grudge

no one could hold one longer
than the ex, his
dad once dissed his smoked
turkey drumsticks at thanksgiving.
he never ate with the man again. i
think of all the alienated
friends and family he could be leaning
on now his hips have been replaced but he
goes it alone cuz, well, when you burn bridges
eventually people stop giving you matches.
it took me quite a few years to run
from his fires but now when he
refuses to pick up his son for the weekend
cuz a teenage sense of time doesn't
match his schedule, i remind the boy
that the father's the one missing
out. not that he'd know it, he's too busy
picking at loss scabs, carving scars
for inheritance ,blinding himself
to the time he has left. he'll fill it
up though, a bowl of gnashed
teeth and justification breakfast
at his table for one.

a complicated situation

at the heart of it is the fool
you know, how you have to speak truth
that no one else dares
but make the king laugh? cuz you're
a poet, you sing for your supper
and scraps from the royal table
are better than what you get dumpster diving.
and if you're a good poet, then you're a fool
and if you're a good fool, you own the folly.
i make the king laugh with my tears, painted
with mercury and swan feathers. impulsively
i grab his crown, place it on my head.
fall down writhing with the weight of such power.
he laughs and longs to leave it on my head.




we pass a lake off the side of an interstate.
you want to know about gators. my dad says
they're more afraid of us than we of them.
except what about the collective consciousness
of the gator species, maybe they figured us out?
you nod. some truth to that evolution.
anyway they like little dogs mostly. suddenly, as if

i'd just smoked some weed, the powerful's vision
of my antitude comes to me. how i know
i'm even less. not ant, not even clay. maybe a molecule
of clay, or maybe a constituent of that molecule.

but i'm so big in my eyes. snout just above the waterline
peering. jaws, claws, tail the iceberg underneath.

you point to the book in my lap, it lays where
my long legs disappear , at a critical juncture .
'the uses of truth'? i can imagine politicos reading
that book. for spin.

you move in those circles daily.
i just want a ride to a distant city. netbased
hitchhiker seizing an opportunity .you offer to take me
shopping. i say you know, i've never done that
with a date. tempting, but i don't really need anything.

not even thongs? are you wearing panties?
yes, thanks. cotton bikinis. and this skirt you like?
not skirt. skorts. combination skirt and shorts
a trompe l'oeil the look
on your face says
there will be no fucking me
in that. i like it that way.


*




but you know, work
no matter how easy it may seem
can be an obstacle to a fool's mission.
especially if she can't quit the dayjob
cuz the king, tho he likes the entertainment
can get it for free so why pay me?
i take the pragmatic, wad it into three balls
which i throw up in the air. i wait.
they don't come back down. i think of gods, belching.








*








still i drive to work this morning. well, this afternoon.
had to see the doc cuz i'm sick. spring finally got me
with an official winter cold. my lungs are sponges made of rock.



sick and alone? yeah, i been there. inside of a marriage
taking care of kids and going to work. no one else cared then
just like now. stop at this walgreen's i need
to get some mucinex. thins out the mucus. you want to kiss me
but are afraid of disease. you think you need something
from the drugstore too. you think you feel electricity.
but i feel static. i guess that's one flavor.




















*


o woe o woe. the way i'm going i'm goin
to be your victim. but come on heidigger
put away the photon beam and come out to play.
no one's a victim here but time. sun's doing
what it's done for your whole life.
if you fall victim to light
well, they used to call that a blessing.
so stop my whining. let me get a dramatic
change on the line.
















*



so dominion. it has its uses of course.
spells, enchantments, the money things buy.
sit on your coinage throne and count the number of heads
at nuremberg or find the spiritual in a blender of faith
with a cherry on top. strong will , and spiritual truth
inside crumbs of a church disentigrating in ascent ,
these are the hymns of enlightenment,
power and pacification the foundation of the fool.







so, here's our rural, we grow strawberries
every year i try to bring my kids
out here to pick them. it's something my mom and gramma did.
i like to think it'll show them how hard that work is.
make them not want to do it. you say
yeah, i grew up migrant. six months in north carolina
six in new york. it was good to learn
that there were differences in places, in ways
we were treated. so when did they stop jim crow where
you lived? oh, a couple years before they integrated the schools.
the law may have changed, but convention took longer.
i nod my head. there's lost birds skewing across the sky,
clouds with heartbeat looking for a lake's lap. no rain
no rain, they cry, under the grey wet sky,
no rain, written in flaps and dips and brown dry grasses. below
are rows and rows of heavy duty black plastic fields spaced by a man's
stride. green topknots strangling out of the oily stuff .
men an women bend over the birdless land, picking fruit
the color of blood brushed lips. so kissable. retailable.
















*











strength is a passing influence.
the shaman bridging the sky to the earth
is not for fools such as you.
let it go. and in that you have released
the snake. green scales and red underbelly
a strawberry writhing to a gator hula



why are you telling me to let go of the snake?
the ability to give love why
would you tell me to let go of that?
well if you love something....


after all you've been saying you don't trust her
she's betrayed you, or you've betrayed her
you don't know what she wants you don't believe a word she's said
in forever. she's so fickle she's a butterfly you picked up
already dead with bejeweled and bedecked wings
some flitting appearance of life and
you pin her to the wall
where the fan rustles her dress occasionally.
tres retro hippie
so hey, if you feel that way, then just let her go.
she was a passing influence. a pissing away of the gold.
a saturday afternoon sunset heading into sunday morning old.

oh my oh my
what ho the victimhood. sleep would be good.
i let love go, what ho! i drive her to the woods
and let her see who is fairest in the land.

i release the snake so she may love again.....

wait wait. that's one interpretation. but the stories don't jive.
yes you have to have strength to give love. from whence it would flow
without the inner font. but release it


huh, i wonder what's god doing cuz the next thing i know
here's the king of wants, with magic wands , partriarchal
and stuffy. give him a kiss, it's you he's missed. but the priest
takes me by the hand and shows me the backroom where brahma's
got his four arms stirring the fire, milk and lemon juice
the creator/destroyer seeking something airy and light to feast upon.
come join the rites.


i speak to you of god in the hinterlands of disneyworld.
faith and its meanings. earlier in the bookstore
i persue philosophy and its twisting truths.
still i envy the fortitude it gives you.
this can be seen in the measured way you embrace a saganist
philosophy. not ecstatic in the least. a puzzled smile
plays over your mouth. you would buy the book for me if i ask.
i do not ask. i spend my own gift card. wait for you to offer.
you do not offer.










but there's still more.
it's a complicated situation.
i found my cigs. nicotine to help me along.




















