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Connor Jul 2016
And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

????

II

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

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin
Written between late June to July 13th.
Sjr1000 Jun 2016
There is a cold wind
blowing outside,
into the graying,
an apocalyptic sky

The lamps are lit
The night descends
it comes as it always does
My table is cluttered
with wadded paper
scribblings saying nothing

The hanging question you asked
remains
"What is your heart's desire?"

The light it flickers
Throwing shadows on the wall
So eerie at first,
So familiar after all

Fantasies
Phantasims
Hypnogogic imagery
A trance like state of mind

Many lifetimes pass
None of them mine

What is your heart's desire
It strangles the mind with possibilities
Waiting for the tell,
the tell that might never come.

You asked me
as we left the foggy meadow
"You who speak so highly of the little synchronicites,
But what is your heart's desire? "

I rise with the sun each day
My path laid out before me
I do this and that in order

Each night as the dark descends
The day's vivid light has vanished
I stare into this lamp light
and wonder
what is my heart's desire.
David Barr Nov 2013
Take a glimpse back down the cobbled Roman road, and you will bear witness to a catalogue of decadent milestones which await unrestrained consummation.
But I am now a weary pilgrim who wanders through misty forests, where the sound of cracking twigs around the badgers sett, shatters the serenity of twilight ecosystems.
Toadstools are not a part of my current diet. Therefore, I bid you farewell. When you stand by the sparking fire at the ancient gatehouse, you will resolve the carnival of hypnogogic and hypnopompic startlements.
Therefore, before you begin your journey of forgotten mystical awareness, I must ask one thing of you: are you able to recollect your whereabouts in the next lifetime?
Jenn Gardner May 2012
Existing, creating, remaining

In constant correspondence with

Fluorescent phantoms stalking
hypnogogic images of

Past selves spilled upon
A marble plane universe.

Fractals of shattered ether,

Taught not
to touch an all,

Indescribably content with systematically

Despairing hairs,
Rapidly engaging in disengagement.

Division of conscious accessibility,
Lately less than half.

Mundane introductions to despairs,

Rapidly devouring
   The residual stillness.

Folk compilations of concepts fabricating
Inquiries into legends of incentive for

Existing, creating, remaining.
Carlena Nov 2012
I'm in a hypnogogic state of mind
Floating through the sands of time
Keep me in this reverie
My hearts feeling fiery
You've got me in this fervent trance
Finding my rhythm a new way to dance
Silvarra Adastra Jan 2014
Imposing despondence annexing hypnogogic state escapes;
                             dominating
                  Precariously constructed walls;
                                stifling
      Presentiment projected, callous shadow castles;
                              towering
       Looming structures of concentrated contempt;
                              ensnared
              A solitary luminescent casement;
                     revealing radiant retreat
      Evanescent relief...
         Enticing evacuation from encasement;
                          a Dusty Miller
Flourishing amongst debris and ruin
The first sign of life...
                                                   in years
Bryce Jun 2018
In the fragments of my dream-state, I saw a past I didn't wish to uncover.

My old home-street.
It was the summer of a childhood memory, and the air was temperate-- like lukewarm water, suspended and perfect, almost vacuous-- without breeze or gust, as if strung up in some test-tube of a world.

The suburban houses lined the path, it felt the dawning age of autumn-- that though the trees were green, I could feel them ready to release themselves. to fall and die-- but not yet.

In the front lawns of these houses, exotic vehicles-- Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis-- an Italian road show strange and deeply uncouth.

With bright fantastic colors of cherry red and enamel white and neon green and twilight blue and midday yellow and magenta-- they portrayed as monuments, movable statues, and like a hometown get-together the families of the houses stood next to them, proud...waiting. For something.

I walked past, the spectral calls of my childhood friends and neighbors following and whispering inaudibly behind me-- a muffled shadow of voice that I yearned to understand, but could not. They laughed and spoke of illusory things, and within their voices dictated golden, pleasant memory, and a creeping sense of melancholy.

I could see my house at the end of the street. As we walked, it was as if a million summers came and went-- fathers pruned their oak trees, waxed their automobiles, pantomimed cooking and eating and drinking and mirth-- while the sunless sky glowed soft and infantile, a cloudless blanket.

