Not at all what I feel this Christmas but still a poem

Your esophagus burns
this Christmas eve,
wondering where it all
went so sour.

Loneliness is a
paycheck,
cashed.

Kandinsky's Pyramid

The arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a
proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly
monumental. Every (whoa)man who steeps himself in the spiritual
possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the building of
the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven.

What I shoulda wrote in the City

I’m drowning like Staten Island

Ferry during Hurricane Sandy, self-

Deprecation not as bad as emotional

Wreckage, Woody Allen knows that

New York has some baggage.

But you got some baggage too,

Look at your eyes. You’re running from

It, she cares so much ‘cos she thinks

That actions make people. I think

She’s wrong. People make people,

Action only makes reaction, meanwhile

Thought poisoned by this charade,

“yes, mom, I’m fine.”

No, you’re not. Lying only prolongs

Everything, and what makes a person

Isn’t action or other people but the

Thoughts inside your head, the feelings

In your heart. I hope you and her

Will work things out, for everyone’s sake.

Cheers

scramble nixon bison lichen
shamble tasers misers fighters
ramble blue balled weights in gold
inertia sold to those who uphold
the absolute power of boredom.

its claws work magic via television,
vicariously bicuriously swimming
in the sea of DirecTV, swimming
in the sea of ghetto-fabulous,
swimming in the sea of mindless
mindfulness, swimming in the
seas of your eyes.

Shop Macy's 48 hour sale. Introducing
dog toothpaste. New season starring
Stephen Seagal. And now, back
to Cheers!

A Hindu once told me about two
birds in a tree branch. One bird is
reaching for fruit, the fruit of the world;
the other only watching.

Now the question arises-- do we
do, or do we watch? Which is
right? You tell me.

Dinner served cold

Firsts

Jelly on the table,
hands on the floor,
eating your feet,
and you want more!

Your face a
burnt apricot,
my lips saying
"this is what I got."


Seconds

Farewell to dreams,
I bid you farewell,
a poem a day
comes out of its shell.


Thirds

Whistle a tune,
be happy, don't worry,
For you know that
God makes a mean curry.

"The snow falls,
each in its appropriate
place."

Falcon Kafka

"Do you not realize you are in the land of the dead?”asks Francis.

Kid stares. Thunder booms around him.

“Look around you,” Francis points. Kid does so. He looks before this forsaken desert, cold and unrewarding. Crags sweep through, signs of water long ago, humongous towers of limestone, fingers that reach up to the gray, cloud-blanked sky. Kid takes this in for a second before he sees Francis walk off, toward a group of thunderheads, dark violet and full of flashes of lightning. Thunderous balls of air clash together, making a falsetto boom. Before Kid's eyes he sees Francis shift forms, from a dark-eyed bureaucrat in a black suit and tie, greased hair, and Czech accent to a pair of naked legs, a loin cloth and golden bronze torso. His arms are covered in feathers, placed carefully, layers upon layers, with coats of wax. His head, Guy sees, is the head of a Falcon, with the same dark eyes.

“Francis! Kid yells. “Francis!”

In the same Czech accent, “I must leave now.”

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“When you first met me, I was just an insurance agent. Now, now I see. I have seen too much, Kid.” And with that, Kid sees Francis fly away, his arms flapping to take a current of wind into the storm, leaving Kid sinking into the sand.

“Where am I going?”

“You are a cage without a bird.” Francis remarks. “I am now a bird without a cage."

Kid watches in his direction, and notices the campsite, the wind blowing fabulously tough, as Kid feels an oncoming wave of sand wash over him. Kid becomes lost in the sea as it makes its way past all life. This sandstorm takes Kid into the desert darkness, where he loses consciousness for a time.

Kid wakes to the footstep of a camel upon his head. He digs himself out of the sand and sees this camel as without rider, but with saddle, so Kid takes hold upon the sack of the camel, and is dragged along the dunes.

Shang-ri La Road, Phoenix, AZ 7:34pm
Saturday December 15th,
FM 88.3, just rained, choir music and
I can't wait for the day when I can
say, "yeah, I've been there."

Inner turmoil-- when food has no
taste and the world is in grayscale,
everything floating so you carve out
of your day to day moments of silence,
of peace, attempts to make things better.

A bird on the porch.
Orange and pink across the late afternoon sky.
Movie-goers.
Watching holiday shoppers.
Other generations had the Vietnam War, Desert
Storm, Charles Manson.
Mine has public shootings.
What's goin' on?

Compass moral north points

ego satisfactions south points ego-

lessness, tho if you're william

s burroughs you pronounce it

(eggo)lessness.

East is Athens, where the Parthenon

crumbles. West is Jerusalem,

where the cross is fumbled.

I'm all too comfortable grumbling

about the rumblings of my spiritual

stomach, left of center but without

vertical standing.

I see now the contours
on this wide road into
hell.

"The Lord is my Shepherd"

I am a shepherd without a flock,

a comet without a trail,
fire without smoke,
a ship without a sail.

Or maybe I'm a sail without a ship,
a direction without a vessel,
an engine without a plane,
a bridge without its trestle.

Or maybe I'm a pen with fresh ink,
waiting for the Nile when it floods,
'til then, exercising word banks
and drawing vials of my blood.

Lorca Christ

Boy approaches the mystic from Galilee.
'You will go west, boy, to fetch for me
a tooth from the mighty iguana who lives there.
Remember that the iguana bites those who
do not dream.'

Wednesday Koan

There is no

truth outside

the Gates

of Gethsemane.

The Mystery is

alive.

This dog stretches

and wraps itself

in a circle.

November Seventh

Hey now, don't despair, the carnival clown show isn't over

yet, you just gotta let it go sometimes, The Dude Abides somewhere

in us all, in me anyway and I'm no frigging alien. At least, not inside.

The Master Game might be living the early morning, said to

be (divine) by Emerson. Aside, sunshine mimes touch,

even if its contact between me and my dog, his name's Zorro, me and god.

Me and you, owl-minded you, on the rocks over a California

coastline rugged on a perilous trail in the hot sun, or maybe me and you in my queen-sized staring at the ceiling or the television watching Spongebob Squarepants.

The Dude Abides, circumference-building like Magellen to the Philippines,

circles sacred to those who believe in the sun, but this Vegas

sunshine dips me in lead paint and takes me out of this game.

I'll be glad when it's over. Not me and you, mind you, snowy

barn owl you, but this giant Dostoevsky novel starring clowns,

sad, sad clowns. You, however, I want the moments we had to last forever.

Hey, we had some good times! And in my opinion, more to come! If

we can jump over hurdles like racing dogs, the ones Bukowski

used to bet on (tho he bet on horses, didn't he?)

Even if we aren’t any of the above I can hope cus the only thing I know

how to do is write poems and hide my face in naivety, of whom has been

so good to me in the past.

You may be in Oregon but I can't stop thinking

Older brother Abe, off in your own,

I trust the universe brings us together

again. Built a fire for you today,

brothaman, in the Arizona empty.

Hope you're well.

I'mma Jackson Pollock your face with this poem!111!!!!
AJKFNN
KLDFMQR-

QPOFEIM2

dsaafm
12enlasalksdma;;;3p-rki1.cs;dmvsowno
.kkvfgmwaaa;s;a444

FPWGGskmsv''///jmvjttr 

sdc,/a,

gibberbrash the jellyfish out on the lawn,

in and out in out in out til the cream

creams ocean water bath Jerry fix the sink! splatter adjectives with calculus

kinkade astrophysics with infinitives and paint.