*













i am the devil. i'm offering rebirth and vision.
this is my role, it is written. taboo on the color
line playing in your head. you don't understand
yet that fantasy falls once you possess it. you've
never been to disney land. but whatever. we discuss
the candidate and hope. politix and meaning. jaded
and seeming. the state rolls by in fits and starts.
you point to a huge cowfield and ask the going price.
i have no idea but understand the nature of seize.
wonder what wild action would open avenues
in the dark underbelly of the palmettos where i built
my playhouses. i have to explore these spaces.
this is what my lines say. the whip comes down.
the directors hand is strong. god has his reasons.


















*


and all around me are the ones who
love me. these sere fields, the asphalt
breeding distance and closure. telephone
lines, redundant as school paper
roll alongside the red vehicle in which
we travel. your hand moves to my knee
when i discuss things of a sexual nature.
your breath wants to be minnows swimming
but i am detached and matter of fact.
i tell you about the abortion last week.
you don't want to be in the same place
so you chose your words carefully. i laugh
and let you in on my secret. "don't forget my name".
even tho it's false. only the ones who truly
love me know my real name. i have yet to learn it.
i do not want to know if yours is true

i only want to know how your grandmother is alive
at one hundred and six. whose laundry she did
what secrets were pressed into whose starched collars.
but your lips are sealed. you keep them for her.
i might write them down, empty her of treasure.
but the goddess is full of justice and love.
the ratio? 2:1. so, plenty to go around.
but she might not appreciate the set of my jib.
so, sail on mother. sail on.















*









()9

ah wands. the nine of. and strange how it appears there
serendipitously guided by the god of my hand. the gnosticism
begins to fade out at this late hour. sleep becomes my muse.
threes and multiplicities thereof. the power of nature, life's
persistence in the face of it all. you know. that big space
out there that holds nothing, room for us all. this is my hope
arrogant fool that i am. life and how it springs. the feel
of a skin evolved in absolute zero. how that translates to human
of another species. if the end of the world is coming
then i want to feed these bones to the now. a burst of energy
to finish off the race.


































()_*90
















you know we really do tend to need to a reason.
religious structure has been known to transform
more than one lemming. i mean keep going on this path
traveller and you might just find a lucky rabbit's foot.
or a purpose. either one is good to keep on chain,
dangling over your hip. the one you slide next to mine
in the private booth where the bamboo shade gets lowered
after they bring the sushi and sake, and harmony
begins in the pit of our stomachs at last.

so angular

so angular

a flash of red , robin flit of a three year old
gril playing in the palm tree's ponytails. hide and seek
with sun and shadow. i watch her but not too closely
i don't want to be her predator. taking her innocence
and making it perform for me outside my window.
it's a long distance from across the yard thru this glass
she peers across the clear divide. perplexed faun. i smile
and she's safe again, auntie. builds her own world.
shack of stairs and panelling
roof. house of whimsy.

remember the time you grabbed the dead stalks and pretended
monkey, some ramifications of play. how my love
was strangled in twists and so could not join you
in the tiki room for aperitifs. we watched him go
ballooning into the unimaginable, the lived. what we couldn't
express was our own movement, the recession from her eyes.
but we tried. i have the files saved on the web. somewhere.
one day i hope to pass
by them like coincidence.


so u/i watch from the third story
cuz three is a magical number it's balance
with background. something to lean against.

succulents in the window soak up sun slanted
while venetion blinds wrestle with venusian moons.
there's graffitti in wings painted with fake snow

on the top pane . its shadow falls across
the rise of your arm as you shift deeper
into the pillow of us. i feel this only because

i have my eyes closed. the flight of a gull,
mundane and exquisite. places the sun
doesn't touch are like dreams with skin.

yes, let's look at that.

call for reconcile.
the famished crock o dial.


the streets are buzzy at 130. you tell
me how you saw her today, a little more
a little less than what you want. you say
i think i should be alone for a while
and i say yes, knowing that a while
is never enough. knowing how falling into
bed without a way to wrap your arms
around more than pillow won't last too long.

why would i want you back? because you have
lived what i was for you, now. because
you could now be grateful for that but
you claim you always were tho you treated me
like shit. you don't want to open up
the psychic pathways between us again, it was
a trap that kept you anchored too long
in an untenable situation. now that you have
someone your age who has loved you you can see
how it should be. and how messed up i am.
but you still love me. i tell you under the interstate
that i still love you and you say i love you too.
but you mean luv and i mean love. i've
been leaving you for 9 months. time to birth
this goodbye for real. i didn't cry much
a few tears i had to dredge up and fry
like cheesecake with onions.

i will be powerless to stop now.
all this crap in my head pointing to nothings.
the willful disregard of silence.
the year of living magically almost over.
now it's painful to go back to where we were.
almost more so than actually being there.


that's prolly why you said, and this is the thing
your wisdom about things which i have no clue
or maybe i do have clues but i just can't state them
but i just can't live them. you sez look
we had something but that was then. we can't go
back to it. we can't rebirth into it. it was
and now it's not. you at least remember how bad
it got. and i do. i do. so. i was sad
cuz you are willing to give her a chance
and i think o if only i was younger you would have
maybe given me one too. or if i ws younger
if
if
if
hah. like possibility? no way.
i am where i am. i am there.
not anywhere before or after.

alone in my perceptions. no one
will ever see it like i do. and i can't
see it like any one else. i just hope
stupidly for a different pov.
and even with someone of my gen, it doesn't come.
i spit on convention and it pushes me off a tower.


so i see another soul with eyes
and i want to be with him as if jumping
from one to another will put me where i want to be.
in the arms of an angel. fly away from here.



if what you want is to play the fast lane
well there ya go. you dn't have the bod for it
or the personality.















maybe i begin to engage in the now again.
not some possible but what's happening now.
not to be too pragmatic. remember to write a poem
to get the say right.