Deep in my consciousness, I felt dread to return home. There was something off-- and as the dream world strips you of your familiarity, of your defenses and rationale, the raw beating flesh of fear spasms.

We reached the house, the procession of childhood friends all but dissipated. The old oak tree in the front lawn had been removed, the soft scent of lavender replaced with the vibrant colors of red rose and lanky yellow tulips that stood in piqued attention, long leaves of perfect green-- a new garden for a new soul.

An unfamiliar girl/woman-- perhaps the new owner of my lost home-- opened the garage, guided me inside.

Inside there was a McClaren, grey and yellow and unbelievably beautiful-- but dark and covered in dust. The garage was always dusty. How interesting that she would leave her prize hidden from the festivities...

She opened the door, in I walked.

In dreams often what we understand of geography and place shifts radically-- so that we may encounter a more unfamiliar world, to recognize it as distinct from waking memory. Perhaps so that we do not get lost-- to give us a way out, a logical incongruity to feed ourselves-- to convince ourselves that this world is imaginary, that it is irrational and inexplicable.

Yet when I entered my home, it was as if I had never left. The television cabinet, the floral couches, the wrought-iron fence through the kitchen door-- all of a sudden I was home again. For all the times I wondered, imagined the new family that took my childhood home--it was okay. It was safe. it was respected.

In the living room, the new family was unpacking posters. Old cartoons and comic characters next to the Christmas fireplace. Upstairs I heard muffled conversation-- bouncing off the vaulted front atrium to my ears, they were in the rumpus room-- the room I had so often called my own-- where I lost myself in books and games and puzzles and dreams. I wanted desperately to see it, yet I felt a slight unease-- I did not wish to push further than I would be let.

The woman guided me to the family room table, where we would so often have our family dinners-- and I would hide myself underneath the legs of unknown relatives, playing with the dog or tracing my finger along the exposed, unfinished wood of the underbelly-- and these memories flooded my dream-- a daydream within a dream-- calling with it a deluge of melancholic nostalgia-- a sort of hypnogogic recollection.

I could feel the stinging ache of these memories. I could hear myself weeping against the chair leg, looking out the french doors into the garden full of roses and grass and lilies and tulips-- familiar yet alien, alive and dead, lost and found. The ache was painful, yet when I suddenly awoke I found myself overcome with a sort of exhausted pleasure-- the kind of feeling one gets after crying for a long time, crying into the end of one's breath-- at the end of a long period of pain, or a resolutive tantrum.
I'm still thinking about this dream, and the one of the night before. Long has it been since I have had such vivid hallucinations, as with indiscriminate drink and smoke managed to mostly eliminate them from my life. It is both disturbing and satisfying to see them once again-- to perhaps withdraw meaning from them once more.
I took 15mg of mirtazapine on Sunday evening out of pure curiosity.

As a result of its histaminergic activity there is sedation
yet I find I am easily surprised, jumpy but tired.
Initial slight sensations of arthralgia.

After a few hours I identify mild eidetic imagery,
Ever-so-slightly persistent with closed eyes.
These visual hallucinations emerge
from imagination, neither delirious nor lucid.
Perhaps they're more like vivid daydreams
and would leave with tolerance.

This faint mode of hallucination led into and out of sleep,
Supplanting hypnogogic and hypnopompic imagery.
What I remembered of dreaming was much the same:
Nonsensical conetent with similar imagery.
Upon waking its effects were still apparent.
Nothing particularly interesting, useful for achieving sleep.
There is definitely potential for hallucinatory imagery
but I found the content quite bland; it is lethargic.
Anthony Pierre Sep 2020
Is this heaven?
High above, above High
Bizarre, @ poppy sky height
leaping clouds on cloud 9
eyes, hypnogogic eyes
roams recalcitrant red
Idle! Martian! Deserts!
live streams can't pry
**** dried, silica tears
dam: # freedom cry
Free as a sand storm spins
Head: "I'm lost in the winds"
Headhunter's Hunger
Insatiable Appetite bites
Gnawing butterflies
crawling by poppy sky flowers
High above, above High
Heavenly Heights
Salvador Dali was a surrealist

— The End —