Pilgrims, Pilgrims All

Ohm at the dark curtains
the fishy smell suchness,

I'll write whatever I wish
but it'll get me nowhere
it'll tell you nothing--I can't seem to
get down what I should say
only what I don't want to--
and that leaves us right here
where we left ourselves
on the pages of this poem
that reads forever without saying
what I've felt, just
endless useless words WORDS words

don't bother reading
you've wasted my time
the silent office
the bashing staple machine
that can't seem to shut up,

there's no voices in the halls
no movement bah
blah baah bam blam

sound the sheep fire the guns
ahem ho ho
it's closing december
boiling water

Ohm at the dark curtains
the wintery snowy suchness

good day.

Jump!

Momma I'm lapping the
birds on the way down
watching the ledges and
counting the dark curtains
on the cellophane walls,
I'm tired of walking on the
streets robots, and me
being one of them, building
more robots for future
generations of surrendering,
we can be martyrs for the truth
I could swear it casting off
these shackles that you can't
see so why not believe they
don't exist? Because because
it's harder to trust the creeping
black acne of the skull-mind-
intuition--
we could see what I/we see
it would be blasting off sparkling
endless dreams, it would be truth
of the eternal stars, it would be
motionless eyes forever
grinning
baby
grinning

Goof

goof and I've left
one bottle red wine
at 3pm close to christmas
tree's unadorned branches and sits
cold dark corner of rooms in
pastel-sherbet aftermath
swirling in the starless afternoon
goof and with cat's
all on their own and I am
alone and asking the king
slinking by my chocolate floors
what's my eyes have to
do with seeing the
goof when I feel it like
I feel it glancing off my swinging
wobbling drowning arms
obscuring the wails of the kitchen
wailing from missed faces,
left spaces winds wailing against
newly installed window panes
goof pains and I've left
my senses behind to feed on
recognition and only escapes.

of every no-thing

And so I return to the machine
of every no-thing and golden
oblivion--I step forward
watching past and future recede--
a chilling wind on my perception
mind--I am a battered hopeless
shell losing more of myself
everyday--decayed--
but is that right or wrong?
sometime--often times--
the wrong pieces tear at me,
I'm forgetting where they
begin or how much they know,
if it is they know at all--
without memory or peace,
there is no goal but to
forget in sublime failure
the reason--the cause--
the foundation of all things
being one thing but now many
sad individualized separate things--

And so I return to the machine
of every no-thing and golden
oblivion each night to confess
my sins

Never to be found

there's a gulf of years
between landing here
and fading here, and I recall
your smile in each child's memory
much more than my own failings
or never beings or never wasings,
which you never cared about
and still don't, tho often I find
in your eyes what I think is
some hidden sadness, some
longing, some dream that might
never come or has passed from being,
and it's hard to look away--I
admit it--and it's
harder to stare into the truth--
so I swallow it and write it here
never to be found.

Some Change for the Time Man

Anchor me down with the past...
I'm a floating helium-centric
goon of the heavens babbling
incoherent love songs to the sick--
oh well, it was a mighty cause
when I fought it, when I remembered
what it was, but now I'm ground
up in old groundhog day
senility starting 8 hours behind
the sun and escaping into the night
only to sleep never to live
never to live--I'm a layabout--
society bites me, keeps me moving,
I've fallen so far from my feet--
they're dragging toward the gorge,
an endless plastic coffin filled
to the brim with only the faces
I've known, the ones with
concentric circles spinning round their
golden heads--that'd be us Joe--but
they stick the swords to our backs and the
planks vibrate to the frequency
of the queen's machine--
there's no footing, there's no branch
only falling--

Newton's wait

Buddha beneath
a fig tree
Newton beneath
an apple tree
equivalent in biblical terms--
Eve and Adam bit one
or both--anyway,
one understood
in an instant
where there seemed to be
everything there was
nothing,
the other a classical aged
enlightened fool capitalist
saw something where
there wasn't--and has
wasted an entire civilization
on the idea--a folly
which we've been
wearing like an albatross
and making others wear too
until they're all smeared with
shit and evil and corrupted and
submissive or dead--believing
in made up shiny ideas
dressed up in experimental
clothes and called science--
but the Buddha sat and aged
and perceived and
the Buddha took one look,
got it--

and Newton
Newton's still waiting
on
no-thing.

Poets

Poems are an old window
to an old world that's all
but meaningless,
the poet has been
meaningless for 100 years
or he's/she's been dying for that
long--worrying, cracking
bursting with nothingness
and everything-ness finding
poverty and society are
standing in the way
so sitting alone on rooftops
needing not screens or glass,
howling at shit-stained moons,
drowning in the cold fog,
the poet is the great
anachronism of life,
the poet is ever-wanting and free
and never wanted and
doomed.

Windows

I see them drop dead.
from their perch. Yeah the one
right beneath me. it's digusting.
just right there. splat. their
insides must have burst. I guess. I can't see it
and I don't have to clean it. but still.
they should think about it
before they go off and do it. just dropping.
dropping dead like that. like flies out in
the open. Bam. Gone.