Leading lead labors liters pitching tents in Liverpool, nonsense

is sense in a sense. more than one sense, really.

Thus sprake  virtuoso,

ossef.

Brahsef.

Spiritual Hymns for the Underground Railroad

I
Behold this Underground Railroad!
Many in my nation want to deny
the existence of the Void, but
nonetheless its oily tentacles
are slowly strangling us all--
I politely refuse.

II
This Railroad exists only
as a way to vanquish, make
love to, embrace this thing
that is at the center of every-
thing. Some call it god, others
call it void, but in truth (others
call it that too), it has no name.
Only

feeling. To deny this feeling
is to live happy, unknowing,
illiterate. To acknowledge
the feeling is to fall into despair,
underground, warmth turning to cold,
light to darkness.

Lose all grip to the ground,
fall upward, surrender to it.

The dark of the tunnel becomes
light itself, and the Void, merciless
and the merciful, becomes the
only thing worth living for.

III
Everything else becomes color-
less. This pay-the-bills existence
is a drop of water to the Void's
ocean of fear.

The Railroad will carry you.

Serenity sears the back of your throat

when you inhale all that oxygen

for the first time, breathing in

out, in out, crying all

bloody on the table.

Umbilical cord cut, you are

free to move.

Simple like sitting in
five o'clock traffic just
for fun.

Simple like peanut
butter on
everything.

Simple like taking
life easy, the Dude
Abides.

couple months ago

It does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom,
or bow down and pray for their god's eternal kingdom.
They used to sing of the sweet chariot swinging low,
but now they suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau sowed it, now it's time to reap it,
break our bread and remember the struggle to remain awake,
that it doesn't behoove slaves from reasoning about chains
either-- it's time to shake this, import fists,
time to join the hope and let this saga unrip.

Astronaut

The kid with the addiction

fails to articulate her loss

of the world around her,

the sea spray calling from the

shoreline rocks. She stays

at home and smokes til she

can’t see straight. “Fuck it,”

from the under the covers,

“it’s too cold.”

She makes an exchange.

The world passes by without

her knowing it, she passes by

without them knowing her, her 

timely escape from Planet Earth impeccable,

but oddly not timely enough.

That’s really what all of

this is, isn’t it? A thunderstorm
makes its way along the coast, a burly

shoreline mainland suburb, with

its pines and birchwood and oaks,

the lighthouse on the harbor break,

a break beyond it, waves minute, seagulls

galling and everyone’s in

big coats.

If only fantasies were reality,

If only she could escape, become,

for all intensive purposes, a

Mothertrucking astronaut,

then maybe there would be no need

for substance abuse, religion, greed,

and envy. But hey, sin is earth and

we are of it. The kid with the addiction

knows this. She accepts.

Eventually she'll wonder what it would

be like to be fire instead, above earth 

and everywhere. 

The Letter I

Die, id, drown
in Allah's
most merciful ocean.

Die, cease, stop, yield,
so the alphabet becomes one
letter less. Wiseman says,

"He who takes himself
too seriously denies
our Lord."

Ode

The Hindu goddess Kali and Jim Morrison are up on a hill.
They stare at each other til they have their fill.

Ted Nugent and Stephen Hawking are on a bus,
Nugent bangs some jail-bait right in front of us.

Vladimir Putin and Simone de Beauvoir
fuck all the way to California for some pinot noir.

Dennis Hopper and Sarah McLaughlin
have BDSM next to Dracula's daytime soap opera coffin!


But some make sex unenjoyable, some pretend to make it celestial.
Warren Jeffs several years ago tried to make it incestual.


You know what they say about these kind of things?
Nothing matters until you put on that wedding ring.

Queen Latifah and Teddy Kennedy?
How about the Dalai Lama? He's about seventy.

Once you imagine Hilary Clinton and Nicolas Sarkozy
getting down with Anne Coulter and Bill O'Rielly to have an orgy,

You're gonna wish you were blind and
driving a Nissan.


One more thing, before I go,
a movie turned up with reality tuned low.


"The physical act of lovemaking, coitus, do you like sex?"
"You mean coitus?" You inquire, with DGAF basic respect.



She says while fixing a drink, "do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?"
You say before thinking. "I'm talking about my rug-- excuse me?"

Gonzo and Dostoevsky share a drink
in the corner of this death-end bar,
they talk alcohol and Marilyn Monroe
and Gonzo takes Dostoevsky home in his car.

But the car swerves off the road,
killing a mother, outright mowed her
down; no way can you die in the land of the dead--
"At least," says Gonzo darkly, "not when you're sober."

Dostoevsky admits that they went a little far,
taking death for a joke and a mom from her daughter,
"Here, take this," Dostoevsky says while laughing,
as he hands Gonzo a present, one Russian revolver.

Gonzo asks, "What do I do with this?"
The reply was, "You know what you have to do."
Gonzo thinks for a minute and takes the revolver--
he shoots Dostoevsky, then turns the gun on himself too.

That's when the Devil shows up
after he watches from his blackened tower
the event transpire-- he steps foot on the scene
after everything went sour.

Kick the gerbil,
miss the refrigerator.
Listen to a song
summoning the terminator.

The terminator.
The terminator.

The pillars of the world not withstanding,
they feast on ash and slosh down Michelob
Ultra, the men and women in these great
Tolkienian mountains chirp with glee as
the many bearded godman sits down
for a pail of chicken wings.

godman takes his fee of chicken
and delivers a half- baked sermon
on light, what it means to become light,
but it is all lost on the people of the
mountains. You see, they have
no idea what light is.

You, too, the reader of this poem--
me, three, the writer of this poem--
have no idea. Light, light, this light,
light, godman's light, Light, light, light
cannot be reached by eyesight alone.

Inertia
creeps into
every sitting
corner.

Shadows of
this second
room cannot
be trusted.

Where's the
door to the
third? Where
is your teacher?

December 2012

Perhaps the bow of Arjuna,
or maybe the belt of Orion,
will grace our international
presence with its
overbearing arrows.

If such a mythical
event were to occur, Times Square
would swell and pop
like a bed bug who's had

its fill.

If poems were air conditioners, my bedroom would be an icecap.
If poems were houses, I'd have a city in my fingers.
If poems were teeth, I'd be the fucking tooth fairy.
If poems were television sets, I'd be the thrift store down the road.
If poems was oil, imagine the war in the middle east!
   It'd be fought with graffiti and pencil marks,
   and our cars would run on the misery of Sylvia Plath.
If poems were eyes, this world would be blind.
   This world is blind anyway, sweetheart.
If poems were binary they'd be 1.
  Everything else, 0.
If poems were french fries, you'd be covered in cheese.

This anteroom stinks of failure. This anteroom stinks of the failure to outlive my life, hypocrisy rampant like a firehose, but jesus life outlives me, it outlives us all and who am I to say no to the hole I'm standing over? Moreover, the many-mouthed Ego, in this poem Ego is Kali with her eight arms holding up eight different middle fingers, Ego must have taken my brains, because they're here, on the sidewalk, ready to be made into scrambled eggs. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant pleads.

Hey guys! This story I posted on Rumble Fish back in May, and now it's published here, with an illustration. Check it ouuuut.

http://thestoryshack.com/2012/11/12/the-dervish-and-the-little-girl/

Myth of the Mad King

The myth takes various forms. Some of the better known variations on this theme are the story of Nebuchadnezzar leaving his palace to eat grass with the beasts, Plato's story of the prisoners in the cave, the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son and the related story of the wandering prince contained in the Gnostic allegory called the "Hymn to the Soul."

