On the balcony,
It's pseudo-social housing,
Nothing fancy.
So I'm on the balcony,
And there's this beetle, this little beetle
And it's either high with me
Or dying with me
Just kinda flying into the ground and sorta sliding around on its head
On the still sunlit concrete.
It stops. On its back, legs flailing in the
nothingness. It rights itself.
It's sat still (well, not really sitting; it's a beetle.
but I imagine it would want to be sitting. I'm sitting).
There's a lightning bolt urge to crush its tiny carapace,
Just as quickly dashed away.
I take my last drag.
We watch the setting sun a while.
Spring is beginning to warm.
I leave the beetle to its business and go inside.
Escapes won't save me;
How terrified I am.

Last night there was a spider
Floating down from the bathroom ceiling
Tethered by an invisible silk thread
On a backdrop of powerful yellow made dingy by the incandescent light.
It was so graceful.
It looked like it was falling in slow motion.
I went to the kitchen and got a plastic cup, and came back to the spider,
Scooped it out of the air carefully, catching the thread,
Went to the living room and threw it out the balcony door,
onto the then dark concrete
(I didn't see if the beetle was still there, I didn't think to look,
I didn't care, but I assume not).
So today I was volunteering in a bookstore
(I remind myself of that old saying: charity is the pastime of those who don't care)
And as I came down the stairs
(upstairs is sorting, downstairs is selling)
There in front of me, evental,
my whole horizon, centred, unexpected:
A familiar form that had forcedly been forgotten
And an all too familiar sensation,
a chest-tightening-heart-drumming
terror
as if thunder thundered just behind my head,
Zeus piercing my heart,
His claim:
A woman who works in the coffee shop
Who a few months ago I asked out
(not the coffee shop, they don't pay their taxes)
Who has a boyfriend who would say he has her.
I think my disdain for chauvinism and possessional language
still arise from motivations chauvinistic and possessive;
I have not outgrown the oppressors in me.

La Rochefoucauld once put it: 'there are some people who would never have fallen in love
if they hadn't heard there was such a thing.'
I'm one of those people, or at least it was wanted.

We had only really spoken on that one occasion
(not me and La Rochefoucauld, he's dead; the barista)  
and briefly on that one other occasion
other than those service-consumer paradigmatic motions and incantations
In the practico-inerte, or beings-in-themselves, alienated, i don't know.
But really, it hurts to be reminded.
She hadn't yet seen me.
I had absolutely no idea what to do for a few seconds.
I say hi and timidly waddle toward her
And at first she doesn't seem to notice, but then is like, hey.
The awkwardness is peppered with short exchanges of information
And smiles that remind my soul it's alive.
I'll skip my failures in making conversation:
Turns out she draws. An artist. The knife twisting.
She's not into politics though
As if that somehow changes things.
I buy a pile of books. We leave the shop.
We're walking the same way a while.
I'm dying here but above the clouds.
She says it's nice that it's warm when she comes out of work now.
I say something weird about spring.
The laugh says it all. Baudelaire said it all:
when you walk, you dance, when you speak, you sing.
(he's dead too)
I asked if there is a lost and found at the coffee shop: there is:
I intend to retrieve a gross lame letter I wrote her
that one time I broke the symbolic order,
to my shame and undisclosed superego humiliation
(an all too familiar sensation).
Am I in the age of guilt? Was I transubstantiatiated? And hell? Pardon the details too many and too few.
The short walk had filled me with such energy
to prevent me being sad when we parted.
Back on the balcony, in another sinking sunlight
The spider scurries out of sight,
And I can see a glimmering web built onto the vertical bars.

often i ask of my cigarettes that
they last forever. they always answer
in ashes, smoke the moonlight slow dancer
arching out of its own transient act

as if parting came easy to creatures
that dream of eternity, and wake up
again craving its adumbration, butts
spilling out of the tray, pale these seekers

their beauty not betrayed by their briefness
but by the dream, for some things are only
enjoyed by virtue of their vanishing.

it will free if it makes time for stillness.
be patient with what is strange—there, the opening.
breathe, and know nothing but fascination.