Banking on Christmas' Time

I don't know--the tree
dominates the room--
purple monster
of anglo-saxon breath--
crane--I crane--crane my
neck to look at this decadent
(used to be green) violet
triangular god tree--It's
Christmas at the bank,
or almost christmas, slick
floors and flavored coffee
from one side--or else stand
aside--Ha, I'm kidding,
I mean stand aside--

Oh, who am I
to say I've no authority--I write better
when the deadlines
are past anyway, and
it ain't easier to
submit this drivel than
it is to write it--just hurts
more--burns your eyes
more--watching those
guidelines legitimate--

Now place your ornamant
at the alter, god the purple tree
says so, no tangents just
submission submission
be a good boy keep your head
down--
watch out for a hanging branch

Without a night stand, my cup spilling

I left my bowl of
cereal in the sink unwashed
thought for a moment by
your empty chair
turned down the lights
removed my clothes
climbed into cold bed
under cold sheets,
closed my eyes
listened to a solitary car horn moan in the night
reminded myself,
"You must remember your dreams,"
then drifted
just drifted without thinking
until I slept
a black endless vision-less dead man's sleep,

In the morning I opened my notebook
and scratched a big X onto the first empty page I found,

"Shit,
          what a waste," I thought,

But hell,

you know, there wasn't enough time or ink
to fill the damned thing in anyway.

untitled

She wants nothing of me
but my presence
and I can't even give her that

Untitled by Choice

I passed the salt to
my dental brain,
thoughts out/fluoride in,
the street is a string of
lights and I walk on tip-toe
to the entrance of the thing--
what it is? No one can say
but it sparked the beginning
and it will bring the end (what
I heard on nobody street
from the nameless man) a ghastly
thunderbolt and the sky
is rent by burning barrels
and stories without theme
or meaning or are they meaningless
to the plot just rambling truths,
I am at the entrance
I have already entered
I'll be standing outside forever
for all time and without end,
I passed the razor over my eyes
nothing left of our sanity
but to wait blindly,
but to wait obediently.

Lessons for wednesdays

Compose the html strain
on our mimic brain--mechanical
mind melding fuck-all
teacher is segmenting bodies,
classifying objects, bleeding the
discourse into the marrow
of our bones,

lunch is a rambling
sentence spreading over
half hours of time
clicking measured lengths
counting up? counting down?
counting only to remind us
who's in control--

oh, weary servant's song
I'm in the quarters
quartered feeding on the beast,
drowning on its browned
milky puss--perpetuating
the link--

I believe the TV
I read the news
I am a suffering invalid
unbelieved out of existence
living in bright shadows
entirely--

We took the elevator down together,
we saw separate things, different
thoughts, metabolized brains--I drowned in the shit
spewed from the floors while
you looked for the sewer
drains and we promised
the whole way no matter what
that we'd hold each others hands.

Epiphanies & Shopping &

You know I was thinking
today,
and you should wear black
stockings all the time,
with boots or black shoes,
maybe the kind with
the lingerie strap
under long tight skirt (which
doesn't have to be black)
& no one would know
what was hidden
there but me--

with my x-ray vision
knowledge past the
knees, ah--

I was thinking today
very clear thoughts.

What did I dream last night?--an empty notebook--

Dreams are sleep piece
visions in the essential mind
fitting beneath those
of our mundane reality,
a fevered mirage going to
waste each night,
that's its own sad
story--a mirror to our
crumbling thoughts--
reach for them, taste them on
tip of tongue and idea--they're
out there stacking and falling,
filing and calling out--
ignored.

Black Friday Angel

Into the night
you'll go running
Black Friday night and
morning's sleepless shoppers
ignore abandoned streets
unlike lighted god malls
and the idols
somewhere therein
always beaming--

There's no bikes
keeping you safe on
creeping doom wheels
and the taxis only take
cash, specifically
green paper credits for the
beast--

(I imagine several darkened
blocks away) the Marriott
with its dim lights,
locked doors, and
sleeping agents guarding
beautiful empty couches &
unstained tables
from my breathless angel
hurrying home

How the rain sounds on a sunny day is nothing like what I have here

They're waiting for you
with the worst pens
subliminal
a sorrowful dull carcass
bleeds invisibly down one way street
sorrowful to die
unyielding,

my virgin nightmares
are implanted by crooks,

there's steps stepping
toward white
tiled corners--I listen--but

they aren't mine

I walk on my toes.

The Setting of their suns

Let's drown the star-eyed
colossus
in the vegetable sea
you & I
at the birth of our world
worlds away

She's a Reflection

Her glass stare shattered
on playground concrete,
her steely vase reflected
hips and ass

her nakedness was a child's myth,
clumsy,

boy's recalled only the purple sky
or was it golden
like her eyes that day?--

"no one matters," she spoke
like a question festering
as they hung on her every word,

she had those legs like the end
of a dream

unimaginable.

Souls

at infinity, the last casualty
brooding and bloody and bullheaded
warrior against apocalypse relapsing
to the point of nausea, dancing on
the graves of the void--
a single computer (blue)screened
bang--shrinking platform of
stand alone mockery--oh,
purple hellish sky, he claims to
have claimed, where
can I wander now?--

the fish swim beneath our feet
the fish swim beneath the stars

George on Piano

Young George on
piano--bodiless
sound--never
ends never ending
off my ear
off my ears
wailing telling clock
all hours of the
lulling green masterpiece
of shouldered dilemma
bitter misting Christ
in heaven scowling--

a child crosses the street
onto 19th
tinged with bleeding
ideas in the nigh
gone gone pink of the coming
night
Saturday morning
night, that's dark and seems to
last forever until Sunday
and hangover football--

I'm talking but not there yet
and the moment is scoffing,
saying-- some idiotic
trivial god awful thing--

the commercial screams
pulling me out
righting my head--almost had it--
but for trimming the jagged edges
to erode my dream

I am a tool without cells
moving forward unwillingly into the unknown
I am a tomb ever gnawing at
my own walls

George doesn't have a care in the world
he keeps tapping--content in the past
with the dead--

Democracy at Work

Humanity, you are
an idiot's instrument
sounding aimlessly into the night
Humanity, you wait
like cattle to namedrop
into endless uncaring square ballots
Humanity, you are a
meaningless horde
born only to whither & die
never realizing the truth--

In a way I wish I could love you
but I'm all dried up,
In my own way I'll care for you
and bleed for you

if you forget me,
if you ignore me--

timebomb

I have two minutes to
get this all down
and now I've got to
--oh--move outta here,
dance outta here,
swing by my neck outta here
toward the
                 spit stained floor
                 ta
                 find
                 whatever
I'm supoosed to
short of
short to find
was meant to simply
follow the arching plot lines
that read submission
                           not
                           meaning
                           what
                           you
                           think
                           tho
consumer--

but what you can only think

the first thought burrow into
brain, burrowed into your
hidden brain so that even our
initial thought line beautiful process
is ruined--

only 5 seconds left
                              before
                              I'm cut off
            only this--

ah, returned.