This old myth, in its essence, compares man to a king with a sumptuous palace at his command. But the king went mad and insisted on living in the cellar surrounded by rags and bones and other worthless objects which he called his possessions. If any of his ministers reproached him for this behavior and tried to remind him of the palace and its splendors, he indignantly replied that he had never left that place. Such was the nature of his illusions that he saw the wretched cellar as a palace and the rags and bones he had collected as precious jewels.

Today we can rephrase this old myth in terms more precise and in more accord with our new knowledge of human nature. We can say that man is a being with great powers at his disposal, which are his by virtue of his large brain and, more specifically, his huge cerebral cortex, an organ he has not yet learned how to use. Be­cause he does not know how to use this powerful machine it tends to operate in ways not beneficial to its possessor, to generate a host of illusions among which he wanders like a babe in the en­chanted wood, frightened and confused, a prey to terrors that he himself has created.

In psychological language the myth of the mad king means this: Man's ordinary state of consciousness is not the highest level of consciousness of which he is capable. In fact, it is so defective that the condition has been defined as little better than somnambulism. Man does not really know what he is doing or where he is going. He lives in dreams. He inhabits a world of delusions and, because of these delusions, makes dangers for himself and others. If this is accepted, then we ask the next questions: What can be done about it? Can man really awaken? What other states of consciousness are possible for him and what must he do to attain these states?

Robert S. De Ropp

Just too wacky to ignore

Cancer, white lipped,
sniggers from its trans-
sexual throne, covered
in extraterrestrial slime,
could also be called
celestial slime, God's
cum all over the place.

Socrates lassos tumors
littered around Lake
Las Vegas before speaking
at political parties, but
in the middle Socrates
drinks a little too much PBR
and sloshes around at
the podium before becoming
a total Belig toward Cancer.

Cancer's eyes narrow.
Socrates, you old-ass sonofabitch,
your liver's mine.

But oh ho ho! Something came
before God did (see what I did
there?) and killed him first--
and that's the power of democracy,
muthafuckas.

The power of democracy came
all over Socrates' face, leaving
a huge ball of Plato behind.

Drool leaks from
your mouth
when you

read this particular
snorefest. Hey,
look, another poem.

Lao Tzu

When you find the Way, others will find you
passing by on the road. They will be drawn to your door.

The way that cannot be heard will be reflected in your voice.
The way that cannot be seen will be reflected in your eyes.

Here here, mademoiselle, take this neo-
liberal doctrine and spin it into rings,
hoops for dogs to jump through.

Koan for the night

the carnival clown show isn't--
The Dude Abides somewhere but
I'm no frigging alien. 

Me and you, 
owl-minded you, 
Spongebob Squarepants.

God, I'm so naive

cus the only thing I know

how to do is write frigging poems.

savannah split

elephants, african and post-pubescent, dis-entwine trunks at
the watering hole, krsna imposing a thunderstorm on the
savannah

split

no water to drink nor shade to be found
on this african plain

one elephant used heart when brain was needed
the other used brain when heart was needed

let this be known, krsna jesus buddha boy baby herakles
luke skywalker superman joan of arc jim morrison charles manson
God's son osiris ganesha bodhisattva saint michael saint
patrick saint peter saint thomas mother theresa gandhi
jfk dionysus romeo juliet john lennon kurt cobain
daniel johnston lovers fighters martyrs betrothed

mistakes made are humane and should
be regarded as the path to wisdom, if one were to use them
as rungs on a ladder

this elephant's problem is that he's afraid of heights
this elephant's second problem is that she isn't

Some moments are holy like the Klondike,
missed my chance but still gotta fight,
need to fight but oh man I'm scared,
terrified that life is happening and my
dreams might not manifest themselves
into specific realities, but oh well.

Just as soon as you think you're done,
some big ole mess falls into your lap.
Or you, the mess, falls into chance.
Either way, gravity's the culprit.

It's November the fourth, my reasons
be changing like the seasons, Guy
Fawkes charged with treason, god
oversoul whatever it's called a liaison
between Ken Kesey and mastodons,
hear me saying that the fight is on,
this battle of self and selfless, worth
and worthless, love and loveless.

primum vivere

sardonic and suspicious-looking, our hero winds up burning down trees and pushing down bridges, leaving uncrossed tunnels to the rats at st. marks. the downfall of boys is in not being a man, a coward. the path does not tolerate cowards who spill milk all up in jerusalem. or the east village. whichever. the full phrase is primum vivere deinde philosophare.

live first philosophize later. the phrase should be extinct. orion says no regrets, i say i gotta cupful.

There's a bear in my
bathroom! There's a
Lizard, big, eating it.

Queen of light touches
her vulva, springs and cogs
lost in her Dairy Queen
blizzard, her sunshine
loft, dancing Russian

swan embraces bear.

Lizard eats from his
underground lair.

three days ago

My month in New York blew by, like the hurricane that's making heads turn now, what do I have to do to make heads turn too? I guess if I powdered Midtown in layers of October snow, or if I drowned Battery Park in harbor water, or if I made lower Manhattan shiver without power days before Halloween, maybe that would do. But hey, I can't do any of those things while I'm here in sunny Flagstaff Arizona sitting on a bench waiting for the greyhound and its busloads of nobodies moving around in wifebeaters and love you mom tattoos. Ex-cons stare at nothing. Neither do I.

I'm reminded of a man named Church who came up to me in Union Square, 60something with stage II liver cancer, wanting to talk to someone about the importance of love. Religion, he said, was made by people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality was made for people who have been there. His eyes confirmed it. I can't say I've been there but I've been close, tho I'm not sure how close.

Heads turn for hurricanes, I turn for the Way.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either
one already in exist-
ence, or a scheme that could be carried
out under existing conditions; but
it is exactly the existing conditions one objects to--
any scheme that could accept these
conditions is wrong and foolish.

The true criterion of practical, therefore,
is not whether the latter can keep intact
with the wrong or foolish;
rather it is whether the scheme has enough
vitality to leave the stagnant waters
of the old, and build and sustain new life.

In the light of this idea, Anarchism is indeed
practical. More than any other idea, it is helping
to do away with the wrong and the foolish; more
than any idea, it is building
and sustaining new life.

Or it hopes to.

From Comrade Goldman.

Thus sprach Zarathustra

Camel and her friend Lion were the best of buds growing up. They raced each other to the watering hole, snuck off to an elephant graveyard on more than one occasion, and had a great time lounging in the African grass cloud-watching. They grew older, grew apart. Camel believed everything she was told, and because Camel believed, Lion believed also. But darkness grew over the land when Lion smelled his friend Camel's blood for the first time, when she cut herself on a Savannah stone. Lion tore at her, the race this time final. Camel ran as fast as she could, but was outmatched by Lion's muscles. Lion ate his best friend, but not without regret.

Lion ran away from home. He shaved off his growing mane and proceeded to wander, starving himself to death. Then along came a village. The lion knew the villagers would kill him if they got the chance, so he hunkered down along the banks of a nearby river, haunting visions of his best friend, and he realized that everything he was told was a lie. That it wasn't in his nature to eat his fellow animal. Or if it was in his nature, it wasn't in his heart.

The villagers were well aware of the lion's presence near their drinking water. The problem needed to be fixed, so the villagers rounded up their warrior clan to kill the lion. A little boy, son of a warrior, wanted to watch, and when he was told to stay behind, he picked up a spear and tagged along without anyone's knowledge. When they cornered the lion on the banks, the lion about to pounce on its attackers, the little boy flung his spear into the air, nabbed the lion on the shoulder, and the lion's body fell.