i'm a product of capitalism.
my momma shoulda known better,
there's no reward for social reproduction,
i'm a bad investment
and my history attest to that
and my trajectory is already set to a certain degree
for freedom demands strength and bravery
but i'm running deficits in those sectors.
and i often question if it's too late
for course correction.
i'm inauthentic.
crises are endemic to my life cycle.
i exhale pollution.
i feed off my own festering flesh.
i'm a breeding ground of oppression.
a tendency to lie to myself: austerity is the answer.
the competition is killing me;
when pressure doesn't make diamonds it intensifies violence.
my breath left when my father moved his assets offshore.
i'm poor, sordid and a parasite to the core.
my bread was plundered from unpeople in the name of a privilege i never asked for.
tell myself problems can be solved through purchase.
i'm stressed and spent and i can't pay my debts.
my passions arrested, i can't confess: looking for the door.
i'm not sure the least worst of all systems is worth it any more.

my life
is going to cost me dearly.
i didn't ask
for any of this.

my body and soul,
signed away before birth.
the devil takes me.
i try to sell my time into slavery:
it's all i've got, it's all i've got.
but i'm dead labour and depressed.

my life
is going to cost me dearly.
i didn't ask
for any of this.

and could it even be
that i'm in fact a lucky one?
aye, but there are luckier still
and always those less fortunate
while history remains that which it was made into;
the higher up you go, the less gratitude there is.
in retrospect, to never have been
would have been more than enough for me.

my life
is going to cost me dearly.
i didn't ask
for any of this.

1
at the inauguration of
the 45th
president of the most
powerful country on earth: a
White Man Of The Good One True Lord says
that in The Bible, rain
is the sign of
a blessing from
God.

2
perhaps rain is a blessing from God, perhaps
she's trying to cause a flood.

3
2016 was the hottest year on record.
we're going to boil,
America First
(well, really it's the poorest
non-white people who will feel it first, who are
feeling it as we speak,
as some speak of it
as if it wasn't real, our impact).
climate change and LGBT rights have already been removed from the White House website.

4
we all have our part to play
in the suicide of the human race.
America First.

5
perhaps i'll see you in the nuclear bunker
or if we're brave, by the barricades,
either way,
come bridges or walls,
this concerns us all, and
be careful, many still see the
skin
that is
not white, as dirt, and
be careful, The Man is not afraid
to grab you by the ***** (men
set the standard of ****** assault, ****,
what is acceptable; patriarchy
and patriotism go hand in hand, they even
descend from the same root word,
'ruling father', 'fatherland'), and
care for one another, defend
those who could just as well be you
next.
we are all just bodies that feed the machine.
we are all in chains, robbed of time, we all
have a world to gain.
"because things are the way they are
things will not stay the way they are."

6
when will a "Native American" be president?
is it not their land?
imagine what the world would look like
if the founding pillars of
America
had been genocide and slavery...
(it would look like this.)
can you imagine a Muslim president?
there's every reason to believe
that Foreign Policy means
terrorism
in a foreign language.

7
"first as tragedy, then as farce."
******'s moustache.
some strange yellow thing
on an orange head.

8
God as The Father
was a metaphor
that was appropriate for a time
past.
did you hear the one about the
astronaut?
when they returned to earth,
peopled asked them,
When you ascended into heaven,
did you see God?
the astronaut said Yes.
the people asked desperately of
what God was like.
the astronaut said,
She Is Black.
there's also the one about the rock.
no matter how massive and solid it is,
if you and the rock are
both falling off a cliff,
clinging onto it won't
save you.
my god is an indisputable
feeling
that comes and goes,
sometimes impossible, nevertheless
necessary.

9
"where there is oppression, there is
resistance."
"it is right
to rebel."

10
though the enemy is abominable,
you need not despair.
nor do you need hope
to take action.
out of nowhere, by hazard and courage and angst,
an event can change everything.
"cast away illusions,
prepare for struggle."