October

Jack's October
nearly gone, Wolfe's
revelation, turning leaves,
World Series, dreams--
the Shenandoah brawling
in corner of Virginia's mind,
little boy silent, lonesome(?)
on hilltop gaping into the void,
everyone goes home in
October--or walks away
into golden sunset,
the last sunset before winter--
gray and cold and gone--
gone--like the glint of the autumnal
eye, like it blazes its wink
all over that blue mountain backbone
that we kicked last year all the
way up from
its beginning to its end--
to the high watermark and finally--
I can't even say it--brown and orange
October--what it means--

I woke up just to tell you

Walking through those
photos last night, each image
a different room
alternating consciousness,
altering consciousness,
both indoor and out,
then tagging the faces,
faceless features, images, actions,
reactions I've seen,
blue skies and 10 foot ceilings,
unknown bathrooms, oceans, rain,
unrecognizable gathering humanity,
laughing talking around
bonfires and street corners,
I breached the two dimensional/third
dimensional internet/photo gap, the social media
society string-suffocation theory
warping through the turnstile
machinery at slow motion speeds
I noticed all the walls set to knock down
all the names and faces linked into
the superconductor running the engine
I walked through those photos last night
tagged the locations faded
fated to my sleeping memory.

Grips

You seem to be falling out,
like fading away, playing
fool/goof/phantom/drunken joke
to grown up little boys and girls
across sad broken south Philly homes
that chug and churn like the machines
of the past regurgitating old
memories onto old faces and wrinkles
of the mourning night too
close to sunrise to remember--
too locked in twisted horns
with dead things, meaningless things
that need to be let go-- a drowning
universal truth slugging its way
at your temple-- a a a--
just to let you down and you brood about
these things that can't change
next to open window and open veins,
when you're supposed to be the one
that lives and blazes and burns--

Incoherently I'm incoherent
137 miles in hell and away
like fading rivers pulled under heavy roads
of gray dawns--I'm connecting these thoughts
drying out--

You seem to be losing your grip
on where your reality resides--

Saturday Night

I walked horizontally on the street's
walls with V by my side, it was
a treadmill rotary phone
Rolodex turning around us,
the same homes same cracked
pavement over again same hoarse voices,
until the park and something new
because the ground
was sinking further beneath my
stumbling feet, keeping up with the
speed--

It's a return to the biblical age
and the party has spilled out to the street

Which street?
Don't ask me, I couldn't find the river

and
Tommy yells at me from across street
in matching (my) shirt and white
construction worker hat
but
I wander over and sit down beside the
gorilla on the sidewalk propped
up against building on corner
watching (seemingly) tumbling toward him
SUV,

It's Joe
sweating and tired and sweating mad

V heading back inside painted white door
upstairs to talk to the girls
tho there's girls out here
and in 51% of everywhere
glowering and scowling
at sad men with sad pockets and nothing
to give of but themselves
which is what V has got,
all of his great and beautiful self
but that isn't enough for this world
NO!

I can't take that and I never will--

So Edd comes rushing downstairs
throws a full pitcher at some stumbling
asshole punched him in the face
and theres a scene like any scene
with beer and working class
that you could have seen every wild
night in every city America when we were allowed
to live but now it's so alien and strange
and it's broken up, Edd turns back rolling
which is where and when we decide to split and head
on back up that same street,
my heart street and only street, to V's car
where we pile in and slowly lift off
leaving fresh screams and sad dripping memories
like somehow we always do--

Mornings on 19th

Rain on gray street
and gray marbled sky--slow moving
clouds just finished overnight--
with brass band playing somewhere
out of sight, the only other smells
are starbucks and subway and you
can get that anywhere in america
and probably the world on every
city street corner that isn't ignored
or shoved headlong into some ghetto reality
that doesn't exist here, we're living
a choas dream of all the wild stagnant
dreams you've ever heard of in squat
skyscrapers that taper off into block
house hell with the only visible resistance
a pile of wet blankets soaking in
a park that no one else bothers with
until lunchtime fantasies--I get it, no kidding--
and when to cross the
street I'll never tell ya, just watch the signs
that get us there in one piece--

Unfinished

Aw Christ,
cast me off onto some road
along blue skies and
plains without fences
and it's just green flat
golden free land as far as
my eyes can see, which I pray is
too far to follow--great beautiful
America that I've been chasing
after for God knows how long
and which I fear I'll never
find or catch or run fast enough
to escape what's coming for me--
a concrete existence and bottom
of my soul unhappiness forever--
I see it before me and it stings my eyes,
the future, is it out there?--or here?--
and it's like I have no choice.

Summer is Gone

Moan of windshield wiper
horror, falling rain, gray roads
of I-95 sad trip back-
to-back, haven't rested in
years of immeasurable 137 miles
of road life between bridges and
missing most things on
tumbling wheels of 3 hour time,
never catching up,

I am a forgotten ghost
forging nothingness

I've become meaningless

I wish to drop everything
I've written into the great lake of fire

Bus pulls up in Baltimore
too dark to see, I don't get off
there's an hour to go on this
empty coffin, the rain is
slowing down.