The villagers ate well. Many years later, this little boy became king of this land, and in his coronation speech, he spoke of a new era, a new time, new ideas.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

God-morning!

Tears in my eyes, girl,
tears in my eyes, girl,
while I'm waiting, while
I'm waiting for my turn,
as we part in the rain in
late October, Brooklyn
behind us Manhattan in
front the train leads us
across the river, across

the hunger of figuring
out what is isn't. Not
like we all wanted it to be.
And so the sun rises
yesterday
to the west, where home
lies. Like every Zeppelin
song ever.

And regrets ride high like
miscommunication, intolerant
near 8th street. Easygoing,
above all that's how I make
this life, not how others make
it out for me, not how the city
or the village or the household
tried to make this life, no.

Holy Mount Zion lies where
people aren't.

10 19 2012

Bleary on Broadway and Bowery,
southside revival in my heart as
I pass the days out in the city, the
willing unwilling and the ill-willed
even more willing to talk about the hell
that is addiction, loaded with super-
stition, now living for the scripture
on the streets sifting, sure, free?
Maybe.

Exist in Astorics

Astronomy in Astoria, ya
ain't real ; til ya write it
down ; watching time pass
its BAR exam and continue
to threaten me with its gnarled
hands, they're reaching
for my throat and in these last moments,
I question its authority,
its hold on us the majority,
but I realize I ain't no parrot
when I tell ya to wear it--
these colors ya be flying,
telling me ya don't partake, ya lying ;
fucking Winston Churchill once
said "ya can't be neutral on a moving
train," I'll say it again,

these things that I've said,
I ain't no parrot nor am I trying to be one,
not that there's ever anything new under the sun,
when the sun here is shrouded by clouds,
you and me fucking around downtown,
it don't mean nothing, nothing does,
Nothing means anything 'cept the clock with its
big man-hands on our throats, us the cancer
Earth wants rewrote ; ya
can either wear it on ya sleeve or face
the grief within, Jesus done savin' all
his men, where will ya run then? ; the circus ;
the circuits in ya brain rewiring,
didja know Wal-Mart's hiring?

aches in your brain leaving ya pragmatic,
dogmatic up in ya radical whack attic,
track-marked addict fanatic on sabbatical,
eating a bowl of cereal, shit's so surreal, but
God ain't in no attic, ya fanatic ; she's in ya kitchen,
radical whack addict, sneaking liquor from the cabinet,
while on sabbatical, grammatical errors be phonetical,
rhetorical, I ain't no parrot, muthafuckas. Don't
you ever forget, making all ya girls scream with ya panties wet,
ya radical whack addict playing Madden on your hidef set,
what kinda life do I needa have, what life do I live, these mountains I trek
I might as well scream in my underwear like a faggot off his meds
might as well melt instead, become a red, death that I dread,
hey muthafuckas, where's mah bread? I'll tell ya one
more time, better listen closely, profusely--

ya ain't real til ya write it down.

ya ain't real. period.

Isometric isolated
isotopes I sow into
the ground ideas
like appleseeds.

A shrine in my heart
and head lies in Central Park,
where the paths lead to man-
built reminders of god, of pray-
er, of leisure, of peace.
I pray to the spirit of myself
to this temple, on a medium-
sized ledge pink gorgeous vines
ripple down it toward the pond
at the bottom, and my mother earth
who gives me strength while
I face time out of spirit and into
the world. But this world can't
help me.

It's a gazebo, white with a trape-
zoid roof on a ledge with a pond
beneath it. Cry out for peace because
all this world is is struggle. Let us
be fish in this pond.

Coke Dealers Kill Each Other

Churchman checks our skiing inventory
while my girl named Laurie

presses her finger on the trigger,
stoic emotional rigor

it takes to shoot that gun,
Churchman goes down in the Filipino sun.

We grab our supplies and hit the turf,
skiers left and right come out of the surf.

Laurie 'n me make so much money off this wave,
but Churchman comes back to get some from his watery grave,

so Laurie takes the levers while me in my slippers
takes a semi-automatic and turns Churchman's shoulders to ribbons,

one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight,
it most certainly should have been a twist of fate

'cos Churchman remained unaffected
while Laurie looked dejected,

hands on her belly.
My bullets went through her like jelly.

And so, like any good man who knows his wife's about to die,
I pick the semi-auto up and tell her goodbye.

Carry on, Mr. Churchman, I grimaced to say,
"Was that a hot job," he asked, "was that a hot lay?"

Require assist to conserve our own just house instruction Planet instruction perform your own little bit right now!

Just house green Earth love my ordinary jerry-rigged megaphone crackling out fingerlicking Ferdinands tanning furs with Green Day's turds, 

Jerry rigs megaphone just our house, little bits of Green Day's turds perform fingerlicking Ferdinands tanning furs, just our brown love blue love green earth now!

Green is the color of the day and the earth, time and place both in one.
Green is the color money ganje trees and frogs, love and hearts bees and,

consequently, Irish wives who like to flog
their children or husband for getting out of hand,

hand, MANOS, hands, hands, the hands of fate, the hands that
bleed green envy Ferdinands!

Let's hope I don't ever actually talk like this in real life. One more time!

Just house green Earth love my ordinary jerry-rigged Irish wife fingerlicking
flogging fate, hands that tan furs go green, stung by bees, performing little bits of 

Planet Ferdinand Manos, Ferdinand! I am Planet Ferdinand Manos, and
I am here to avenge my father's death. You are here to die.

Jokes Aside

My time here in this particular
village has an end-- I'm glad for
it, I want safety now like I thought
I wanted freedom before.
The lady behind the counter in
her coffee shop uniform smiles
but what keeps me up at night in
my dreams is thinking of her, my
wonder-eyed thunder-minded girl,
rain to fire her rain my fire.

Let's pause for a sec while I grab
my heart and hold it to my brain.

It's 2am here and I'm fucking tabled
down in a supermarket bathroom inside of
pomegranate seeds when they explode in
my mouth and on the wall and I'm watching
this girl dance on the faucet here in this
bathroom, trance-dancing trance inducing
gaze, throwing down while karma
inserts inserts itself into coma,
Jamaica and Roma,
walking through the suburbs,
they're not exactly lovers, duplicate and then
you wait for the next Kuwait, pomegranate seeds
exploding Sufi swirling scifi throats to the ground
of divine truth, the supermarket categorization
dis-proven by the law that everything
is god.

To all the nude beaches we're too poor to visit,
to all the African children dying today I'll never see,
to the trees that will eventually sprout from this city
avenue, to the fire in your heart that never fully extinguishes
until you're dead yourself, to all the Victorian castles
we will never actually live in, to the loaded words
help and poverty and save, to donors and exacerbations,
to pot and beer and heavy intoxication,
I wish the world never knew about our disgusting habits
of survival.

Liver liters pitch tents in Patagonia--
it's where I buy my patio furn-
iture. These liver liters also deliver
legal talismans like UCC Section
1-308, and if you give us a dollar
a day, comes to 30 a month Patagonia
don't wait. Patagonia don't wait,
neither do the children, the children
that inherit the future that we're fighting
for, the concrete blocks I be walking
toward Patagonia, the sistas and brothas
who be struggling for themselves and family,
the lovers and the fighters living in peace temporarily
before picking up again to meet the frequency
of life in these busy freakin' streets--
Help us reach our Patagonia tonight,
Patagonia's the goal and we're helping
some children, put plainly, money's
the key and goal to survive.