11
God bless the (Dis-)United States of America.

is that it?
no.

most people leave an impression on me
like footprints in the sand,
washed away by the waves that encroach over time.
you're more like the meteorite
that wiped out the dinosaurs:
you re-cast the dice of my world.

in the garden of my life,
the seed of death is planted.
the seasons roll over me
like the winds over the ocean.
the tree of love bears no fruit
and the ivy and vines of isolation grow tighter.
the night sky is a mirror:
every star is collapsed.
each gulf is expanded by the absence of all the yawn of time;
half the moon laughs at my misfortune, justly,
while the other half, unseen, weeps.
dreams that fill my silences are destined not to come true.
every word has become flimsy and untrustworthy,
but they're all i have to build a bridge that reaches you.

(if hell is other people
then submit me to the devil's reign.
if solitude is freedom
then slip me into the heaviest chains.
allow me my weakness—for now, for now.)

so afraid was i
                                    to put pen to paper

for fear nothing would come, nothing
                                                         ­      would reveal

                                                         ­                    and lo, behold—

                              what chance
                                            to have stumbled
                                    upon this place.


          and but what if all my love turned to dust?
                    it would matte the silence like an untouched skin

                                                           ­  electric

           it came unseen, anterior to knowledge

                                                      ­       exceeding it


desire was the flame, the heat, the function, the burning bright, the sun, the roar and the dance, the play of frivolous gods, the bite, the consuming, the unrest of molten core, spark, flicker

desire was the sea, the waves coming to claim what was only ever borrowed from them, the bounty and breast and beacon of life, that vast graveyard, the unending gift, now peace, now storm

and desire was void and lacked nothing and produced
the real


                                                          ­            and what, for all that,
                                                           ­                       remains?


a quiet collection of dimming experiences
the tender redolence of human encounters
a song and music in the heart, if you are capable of listening carefully
a whole body blessed with the texture of gratitude
laughter—its promise


                                                       ­               an eternal joy, given
                                                           ­           in the senses
                                                          ­            and senselessly          


go now among the strange things of this world
and may your existence be a dance across time


to have dared will always have been
the essential,


                                                    ­       come desert, or mutilation,
                                                                ­                         or even flight

                                                        i­f yet flight.


we do not yet tread among the ashes of the sun.
there is something vaguely familiar to hope in that
at the very least. on.

i cannot reach you
like the thing-in-itself:
i can only think you
and know you exist,
sublimely, like this isolated love
that was inscribed in all the virtual scope of space
even anterior to the time of the arche-fossil;
a tiny tragedy promised by eternity
made manifest in the place called here and now
by way of infinite, complicit, contingent physics.
and all this for no reason at all.
a beautiful, traumatic vista that sometimes reveals
questions that cannot be answered and the beyond.
and if it were all to collapse for no reason at all,
what would it matter?
at least then, i would not need to reach you.

agonising
over tiny details
of language:
the beauty of almost
infinite permutations,
up close,
makes for narrow breathing space
in a labyrinth
where you remain elusive.

rust is the template of our salvation.
we are all drug addicts and prostitutes,

                                                   ­                                except there are exiles.

we fixate on the mirror to escape
ourselves.

there are no real words, we vanish into
a misspelled being. sight imaginary; thought
symbolic; only touch is ever real.

it’s impossible to think your way out

                                                            ­                           of a refugee camp.

you can only struggle

or be privileged
enough to move like capital across borders
(freely).

the other is injected into me:
it is the denial of the addiction
that is making me sick. *semper eadem.

and we had but
yesterday as if it
was always
going to be
enough, but no
tense that we could scrounge up
between us
quite captured
the moment.
perhaps tomorrow.

the thrill and guilt
of transgression
unhinges my very being.

a foreclosing law is laid down
on the fierce skin of justice.
duty and danger calls.

and should the heavens truly fall,
if i'm caught, or probably even if not:
it will be an even greater struggle than ever before, living myself,
but that's not all, at the very least, that's not all.

we became so accustomed
with dying
that living
no longer came naturally.

there's no satisfying you people.
****.

where is the time that drips like honey from the ark of eternity?
under the starry skies that are you eyes!
and yes, i've used that metaphor too many times:
so be it! so be it!

soft are the lips of truth, unworthy are my own.
up, down: my ever undulating tongue.
sinking into your seraphic image,
i slow dance with plasma shed from the sun.