Hold that door!

She closes the elevator
to say sorry, juggle your drink
in formal wear work party
shuffle, sorry sorry
red faced surprised lips
con job,

you wanted to get to your
floor 5 seconds quicker
I get it,

It's the end of the world
dig, it's the end of the world
so don't frequent the elevators
God hits those first,
the cable veins
and blood cells
souless grinding 13 floors
with those colors underneath

but what do they mean?
R O G B
figures out,
it's Gold and subscriptions and payment
increases,

backs of broken
labor shnelling yelling
why don't'cha just drop
the dirt in here! it's six
foot and deeper,
it's the elevator shaft
devils work and lunch
time is no time
is half time is half hour time
is the clicking lock and
the fumbled coffee
is the rush to get wherever whenever
for no reason other than nothing else exists.

Fluoride for the road

I'll drink from the water
fountain fluoride dispensers
and corrode my
pineal gland because my
dreams are already dead

best not to think too much
or you'll think

of a way out
or of someplace you should be
rather be
supposed to be

I'll shower in it
so it rots everything else
preserving only itself--

I hope it kills my vision
and I have nothing but black
empty nothingness to sleep in

I can't live if there's anything left
to wish for

End the World

She's got a ringtone whistle
eating day-glo cake on the sidewalk
mistletoe street, the cats are all
backed up in the alley counting fish bone
soup tickets, skin stickin' to their little ribs,

nearby the greyhound bus is flying
pink flags for the pirates on I-95
who won't pull the colors over because
everyone on the bailout sheet is sure
they've got bigger rigs to fry,

catch that bum Bodhisattva crossin' the highway
facing on coming traffic both ways,
with the checkered bag and picnic memories
canned beans and anachronisms,
no money and homeless outside or within
city limits peppered limits limits of the void
ball machine chaotic glitter thunderstorm swelling,

a dimensional rift has opened out
toward Pennsylvania and 17th
on a grey old day like other old gray days
before, behold the godhead apocalypse in the
guise of falling lambs delicately painted by
fluorescent crayon wax descending,
listen up it's the nothingness abyss that'll suck us all in,
not the hooded pantry snakes and dreaded jungle gyms,

these are just the signs I've imagined from
my windowed seat.

untitled

This will remain untitled
for you--a recording
of absurd references to
nothing-- lost in the hands of the
blazing caterers of the
stars who carry universal name plates of
hot roast beef torment to all scattered
distances, who exist only so
that we can never

know--

where we're going

or--

where we're ending.

Please More Glue

outside
the world is hacking
at itself pulling at
whatever strings keep
the cars running alright
on the tracked roads on
tracked lives under that
crisp American sky
that might not be blue gad dammit
but it's beautiful I can
guarantee you that and
gleaming unlike the iphone
mirrors that warp it
and distort it with each new app
crossing the t's that trap us
within the nothingness of
3rd dimensional thought
because it's how we see everything
now through the reflection of screen
that isn't covered by sliding
fingers and downcast eyes,
remember what the clouds looked
like children, or dreams?
they're each just as fleeting
they're each being lost.

This is not what I want from life

The halls
are all piss yellow
walls and lights spotted
every now and then
at regular intervals by
bathrooms
closed down
8x11 black ink signs
meant to bar my way
while I'm
ducking the goblins
who refuse to smile
hi at the lowly ones
of the green badges
who can't pull the salary
of a human being--I wonder
at my desk what my soul thinks
each day as it waits outside
the gates dying
slowly dying soundlessly dying
ignored nobody listening--I blow a kiss
at the mirrored building glass that
lines the sidewalks at the end of the
day when my dreams
leave me for someone else

Dreaming of Newark

Looking for his cookies on
roads, abandoned lots of weed and
cracked concrete in Newark, NJ
as we carried ourselves to
some class no one knew
Svyatoslav crouched and hunched
running behind our group
appearing from nowhere,
everywhere, leaping down hills
disappearing into alleyways
like a phantom from the painting,
he offered me his finding, crumbled
chocolate baked and lost,
Vitaly pushed them onto everyone
else, "Take a cookie! C'mon!"
no one took a bite,

In the house now we'd made it
small two rooms and not the
kind of place for a school,
tho everyone we knew was there,

"You got Heckenberg?"

"Yeah," we told them,
Whit was there too,

We worried he'd be confused
living in two houses at once,
traveling to Jersey for class,
I hugged him against my knee

Joe and Svyatoslav watched silently
munching away on the cookies,

Again Whit was so small.

A Weight on my Chest

Now that I think about
it the path through the wood
reminded me of Gettysburg
Little Round Top just darker
like I couldn't lift my chin up enough
to catch the light streaming
through the trees that cold
autumn day, I had Whit in my
arms, he was small tho, really
God damn unusually small
and there was another Whit being
born or covered in bloody gooey placenta
on some TV brain beyond my comprehension,
and Alton Brown was there swinging,
smashing and being an all around
hero saving the girls from roving bands
set on evil deeds which isn't so far off
from the truth, I guess--he would wander uncharted
alien forests heroically super
heroic without fanfare--and Whit glanced up at me
over the commotion of my eyes
waking and mewed softly for the
morning.

I'm out of the metro walking to work

Am I supposed to
write
        about
the fluorescent lights?