Now now now, 77 million children are not receiving
some form of education, they're
cut out of circulation, education--
some call it regurgitation--
means more money made in their lifetime,
means less children in their lifetime,
means children they do have will be twice as
likely to gain an education too.

Here's what you can do to help!

SAVE THE CHILDREN loves
lion dens where Wallstreeters
prowl up and down the wet walk,
SAVE THE CHILDREN loves
liar pitchperfect mutualists, but all
I am is a parasite.

All I've ever been is a goddamn
parasite.

Everybody loves Bob Marley,
everywhere I go it's the same old story,
people of all nation, they love the rasta-
man vibration--today is saturday and the sponge
looks out his street-view in Brooklyn, but
the sea is large and vast like the city may or may
not be, nineteen and dreamin' real goals be
fluctuating but keeping my head in the
face of sour patch kids, they
say we're dreamers but we're not the only ones,
feel the spirit alive in the town and the city,
mood is only delivered by chemists
and alchemists who push Pb
into Au, dopa-mine into receptors,
blood into body.

And yet the past still feels like the present
even here, I can't run from it. Lainee
lives homeward but here I lay
wayward and the current's sweeping me up
if I let it.

Fire Inside of Skyscrapers

There's a new evolutionary
paradigm shift!

It's not something you hear
about on Television!

No!

It's real! Real like your mother's
mashed potatoes, this new paradigm
shift is predicted to take effect in our
lifetime, in our world, with the tools
we have for our use today, this new
paradigm shift I might take the liberty
of calling Homo Eros, equal love for
man and womankind!
It's not something you'd hear about in the New
York Times! That's because we

are Homo Eros! And we're here to
build love inside of competition, empathy
inside of greed, fire inside of sky-
skyscrapers, morality inside of
kapital, and most importantly, us
inside of struggle.

Poverty in Eastchester

The train rattles on by as I sit
in the green New York suburb
of Eastchester, Westchester
county. There's a golf club behind
me, trees, miles of grass interspersed
with homes and a neighborhood full
of old money, upper middle class type
old money, money made in the city
doin' the dirty, sparkling Audis hover
in the driveway.

Let me speak for a minute about
poverty. Poverty's different
for everyone, but almost everyone
feels it.

Let's talk ramen noodle poor. Let's talk
tap water poor; no television no internet no
gas no telephone don't even know what
day it is poor.

It's beautiful here in Eastchester, West-
chester county, crickets noising up
the woods to the tracks on my right,
to the south, while I lie here thinking
about how I'm here using old money
to combat itself. Haha! I'm an

evil genius.

No Free Rides (Maybe sometimes)

The Jersey town of New
Brunswick, collegetown,
much like the region of Taco-
ma where I spent some months,
great place for rain and fire,
not for friends spread out along
the country like not
enough butter spread over
too much bread, and I realize
there that I have no idea
what

I'm doing on this planet, here,
alone, no mamacita no girl
no paper no pen, traveling
on a free ride.

Union Square. Three o'clock. There's
a gypsy in front of a fountain, a
mountain of bones and muscles walking,
this way that way ANTS! A city
of ANTS! in different clothes, sporting
different colored skin, bird shit on
the pavement, over there the Buddhists
perform magic that is music with their
throats, tongues unexposed, commuters
exit the train station underground, sparrows
back 'n forth, there has to be a hundred or
more ANTS in my line of vision, some
desperately needing circumcision, trying
to get this out with precision, when every-
thing around us is bonafide illusion.

The sun spotlights a brick building, a hospital,
twenty-six stories high, two towers on a tri-
angular base, trees lining the roof, the way
a city bus shrieks on every corner, that's how
I think of you.

Aspirin Nation

Fear--
fear for myself, approaching twenty
Years--
on this planet full of switching
Careers--
superhighways and churning
Gears--
left to us The Cancer, Hello,
How are you, Nice to meet you,
Kill you later but put you to Work
now, alone, maybe, maybe alone
in the universe but the earth's conscious-
ness lives in mountains while ours
say it's lonely at the top,
but you know the road's lonelier on
a reservation in Arizona, one in the morn-
ing, must remember fame and success
suckled imprinted on my aspirin-nations,
my aspirations, my antagonist yet to show
Himself 'cos it's still the first act, or maybe
the beginning of the second,
but nonetheless must remember
fame and aspiration isn't the best way nor
the only way, 'cos the Butcher gobbles it
all eventually.

The Conqueror
just lost his
thirty year mortgage,
found a foreclosure
notice on the front door,
aged with hard weather,
The Conqueror Lord of
the Spoken Word moves
slow motion toward dreams
melting in the Eastern Sun,
Union Square bats no
eyelashes, instead bats a .335
on the road to nuclear nectar

ego 

death moving always
moving, treasures sinking to
the ocean floor.

The ocean looked like
a television screen, all silver
and flat, while I saw out
the window of the airplane
our shadow, dark and anxiety-
producing,

and the shores of Long Island
looked tropical like maybe
the Bahamas with the sun setting
giving us orange and pink
everything, everything the light
touches is the Pridelands.

This was last night. Today,
though, today is Day One in what
used to be called New Amsterdam,
overwhelmed and lost in the streets
like a Cretan to the Minotaur, but
the hope burns and my heart
breathes fire,

your heart breathes fire too. Let's
hope
I don't
lose
my
wallet.

Sufi sundries care not
for your twirls, your
whirligigs, thunderstorms
you whip out of that
axe will empower, not
enlighten.

Yogi Berra

How
can
you
think
and
hit
at
the
same
time?

SW to NE

We meet again, gravity.
Let us mingle with brevity
for a time, and when the game
is over, this chess game for
my soul, we can laugh over
darts and the movie Office Space.
(Excuse me, I believe
you have my stapler...)

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas!
It chants, this THING in a box
of junk, this Santa-face monstrosity,
from childhood but works on
the same acid-batter battery, it jingles on motion
sensor. And sometimes, light sensor.
The fucking thing.

But seriously, life pushes me northeast
where the lights twinkle from the ground up,
a ten mile dick inbetween Jersey and Brook-
lyn. And I don't know
what will
happen.

Ha.
The stillness now however, it is because
of a rowboat on this lake, tied to the dock.
Me and her are in it,
my fellow alpha brain wave sistuh,
my world class so class is class goes to class sistuh,
my home sistuh and my mother earth sistuh,
my root chakra knows where home is,
though my naive moronic head says there
is home where I lay my head, and only
for a while.
She's a sistuh but also my lovuh and
you betta believe in Jah that I'mma write to her,
elephants never forget, not while tied
to this dock together, let's untie
and cross to the other
shore.

So Ho Ho Ho mothers and sisters, friends
and fuckbuddies, lovers and teachers and drinkers
and piss ant noBODIES, Ho fucking ho.
John Lennon shoulda said
"NEW YORK IS WHAT HAPPENS
WHEN YOU'RE BUSY MAKING
OTHER PLANS."

We were sitting
on her family's back porch,
sunk into the comfiest
couch this side of the
Mississippi, while her
mother sat in a chair adjacent.
She was smoking Newports
and telling me a story
about her godson.

Her godson lived in Anchorage,
worked on the Naval base there,
and his friend needed $4,000.
His friend killed her godson.

This is not something that
happens in real life, Lori explained.
This happens on the news,
or on cable TV, but you'd never
expect your kids, your godson,
you don't worry about things
like this happening, because they
don't. Not to us, anyway. Not
to us.

He did it with a hammer, and when he
was done, he cleaned the hammer
and put it back in the truck.