i'm captured by the gaze of your coruscating eyes,
i must risk disaster, fly, and not be petrified;
that smile, that smile inspires a desire,
a desire to inspire that smile of yours myself.

mass grave of wasted days
outer reaches of meaningless ***
system of grand ideas amounting to
            0
dead heat of futility
thought migrating out of the confines of the human brain
endless reduplication of signs signifying
            **** all
black hole of love
commodities on all sides
lonely ecstasy
appearing without being
fishhooks of want
time without number
number without form
substance rotted from the inside
boredom
            filling interstices of voids

and you, if you, always
            somehow
untouched by these pallid things

keep on your seeking
            if you can,
o joy, go on, if you can

the red moon.
the red horizon.
the red necessity:
a world for us all
or death, despair, and death
forever and forever and forever
in the blink of a blind eye.

cosmic aperture,
let me look, let me
explore, friend.

say sincere enough and it becomes sinister.
say it sincerely enough and it becomes...
—my angst is piqued, soon my anxiety will peak.
the nausea seeps in where the light fades out.—
the sirens, the silence, the single drumbeat in the bed:
getting to sleep will be a sorry affair,
the revelations coming too late, always too late.
i await the dreadful morning of forgotten dreams
when i must rise again and repeat and repeat,
my transactions and transgressions, this stasis,
repeat and repeat, until once more i can put off sleep no longer,
nor quite receive it neither.
"forgive me, forgive me."
i bid my ghosts the most sincere apologies.

i have hit rock bottom, and now i am
pestled into it. my body has been
forgotten, my metal appendages
are becoming independent. o man
you beast, you insult to beasts, you maker
of beasts please i beseech you unburden
yourself of yourself and me now learning
i have squandered my learning and learning
of my eyes and teeth, lips and tongue and wonder(s)
unclean, torn, horror, rot set in where hoarded.
lexicographers of injustice all
bribed to omit that which was done to you.

poets
make great
stepping stones.

greeting faces just to watch them go.
slipping away, the makings
of fragile eternity.
finding traces of you here, traces there:
i grasp them so close to my heart,
so tightly
that they are crushed.

the tree rustling
the wind:
speaking and not.

so it was there in a one-way mirrored sea
like the symphonies of last nights missing
like dreams, tying together a raft of flotsam
and bottles with only their messages
keeping them afloat, the rocks at the bottom
of the glasses, delirium, the deserts
of time, trying to re-member the mind
dis-membered across a splitting headache
that will teach you as much as zen anecdotes
you tell other people, you only have
what was already running out before,
where someone left the idle shore to lose
and be lost to you who will miss the bliss
of whispers before that last kiss, like a grand mirage.

the air is filled with the scent of spring flowers
whose names i do not know,
whose deaths i will not notice.

messiahs and heroes
pass by each day and night
in nameless droves.

in my travels i kept meeting philosophers:
the first philosopher taught me that i need
to grow up,
her medium, a picture of regret;
the second philosopher's advice was
to stay away from philosophy for my own good,
she told me straight faced and direct;
the third philosopher told me i need to
get to grips with just how much i will never know,
and i learnt just how attractive i find wisdom
and how out of reach she really is.

in a kiss
is kept a fragment
of eternity
and a torturous memory
when your lips drip poison.

within ten minutes of getting home
i'm already ******
and reminded that the highs
are always followed by the most atrocious lows
already moaning in my poetry
and loneliness has been keeping me company
since the moment i left rooms full of laughter
and my silent room full of unread books and forgotten pages
hasn't yielded an answer
already moaning in my poetry
always moaning in my lonely poetry
and i remember a precious friend told me
he had been jealous of me for achieving scenes
that coloured his angst riddled dreams
in times that i don't like to remember
that were anchored by secrets under sleeves
and crude masks, and childish fantasies,
and fake pleasantries, and keys to an empty home,
and a nauseating shape and face, and a lack of talents,
and an absence of stable or intimate relationships
—pft, what's changed?—
and he couldn't believe that i was jealous of him
this whole time
and i will keep being so for time to come.
but it still pleases me to see him succeed
even from my unseen observatory of squalor,
and i do adore hearing his lover speak of
how her love for him was born in fire,
awkwardness and innocent symmetry.
in all my travels, i have never found anything
more beautiful than friends
and why should i need to?