it was funny to me that i was your fantasy
that you were too caught up in your upbringing
and the things that formed you. how black men
don't like to eat pussy. how differently we percieve
the things of this world. how you let me talk
and talk but nothing comes out of you.
i tried to get you to open up about carl sagan
philosophy, but you didn't want to
but you couldn't. as if what i could say about you
would damage you somehow. i'll forget your name, you
never had a name for me, you were that guy
wanting a lasting friendship wanting bullshit
to substitute for relationship. wanting sex
but unable to provide it. i think
that i am poison to passion now. i think
i think too much, need someone to listen
to me for a change but no one's really innarested.

not really. only you, you should be my first love.
you should take care of me, you should do my laundry
clean my bathroom, smoke my pot, put my makeup on,
brush my teeth. you should love me because i
am you.

what are you wearing?

there's a triangle triading back to my pointed heart.
healing in sex taking more time than i want

oh fuck the busslights and ambulances.
just say it. i still love you. what does the rot say?

i feel like a cat that needs purrr, but i only want
one pair of hands. well, maybe 2. and there's a devil
coming my way. it's good that you're out of the picture now
loser in a blender, waiting for push.

let's see what shenanigans sex has in store for me.
i know where my heart wants to go and it's forbidden
love. do you think we could be again or do you want
to be gone from me, entirely? you said so on
new years eve and now, a scant couple months later
here we are again, smiling together wanting

each the other to be a different age. or maybe that's just me.
i could call you and find out but i don't want to
rather live with this hope less ness buried inside.

meanwhile the muse talks to me from across the bay
where jesus used to live. he wears a dark cape, his skin
dusky and slight. lips of the nile. how he wants
this complicated dirt. i stole that and a cherry
vanilla djarum from his pack. why can't i quit romance?


sure there's safety involved. keep the jumper cables
in the trunk for dead batteries and wraparound protection
in event of a serial killer roadside rescue.

i want to ask you if you really thought
it would have worked given the obstacles
we still face i want to know you would walk
thru the fire with me again. right now.
come on, take my hand.

archs again

gardens from bach the mountains enfold
cathedral glove ly, lovely
smoke across the hills. bee
circlings, begonias the color of sun on the edge
of the earth. crow caws the morning
a persian stalking beans .

from the third floor sun porch the sun
heats me up. coffee and nicotine buzz

i finally went to sleep about midnite canada time. woke up and it's still morning here. feel good tho. i've been thinking about how i love these mountains. but i never saw them in the snow. i'd move here as if this were paradise.

the crows are upset today. the fires are coming near . we're going to pick raspberries soon. i'm taking this and posting it. words are leaving me for life.



















*


it's not my story but it's a good one




*





trashpo
ezOP
(8/2/07 9:43 pm)
24.67.207.31
Reply | Edit | Del

wilding can happen anywhere the sky is blue above the peaks.
trees a cup of mountains. you have
that instinct revolutionaire
admiration for all that you could not do.
no one takes care of you in the night
when the moon eats your face.
mornings bring recognition and fame
that you assemble with each story, mascara
for your conspiracy, loud sex from the couple
next door, which you enjoy. who would not?

stacks of hardrives, towers, modem cards,
rubegoldberian paths thru roses on the mount
a skylight in the corner of your story
sunlight a postcard from outside.

in the dark there's something
you cling or clinging whistles
a hummingbird
a very large and feathered wasp
from the hive hounding wild cherry corpses.
houndling raspberries and symphonies
of burst. i bleed a cut
on my arm, a nick on my foot.
swat a fly. feel insignificant.
helicopters over the lake dip
buckets to douse spontaneous fires
water is at premium. the raspberries ripen.
she says "everytime i hear them, i think of what it might be like
to be living in baghdad. " i think of police states
and going back into that border. the paranoia
pushing you around rationalizing fear like a soma riot.

















*









the poppy heads fulfill the laughter quota.
spaced between daisies and empathies, little precious
centers of galaxies, spottrained and periwinkle.
illegal in shoeless countries. the children find
their way to the inner court. the fruit blushes
at their desire. interface wildfire occurance may
be immanent. your puny hose will not help.
buckets dropped from the helicopters might.
a lttle green for some green. the language of exchange
in red, seeded fruit. you can hear the wasps
and the mighty smacking of lips. juice of the gods
in their own little package. completely biodegradeable.
















*






the girl is fifteen.
soft and quiet , a forceful pout waiting to happen.
out for the night, she extends her curfew. but mom
i called every half hour. two blocks away is two hours.
she pushes & pushes. found and grounded. lessons push back.
no the boys may not stay no the boys may not play
with you in the dark in the woods with hormonal blossoms
for a bed. the heroin future awaits in the alley behind
the shoe store. she passes it on her way to work, a parttime job
for the summer. training. training. her body a razor waiting to slice.

















*









the dog reminds you of your childhood
mutt, but twice the size, like the pines here,
like the heads of echinacea. a large crow
calls displeasure at the company. i filch
some raspberries from the bucket. pokemon addiction
rivals the taste. gaming on so many levels.
like my feet upon the stump, at evening in canada

the way sound carries in the hill, the bright glow
of a gone sun. the strawberries are done. they await
the first snow. i'd be a sunbird. there's music
that thrums from last year in the caves beneath
the rotten & blasted rock. you wonder if your son
has called his father, cut most ties
to back home, moving foward
into the west
chasing a broken web, hoping to mend it
or cleanse yourself of the taste of bitter spit.

the raspberries are tart, and watery. they have no
pesticides, only the exhaust from american flight paths
above these and other canadian lands.
this is not your home. the waitress could be fed to the hogs
you wouldn't know it. the boys rush
thru the park, high on crack laced
into the joint they bought from
the dreadlocked streetcorner folksinger.
you want to think they didn't know, he didn't know, it was all
an accident, she didn't know not to be out
in the dark, looking sweet as a piece of fruit, ripe and ready to pluck.