The afternoon sun was sinking,
the crisp golden light touching their
untouched lawn, grass growing five
feet high, an untended rose bush in the corner,
a tree in the other.

Did you know the rape and murder rate
for women is highest in the nation in Anch-
orage? Lori told me.

Oh but the comments on the news story
webpage were seeping, and Lori found the
killer's mom in adamant defense--

Lori pointed out the killer's involvement with
a dog fighting rink when he was 15,
charged with felony. And they let the dude
into the armed services.

Hey, life happens. But death, it doesn't. Not
to us.

The Tragicomedy of Jimmy Johnskis

Peanut butter Thanks-
giving pie, a slice for you
along with ham on rye, so
the obvious problem with
ordering this from your local
Jimmy Johns does follow:

Mr. Bukowski, the
"associate,"  has to consult
Mr. Sandusky, the manager,
employed by
Mr. Lebowski, who drinks
alot and listens to Stravinski.
But it's funny, Lebowski's wife,
maiden name Lindski, listens
to Stranvinski too, ever since
she was hospitalized in that
"ski" accident with "instructor"
Bukowski, and stayed with
the homeski for two weekski
(it was really a new Bukowski
inside of Lebowski's Lindski),
and everyone's a Stravinski
fan sans Sandusky, who prefers
watching a "bootleg" copy of Monica
Lewinsky sucking Clinton's joystickski.

It surprised Lebowski one morning
over a cocktail, Lindski's Stravinski
choice gave Lebowski a smile, but then...
the pointski came to his headski.
Let's be sureski that Lebowski didn't
let that shitski go. He buried Lindski
one night, tried to catch Bukowski

but that mothafucka fled to Cincinnati.
Sandusky was sworn to secrecy over lunchski,
Lebowski found an attorney
and when they finally tried him for first degree murderksi,
his attorney won the jury away from pleading guilty.

Meanwhile Sandusky broke down over
a glass of iced tea raspberry and told the copskis.
He acted as witness against Bukowski.

Bukowski was put away for 2 years,
Sandusky killed by hitmenski.

But really, I'm thinking, Jimmy John's
don't have what I need, doesn't
peanut butter sound delicious
today?

The Reed Flute and The Library (in @ parts)

Uno
CHORUS: The words said
live in their own
worlds, voices
swirl like honey, while
I'm all lost in the library, and
they are real. Eggs
laid, seeds planted,
let them grow!

RUMI SAYS!
Body flowing
out of spirit,
spirit up
from the
body, but it's
not given
to us
to see
love
the sea
that
is
our soul. The
reed flute, friends,
the reed
flute
is fire.

Not wind.

Be that

empty.

I SAY!

The reed flute is fire, I'm fire, destroy

destroy empty lawn chair Bob Dylan go to hell

empty I need to be empty the tar in

my lungs need to leave, the lungs need

to leave, the heart must leave the body 

must leave, there should be nothing

so then I can be filled with everything

everything.

Everything

that might

HENRY CHINASKI SAYS!

be me

or God or you

or people

or the devil

or christ but then, all
I'm
really actually
gonna do
is sit here
while
the ants
crawl on
me writing
poems like
a stupid
sonofabitch
and get drunk
and maybe
she'll fuck me
tomorrow.

Dos.
The alchemist sat in his brass chair
and took the ivory figure of a horse
and set it on the table top.
Alchemist you are, if your name
is Daniel Abdal Moore.

ALCHEMIST SAYS!
I drank rainwater collected in a trumpet
flower and saw a youth dressed in leaves
gazing with love on everything around Him
extolling God in a voice the hibiscus flowers
could adequately hear!

I SAY!

The Alchemist's dark laboratory off Moulton Street

can by no means win over yours,

your heart brews pneumatic

songs, if you read Tolkien

you'd know the universe

was made

by music, I say

the

reed flute's

music

is the universe

in song.

LORD OF THE FLIES SAYS!

Boron Born and hermetically fed up,

burned everything but manuscripts,

especially subversive politics and pigs with lipstick

It isn't like Bloods and the Crips,
no, it's me muthafucka, hanging on a stick!
Oink oink I'm a pig on a stick
grinning like Stalin to his kids,
flies in the mouth just for kicks!
RAW! Does it scare ya, you little bitch!
Voices be messing up your head all up in this shit!
Luck brings you up and then puts you in a fit,
Come here, baby, kiss my lips,
or burn in hellfire, dead in a ditch.

CHORUS:

The voices cry out dying

foxes, cunning malicious stoic

haunting voices make us all

shiver in the library.

The library isn't covered in
ants but maybe, just mabye,
it talks to you too. It should
haunt you too.

Ferryman

The stars point my soul
toward the ground and I
got bug bites on my fingers.
The ferryman wants his
two cents and I only
got one sense and it
sure as hell ain't common.

The ferryman calls himself
Oblivion, don't call him
Death, and the journey's
taking forever, nineteen
years so far and many
more to go. The river's
bending and I have no
flexibility when it comes
to my joints, my joints
quake.

The trees around us are dead
and whisper lines in meter,
but the river isn't in meter,
it's full of mosquiteers.

The ferryman tells me to hold
my breath as we go under-
ground.

It was seven-fifteen
and I'm busy dreaming,
sitting in this diner thinking
with a cup of joe
(I'm a fiend for the bean, dig?)
And I know that once life picks up it's breezy,
this shit will pass, done phasing me,
accepting the back-forth reality
of super ego duking it out with the id,
my amigo, the placebo effect
has the mind swimming in oblivion,

and I gotta girl with eyes like a doe's,
full of calm and admiration,
I gotta tell you I'd be lost without her in this equation,
her character and natural fascination
for sensation, she's close like fabric to the skin
and for once life lessons might be sinking in
and she gets me, oooh she gets me.

I gotta tell ya, I need better kicks,
though my head's screwed into the meaning of wit,
tired of this shit, neurons rewiring I feel it
when the ganje kicks in, when her love kicks in,
when my soul kicks in to the experience,
I'm delirious with passion flying out my fingertips,
though life don't stop when you're out of dope
or out of hope, rewind the tapes and play it backward
just to show that it can't unhappen, me and my
mismatching socks, your mismatched hearts,
I know where my heart stands and that's on the ground
in the clouds kicking so much ass, and
oooh she gets me, oooh she gets me.

Cementland Reality (Just Breathe)

Our eyes lock,
time stops,
heart's poundin' raindrops
clock used to go tick-tock
but now it's gone like our soldiers in Iraq,
the wind's pulsing and picking up rocks
thrown against the window the force shocks
us laying in her bed,
our future we don't want to have so far ahead,
talkin' about all the books we haven't read--
her father telling her our own paths we tend to tread
shit, she laughed, he's been doing that since I was eleven,
it's our education we're smoking away.

She secretly wants life to be some surreal animation,
just sweet sensations, no church or state or federation
or health problems like lacerations
or TV's "Face the Nation",
no more infestations or incarcerations,
no more medications or the need to take them,
no more vaccinations or the need to get them,
no more transportation or the need to use it,
no more insanity or the need to plead it,
no more court rooms or the need for recess,
no more diabetes or the need for dialysis,
no more guns nor the lead that's in them,
no more me if I refuse to listen
to my heart that's pounding in her ear as she's talking
her eyes and mine expanding,
her eyes tell me love is now everlasting
like it wasn't before,
the sunrays peaking on the shore
of this long night finally,
the morning star brightly seen,
the green and blue serenity
but you know you're soon gonna visit
the cementland reality,
the cementland reality.

