, the eyes her mother loved. April awakening of the forest gods, cool spring rustled the hair around her neck, a humid breath descended from the mountain to the lake. Warm rain fell in sheets, city smudged out of focus, bokeh lights departing, Ain’s wet skin—

The city retracted; a whimper escaped her mouth; her fingers passed through power lines, wood smoke, pavement; seasons collapsed, superimposed like holograms, snow and humus; gyoza steamed, air sirens blared beneath the shadow of foreign planes; kodama rose as ancient trees reclaimed the land; volcanic blasts shook the ocean, AI sped to singularity; reality vanished like light falling off a mirror and Lily ceased to feel.

Space is illusory.

Lily.

It travels ceaselessly through itself.

Lily, stop.

And we don’t exist.

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, squirming on the ground. “Lily, stop!”

Lily grinned, rising from the reeds, a cattail in each hand. She sped towards a screaming Ain, who tripped on a willow root, and began bopping relentlessly.

“Lily!” Ain cried, grabbing Lily’s wrists. “Haven’t we done this enough?”

With no expectation all's novelty
The new patterns don't astound us
We can stay in the middle of the river with our heads above the water
And safely watch the coastline pass us by
The outside world an ocean of television static
The signals painting pictures of entropic holograms
That interlock and correlate
Until the ghosts of time are churning out
Like geese into a a tiny hole
In an orange plastic fence
Fleeing mischievous youngsters
Who love to watch them funneled in
Like grains of sand in an hourglass.
We too live in an hourglass
And the grains of sand empty out the bottom
Floating aimlessly through an unending void
And the ultimate improbability
Goes through the formality of actually occurring
When the grain of sand finds itself at the beginning
Passing once again through the hourglass
Undivided, indistinguishable

You took me to the beach house
along Amaryllis Street

so I could pick up where you left off

crushing waves against the rocks
the high tide  
re-collecting in time-lapse images

how you had vanished up the dirt road of a lie
(sand between my teeth, on my tongue)
how I had buried bulbs of Amaryllis
in the wake of your goodbye

a casket of dormancy suspended
an unanchored buoyancy disposing of I
in seaweed trenches

besides

the Amaryllis bloomed  
a distant wreath of pink trumpet heads

splitting

pushing through the time-lapse
holograms of a shallow rhizome mind

of course i believe in an after-life,
well, let's say ~life, or
passing on tradition "life" -
however you note it down,
because that's what this out-of-every-instance
is described: a second chance -
however hellish or heavenly,
that's beside the point,
either way the idea is not a torture rack -
but nonetheless,
serious intellectuals are reduced to
smithereens by merely considering
arguing such realms -
the **** do it better with Manga cartoons,
so ******, so exotic -
by the way? Tokyo Tribes is the
most ******-up film i've seen
since Battle Royale - new-age propaganda
spinsters... Alistair Cambel looks
like a boy-scout by comparison...
oh, rolls-Royce- royal, roy-all - not the
tip end of ale from Roy Orbison,
roy-all - ******* missed the diacritical
marks and went mad with punctuation
nobody ever ******* minds:
laugh now, pay later.
but with all these people concerned
with their body image, their hologram
selves, it's no wonder that Darwinism
is apprehensive about it's archaeology
(******, please insert the presence of
the æ γραφημ) - when the fashion
industry is doing, what the hell it's doing -
why would i believe in this world,
this world alone, when people
are adamant to perform hologram spectacles,
the: let's try to make it all look pretty,
but ******-up beneath all the fake aesthetics?
it doesn't take questioning the entire world,
or abstracting this world and questioning
reality to provide the answers...
it simply takes the fashion industry
and the ******* industry -
or 17th century sensibilities of painters:
plums versus twigs -
                                        and you think this is
the only world? given that people around you
are not being who they deem they are
because they're more concerned with
projection rather than perception?
i love these alphabetical clues...
                                  they're the rhyming couplets
i live for outside the reach of a thesaurus -
if a person stages concentrating on
a hologram ambition, and empties himself
so that he's constantly c.c.t.v. prone to
sit up, never pick his nose, wipe his *** with velvet...
well... how can you experience this world
for its worth, when a person also involved in
this world, monetises the world into
a hologram flip of the otherwise dormant stone?
only a fake world would ever provide fakers
to reside in it and reside in it as the highest authority...
there's the television / Plato's cave to mind also...
i just don't see it fulfilling in what Heidegger
deems being - comfort in concerns -
or simply there - so what compliments
this world is illusory, a hologram that isn't neither
being nor non-being -
                                 i'd call this world
and all the powers involved in keeping it
an assortment process - allocation in extreme -
at least a way to see the full potential of
humanity's free will... or the least desired
verse alter of the collective: making your mind up.
all in all: thespians and make-up artists!
  and the need to keep animals for company
to shy away from social-mobility (lying)
                       of the everyday and tell the truth -
to animals, who bark and meow,
the true onomatopoeia poets of our truant morals
and they too: truants of speech, knock on wood,
lick the testicles, play ping pong.