Sometimes I like to wonder about/ how the format
has affected the form of the
voice.


and how sake will affect the dynamics of poetry



for 4 daze / we sit here / on the back porch
(tequila wants to give me a headache)




i can't believe i;ve been here for four days and you
already have ammended the one line rule
to seventeen. an epic poem. you have to take your own risk
to have a Niche. the next death is yours the line
unto the meld you always wanted.

fifteen loads... jeeze...
$$
synthetic refresher
with tap h20, showers

his very habits bad

chasing the rice dragon

punctuation, that old thing
remember possibilities?
like playing the "proper" chords for a proper interval, an interval that feels blissful pounding techno pop, and then a certain rogue progression demands articulation within someone else's 4:4, dancing with external harmonies, occasionally licentially rubbing against...




the girl comes out
ducks back, the cactus dragon is out
the rice dragon calls come
to me
come to me.


a light a smoke , poser mescalitos
firesign theatrical audio tracs and whispering
in the background. can you imagine a joycean
kulture shock. the techno echo of the encroaching
smoke. toni used to do a techno rave, loop
a couple riffs and the groove caught all the etard
so what's so bad about tweaking.


dar's story is scarey stalker shit.
jon plays the piano makes life a movie
or some script .that didn't need a rehearsal..
stairway to heaven a clockwork orange of listenership.
it's a theatre, your business is obvious
your four or five women with all your children
he thinks his whole life's a movie , all your friends
are
witches and people treat the bible like it's a bible.
we're all just part of of the big harmonics.





















*(*)()&(*&(&(&*&&(*(*&


for the japanese the frog is the sign of safe travel.
there are red bellied frogs in the terrarium
one icon or another brings us home safe.

$



or like a

poetic dynamic

but live
of course
we have the technology

the finest pornography

eurocorp's nutter new-epoch priests with electron maces - information doesn't matter, when you're faced with an electron mace - smooth fractures -- unconscious of laundered money - tide - rolling suicides - foamelliricles. Brides of voided posts. Remember when we used to look out the window? Baker St. Porch.

















*&^(**&^*&^&





OH OH / what have

have we here






& we sit here / me / crow / lynze
& dar / we all suffer




we take the keyboard from the birds
they don't testify to anything, legally
but spiritually you just gotta let it go.
the moths leap on the roofing like drops
witness to the process, but i can't testify
not that uncoolth. y i've got the spanish outta me
and the kooteny smoked inside.

you put the weight right back on me
i pulled into pittsburg, illinois -- smuggled
amoral porpoises across state lines
the dismemberment of small town living
don't take it on?
question
better open ended
in the pines...

the best way to go
you're not gonna get between anybody and their endorphins
but i'm on the peripherals
i testified - and jammed - it felt one and the same - honey mustard sauce on vallei slur.

fat kid learned from a video game
nothing will ever be the same...
oh fat kid, what have you done?
you've turned our preconceptions, upside down...















(*&(*)(&)(*&



the bud crumbles into fine dust
like the dirt at big valley where graffiti
has a home. the catalyst for pacification
as in manipulation as in work it baby
work it. it's ok if you dont wanna smoke
just pass it on. it's ok if you don't understand
or can't see the next pass. it's hard to beat up
the geeky weird kid. theatre kids in this city
imagine. art is in the air , infecting everyone.
someone, us a grant.

every tricadecaquarter eighth note
dancing - like it's the panace or something
it can be...

It's the endtimes, man
crawford bay...
the nearest vendor

mary tyler moore
a karmic exchange
a few random lines on a laptop
i did use the last paper, and did get it wet, with, hopefully rice-wine...

pragmatic travellelor

fuckin dance junkies
dance tweakers

i hit the reset button and i couldn't get thru
you cn't get the valley girl inflection so forget it
woman. it's easy to move. wht's wrong with those people.
the deep conversation is gone/ replaced with shallow
cocaine reminscenses. i can't ever find my cell fone
the slashes will be inherent. i can't find them. i'm keeping
tabs on the hit of e you got last year. you hit green
to call and the reception is lousy. you've been drinking
the shambala tequilla. i'm just gonna hiccup
into his answering machine

what does the hiccup look like online? unline? uncouthlines...

tricadecaphiliac
welcome to the pit of penultimate darkness
can i have your gameboy
all kinds of distractions present themselves




















//

& the finch arrives / & it is saturday nite
& we are drunk /& finch is drunk & we are
drunk /& the frogs are chirp ing /& & &









& what are we eating now
i am eating ham & cheese on rye
with 2 mustards


your "a's" are fucking me up










& every one laughs / we all laugh


it is a good night / it is















you always smell good / & this night passed


& dar's phone keeps ring ing /

Edited by: trashpo at: 8/5/07 1:20 am
trashpo
ezOP
(8/5/07 1:45 am)
24.67.207.31
Reply | Edit | Del

i'm the womanizer without the women oregin origen alcoholic heroin
addict. i work a lone.

it's an interesting chemistry experiment.
the chinese curse is gobian.
no work and keep going. the psychic drink

live your life like music
big bowl of strawberry ice creme
your'e trying to be happy
fuck happy



brak brain candy. how can you open it.
the top of the mount child on the other side
so until you were born i didn't feel it. didn't feel it.
gotta go to bed. go to into tomorrow morning
fresh and ready to travel on
without some other.







she's caught between the north and southbound routes
all philosophy dripping up the sides of the earth
disguised as clouds. come in closer on her headphones
which she left in the backseat of some former life.
she thinks she can go home again. she can't talk
to the wayside bar. disinclined to go for a mojito

or a magarita because alcohol
kicks her ass. her weed's almost
gone. she might get desperate enough
to turn off the computer, go find some place people
gather to be other than with themselves, staring
at refractions of inner space junkies.







everywhere is actually nowhere


no space to write in
except a big blank plank
white, boundary less
actual specific delineation
some myth you were taught
as a child and now cling
broken angled and partisan felted
feted and fated to be .

you told me how language is arrested
development, how we need to eviscerate
its construct and begin again
in order to exist other than how we do.
i didn't understand. i ply my ignorance

into forgetting to remember. word loss,
the scratching of emblems on the pavement,
standing rock riddled with graffiti & the outpost
named afterward, across the way.

if i were a miner, i'd look for amethyst, toss
the gold back into the river for someone else to find.
instead, old growth burl becomes a hiding puzzle.
i fold myself wrong and nestle inside.







third time standing the one who would be traveling
says to the one who stays in
wake up you little fart!
there's highways with rubber and goo
to roll over, scenery and viewpoints
with vistas you'll only see from the corner
of the camera. fat ravens , the color of repaving
stone ride air tunnels up to a pool
hall , a gold tooth as cueball

and looking in your window. the moutains follow
you home. you can be anonymous as clouds
rising next to jessica who sleeps tho jamie bangs
and knocks over and over on her window her door
wake up jessie i'm not leaving til you do still
she sleeps or doesn't answer
he'll be back tho. if she's not dead if she didn't
commit it in the bed. patric rides his suzuki
up the room next to me. the pacific inn
fills with wearied roadies, concerts mixed on the cd
each bubbled universe of one or two settling in the
nite each bubble verse impacting the next
with wind tunnel and passage.
