our curses make up the rumbling grey
that blots out the sun and spits
spears of fire into our retinas;
our blessings make up the very
earth we stand on
and seldom take account of.

i remember reading somewhere
that when some of the first poems were being written,
they were made with rhythm and rhyme in mind
because it was believed that would
carry their messages further, all the way to the gods!
i'm not yet sure what i'm praying for
nor even if it's gods i want to be heard by.

no one seems to understand me but i
understand why that is the case:
they can't read minds; and mine a mind
i haven't even deciphered yet,
a territory of oppressors and elusive solace.

what can i say of my pain other than
it hurts?
why do i insist
on sweating out confessions of demons
and performances of buffoonery
when my belly is full of *****?
and why does the sight of the ceiling
at 4AM so often act as a catalyst for tears?
perhaps a life of depression
is the most agonising way to die
(if only for how much time it takes),
though certainly i am still ignorant
of the true horrors that lie behind
the veil of privilege undeserved.
the conquerors' half of my blood
feeds a fountain of guilt
while the conquered half whispers
of sorrow, revolt and broken chains.
oh endless body, give strength
to my transient spirit fading
that i might share it with our flesh.

your soul is a fragment of a puzzle piece.
my soul is a fragment of a puzzle piece.
the souls we love, hate, don't care about,
don't know, grieve for or have forgotten
are fragments of puzzle pieces too
and each a world unto itself.
i implore you,
explore.

i am just a shadow in the dream of a ghost
of these flows of light that are lost on you
like so many endless turning maelstroms
at a molecular level, i too
not noticing through all the commotion
i am in the orbit of a black sun.
your woman, your woman does not exist.
a man is made of insecurity
and all the history of violence.
the symbolic universe is not
big enough for freedom. it will not be
expanded by words: detention centres
must collapse – yarl’s wood, its whole idea, a start
to end systematic sub-contracted
sexist racist subsidised violence.

and man should rather perish than take and steer
and twice rather perish than make himself
hated and feared. he said from on high
paraphrasing a misogynist.
britain: two women a week are murdered
at home, by a partner or ex-partner;
one third turned from refuge for lack of space;
austerity closes thirty-two refuges
and counting.

before we met,
i was living my death:
you became my valkyrie.
(if only i could say this
and know it as reality.)

i am attached to you
as is the rain
to the cobble stone clouds.

the sharp sting of shame, barbed, serrated and twisting,
will be dulled by the long passing of time i will soon forget...
but this is no comfort or consolation for me tonight,
as i am reminded of other days i would rather not have lived.

another rotation around the massive burning ball of gas
that gave a random rock ball countless forms of life and
a history
like no other in all the known and unknown universe.
22. not much to show for it, but no time at all
in the geologic scheme of things.
we are born between two unimaginably hot bodies:
the immobile sphere of the sun
and the flowing magma below.
here we are between two inhospitable environments
blooming like flowers.
and between us and each body, another between:
a silent infinite void
and the shifting crust booming with eruptions at the edges.
all this indifference to life paramount to its existence.
i like to think i've learnt a thing or two, but
i could be wrong.
for instance i said the sun is immobile and that the void
is silent. but the sun is at the edges of a galaxy
orbiting its centre, and the galaxy itself is on course
to collide with andromeda
to form a new galaxy altogether,
and celestial bodies have their songs,
you can even hear the rings of saturn singing.
so i could be wrong, it is a tradition of our species.
indeed i think this was the first thing i ever really learned:
how wrong you are, how there will always be more
to this world than what you know.
the next thing i really learned:
you do not know what a body can do, you do not know
how good a body can feel, not yet, but you will.
something i was taught, in passing:
no one moment is unendurable if you abide in the now.
all that is unendurable comes from letting the mind scout ahead
and letting it bring back a report of what is to come, and like
an idiot, listening to that report and believing the mind knows
what it is talking about. the mind is an idiot. listen to the body,
here, with you, not going anywhere. build a wall around each day,
each hour, each second if you have to. do not look over it, ahead or
behind, do not count. abide.
and last, but not least, something i am just now beginning to learn:
god is not what you think, like, at all,
and that's okay.
i've heard it said that love is just a word,
but nothing is just anything.
there are more planets than stars
but most of them have never been and will never be
touched by light or life.
all these statements are not wholly unrelated, as with
all things.
a wise monk will tell you that children of fire
seek after fire
whatever that means.