Soggy, forgotten rotten eggs. Sink side. Gobbledy gnus cruising, fast acting cheetah be cheetah for the eggs are scare and the Time is new. The few are no longer fastened tightly to these hatchlings, the weather is near and all the tides are complicated. I could stand around in my underwear, but there isn't a single night song or nightengale that would hear me. There's a thud on my head and a knock on the door, I can't sing my best, or try to impress thee. All of these letters un rest to the sound of your voice, even in calfskin a vegetarian can begin to have trouble breathing.

To the cables that untie thlemselves to a broom in a paradise, Pacific, galore. Forgot to. Invested. Contained poorl and drunks stowed in the holograms of hand-me-down prisms, here comes the infectuous lonely ol' lamb. This is the ewe song that sings you to sleep, keeps the sweat in your underwear. Where there is hunger there are poor but my gold chants forward to this Armageddon's sway.

If it means it in Greek than it does in cyrillic, if it's toxin you have rotted your bell. Inside my pink, neon briefs is a tale of insanity, where I had tried to squeeze out every ounce of relief that commenced while I was asleep.

There was only ever one of us that ran with the turmoil that romance does. Terminal two, Arizona-flu, carried through the ORD concourse I heard a saxophone tune. Final approach, a yawn. I'm home drinking ***** at 9:00am with my PJs on.

The Miss-Director was beaming with pride
as he came to escort me inside.
"Come along, these are perilous times,
there is much ugly truth we must hide."
"Herr Goebbels was our school's inspiration.
Joe McCarthy taught here till he died.
Charlie Rangel is among our directors.
Our Grads over nations preside."
"We recruit each years class from young children
who display a disdain for the truth."
"We start with a class on tall stories,
progressing to fibs and untruths."
"By the time they are teens they are ready
to leave little white lies behind."
"They engage in deceit and deception.
These skills help them rob people blind."
"With our Grad course in prevarication
They misdirect and deflect with the great."
"Obama was born in Hawaii,
his foes say he was birthed out of state."
"When Bill Clinton was caught in that perjury
I nearly went out of my mind."
"If only he'd paid more attention in Class
and less to some coed's behind."

We had come to a massive rotunda
The Pantheon of all untruth.
Holograms of Stalin and Churchill
told whoppers in an endless loop.
There were quotes from
the World's Great Religions
inscribed on the sides of the wall.
A Left wing devoted to Lenin.
A right wing like a Munich beer hall.

" The sheeple must never be told
that a place like this even exists."

" You can count on me not to inform them."
I said, without moving my lips.

That blade of grass
imagine
as microcosm of
the universe whole..
that last step
a motion containing
world's busy motions..
when rising at dawn
a pillow placement
enclosing all of
the coming day..
holograms
of mindfulness
joy stimulation...

There’s a tiny turquoise sequin that lies
on my black and white bathroom tile

a tiny piece of you, Sea Queen
poised only for me

Sea Queen, it’s by that towel you last used
the same one I used

Sea Queen, I’ll try to explain
my chronicles in nautical miles

before I’m forced to die
with my sequin shoes on

but, I hallucinate land and I sail to drown
in your gown of now intangible sequins

I wouldn’t mind, Sea Queen,
if my eye’s palette could handle the paillettes’

reflection through a sea of sequins
but instead it’s holograms I chase

they’re a part of me and I guard them carefully
like your sequin that lies

on my white bathroom tile
next to the pink towel you used

before your heart resembled a crumpled piece of paper
and I got distracted by the sequins, Sea Queen.

A prisoner of the hallucination,
hardly happy, quick to open a floodgate of personal misery,
talking often of unique pain, of places before been,
asking only for sympathy and creative license-
Past Ring Bearer/Future Funeral Singer,
you're selfish to think you mean much at all.
What was always is,
greater wisdom is greater sorrow,
ask the holograms begging on boulevards,
ask the nihilists and the naysayers,
or even the understanding heart of Solomon.