I guess when
there's nothing else but
the almost inaudible
radio humming Billy
Joel and the condensation
on my coffee cup,

I'm all but forced to--

what happened to me
walking to work was nothing
worse than nowhere feeling
like the lights should
just all go green
so streets would be impossibly
cluttered with the sick stench
of burning car engines and
burning flesh,

I mean to say
                     there
would be hellish crash
bang Daedalean accidents dragging, and
rolling cartoon wheels cutting into my sidewalk
visions of mangled peace--

not the inevitable
lifeless lights
of heaven's 4th floor above,
broken by the shriek
of copy machines and
water cooler christs,
playing the same humming
soundtrack incessantly

The Drive Home

small gray clouds buttressed
billowy pure white clusters in
the sky repeating themselves
again and over and forever in the crisp blue
of so much blueness that
I questioned its reality in
the autumn like sun of the highway,
each cloud was like an x-ray Russian
doll puffed and shrinking like
the ouroboros never-ending until
the final speck of madness atomized
into the abyss,
                   *
                         I thought of your
body, heavenly in my arms, tanned skin,
soft and moist on my lips,
                   *
                                           the road
poured out at the off ramp before I
lost the clouds and the thought,
rushing for traffic lights to sit
and breathe and focus on the colors,
clear and unbiased,
                    *
I've led a happy life with you
but I've not led a happy life.

Trapped in the night

I tasted the sunlight
\through the blinds\
through the vibrations in
the air, aura, Buddha, Bodhisattva
radiating from conversations, night,
morning, greens and blues
and lightning flesh, and when Joe
told me a healer would have
helped our merry band, I listened
to it emanating from his eyes
as colored streaks of gold and
blood shot wonder, I smelled the air
gently brush my flesh, screaming,
watched the visions with my eyes closed in
the night that lasted forever and I couldn't sleep

Which is Me

Toss my lantern
into autumn winds--
the setting sun

out on your
porch is a no man's land
I never tread

tho I'd like to often
there just doesn't seem
to be any opportunity--

the blinking buildings
shake the sun off anyway
if that's consolation

in my silent longing
I'm a fool, like I'm
always a fool, being foolish

and laughing when I shouldn't
when no one else is
or gets why-- the yellow

tint of the sun is
so effortlessly funny sometimes
and sums up all that shit

for earth's one brightest fool
which is me.

To you

We've all sadly found ourselves
old, and in doing so
have lost our beauty--

I'm a casualty for
believing in time too, tho
I was made to
at early ages so that
I wouldn't follow the setting
sun home but the dying street lamps
and the ticking wall clocks,
so that I'd stand in line silently
so that I'd wrinkle and starve
and shrink and die leaving only
lies for the future--

I realized we were all finished
today in the mirror while I
brushed my rotting teeth.

Quick Haiku while working

Ah, I am lost--
on a street
between street signs

          the sky was gray

          it was too early
          to remember it

my cats watch me
go--
indifferently

          I can't write
          any better at work--
          this is shit

Click of lock--
Quick! shut your
windows tight

          bowl of paper clips
          sharpened pencils-- ignore
          fluorescent lights bleating

Night time Prayer

I lifted the curtain,
it's still up defying gravity
defying my hand
making sure I can't write it
computer on my lap
bubbling away whatever
sperm I had left
leaving cancer in the dark
the only light fading
out highway outside
rumbling silent in the nothing
of everything that's happening
beyond my understanding

I could shut the light
I could sleep alright
I could stare into the heaving
mass of bulbs
my eyes yearning for
whatever answers there're left to
find this side of the
Potomac

Lock me in my room before I do something crazy

Put a safety on those
staples now, so the kids
won't be able to collect their
papers now, hang the loose
leaf lessons on the roof
in favor of them glowing screens,
they'll erase easier we hear,
work faster we hear, burn
brighter I see, warp those
little hungry minds with
flashing advertisements and
pretty apples a bit sooner,
so we're clear,
get rid of the pens and ink
that scrape and snarl on mashed
trees and go green with
heat sensors and budding rays,
put a safety on all those pencil
sharpeners please, think of the
all the fingers and the kids and me

The Raven

The specials at the Raven
fuck
1930s bar and cheap drinks
I'm
taking in the lights
blue
red, green, water in the
orange
gatorade cooler and 2 dollar
natty
bohs, c'mon I drank too much
for
a tuesday in some part of old
DC,
the ride home was faster than I thought
it'd
be on the slow as hell (usually) yelllow
line,
I watched the sun set outside
bleached
window panes, I stumbled into the bathroom
a
few more times than I'd
planned.

Where I can find a home

Ah man, sound of cars
reluctantly head north
over the old bridges
at a new angle, crossing
the river--God's river--the
ol' Potomac, that's one of those
ancient arteries drives right into the heart
of the dark American soul, the mighty
rushing waves too far away to
hear over heavy planes
that scorch the sky with businessmen,
stewardesses, free drinks and first classes,
I'm in a new room, that's again,
not my own, tip-toeing uncertainty,
wondering when these sounds
will be mine again, when these sensations
will be private, when I can finally
let these bones rest as the
door closes

clasp collapse conundrum

dumb under the
volcano of time like I
stood August 30th, 1967
foolishly contemplating the uni-
verse before my birth awaiting the
coming eruption that wouldn't hit for
another 300 years that I wouldn't even
make it to see because I'll be on some other
island in some other dreary corner of my own
private cosmic milky way spectrum slide;
All this leaving me dumb on the moutain
top blabbering on about nothing of
interest to the swarming scores
of man all dying beneath me
and in front of me shroudy
skeletons of the mind
sharing the same
unavoidable
fate

Pledge

I hear your heartbeat
America,
in the rain and footsteps
crunching through the sad night
where I rest my head upon your
steely breast
unembarrassed
unashamedly
born to write for you,
to die unknowing, unknown, poor,
broken, foolish,
to leave as a true testament
my very heart and soul
America

An accidental vegetable pome

cucumber lady
this is the veggie aisle
you've no cart
you look lost

cucumber lady
casting empty faces while
carrying your prize
what're you searching for?