Bus lets me off, feet blistering in the cold--
This time no money to hold.
She says to me, "just breathe" when she picks me up
from the station and hands me the pipe, God standing over me,
over us, he's painting on a canvas an action shot
of soccer kids grinning
while an old woman's winning
all up in the bingo room,
she's filling her box pine tomb up
with casino chips while I'm
filling mine with potato chips, while a
little girl is buying a bag of pita chips, while a
dog dies because he found the bag of chocolate chips
left out on the counter--
the culprit now haunted much more than he wanted,
dead dogs suck, you know.

Vesuvius erupts, your heart's a plastic cup,
here's the crutch, I'm a little drunk
but I do gotta heart the size of a construct-
ion site while others still living off of Lady Luck
and those others still don't give a fuck
about anything but their pick-up truck
that was just towed from the Wal-Mart plaza,
'member the old days when shit was hot lava? (Yeah, I do.)
That shit sucked worse than Drone Wars by Obama, Clone Wars, and Big Pharma--
I might be a rhymer but this life ain't no soap opera drama,
'member my two second coma
on the porch of your condominium
while we were watching that movie Requiem
for a Dream?

I gotta question.
Yeah, I gotta question.

Why give wages a minimum
if the minimum is less than two millennium
a month, fuck askin' "can you loan me some?"
"Sell me some?" "Buy me some?" "Lemmie work some,"
But they repo'd the chromium
appliances or your kitchen linoleum to mine loads of uranium,
sitting in their lawn chairs having coke with rum,
later need some Tum Tums and can't seem to cum
inside their wives and girlfriends, sucking the fun out of everything.

The price of livin' comfortably
gets so dangerous when you're a commodity--
when that's the price of livin' comfortably,
and everything's a commodity
but not our souls in the rivers or trees,
not in our hearts our bowels or are teeth,
it's all not bound up in grief or greed or
weed, when everything's a commodity,
one day we'll all be free but until then
we're all fish swimming like
the fish keep swimming, like
Dori telling Marlin to 'just keep swimming',
my time is swimming and your head
is swimming and my time is swimming away.
Our time's slipping away.
This life is slipping away.
This Cementland Reality? Yeah it's slipping away.

Words off the paper
jump into your skin and

eat away at blindness.

Late Observation

The bugs get to me, a big

One with wings two inches

Long roosts on my front door,

Have you ever noticed how
life sometimes seems worse
than death?

A fishing boat leagues away from the San Diego docks and it’s about 2 in the morning, the lights from the night club scene shine onto the bay, and the fishermen drink their rum and try to sleep on top of agoraphobia, the humongous aquarium ocean and the loneliness of looking on that dark horizon to the storm clouds passing you to the north and to the east is the sounds distant and faraway, like where God is to our souls when we fish for food in our day to day, and San Diego is nothing more than the imprint of that fisherman’s eyelids, beneath his hat, next to his bed, where his unused toothbrush lay lying next to the toilet, the imprint of San Diego is nothing more than you and me and Sea World.

Fat Man Fred

Fat man Fred stands in the corner
with a boy of 30 in a baseball cap,
sideburns on both, and boy has
a doobie in his mouth and is cutting
a little bit of cocaine, Fat man Fred
stutters and takes a swig of whisky
through a straw from a plastic cup,
boy of 30 sells him a painting and
it's just another Saturday night so
the crowd's drinking cocktails and
wearing high heels and laughing
lipstick colored lifestyles, Fat man
Fred talks to you about

Charles Bukowski, Los Angeles,
the "Sity of Angles", but your girl
is enjoying the laid-back views
in the corner, little girl rapping on
stage and your girl is gettin' into it,
you're gettin into her, your fingers
in her hair as you and her dance
into the night, into the ever
expanding ever falling well of
falling in love.

Life through heaven’s eyes,

Galactic clouds seen by

The Hebrew shepherds

And astronomers at your

Local observatory. 

Tolkien calls

an event

In his histories

that never happened

“Ainulindale.”

Ain-u-lin-dale

AaNEWlynndaal.

En-oo-leendale

Everything was made

and predetermined

by gods making music.

The stellar cradle

isn’t music but

large clouds

of chemicals

and tiny bits of

stardust turning

into solid rock.

But maybe the

celestial furnace

in Tolkien's head is

where music is made

with fire and collision

and void. I know my
head is made
by music.

Is this what God is?

A bunch of palm trees.
Looking up at 'em with their
dry brown palm leaves hushing
up birds nests.

       Is this what
God is
jazz in the late August night,
ants at the foot of my bed--
wait they're in my bed,
can't sleep so write poems
instead.

Is this what God is?
The whuh whuh whuh whuh
whirring of a stand-up
fan, the hum hum ohm hum ohm hum
of an air-conditioner,
the shtick shtick shtiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigurgleiiiiiick
noises of the sprinkler
system.

A bunch of fuckin' palm trees.

Tremble in Fear

"Abraham believed, and therefore he was young; for he who always hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who retains faith retains eternal youth. " - S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Faith in what, Mister philosopher?
Faith in God? God's not playing basket-
ball in the cul-de-sac, He's not screaming
in the McDonald's playground,
He's not reserving valuable airtime on
a large network to promote his new
"half-priced" law firm, and He's certainly
not driving in our petrol-drinking auto-
mobiles.

No, where is God today? I'd like
to have a little chat with Him.

If God is within, inside like the Taco
Bell you scarfed down last night
at one in the morning, if God takes
his place in your stomach your lungs
your heart your cock your pussy
your eyes your lips your mind your
penal gland your feet--
if God is us, then we must must
must must must have faith in ourselves.

because there's really basically nothing left
to feel. 
Isn't
that sad?
I think
it might
be the
saddest thing
since Michael
Jackson.

MJ Lives in this Poem!

We who peel bananas to throw in swimming pools--
we who color our dictionaries with smeared apricots,
we who smell the Parthenon with our fingertips,
we who live, hear us! Think with tanks made of
glass and taste our shrieks of de-
light at the process of tossing our salads
at stray cats. Feel our sonic vibrations
and tater tots and sticks of slap and our real laughter
that isn't like our old laughter, feel it
in your bones yay-ah.

The ghetto's yawning in the six AM rush hour, and I'm sitting looking out my first story window at the neighborhood commuters, writing stupid poems or testimonies or word salads or toilet paper, depending on who you are and what you stand for, what can I stand for when I'm sitting? Palm to forehead, I slouch.

Elephants and the FBI

"Standing in the place of the wise and discoursing to his students upon the profundities of divine order, the philosopher suddenly speaks better than he knows, becoming, as it were, a disciple of himself. He finds new meanings in his own words; he becomes aware that his mortal mind is being moved by an immortal agent...only through the Mysteries is that inclination brought to the high tide of expression." -- Manly Hall.

Immortal AND immoral, I tell ya what,
sitting in this room full of stuff thinking
how hard it is to break
the ice on the back of the elephant,
past the tough-ass skin of the elephant,
to the soul of the elephant, and when

I say elephant I mean reality-- haven't
you heard of the blind men and the
elephant? That's us, elephant holding
up our green and we're trying to grab
at it, it's all an insurgency, see?

And I say immoral 'cus the damned
thing doesn't know when to leave
a poor sucker alone to his going-
nowhere world, stuck in his parents'
garage hands to forehead realizing

it's so much harder than he thought
it was back in high school. Immoral
immortal agents be all up in this shit,
looking for fingerprints and deciphering

what it means to be alive.

Nothing goes better together
than the heat and the blues,

except for maybe gravity
and its young sister, centrifugal
force.