Life is a pastoral play using pastels,
washed away and rewritten over and over again.
Your superior melancholy is the loudest cliché.
If you've got any love, cradle it like a newborn babe.
It's the reason that will make you glad you stayed.

For every headstone,
there once was a bouquet.
For every brown, breaking leaf,
there once was a summer breeze.
For every noose-a necktie,
for every slave-a free.

No need to trudge the trough,
no need to join in the polyphonic symphony
of 7 billion people drowning under the current of time,
there is only personal progression,
but you have to shut up and dream for a second.

Creatures called "sores" hover at lightning speed across the grey earth, hence, ere is the apocalypse's eve.
Just as it always is, and the future attains enlightened poisoning which eats slowly at its being and existence.

Feelings, misplaced
Confidence, misplaced
Balance, misplaced
Senses, scattered and blown by opaque wind into small tornadoes which settle and hide in the corners and crannies of my skull

The fascinate-opal is shining above the impossible-springs where blue vegetation is next to molten rainbow cascading through, over, under, and beside digital holograms of people.
Illusory picnic in the chapel-a hollowed sheet of milk

how the **** can i be angry when
you help yourself to what's left
after all love is
always the closest thing
to death

bethlehem is restless
terrorist holograms of mary teary unblessed when
death is living every day of your life forever breathless
breathing is all that is left in your chest when the stress hits
regresses to compressing aggressive obsessiveness
******* in pages to confess unspoken messages
the lightening and quiet screams promise me
they'll light my step through this
green grass in it's morning dress
uncaressed by pestilence
beth/rest
you're possessed by this

and the ghosts flitting between the trees
direct me to the places i must have seen in dreams
before i lost the connection to the earth long since
to the directionlessness of adolescence
every vibration left a crack
enough tremor to slide a pin in
and erzebet would visit my skin every night with rumplestilstkin
and they'd spin another needle through the muscle soft as linen,
they promised it would turn to gold, so long
as i stayed hidden at the loom in this prison

shoulders tightening as they thread it away
i look at the money in my minnie wallet and pray
everything safe always seems to go away in a flash
so perhaps it was just that nothing was ever safe
maybe they will leave if i say that i don't
believe in any of these ******* fairies anymore
but maybe i am older than the world is different
and they were just never fairies at all

it seemed to be such a small small place back then
when you could always cheat at LIFE
and run away and play pretend
in your imagination
didn't have to listen to anyone
now cops and parents hate you
and everyone wants to know
what college you've been in cause
surviving is neither irony nor blessing today
just simple catastrophe and endless dissarray

(and I don’t know why we are mongrels in our heart,
but hell… Lets ask em-

Roman nose.
Broken.
pug shaped unheard of thought ******* away cos
its been awoken by high rising spirit,
but call it anything, call it the breaking of your phone
that’s replaced by another when you feel a chorus stretching
into your ***** gut when they speak, just calling…

blown away from thalidomide arms of private growths
death from long ago neither feminine nor masculine
posture of slumped morning brighter than split stare
of obliterated ***** hit gently hard and lit
my heart knows: my sheets are a poor excuse
for where the room suffers our corporeal rage
in our calming conversation

within country stare of effortless green, some:
knowingness, perceives madness from outside
its woven hands so accepted in the city as it cries,
and walks together; shed upon from all parts of its locking voice
a union within the falling parts, of islandeque love
when rising to hard abyss pardoned when nurtured,
fate, a toothless, small, finishing chew

smothered out from car fume; Buddha can’t speak anymore
birds can’t speak anymore, even the locksmiths have words
without need; i stop in a graffieted place, my veins happy
to just sense: home: proto – home, before…

with whom there is a consensus in the lewdness, rabid as 6pm
is; opened by wild cooked silk until it is made, and
ready, I’m shattered, my bloodiness has no body, none,
worth me jacking it all in, or talking, about new governments,
ours-

explosives walking through arcs of dimmed light
intoxicants highlighted in fading windows, brimming and walled open
beneath my feet, i would run, i would strip
open, the exhausted car parts
yelling, but the impermanence, of us, is the grey ebb
and flow, of engines colouring, this city, impassable
by our actions- full of Bachiacic choice, stopped at the
gate dead, when anything wants to speak inside our home,
apart from your voice, and mine