cucumber lady,
Your husband has the vinegar
somewhere

I swear
we'll find it

cucumber lady
don't be afraid

they'll be more of us
in the future
cucumber lady

Trinities

Hey, Walt I think of your voice
in that wax cylinder
long ago
what were you thinking about, well
if you ask me, I think
you were thinking--
could it work?
ah, out under your stars

the civil wars, the campfires--

And, Jack what kept you
going really, after seven years
and nothing to show?
falling apart in mexico
and california and all that
shit and Allen losing
what was left of
his reality,

taking several phrases from you--

Fuck, Hem, when it got to
the end and it was lost--
the dream, was it black under the
florida haze when you showed us the way
it's eventually got to be,
our hands and the rifle
and our life's work
moldy on the shelf,
dusty jackets and illustrations
we didn't okay, thrown away,
asking god because we can't
remember ourselves--

did we ever get that shark?

The First Night

We stood
six spectres
confronting infinity--
death, rebirth, life--the passing
of time as we buried memory
like the old dinosaurs that slumber
beneath unsteady feet--
the stars fought the
light pollution of the society
mechanism,
the night a growing
purple abyss--
we were obscured in
what could have only been
oblivion's complete oblivion,
wind howling, waves
white capped, invisible
but for the crashing force,
we existed in the void beyond
worlds, beyond truth,
possessed of chaos,
living on and on
without fear

Collapse, play, get-up, fall

magnetic story piece
dedicated to nobody
mr. nobody blank face
homeless man speaking
in monotone desperation
several phrases over over
take the under on metro
bus maroon seats seated
but not enough for 15 dollars
bed at night the machinery
whiring above or spitting
sputtering doing cunning
cuts/ unhinged story piece
scattered on napkins
thrown together with caring
unloved spiral black eyed
blind abandoned terror
to get it right to make sense
to bring about the senses
required to burn in the endless
night of highway sounds
to finish what I started
all the lies congealed in the
conception of night the
night we'll both be subject to
in seperate disparate parts of
worlds unlike the merging
of idea and loss the finite
story piece collapsing
on itself.

Hey Jude

watched that guy
go
gone
goodbye
said nothing really,
just see ya around

a
flourescent bulbs
kinda lie
that you gotta
tell every now and then
or every day

he walked out
past file cabinets
like he was forgetting
something
slowly
each step
exaggerated
elongated
s-l-o-w

I listened for
lock click
of ugly green door
leaned back in my
black office chair
sealed in alone
thinking
about
how long
it must have taken
him to reach the elevator
reach the front doors, bus,
pavement, front door, home,

I wasn't gonna try to
get anymore
work
done

Upstate Stop

I've missed that look of
Upstate NY, beat clouds,
beat houses, beat roads,
that certain shade of
colorless color, like life
seeping out of ink, that really
lets you know
where in God's great big
wide ol' country you are,
really tells you this is it--it
all stops here forever--
dull & flat & hopeless &
so true and honest
those shades of colors
of peoples of NY USA

July 4, 2012

City bus waving
the Red, White & Blue
heading downtown,
in every parking lot,
street corner, crack
of powder fireworks,
sons, fathers, daughters, mothers
(I'm alone) standing in groups
arms raised at the
sky, darkened children's faces
of the just now night, pointing upwards
into the aether,
grandmother gasping, girlish,
holding the shoulders of
granddaughter, lollipop mouth,
who looks away for a moment,

blank building store fronts
all dark & locked tight,
a boy on scooter weaving,
watching the spectacle above

a sweating 90 degree mid-
summer night,
a Happy Birthday America.

Man, I gotta GO!

Image of Adirondack
space is a spectre of loss to me--
of my soul--where should I
be--Oh, Jack
why'd they take
your notebooks
away
in mexico?--at Braddock
Road like any other NoVA
road, green & gray & peels off into
vast, not quite so southern
distances--anywhere but
here is my demon howling--
but I'm forged to
forget these ramblings--
cursed and immovable.

Greyhounds of dusk

I suspect--fear--
(am afraid) I may be
trippin' out of--seen the
same Royal Farms
gas station with green/blue
sign--3 times--signs
point I-95 both sides
of road--but he can't find it--clueless driving
and we'll never escape
Baltimore--had to take
eyes off book--was looping--
dropping--shifting--losing--
forgetting the air the space the weight--
and magnitude--God, find
road soon--or I might lose
whatever's left--
Ah--Again!--gas station,
I am lost--in--lost--dripping
HELL--I am lost--like
eventually we wither and die
sulkily--a forgotten sack
of shit bones nothing--

For you

I saw your city
sink into the muck
of our collective
past,
a monument
to failure,
a laughing joker-sun
brilliantly coal red
in the summer
dying fire--

I marked it down
in my journal
of revelations
to scrawl on the
wall of bone dry hells
of our sometime
future,

I sang a song
that was a lie
so beautiful
as it disappeared
into the horizon
centrifuge,

just so you can claim it
as yours,

I'm giving it away--

Wrong turn

whole of diamond 12 flooded
looks like old shore
town of all shore towns
in the gray afternoon
NC two lane road
houses on stilts and dunes crawl to
west side of the tracks
where the brown runoff is
up to the doors and mats
and hellos
vacationers hustle
out of rain in board shorts
and bikinis, watch helpless
as helpless trashcans float
away and pass the cars
going 5 miles an hour south
or north splashing in huge white
waves the cars on the other
side, a great froth-war nobody
acknowledges like they would
a few yards away on bay pontoon
boats and crab fishing adventures
and I couldn't get my
window up in time
before the next wave, I just wanted to
smell that ocean air and instead
got a mouth full'a Old Abemarle
Highway salt