To all the aging homebodies,
to the junk and scrap collectors,
the busy busy pet-owners who
don't have enough time to clean
the feces-ridden cage in the corner
of the house,

to the ones with cockroaches breeding
in their swimming pools, who'd rather
watch Netflix and eat pizza and go out
camping to avoid stepping in dogshit,

I feel you. I wonder how I can avoid
making the same mistakes, I wonder
how I can keep things from getting
so bad, because it just seems too natural.

The Devil alias God's Shadow

Okay, so here’s a story about the devil you kids know so well,

Because I’m sick and tired of writing things that won’t sell.

The Devil, when in Russia a magician named Woland,

when in the desert a man in black chased by the gunslinger named Roland,

Took my guitar and told me to go home, I’d never make it.

But I told him, ‘nuh-uh, my girlfriend never fakes it,

And you can’t make me move because God wants me here,’

To which the Devil says, ‘I took Daniel Johnston, so you betta have fear!’

He says to me, ‘look, I can make you an offer.

Something so you won’t have to suffer.”

And I tell him his offer’s just fine,

As long as he keeps it out of mine.

He laughs and tells me I need this deal,

That this is it and the deal is real.

I tell him I don’t want to cheat or be cheated.

He tells me to ‘shut up or you’ll be deleted,’

And I tell him to go back where he came from,

And he laughs and tells me ‘come and get some,’

To which Buffy the Vampire Slayer surprises me from behind a tree,

slays the devil with holy water and ancient key.

While he’s cackling like hot coals about to go out,

I take my guitar back and tell him get out.

The devil acts all lame and really infantile,

So I lick my fingers for something I haven’t done in awhile.

I put him out with my fingertips in a heavy sigh,

Rolled myself a joint with Buffy and then got high.

Dog, ya dog,
try to make sense
out of a hurricane,
ejaculate on her belly,
falling on the floor

bound to pride the
way lions are, the lion
that is freedom roars at
the riot-cops--"Destroy
what destroys
you"--
filing insurance claims,
withdrawal fees at ATMs,
banks charging interest
for just about every-
thing. You know, Muhammad
the man not the word
said 'charge no interest
to your brother.'

The hurricane inexplicably
came on her belly,
who's her but liberty?

The sun shines through the rain
That pastes itself onto the wind-
Shield. God brings the rain but
He also brings bigots, liberals,
Cockroaches, famine, life,
Love, let us not forget rain.

The world at large you can wear
On your pinky.

Space Cadets!

C’mon, space cadets! It’s time for another

roundup, one of those hey-it-won’t-be-every-

day-that-I-have-to-do-this-kind-of-things, something

fast like your mother’s pet alligator biting

extraterrestrial radio listeners when they investigate

her cellar in the Bayou for human artifacts to take back

to their extraterrestrial city exhibitions describing

their creations, or conversely, evidence for abuse

and battery of our local ecology, and grounds for

annihilation.

And the Vietnamese children cry for joy

when extraterrestrials made their debut upon

the childrens’ old and broken continent.

I will cry too, if we ever get the chance to meet

our maker, beginning or ending,

and it won’t even matter in the long run

because we’re all being swept away in the

matter recycler black hole that is the sun in

five billion years, which if you’re a fourth or

fifth dimensional being then five billion years

is the blink of an eye, and I long wish

we were defeated by space.

I’d call it the day the music died.

Eliot

TS who shows me fear
in handfuls of dust never
ended up in this town, altho
fear and dust
go hand in hand.
The bum on the corner
of Charleston Blvd. and Lamb,
next to the McDonalds,
he has a mouthful of dust.
Eyeful my eyes are dust.
Her breasts aren't fat cells,
they're dust cells, and even
beyond the neon, all you sinners
are saints covered in dust, fear
handfuls dry, making worse
my unquenchable thirst,
making worse my unquenchable
thirst.

Little girl thinks the meaning to life
is inside the video poker machine.

Nicotine-stench in the caves of
my city's bowels, the city's bowels

big like an all you can eat buffet. Little
girl, take your cashier checks and get

out, past the puddles behind Circus
Circus, past the prostitutes on Industrial,

past the I-15 and the chamber of commerce,
past the lies and into the light.

Outlaw living paycheck to
paycheck, two weeks straight
without common sense.

Outlaw the machines, brightly
colored, noises and levers,
giving people without things
to do less to do, glassy-eyed

patrons, or are you slaves?
toeverything that's wrong
with capitalism.

it's a scam.

by FT Marinetti

“And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black

 fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran

 before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.”

Pray, mantis,
monk, ascetic
leaf-eater.

Smash cricket
against floor-
boards.

Moth, fly into
this devil's
mouth.

Swallow
flies by the
cupful.

There's a hole in my heart and I'm
filling it with cork and maybe bubble
wrap.

Oppenheimer says that
he's death, the destroyer
of worlds.

I say I'm depression,
the destroyer of words.

But switch depression
for television and words
for critical thinking,

you get the one place
we don't want to be, the
one place we're already at.

The television when I turn it on
gloats that Life's Good.

Found mummified cockroach
in cardboard box.

Suburbanites of the Mojave, be warned-- your next
box office movie ticket might explode
all over the evening news like Charlie
Sheen's load, in a town exemplifying how
the West was finally won, not by the cowboys 
but by realtors.


And Vegas was also won by the realtors,
so are you if you play ball, and playing ball when
you're no good at it makes the game easier
for those that are, and playing ball wouldn't
be such a crime if only it was a real ball and not
some immigrant's head that found himself in
the wrong neighborhood in Phoenix.

The world needs more firebenders. And when
I say firebenders, I mean poetry that matters.

Can we make poetry matter?

Neurosis

The iguana firelight trembles
underneath the home turned
landfill, paper boxes stuffed
with dust, mothballs, spider
eggs, hot glue guns, a broken
sewing machine, plastic bins,
hair-dryers, old cell phone chargers,
dust, furniture, knick-knacks,
broken china, unbroken china,
books, books, another printer,
dust, pencils, computer monitors,
symptoms of an overproducing
society plus the nesting instinct,
where money buys misery,
not clean but filthy filthy misery, the
next best thing to happiness.

Waste land, internal clutter, banish
your neuroses--

or your neuroses will banish you.

trying to pack my room into boxes

Dissenting deserters dig dinosaurs, democracies, desserts, dung, dollops of Daisy, dragons, and the letter D.
Californian creepers cream their jeans to the sight of it.
Bland belligerent bigots believe that
ANARCHY IS ANNIHILATION OF ALL THINGS AMERICAN,
but bullshit is bullshit, buster billionaire.
Capitalism cools the collective consciousness into ineffectual ice, and when
dumbsaints demand democracy direct, dilapidated and destitute dogs die by drone-strikes.

In an airport in December

Mitt Romney's on
CNN, 3:00 on
a Saturday drizzle,
and the bilingual chatter
of airport waiting lobbies
echoes like Skywalker
slam-dunking the Rebel
bomb into the Death
Star, use the force Luke,
use the force Occupy,
use the force I say,
tell me who's that ridin'?
John the Revelator! Tell
me who's that ridin'? John
the Revelator! Tell me who's
that ridin'? John the Revelator!
He wrote the book of the seven
seas! But in the meantime, the 
bees keep a-buzzin', the rain
keeps a-bumblin',
geriatrics keep a-dyin',
and I'm dyin' too, bub,
we're all dying within
the confines of airport

waiting lobbies. Skywalker,
John you Revelator,
move down off your myth-
ological mountains. You
have Death Stars to forcibly
dismantle, books to carry
across this placid wasteland.