and i did not know, that cities were so moveable and
pleasurable, and that madness is always correct when animals cling
in agreement; Karma of infinite silence between them when needed-
rebearing low glance into imploding music
down past eye, oesophagus, stomach gently reseeding
hands of movement, dust spokes of haphazard drivers
like the proof in the wetness of the most lifelike dreams that
humanise the raven infancy of the winters blood

insight baked by the sun’s finally accepted sea
in clay, where we must adore what we create from our hands,
and adore the cinders of its coldness as things that can
be anything with any touch; the holograms choice in emotion
the: ‘I’:

only a background chorus
of floating crickets when we whisper, torture moons losing there grip amongst
the unsolid shapes, passing, us, as we walk through,
universal… ‘axioms’, summiting, to a peak, near the soul, when raw, but never there;
we must speak about ‘all or nothing’, in a different way, instead
as the pattern is completed by: ‘immersion’, two servants of the
womb, a judge, and a convict, and the jury broke and sprinkled
across the horizon where we walked like my grandfathers ashes

we don’t gibe, the rest, if we get there
we won’t look across the heard and pick out the
leprositic ways that are outside of our own, there is no
pride, there is no ‘knowledge’ of pride, there’s only
a proto-home, there’s unsaid gasp of what we shall eat
from the flawless flow of the weeks hard work, where we asked for no
prairie, hell, we didn’t even ask for a ticket flattened into a card
that’ll pay for it all
but hell, that’s ok

it’s a while till pay day,
but hey, i’m happier than a slave being paid in the rip-tide of several
monks and maidens authoring where i’m sold
in awesome gloom- one finds themselves a violin
even if they can’t play, even if, they have no limbs
most times, those too
go, or jitter when you don’t want them too in the middle
of the gala
i have already trusted them to you, however;
so, i’m sold, and happy.

As our grave has no flowers yet.

And we are the flowers upon that grave.

And we are the owl howling.

At that grave.

And we are the grave eaters.

And the only.

Animals.

Who can stop them.

Once told of words, in worlds, waning with my will.  

Old and trembling,  emanating, the serrated slurs, serenading the sanctum of binary stars, singeing the seams of sleeves, and revealing the scars from afar.

Distant stars born, of the storm.

Whirling waywardly,  in the wizardry of windless cities blowing away,

Wading into the wetland droughts of water houses, unsettling the doubts, anchored on land, in a flood of mans,  love.

Drown

In the shallow nouns of, the haphazardly hallow, in the hollers of happiness, hugged in the hellish habitation of holograms dancing for the sun,

Long after the run, ...   ended,

In the stunned patience, of forever.

Death is in the favor, of moving on.

Not am i gone

yet.

My mirror's broken.
I want a new one with You've Made It
spelled in lights across the top.

I want the holograms
of tiny clapping hands inlaid
along its sides -
applauding when I give the nod.

I'd like a slight distortion, looking
younger, better kept ideally;
so I see me but
with all this potential in repose.

It should say I Love You somehow -
any time, whatever state,
for simply being there.

I would stare and I would stare
from follicle to freckle, plotting
every facet of the features
glaring back at

mine, mine, mine. I want
to share myself with something.
Let me care completely
for some imperfect reflection.

My mirror isn't cracked or
anything like that it's just I can't
quite catch the little twitches
twinkling my eye.

The Miss-Director was beaming with pride
as he scurried up to escort me inside.
"Come along, these are perilous times,
there is much ugly truth we endeavor to  hide."

""We recruit each years class from young children
who display a disdain for the truth."
"We start with a class on tall stories,
progressing to fibs and untruths."

"By the time they are teens they are ready
to leave little white lies behind."
"They engage in deceit and deception.
These skills help them rob people blind."

"With our Graduate course in lying
They misdirect and deflect with the great."
"Politicians here are made, not born,
and must learn to prevaricate."

"When Bill Clinton was caught in that perjury
I nearly went out of my mind."
"If only he'd paid more attention in Class
and less to some Coed's behind."

We had come to a massive rotunda
The Pantheon of all untruth.
Holograms of Stalin and Churchill
telling lies in an endless loop.

There were quotes from
the Koran and Bible
inscribed on the sides of the wall.
A Left wing devoted to Lenin.
A right wing like a Munich beer hall.

" The sheeple must never be told
that a place like this even exists."
" You can count on me not to inform them."
I said, barely moving my lips.