Tour o' the town

Sat next to southern belle in
white brimmed shore hat and
soft tanned skin,
at coffee shop end of world
double/brewed ice coffee
none Starbucks entity...in fact there's
no room on the island for a franchise
in fact it's all out of house and home
and you're a local
because you gotta be,

                         anyway,
she was sipping latte and
we listened to the rain lazily drone on
outside, the beach of eternity over
the dunes where the cats
play and rush about stray
and like the people belonging
to this out of the way fish hook,
was barren in the corners of my
thoughts, another place entirely
                        sister and brother
played connect four (the board
10x bigger than usual! maybe? it was
big I swear) playing round after round
and like children can, ignoring me
even when they poured pieces directly
onto my shoes laughing, I smiled and laughed
too, and like their child innocence was 
unembarrassed, watched sister 
deliberately miss three winning
turns in a row so her little brother
would win and they were off to other games,
other memories of which I'd 
play no part,


coffee done we checked 
thrift store in back 
of home and bleak old VHS tapes,
kittens for adoption, but too
far to drive'em (imagine 7 hours
or in fact, yea, more like 9 we'd 
never make it) so
we moved on to small shops in garages
little cute art works and family knickknacks 
and wrong turns and each turn led to
ocean or bay so there's no wrong choice
actually,
and in fact route 12 becomes a
ferry at it's southern most
wandering
until it finds land and then
ocean again
in Ocracoke.

D.E.T

in the morning we
were mosquito food--
the bathrooms smelled
southern wood baking
in the new sun--
we walked to the beach
at some time unaware
of the time crashing on
the shore shells crabs
crab holes they skirted
along the beach watching
wearily they don't trust
big fleshy clumsy feet and teeth
that gnaw and gnash their
brothers--
we fell in the waves
and I carried you out
to sea-- you screaming
--and on the beach no
one but us-- following
you with camera on high
dunes-- you wanted to see
the sea turtles still warm
in eggs unborn-- we were too
early and they behind
man-made tarps--
but picked up sea shells
and washed them in
the clear waters off the
island--
I watched the sea of
the dunes stretching out
until they bled into pearly
blue skies that last night
had been heavy rain clouds
and thunder that shook our
car until it felt to flip over
and finish us-- I felt
your warm skin against me
as we climbed back to camp--
to become mosquito food again
to be guarded from the ocean--
I heard the waves crashing over
our horizon beyond cactus and
dead graying limbs--
I felt those fuckers start biting
and buzzing and landing--
you frantically sprayed us down 
too late

there was this

old Bodhisattva of the
campground NC night
in Joe Rafsky head lamp
and old torn southern
baseball cap, savior of dying
fires or young blue flames,
young sapling stake of wood
in hand, wrapped in some
indiscernible newspaper of
Buxton, Ocracoke (like the
vegetable and the soda, ya)
frisco, and bang the fires
going as the thunder creeps
nearer and then he's gone into 
the past or the wandering, looked for
him for 2 days and he wasn't 
nowhere in that place, patron
saint of the mosquito infested
air, 

we finished the last piece of
meat as the rain hit harder,
the hiss stronger on the cooling
grill, the steam thicker, coals, gray and sad, 
fire, embers and out, we
ran for cover through 
puddles that had just found their way
at our feet and closed car doors tight, 
out of breath and soaking,

the lightening caught up
and flashed southwest across
the starless skysea  

Carolina shores

bugs keep biting,
I've forgotten my notebook
north, half a day's drive north,
the rain lies flat on
car windows like a sheet, there's
nothing outside but sound of
storm and ocean, there's you
sleeping and the back of car
already a disaster, it's
4am darkness, no city lights
on the island, I'll have to remember this
one so I can jot it down
when we get
home

An image of clarity or a jumble of echoes

I read greenscreen
for gray screen--

standing in the fog
a figure is bleary and
all lost--in the fog
standing off the path
in alleyways of the future--
standing menacingly, tho
just motionlessly there--
NO NOSE, MOUTH--no
violentthoughts
consumedby--argh--
imPRESSions--

I read you are
your own mother
own father in the
news/tabloids
bulbs blaring late
of that night conception--

a wreck-rack-reaking-wreckable
life--that's who said--under
your purple blankets at
night under roof under stars
under sky under the god eye--
that--off--

I'm outta gas brother--fill'er up
there's 100 miles to piss in
this hear ungodly country
and I got the biggest fucking--
drops his anchor, cuts the gas
closes door--scene

was something I thought of
and just added--for kicks--
link to chain to holy gopher
morning--I was late my life--
take it--

fuck words--
they don't come
or being erased

I suspect that's true
hoarded--is it--it
ought'n'a be--ack
pause--wait, I ah, I
wrote about this before

but it was too late--

they posted all the
best actors in front of those
screens then

when we understood
the greyscales and blue lines
and
I wasted a good title on
that one.

A Classic

Bach is whispering
from my thinkcentre
di-dedidiudididdiiiioooowww
O
 R
  C
   H
     E
      S
       T
        R
         A
No.3
in D Minor
    I've fought this
thing up to '78
which is enough
before lunch

or

vomiting--

I'll listen for the click
of locks to
sync with the
rhythm

I'll close the
window

T
 U
  R
   N
d
o
w
n
the
s
O
U
N
D

nobody
will be any the wiser...

and
besides going out over the
fiber-optic air
he's already relented

Click Enter

It is duly noted--

in
my shriveled
book
of truth

Buried deep within
the hard ground
swells
the teeming
masses and
eyes--
shhhhhhhhy
away

it's
wet
and
won't burn
when
revealed.