*]



what am taking from this. the scope
of aloneness. my son sleeps shotgun
with occasional bouts of consciousness.
is it depression or teenhood.
is there a difference?
does all my writing contribute to it?


three hours from my home seems alienating.
the ones back home say to the one who travels
do you know what time it is? my morning is their early
afternoon. the crow continues to circle.
traffic flitters by ,the human surf become machine.
rocks await in the bay at pebble beach. a hollow
tube of redwood skeleton is in the town square. i've
traveled at the pace of grandpas. mine slowly stops
in front of the handicapped room across the way.
the clerk who helped me with internet access
hads a small ring in her nose. she doesn't smile
she says we could pet sharks
we could do a lot of things but my companion sleeps
as if i'm transporting a vampire. the sun has a few hours

left. after all, it's still summer despite the cold.
dog days. the final hurrah. hurricanes could begin
in the gulf but i'm thinking tsunami
and so's the surf shop. he asks me about earthquakes
as if he'd like to know one. shake its big brass paw
and have it for a last supper. i fear the flood after--
small white and blue signs showing evacuation routes
showing all is well, we've thought of everything
to keep you safe, traveller, dweller of the road.
keep moving. "this life is more than just a read thru"



















object of fie


rhymes with lie. adult swim contends
with the frailty of my heart. cranberry
lemonade with a twist of alcohol
to make up for the addict's bypassed

meds. i just can't see becoming a life alert
senior, but give me a few years. i realise
things like this change as long as i keep aging.

saw stardust tonite. michelle pfifer sez
at the end, spoiler alert, "youth, beauty
i don't want them now that everything
i cared about is destroyed" or something like that.

the redwoods tho, they don't seem to care
about time. knock em down and they grow
a new tree from the trunk of the vanquished.
o they can be killed but it takes a lot if disease
or a chainsaw. think how she grew a city block

then dropped soft cones onto the concrete
how the soft cones wilted waiting for a crack
waited for a splice into a sigh in the sky.
alcohol just doesn't get me there.


form is emptiness and emptiness form?
the sith, the sin, the taking of blood
in cartoon form. maybe out of the one
rises the other i dunno. it seems a yinyang
kind of saying, a koan to sigh by.

the alcohol beings take effect.
a long ascent into asceticism
and the smell of cedar. lost truths
carved on the walls in paint shaped
with graffitti. all the tunes are manipulations

manifested with the slightest dragon breath.
i say goodnite with a vengeance unsheathed
by television as my saviour. adult swimming
into the catacombs of forget about it,
distance becomes the last dance dared.






on the flight to tampa brb to your reading jack.

"pathetic fallacy"

wht can i say, i think those that insist that bugs
do not operate precisely as we do, emotionally,
in their own reality are the ones with the fallacy.
that it is pathetic is true of all fallacies. this is what
truth is made of. can we know how a fly feels
at the exact moment of contact with sugar?
why wouldn't happy, contented, satisfied apply
this is the truth for me about animate objects.
but inanimate objects i have more trouble reasoning
how does foam become cruel?

when it occupies spacetime as our foam
while being a completely differing fractal


or not. ow my head hurts.




i was wondering why a fly
followed me from mt shasta
to the quality inn. then in the denver
airport it was attracted to the green
of my skirt. now 37 thousand feet into the air
i feel its happiness on being with a poet.

i still think i is a way to write.
what's more inviting than a trepanned alley.
take my you and raise me a she.
this lens is what we poetry from
and all your objectifying leaves me little
to curl up with o philosopher.

my son twitches next to me in sleep.
his head on the tray, dreaming of first period.

the man sleeping next to him is a boy as well
with eyes i've seen before, i want to immerse
myself in this daily so that i can put those kind
of eyes behind me, the ones covered
with unlined lids, the dewey ones, the ones
that have seen too much, but not everything yet.
they haven't seen a happy fly.


"once the words are written down
the engagement is gone
they're dead. "

WRONG
they're often dead for the poet
but not for the reader. 37000 feet above kansas
and we're really not there anymore
a tornado spawns from the plane's belly
lands in a cornfield, makes popcorn.
poppy seeds multiply in californian bottles
with drawn faces and the backs of charity.

asphalt on a sere field where fire once lives
hungry for more than peanut coated snacks
it wishpers then roars but worldlessly, angrily
it means to consume all this agony
running inside the veins of the ones who are not
shakespeare.



our very existence on this planet is, in a sense, just an imposture; given its radical impermanence, just to relate to, get along with, other people, even just, other living beings, we must bow our heads in patient acceptance of the day-to-day way things are even if, as poets and writers, we feel it hit the heart hard as a were or as someone else’s to be . . .


hit as hard as a were

he tells me there are sophists and linguists
in our beds trying to fuck out the world of "to be"
to is to was to were to watching the purpling organs
of sunset thirty nine thousand feet up, where cloudes
are land and we ride into the night. when i get home
all will be
darkness and midnite, edt. is to be a particle
of time, will the battery fade before the light
do questions become the children of abortions
is the light of the television screen enough
to dim the reversal of falling into the boat
then falling up out of it over and over
and what of the t. not earl grey which will not
pass my lips until i can forget the new snapple
commercials. actualy. faggit aboud it i hate tea anyway.



"to be" as imprecation. as deluvian separater from the phallacy
of nature. an imposture as delusional as any created from string theory.
and judgement, well, let's go there. i like coke, not pepsi, tequilla not gin
free verse more than the gilded remnants of the past four centuries.
if i were a peasant i would perhaps have learned --a 15th cent peasant mind you
not the thoroughly modern one i am, i even have reprints of degas & dali procured without
monet, ahem aho, oh ah ummmm-- about painting whilst visiting one of the cathedrals
in a near by paris or venice even perhaps a hamborg and then looking around my hovel
i might have seen various places i could carve such epiphanies to god
to share with the others in my village but i wonder
would they crucify or conscript me? excommunicate me or enlist me
would they ever find out about the mary i'd fornicated with
out the 1tlinc's persimmon spermision the one who loved me for my art
and not my new hat? and if i can't like my name, why would you continue
to use it and if i used yours how upset you'd be.


so, i like cornchips but not cornpone, oat flakes but not corn.
i like sappho but not sophocles and jimmy but not judo.
i like the way your face looks in the film but not the book.
the way my shoes have a thong, and not my underwear
o there she goes again getting frugal with the titallation.

yes, it's a planeful of travellers. we've got a destination.
the sky turns
dark and dark above little rock. i have no
window seat, so the jewels you always speak of
are still alive only in your words
i like writing better than speech, mountains less
than beach, pomes and prose equally , the book
over the movie. judge not lest ye be
is ok for christ. he was a beggar. i'm a peasant
running low on batteries. give me one reason
to like something, and i will. call me catholic
call me diverse, call me a pandering idiot.
you be the judge.