the traces
held so closely
they break.

all that was said
and left
unsaid.

the touch
of the beloved
a fading memory.

your smile
like the sea greeting the pink dawn that day
vanished into starless night.

and i, in truth
though torn open and emptied
still draw from the well
of gratitude, that endless sky
that you left in me.

a parting gift.

fragments of light.

tender mystery.

barred
from the body of paradise,
i seek for knowledge.
experimenting, transgressing:
the ethical act—
fleeing:
all the while in search of brick-like concepts
and comrades to throw them with
and build with,
whether it be barricades for the many
or shelters for all.
we'll look back, and say that our salvation was in fact the Fall
or we shall not be:
praise be to Eve, teacher of freedom,
the courage to stand, be counted, and refuse,
and love too;
praise be to Eve, breaker of the neurotic's dream,
my Venus and pioneer of the mind.

i am ashamed of my body!
how it must be ashamed of me,
whatever i am.

consider the inner stream
all that flows in you
all you hold true and hold yourself true to
desire, fear, and dream

the words and their copula
what you want to say
and what you will leave unsaid, to keep safe
hidden phenomena

the thoughts that ebb up against
all the things you saw
the grief, despondency, and joy they cause
and their consequence

the icons sunk and swimming
time, person, sense, home
nights alone, things for which you must atone
waters shimmering

those you loved and those you lost
those you won't let go
secrets you keep, emotions you won't show
gift, fishhook, cost

a thousand different currents
are pouring through you
memories, questions, laughter, light, heat, clues
your defeats and triumphs

a thousand confluences
baptised with your name
out from every corner of life they came
and found congruence

and you were once without form
but then you opened
to let in the dancing multitude whence
came your singular course

all flow with the inner stream
finds its source without
and all that flows would flow back out, no doubt
desire, fear, and dream

—

if ever you are lost
follow the stream
it begins with opening
and leads to the unknownness
that you didn't know you were looking for
all along

i grow tired of my repetitions
i grow tired of
well, you know.

how they are enjoying themselves!
I want to tell them a haiku
or a senryu or a tanka or something
but no one makes time for minimalism.
(how they must maximise everything!)

i know where to go
to find skin that is a refuge
and not a prison;
but under the cold sun of isolation,
the flower of dread blooms in my heart:
i am petrified, immobile.
it is asked of me to cast it all away, to cast off from these shores
and return nevermore:
for from out at open sea is from where desire calls,
and so i must tear away from the fish-hook-eyes,
make sail, hands trembling, the clock of decision drawing a breath,
and declare that the winds take me out of the bay,
onto the fierce and serene waves, and that the night skies guide me:
to the horizon, mythic islands, sirens and rocks.
i must not give way, i must forge ahead, and solidify my art,
despite the flower of dread that ever blooms in pit of this fragile heart.
(for the skin that is a refuge, to make me robust,
for the treasure before the flotsam—under a new sun,
it's beyond, beyond more than enough. )

i'm undone,
thank god and all the ******* angels
in heaven, and fallen ones too:
i'm undone
before your endless, ecstasy-emitting body.
these ruins of the future
are a paradise
in this riveting flux; consecrated and desecrated,
made seraphic and savage
in the undulating ebb and flow of our flesh.

i contemplate my philosophotheatrics
amidst the anthroposcenery.
i’m a joke
and sometimes i can laugh at that.
i hope the gods unconscious enjoyed their comedy.

me a poet paramore of war
and laughter
afforded a good seat.

