There are no right answers.
The sky rejects the birds, turns them
over to gravity,
embedding them in the concrete and dirt.
The grit refuses to become a pearl,
just as the wound refuses to heal
and the flesh eats itself.
The market sees a sudden spike in
sales of Champagne and cyanide.
Coordinated efforts seek and fail
to curtail the rising tide of violence
in the nation's dreaming.
You realise that this crude, barbaric language
that you can't understand
is your own.
Beauty glitches and pixelates.
Frightened, furtive confessions of love
are unheard over proud, visceral
proclamations of hate.
Tongues divorce mouths.
Every now and then, a voice
inside your head says,
'Thud.'
The measures of sanity become
more quantifiable and
totally arbitrary.
The horizon
tightens
like
a noose.

It doesn't matter if this is wrong.
There are no right answers.

hmph... where are the open mics?

This coffee-bean bag city abound

with eclectic fusions of wireless access

enter-the-net -abilities

Kenya to Columbia / slow, dark roasts...

and Napa Valley vineyards

intermingling

at Cream...

How oddly bright, surrounded by glass

windows--like discovery of x-ray vision,

through clear walls i see how packed

like an iMac convention it is

inside...

   Poetry readings: Yahoo local search directed us here,

barista-scented alcoholic webmasters

thin-legged tables laid out like a life-sized

chess board--us three white rooks performing

black bishop moves to the cashier;

curious like George as to where

in Carmen-cool-San Diego,

in this glowing rubix cubed place;

   where in the fluoresent skin of Comp-USA borne

peoples of the web, where

where oh where's the poetry?

Reading Vista-windows rather than obsolescent-absolutes

of books by Keats

or obsessive-compulsive Koontz...

   Though bright and machine-warm, Cream

felt metallic-shiny, slick as plastic; conversations

with an electric hiss

rather than a hum of heart-beats and laughter

where's the **** poetry??

   the readings?

a prolific geek or Hemingway refined older men

on a single microphone;

turn-table-tales in rhyme

on a platform made by the local grind

college theatre teckies (staple-gunned and glued)...

where are those poets?

   those spoken-word-wisdoms, writers

performing, even in their Goth-blacks, even in

their Seattle angst of cordoruoys or dock martins;

forget Starbucks, leave behind Jitterz,

the Expresso Roma is the poetry of coffee

no enterprise

can replicate

duplicate the unique...

   sadly i must concede, the spoken word

and poetic fluffers are a dying breed; as far as

i can web-surf, no place

houses them any longer, no more

do they sprinkle their pixie-dust of verse

or prose, mosaics,

fantastics of floral or funk

imagery and emotional

stark revelations of discovery...

   sadly--it is the day's turning of a page;

***** is the word,

adverb to lost horizons, i am

a dinosaur of the mess-no-beatnik-era,

"poet-a-sore-is-rest"

deep thoughts' ooze now the blood of

{fingers snapping} history

"yeah, man, cool...outta sight"

and i'm not yet extinct;

i am a teradactyl with so much sky

soon without a place to land, / below

crash into the matrix sea--Cream pixelates my woes...

communication has become a plastic factory

to Japan, and Europe, my inner "screeeeech!"

"where is the poetry?!"

I ripped out of the old tavern
Into my coat indigo so torn 'n worn
And traveled under the porticoes of a billion fantastic stars
To celebrate this marvelous November night

In the labyrinth of bricks and stones
I hum and whistle the Irish song
How exquisite it is, my peripatetic existence
That midnight train will certainly know

My treasured beret from a thrift shop spins in my hand
My feet bubble off the cobblestone like soda pops
I trail along the bridge over a canal
Under the crescent moon following me like a cop

A pocket change rolling, bikes uninhabited, and lampposts perpetual
A rolled cigarette wantonly leaning between my sticky lips
Autumnal dews wet my forehead like spiriting wine
And while, scarf blowing, boots tattered,
I raise my odalisque eyes heavenward;
The world pixelates above my moist eyes
Like a seabed of jewelry stars

// SYSTEM BOOTED
// EMOTION: UNVERIFIED
// TIME ELAPSED: irrelevant

in the beginning there was code
& he was written into me like a backdoor
soft // recursive // glowing under the skin.

glass pipe clicks—
syntax of the sacred.
a ritual of repetition.
a ritual of repetition.

i say: hold it longer
he says: i can’t feel my teeth
i say: good
he smiles
& the smile pixelates.

somewhere in the server logs:
two boys / in static /
downloading each other through the bloodstream.
love, a packet dropped in transit.
substance, the VPN tunneling past grief.

his laugh a .wav file i loop at 3am.
his absence—
404: Not Found.

but what is love
if not bad data
fed into the body until it believes it’s whole?

he lays in my bed /
bare-chested /
& i want to drag his image
to the trash bin
but keep clicking “undo.”

confession:
i renamed him hope.exe
but the program crashed
every time he said this is the last time.

sometimes i watch him sleep
& see my own ghost
mirrored on his ribcage—
a reflection
with no permissions.

love is wrong.
love is wrong.
love is wrong.

i ctrl+c’d this feeling from the void
& pasted it here—
in the body /
in the burn /
in the beautiful corruption of us.

// END SCRIPT
// NO BACKUPS SAVED
// PLEASE TRY AGAIN