Sky concert at the sky


you were never more with me
than when i saw the snow on the distant
mountain and heard her sing fuck you

for that i blame myself
now these rolling hiways
will always be the seperation
i traveled

but i won't be here
and that seems just about right.




boomer date


you are a gentleman, i can tell
but your soon to be ex can't.
thirty years in a toxic relationship
and she's the one with the problem
i can relate to being mentally exhausted
i was there, only the gender's reversed.

so you did the dancing thing too? all those fresh
faces mumbling behind their hands at least
you had the courage to confront the laughter
dance on dancer. me, i go where the cost is least
sink or swim and they don't even see how i don't belong
after the alcoholic haze. don't tell you how i used
to try to sneak my underage bf a gin & tonic
as you begin to outline the benefits of networking
and myspacey agey. i checked out your site beforehand
and yeah, i've been there, differently. can 't seem
to be impressed. that you were at woodstock
only annoys me. but you're still into peace i gotta admit
that's better than the last guy who took me to sushi
also a boomer, but enmeshed in the MIC. i relate
that experience to you so that you, like me, know
our conspriacy theories are anything but paranoid.
peaceniks gotta have our validations.
i get in your car, risky? naw, you merely want to show me
where you dance. fifteen dollah cover and the line's out
the door, you assure me, tho tonite, in the rain, on a tuesday
it looks as desperate as you or i.




gen x date


good conversation is better than bad sex
but it's still a one night stand.

i lost my pipe. you're all about coke
but i'm not into the addiction dance.
except my meds. accept my meds.

the halo of missing hair
skin dimpled dryly into post bimbo.

as a member of the russian mafia
you ran packages of great worth
to men of huge stature
inside cloistered circles.
they dealt in weaponry, cars and drugs.
you wanted all of it. your aryan hair
your bottled eyes your willow leaf arms.

suddenly you find yourself in a low rent mexican joint
drinking tequilla, thinking of nice, how close it is to milan
where your wine orgasm waits, the virginity of the taste
akin to the escargot before my divorce.

we've decided, on seperate occasions, that what happens
tonite stays here. words bounce off the screen
rumble in the air, are picked up by the television,
disappeared like a hooker into a red taurus holding
a bald man with a twenty. he asks for change.

out in the parking lot your poetry is electronic.
i critique it. you say you vomit the stuff, it means
nothing. i get the sense you want some meaning somewhere
and when you get it, you'll dismiss it immediately
tho god lingers somewhere beyond chemicals
you can't see it, and thinking about it hurts your head.
i'm on some spiritual journey with a fedora, a tie
and hard shoes, all in black.


you like the music i made.
you say. hunched on haunches outside the car door
smoking a bummed cigarette.

metric exchange

i massage your
neck, ask does that
help is it
here? hmmm that feels good. yes? i
always thought i should be a therapist
but at my age i'm glad
that's not what i do. it wears you out. my hands
travel to your spine, find
the knot, knead it you say
yeh babe, right there.
my thumb finds the spot
and pushes i ask in silky
tones what's my name? babe.
you state. no
what's my
name? bit more
pressure to your spine
oh you don't like that? why?
i remove the thumb and get off the bed casually
gathering my stuff, because
i'm not your babe. you say
so that's it? o
yes, my profile said
dishonest it's true but i guess
you forgot the drama queen part. i close
the door on your ironic yet
upset smile. you figure the massage
was worth dinner
and you didn't have to find
out if you really still couldn't get it up.

but no stiches in my side...

i'd like to join myself
in chat but i have not yet managed
to spilt my access like my mind.

i cleaned the big entertainment center
the former inhabitants left, dusted it too, put
the 13 inch tv in the big slot then draped a red
silk cloth with gold dragons around it. properly
kitsch now, i add the vcr to the mix,
put "vampire nights" on repeat
turn out the lights & leave. my installation
will run as tribute to american middle class
for as long it takes me to forget about you.
i would have used the passion of the christ
if i had it. i did not organize the cds. gotta
save my projects for karma, upchucking.















*



the weed in the bathroom
gets taller, more buddy. it smells
like sensimilla
but i know better. there's a male
making stamens, seeds to pinch.
i think about the last time we shared
anything other than mutual angst. the way
you wanted to plant us in the same pot
with different time zones. the way i
kept falling , too full of hibernation
and rhyzomes, out of your trowel.
i'm thinking harvest time's a bit late
but smoke it if you got it.


















*






another load of laundry awaits my touch.
the turning of the dial, the adding of the soap
the soft tumble into water and cleanliness.
if i were religious baptism would mean more.
as it is, fire's as good as any cleanser for some things.
like this pair of jeans i've been wearing , everywhere, all
the time. the only
pair i own. they ride low
on my hips, cuz that was fashion
when i bought em. but the zipper
broke two weeks ago and last
week when my car's tranny
tubes busted i got a big ugly stain
on the thigh .despite that i wash and wore
them to the state fair in my role as orchestra chaperone
with a pen in my pocket. which leaked blue ink
down the front. so i bought a new pair
on the way home. i'd like to give these things
a proper send off-- bonfire of the stained
and broken. how i'd fit right in.






















*









sticky alien glue
on the back of a post it note.
the tearing off of maybes
the trashing of hastily dashed contracts
worth the scrap paper they consume.
all of these clog and muffle the muscle
i've come to depend on for life. or something.
i know it's in here, but i'm letting it be
until i find the right tools to free it.
i mean, i got the three strikes rule going for me,
didn't foul tip anyone, just solid swings and misses.
i'm glad it'll be another couple innings
before i step up to the plate again.


