buddha without me buddha within me,
i choose the uncomfortable night,
there can be seen stars and things that need doing;
i think no longer will i sing and dance
with all the world ablaze
so enough of your death drum.
give it a rest.
i don’t often meditate though.
i mediate.
and meander towards the spectacle exit inferno
and contemplate
how to make fire burn fire
as a child of fire myself.

i threw myself into politics
then had to get home.
i ran to the train.
i'm sat. book open.
she's sat opposite,
also with a book.
how visions of the future blossom from aleatory situations!
what virtual constellations reveal themselves in these celestial scope revolutions of ideas!
how all the categories are shook!
some blokes are sat near in a four seater,
three of them i think, i dare not look. (why are they always in packs?)
they're complaining about the football game
i didn't know had been played in the city we're leaving,
and extolling how they've been drinking since this morning
(it's almost 8PM now)
and they're rather quite loud.
one of them says everyone is reading Harry Potter.
another says "******* is it Harry Potter."
"it's like a library in here." "i don't read."
they start to talk about ****** foreigners and ******* birds.
"that one behind you is alright, ey, ey."
they're talking about her.
i, all the while: an immigrant's son, a cowardly statue
whose basic elements had been rendered into fury.
i try to tell myself:
these are my working class brothers, my fellow sufferers,
a picture of people i'm fighting for...
it's even for people like them that mothers teach us how to love...
but inescapable is the instinct that they are a lost cause
and that liberating oppressors would be counter-productive.
seeing as i am being cynical:
i, for all my principles and sense of duty,
i who has not read one page since i sat,
my fantasies are just as possessive
even if they are dressed up in metaphysics;
a sordid, crumbling, self-corroding man through and through.
at least my family in the east and spain and greece and elsewhere is still beautiful.
we arrive at our stop. an empty freedom.
the blokes are first to get up. i try to be in time with her;
our eyes meet and she gives a smile i'll remember,
but i didn't really manage to return anything at all.
another lost future i began to fall for;
perhaps i lack the strength to prevent these premature autumns...
well, my silence in the field says it all.

do unto others as you would have done unto yourself
and do for yourself what you would do for others:
take care.

i reach into the treasure box of language:
what was once shining and vital, far off,
now rots in my hand.

were i to build a bridge
- that crosses the aching gulf between us -
made of letters, gestures and sounds,
would you trust me enough
to walk across it?
...
the bridge served no purpose
- it went unnoticed -,
eventually torn by tectonic departure.
the real problem was that
we weren't meeting half way.
...
looking back, i wouldn't have crossed it from the other side,
wherever that was.
it's almost funny, how easy it is to delude yourself.
and yet it's so strenuous,
deluding another into saying "i love you."

all i want to do is help people
because all i want is
someone to help me.
struggles struggle on.
press on, press on.

if you look into the essence of things
for long enough, the truth will manifest
that despite what the universe is telling you,
you don't really need that Big Mac, at best

a deep desire's unsatisfaction
is its only real redeeming feature
for its completion is its death, and worse,
your loan will not cover your expenses.

but the sacred only enters when life
is lived beyond need, and all of future
is a faded dream, with life completely

emptied of engineering, and the eye
in excess consumes the sun to suture
itself to night, so to see things frivolously.

a surface of water, still, no depth, no body,
surface only in name, water more than name,
a trans-finite plane; ripples out of nothingness,
still again, ripples again, a mirror again, disturbed again;
reflections clear as day, a void, a chaos, lost constellations,
new constellations, a cosmos,
a black sun, a radiant dark,
disturbed again, ripples again over the surface of pure experience:
who else but us?
experience only in name—us, only in name.
who dares becoming-ocean wins.

rattling in the canyons of madness,
where did you make this pilgrimage from?
where are you going?
or are you dancing, with no concern with where you might finish,
but only for how well you danced?
this man was given the world and this one
a space on the pavement
and hands to beg and a skull to contain a torturer and shame—
a thousand others pass by:
hollow, hollow, hollow! and i the same!
who wills the world to be as such?
it's not hard to know why.
who builds monoliths, piercing the gutted sky,
on the destitution of my connection to you
out of the concentrated expense of countless invisible victims?
in the shadows of their towering opulence:
sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
i'm sorry, i do not know, alone, how to help.