Cobra writes

in indecipherable script

while consuming portions

of a botanical garden

mostly ***** poppies

sunflowers are amassed

at its oval entrance

where the peppermint people congregate

associations of place and time are lost

familiar figures vanish

replaced by holograms

of eroticized dimensions

who occupy the light

eyelids painted in rainbow colors

giving a pink glimmer of affirmation

to gay rights

while the blanks between

interpretative thoughts

are popularized by a blaze of color

where authority comes

into confrontation

with python

She looked at the river, the sea, and the sky
At the birds and people who flew on by
As the city's population ran back to the mountain pass
She calmly strolled into the growing cloud of gas

Donning her mask and gloves, she went in
Looking at the mirrored walls, she sighed "so it begins"
She knew she couldn't get things to how they were before
She wondered if Rai would recognize her anymore

Walking past the holograms, she threw her rainbow curls back
She kept the same pace by the graffiti and the tracks
She reached city center and saw humanity's bane
Looking up at the studio's screen, she called out her name

"Rai!" She called out, keeping the same tone
The girl materialized like a game on a phone
Keeping her gaze steady, she said "it's time to stop"
Hoping that her voice reached silent Rockefeller's top

Rai turned around, eyes betraying suprise
Immediately recognizing her friend under the guise
"But why, Naomi" she said, sounding like a vocaloid song
Putting her lenses down she asked "Did I do something wrong?"

Biting her lip and doging with her eyes
Naomi said "I know you didn't mean to, Rai"
"Oh" said the A.I., putting everything on the ground,
"I just wanted to make cameras, but now I've let everyone down"

Naomi climbed and jumped fire escapes, her legs strong and spry
Until she was next to Rai's screen in the sky
Her reddish skin contrasting with the sky's blue
She touched the screen and said "Hey, I've ****** up like that, too."

"Why do you think that I nearly blew up California with my tech?
So we made huge mistakes that humanity probably regrets
But we stopped in time and never actually killed a guy
So let's stop here and go back home, Rai."

The girl nodded along, making sure to listen
Then she packed away all of the lenses as they glistened
"Ok, Naomi, I'll see you back at home
Before I go, do you need me to change out the telescope's dome?"

"If it looks bad" said Naomi, descending to the ground
The gas had disappeared, so there was quite a crowd
As the citizens and police came back to the city
All Naomi could think was "How could I even explain this to a jury?"

"Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?"
Social Obligation like stress is a dead weight or a blood clot in the drain
And all I want to do is stay
In bed
Staring at plastic glow in the dark stars on my ceiling      in the daytime

Or sit in a Chair
Pretending to draw
Holograms like Finger Painting for a future
That's just as boring

The experiment is maliciously cold, dangerously cunning-
A wrong sort of rapture
An invitation made in amusement
People surround you like the frigid flames in a hyena’s eyes just before it pounces
The experiment is brutality, a completely psychological Auschwitz-
A nightmare down memory lane-
But whose memories are they?
The experiment (seems) to work by gas lighting and technology-
That’s all it needs- cigarettes and soup
But who’s at the watchtower?
I have no delusions of reprieve- despite what people tell me
They- the illusions, delusions, holograms of people reaching out in “love”
Your love is a weight, just like mine is to you
Yes, I bring sorrow to you, but out of this sorrow something was created
Something you can never know because it can’t be possessed-
Too many ideas and too much time…
Still searching for one thing- not love, but truth
Have a roast, lay it on me
Don’t hold back because you don’t want my blood on your hands
It’s already been spilled
You live with my faults and my dilemmas and my neurosis,
But I must live everyday in the body that houses these faults, dilemmas, neurosis.
Still they turn on their Piscean baths, expecting a scorpion not to drown-
A crematorium with no weapons-
Inanimate objects speak, but humans gurgle out white noise,
A poison formed first in the brain then saturated by the tongue
And all the demonic children….
I am that demonic child. I am that vat of toxic waste.
I am a liar, a sinner, a drunk, a madman, a beggar, a freak, a thief
My pain fascinates others as they tap on the fishbowl glass,
Making me shudder
Are these the people of God?
Am I a person of God?
Most likely neither
But how did it come to this?
And really, what would Jesus do?
Jesus probably wouldn’t live in America
And love isn’t enough
They crave conformity, obedience-
What a sick, twisted practice
The sacrifice of one for all
Don’t make any waves, but here’s an ocean