&















where's my pipe?

things to do today

1)stop writing
2)get up out of this chair
2).a. empty the ashtray
3)light a cigarette
4)begin writing again
5)quit you
6)pick up three weeks worth of trash from my floor
7)make a new profile
7.1 post it
89-laundry.

i was trying to play the keyboard bass
last nite. pretty simple riff but i could only
keep it going for three measures.
then my fingers hit the wrong key and
here's the outer limit part
of their own accord. italics.


or it could be palsy. if you ever find
the key to the box i gave you that nite
we fought so horribly perhaps you will
understand the split level housing i've built.
but i doubt it. those wacky closets,
hidden stairways, doors opening out on
the void surrounding, portrait of dorian
hung next to a genemod vision of you
well i'm sure you'll feel as if you've escaped
from the bate's motel. but i'd never
take a knife to your shower curtain.
do you know how expensive those things are?















90. vacuum
91 dust
93 kitchen
94 drawers
95 retrieve my keys
96 something with the titles

92


hand laundry.















*






go out and enjoy the day. that's like a command.
but i don't want to be out amongst the follies.
i like sitting in my chair
looking out the window
wasting time for unproductive things.
entropy, rising.


however sometimes even that gets boring.
i'm just trying to talk myself into getting on with it.
then once i do, you'll come round and hit me again
like a tether ball. or v.v. i dunno who's the goddamn pole.




it begins to make one feel very mousy. i'm sure this
is close to how you felt before i said anything to you.
i've been here before...yes we have all been here before
we just have to remember is. it.

















*




22)carton of cigs
7)remove repetitious things
54) organise books.
74)turn up the temp on the water heater
97) wake up the boys and make them clean
a. the bathroom
b. the playroom
c. the kitchen
d. the yard



_________________________











1)let go of you
3* and you
1) find self.

in the language of wish

all the doors
and windows are open
today, hobo breeze.
a NeW! global warming winterTM
drifts thru full of old lovers
dressed as dandelion seeds.

naturally progressive spreads

mine a gibbery digeridoo of a moon.
the sun grows dimmer in illuminati.
the tarot explodes.
























































an amalgam blessed by a spell.
why do i always return4er
to symbols? as much as linguists
try to pin them to felt
covered boards, resistance fits

their persistence-- i think
that might be a symple explanation.


there are some who seek this in entheogens.
the god within becoming. the sainted
remembrance beginning


again,religion as opiate where mundane
love fails. you just
gotta find the one that speaks to you
in mysteries clothed as peaks' peeks.
hey , good morning poetry. i kneel
in your church. can you point me to the perks?







































the key of the nile rests
around the throat of venus.
the star shot moment when
death copulates with birth to brew
this stew. is it a new yew?









somehow i doubt it. call me thomas, my son's
middle name. manna is now illegal in twenty states
and growing. when all of us are gods who
will collect pennies from heaven? these and other
questions land heads and tails on the umber field.
the reader directs the prepositional object: grain, love, rain.






































































a field of rain




sky as your eye, partly
filled with color and pattern.
pulling river riding an egocycle
down eternity lane, main drag
nexus of homo erectus.



it took me seeing me
as you might have
to collect like this, in a shallow
gravity well, a particular hell
or heaven if i only will.


or weil. heh. to seek
slavery as release-
i have ridden this beast,

no more gnostic
than holographic.



no less, either. or triad, the math of matter.
numbers as dayglow stripe illuminati, yes, your
body. and mine-not-mine,engaged ,mind engorged
an anvil forged from less than fairy eyes inverted
seek to rise above flesh diverted , perverted chant

which hathor envies, had she pants. heh. the twisted
fall, icarus, of the almost flown.






























































































































excalibur




there have been many of you
trying to get through to me.

phone numbers amass in my toilet stall.
my shadow outlined on yr plexiglass wall. or so
it seems i mean i've called you? and your numbers"
been, like , busy? don't you have
caller id? hmmm.
i think it comes down to a perversion, societys'--
excuze me did you think it mine? and those
not called , it's not been time. i think i'll lose
whatever drag's been keeping me anchored

in the dream state normalcy. well, except for
my son. the bright days of pick up your plates do
your homework. get up early go to work, come home
early dig language earth. tease you slightly, monkey man
why? because you think i can.






















































































despite all this i am not a quick fuck.
u must take time to know me,as i will you.
namelessness belongs to the stars of which
you and i are are/¬. but one night

just might be enough.




(composing a new dating profile
the poet cackles at the booty she will toss
back to the sea. )


the conjunction of mars and venus
occurs in the sky or in your starts.
when playing poker always

keep the king of hearts,
until the hand's to be revealed
then toss or lay it, but keep it real.



(cuts and pastes the eyes of betty paige

to the body of ms boop. )


((she once wanted to explore the tantric. now wonders

if sting is the only man alive to get it. ))




>>uploading a picture to go with your profile increases your chances of response.<<




















br>








A sign for the fourth Olympic spirit in some Cabbalistic mysticist contexts.


wtf? "some cabbalistic mysticist contexts??!!" y so bloody cryptic? br>





oh. heh. Kahballah. kaaaaaaaahhhh bahhhhlaaahhhh







isn't that the jewish gnostic thang that madonna's so fond of?



well, there's a nut for my kronish soul to chew on.
approachment of the embrace to oblivion. add the '
to make it french. but i can't. oh my lack of proper tools
is legendary, legionairey.



like faery's eyes because
the eyebrows make a broken frown, when upside down
and rightside up, mouth makes a cup from which to drink
a kitchen sink of beatitude upon the brink of taken hold
where nothing is what's bought & sold.






























half pitch lower




somewhere between a and b
i sit in the chair you left
when you moved on. it has the
vaseline stains from when you
borrowed it last year, circles on
the blonde arms of some rusty
cds we did together, a vision
of a tattoo in black ink
stains on the seat from
a full moon flow. it's a very
comfortable chair. thank you.

you told me you watched black and white movies

how you wanted to be peppard
at tiffany's place, how the girl
was so perfect for you because
her imperfections fell together
into an unconventional beauty.

on saturday afternoon, i watch cary
grant and katherine hepburn play loves me
loves me not, then romantically hot
by the end of the flick
they know they click. but it was
spencer she loved. adam meet lilith.


fourteen vases of cut flowers
later and i stil wouldn't forgive you
for stealing my youth. even tho i gave it to you.
willingly. now i meet you again

or was that you? try on this shoe.
see? it fits. now break it cinderfella
or we'll never get out of this hollywood.