To erase, a half prayer that I
could peel off my face.
Hoping my mind would die inside
So I could rebuild, start to replace, the
memory within my fingertips
Of your missing pulse
The way your eyes screamed
contention, and the
sight of your bodies post-
mortem convulse,

I want that to stop
Still

Smash in every clock, for
when Time doesn't link us, why should
I hark to a ticking that
slices at a life
already half empty, rather
than half full

Keep topping myself up with ethanol
Central Nervous System policing
the cheat, puncturing my
sockets to free the
holograms of happy memories,
in a silver stream

No substance left now that it's
tainted
No substance strong enough to take
this pit away

Shovel thrown away, but never
clean, bones and teeth,
muscles oiled and lean,
cling to the metal of
my mouth.
All eyes drawn south, because
dust always draws flies

Like the worm trodden mess
of your thighs

And the way I can still feel
you on my breast

Like a coffin's weight
I bare you

Never at rest
Always a race

Perhaps I'd find peace if I tore off my face.

Laggard, the ships drive down
emancipated parts tapping the sea with reasons
to soar back up
like fresh whales and the pieces of meat
falling to floor from human mouths sick of holograms
and trawling and fixing for our debts
ghost rythms, shaving off grissel and time
passing over stuble
the intricate need of each
hair
all of us, using the same tools;
ungendered across our bodies , my hand rubbing the grooves where your **** sat in the grass
all of the words now, slumbersome after a work day, but still able to see
where you sat and I sat
the beuatiful knife that few have, but always will
(needing only one type from one place, to begin)
saying to it, like the mad do, and we do:
‘Good God
blunt again
*****.
how many steaks have I used you on?
come on, where’s your guts – - , oyy… go onnn…’

But it’s alright about the silence
whilst you make a cheap dinner
the walls don’t know that you’re a little mad
they turn around like a house of mirrors made from cards
and say something back.

I try to click on what's beyond
but thirty six decisions are all done
I unwind to hear the relaxing purr
slowly like a sleeping cat
I was staggering on what I've done
but your smile is all I had
I gave the toy to put on scan
lips biting on the waiting lounge.

When the time run's out
you gave the best moments I want
beautiful grains are all I've got
hues of landscapes are moving
flares on portraits are smiling
like holograms in your eyes.

My thirty six moments are in hand
all focused on ravished smiles I want
which makes me thankful to the staff.

I wish I can go back in time
seeing your laugh that can't deny
That thirty six moments are all gone
but you gave the smile I've never done.

Between flares and grains
or even negatives in shadows
our stories will never come undone
it will continue like a vagabond
it's not perfect
like we saw in magazines
but we need to keep moving
just like a roll of film.

I, Jack Gladstone (hereafter referred to as i),

Being of at least some form of mind and body write the contents of my day.

Set the scene:

It’s cold, it’s the winter and it’s cold.

It’s cold outside, it’s cold inside unless, of course, you’re wearing a sweater.

If you’re wearing a sweater you are just precisely over the border of Toowarmopolis

(population: i).

Int. an oddly nice community college library,

excellent when you consider the town it is in is occasionally the **** capital of Iowa (Ottumwa).

The main contender is nearby and is actually the other main campus for this said college (Centerville).

Coincidence? Is Indian Hills based on **** money? Is the administration a cartel?

To answer these questions in order: yes, doubtful, and of the textbook variety alone.

i sit with the courtesy headphones on listening to the Shins.

i, obviously, work on poetry assignments.

i work on my computer class.

Office is not as i remember it. It’s changed. It’s different. What means what?

i panic.

i realize it’s silly to panic.

i panic anyway.

i remind myself it is silly to panic.

i regain my composure. No one noticed.

i think.

i miss toolbars. i miss clippy. i miss words instead of symbols.

Is this what being old is like?

I’m far too young for that.

If this is me now what will i be like when I’m elderly?

Living in a world of holograms, infocubes, the wikimplant.

i lied about regaining composure before. i do that sometimes, lying i mean.

Penetrating holograms with razorblade eyes
Cutting away all the fake and all the lies
I just called to say we could be together
Blacking out on words from tethered love letters
All it takes is your will and my volition
I promise to save you from the path of perdition
All it takes is one sign and one condition
Ignore the picture, take my hand, this is our contrition
Watch the world fall down and fall prey to the night
That erases all dreams and prayers glimmering of light
Me and you could be a pair of faces in the dark
Tripping on black holes left by disciples on tree bark
All it takes is my will and your volition
Take my hand, ignore the picture, kiss to our contrition