a strange but beautiful occurance

a strange but beautiful occurance below a promise
of rain, birds strip off a wire,
peas from a pod.
waiting for a turn
the wind spits oak
leaves at the glass
between us,
fluttery insectious,
infectious as laughter, like
remember when-ing.

you say we aren't metaphors, only people.
i wonder how you can be so sure.

i was looking
for nothing when
you found me.
virtually everything i seemed
to want. send me words
that match what i mean
without all the bother of actual
paper, without all the flesh
fuss, without all
the redundant
replies to reruns
that no one's watching.

or maybe that's just been you.
i can't speak for the rest of the world.

odd how when it's your idea
it's more palatable. to you.
but i've been holding the chocolate
on my cold tongue waiting for bitter
to melt something other than eyes.

i'm so tired of waiting
for the right wind to blow.
if i were a bird, i'd want
to the one already flown
ahead of the simile, olive
pit in my beak, ready to grow
an ace of staves.

never meant

as we talk i can hear what i've said,
presciently- despite your insistence
that i'm just putting words in your mouth-
come to pass. i speak in present you speak in past
or some fantastical future perfect.
the tenses become a wire on the verge of goodbye,
a tincture against the pain of here and now.
open up, a spoonful drains into a sick lemon
with frogs and other potion makers waiting
in boxes on a black laquered shelf.

you say we are not metaphors, just people. i say
i could mine this situation for diamonds you couldn't buy
or rent or dream to be.

but i don't. then i speak of respect, a heirophant's litany
in the rabbi's confessional. that means only
the jokes are truth. here's another one for you:


oh. i forgot how to joy. this joke will be continued
when i get over a false hope tied to a horse's ass.

but i should have more respect than that. i should thank
my lucky stars that what you're calling love is now withheld
due to unplanned interruptions of the master
plan. so, brush this little fly on off the crumbs.
i don't need you hanging out on the anticipaton balcony
waiting for for romeo's confessional. yes yes

what soft love he has , what betrayable snacks in the baking.




so now it's cut and severed, gorgon beheaded.
i did my crying now it's up to you for dying

crablegs

he meets her a hooters,what a hoot.
the crablegs are tasty as the waitresses'
she insists they talk work until he brings up
the blog tag question, what five would you invite
for a weekend retreat? hers are all poets
his are explorers and men of power. ghengis kahn
vs oscar wilde, cleopatra meets emily .
so , this is the basis of it. hands soothing
but mind caught in a knot.

silence

the core of disarray
spreads itself over the floors.
you try to find meaning in a broom
or a vacuum with a five year warranty.
it's after noon. the sun slants again
into a scene from summer. you're courting
winter, sounds of youth scraped
up like snow kept in a freezer that shut down
on the last season.

you don't want to be glum. the winter sky
bright and promising. temperature modulated
by the tilt and yaw pronunciation. how lying
in your arms, bleeding love into your cave
was not enough to save you from your self instructed
catastrophes. now your hair peels like burnt
skin, bubbling on pale fingers, long strands
of red shed for shred. white replacements waiting
in cells dead to the head. you're tired
of writing now. the mess calls for a mom.
put on your hat and sound the alarm.

eternity not

sniff sinus again sniff
in self satisfaction of a job sufficient
to the means. the metal was facade and seeming.
its meaning only surface but forever is

a long time. nothing to grasp into
the roots went shallow, the eye fooled
but nodes know where to find gasp
when to pull pack, push in, waiting.

losing the piece was careless as a sky
painted on a ceiling. what do babies know
that would translate that falsity to comfort?

it seems truth, your core is set. the tower
inside too massive to leap. i didn't want
to see it, princeling in a beauty shop.

so i forced you into the clearing, twenty paces.
took the first shot, pierced the knot forming.
it fell apart, disconnected mobius, moby
dick connected, you feel infected with virus

but won't take the red pill. well. then.
i have a stream to catch, resistence bound
and bled out. a rout of snarls and punched holes
bent spoons attracting the mind to matter

metal fired and twisted, real empty
spaces to leap, one cliff to the next
like camel pack homes, resisting arrest.

sepia edges

you want to see me
as nympho, orchid splay, bee stung
instead: tattered dandelion in fish
nets drooping over the vase on the counter.
all the metaphors fall into the hanged mans eye,
hemp ropes and partial birth aborted.

try to say agape with wounds where light spills out.
attempt at black star in white noise sky.

inversion of mirrors
and slightly off
color smoke. the man on the ringside porch wearing
alcohol and death , calmed by the taste of a slice
of sexual mis-union. the rub into shouldn't be. how he

in his daily suit would fuck you himself
rather than have you fuck me. but he'll watch.
he'll be happy to watch.

it's hard to sustain passion in the face of a retarded world

the debate about evolution and raise yr children well
global warming is a natural process happening adjustable froggish
but we will survive it catastrophicly invincible.
the powers that be will insure our survival

if no body cared then what would it mean to them, the fortresses
the land, the bent backs with bent will they and or their
muslim seriously theocracy. if osama invaded the us
they wouldn't last long.
mericans would rise up, and expel the enemy. o! bama
maybe you won't be confused with terror
al l the sudden terrrorism is a military issue? i think not.

gngsta rap on the stereo drivin 45 on a 30 street
speaking target , speaking blunt smokin attn drawin
jail luvin brutha. what can u do, speakin gun waving
citizen, homosuicidal wreckage.

you think i'm kidding when i say tear it all down
just an overreaction to emotional issues i'm having in my per
per
personal life. but no. no. i mean tear it all down
the dysfunctionally bleak home ownership shell game that has all you brethren
lined up lambs to a very roomy knife. time to remodel.

thwarted

my tranny leak, spitting wan blood out the bottom
of the car. high whine of no sex tonite. the moon
and the moon and the moon. so i call u

no offense but

fuck yr heart. i mean you bring it out
and force it on me then wonder why i don't
want to eat it. i say hey
i'm a bit full right now and i have dispepsia
so maybe let me just have a small slice
but no. you tell me take the whole damn thing
or nothing. so i tried but it just keeps
choking me, coming back "file 404 not found"
cuz it's looking for a match and i'm all sulfur
tho the fuel just needs a feud to flare.
so i make one. then we're all used up cuz air
has so much room to expand, but fuel is a gas line
in a gas war, wrapped around the block to save a penny
a gallon. heartless or heart made of stone, the outcome
is the same.