I wouldn't bother with it.

the radio plays
whatever
for the boiling heat outside

while I can't even
glimpse the sun.

workaday western hiaku

Billy Holiday
barely audible
I hear other voices

Intermittent hums
under olive hat--
day grows slower

socks rolled in
packed up shorts
forgot my shoes

hey tom,
there's no one watching
wake up!

Ground'll melt your shoes,
he says, Remember the last
RAIN?-- bummin' change.

go away
1978
there's too many of you

blue shirt guards
dumbly innocent
sneer at their lunches

on my compost heap
lunch box rests
a salad fork, a pea

Who knows anymore?
I'm tapping my way
to the grave

pretty soon we'll
all have ipad eyes--
NO BRAINS

Farragut

up from my pages
across from me on train--
girl reading--(!)--On the Reooaad!--
wow--On the Road--recognize 25th anniv edition--
I got that one too--tho--
not the one I usually read--I'm having
visions--Cody--Dean--NEal--she's about at the
point where Kerouac pulled a gun
on that fag in the bathroom--yea--
he felt sorry about it and
didn't really know why he did it
later--cover is marked and dusty--
like MINE!--orange sun setting on
orange plane--burgundy--the road is dark
and black and not a road at all--HEY!--
She gets off at same stop--lost in
the lostness of lost subway crowds--
how it should be--well Jack, even
if she's reading for Mary Lou, we
still made two stops 
today--

Joe groans from the other room, Tommy is on a couch somewheres

strange frozen world again
like ocean, sirens, beasts,
I run, swim in frozen snow seas
the missiles are launched
and nearly on us,
I kneel down with my pillow,
with the others, it's playing like
a television screen, ipad image
I can't make out what it is

before Impact--

strange skinny tall car, like
surrealist fantasy, warped fun house mirror
stretched, ugly puppets, wrinkled
somehow evil (I know it) bobbing their
heads inside, two of'em,
watching above I'm with others
I can't see,
they're inside some pinball maze
built too small to contain
the jerking motions of the
automobile,
I see their faces, eyes,
I feel sick, twisted,
at the center
another puppet, this one
darker, in old 70s cerulean blue
suit, plastic hair, bobs his head too, in time;
smashing at some hellish control
pit station, I see them all
idiot faces, broken teeth,
almost human,
rocking, motioning, I can't understand
why I'm forced to witness this

I recall
the blast

I wake up thinking,
"God, is this hell?"

but no answers.

Shooting

I'm a poet
wanting more, fuck--
a chance to be big failure and sell out,
cum on my book, books, novel, novella for highest bidder
on movie paramount pictures set and
say fuck it, I'm done with it
I've nothing left

Blanks

Why must every word

in a poem 

contain a profound meaning,

every punctuation mark,

every space,

meticulously chosen

deleted, 

replaced,

filling words

with meaning

where there is none,

We are all hanging 

on the coattails of

Shakespeare,

so why do I write?

I look at my cat

his coal black fur and

soft green eyes staring back at me,

because I have to.
I refuse to believe there's a choice.

You should only preview files from a trustworthy source

Text is the same
wrap around arial font
no commas punctuation
thought individuality
loaded cunts and the
after-birth-after-effects
of an awful story situation,
see-- told to everybody
on the listserv-- cause we all
care (!) and mark it down in
notes on pink pages
ready for next week's glory hole,
stuffing as many cocks in as
we can so they feel awright and
pickle okaaaaay-- can't have too
much (air) the salt won't take--

look, the printers are in reverse,
the copy machines scan
jagged stainless tools and I place
heavy rocks on their edges

we all stand at attention, see--

It's ah theory.

Might be half a worker's sentence

Cleaning ladies shouting in
Spanish across
their too small sad
wood (composite) lunch table
with what looks like
tons of food to be shared
smelling great like
I'd imagine Mexican streets
do with warm tortillas and
whatever else in the warm
sun of old America summers
baking everything a golden brown
lovely ancient color
can be themselves
for a only those few stolen moments,
even in their dirty blue stiff
uniforms, with the half hour 
clock looming, before the 
boss man needs to eat
or have his toilet cleaned and
god-what-all-or-what-have-you
requires them
to snap those defeated, stoic 
masks back on and 
go to breaking their bones or
spirit cleaning up somebody
else's shit.

Edward

my great-grandfather
had big milky blue german eyes,
bigger hands, a barrel chest and a
perfect head of hair,
he tugged at his suspenders
and had long quit cigars by the time I was born,
tho in every wheeze you could
sense the toll they'd taken,

he told everybody
to go fuck themselves

at the sausage factory when he
felt he'd worked enough

at the tank factory when the pay
wasn't what he'd been told

in his back yard in jersey loading his
BB gun to shoot the cats

in his too big Buick at the other
drivers on the road tho he was drunk

at the officers who told him he couldn't
go with everyone else to the western front

at the man who wasn't there while he strangled
him, blind and delirious on his death bed

at the world who he made sure he left
nothing to

double parked in front of his handicap
spot when some idiot took it up

at my Uncle during Thanksgiving dinner three
Manhattans deep and who knows how many before he got there

at the cancer that took his wife
while he waited impatiently to join her

at the flat feet
which kept him from that war

when he taught me me how to respond
to all the pieces of shit in the world

When he was teaching my mom the same thing
20 years before that,

physically not fit for service 1941,
the great battlefields of Europe,
factory worker on the homefront,
a widower for too many years,

I wondered in that cold,
silent room, his death bed's room--
watching stiff caloused hands
my mother's caked mascara--
if the man he'd lunged at so viciously
with what little time he had left,
if this phantom taunting him from across
the paved streets of his dying mind
had anything to do with that
lostness we all suffer through just to go on living.

Untitled - also a draft

            Some bird watching from above. Pitches slowly left, then right. A grand view of space and mammoth clouds, gray and blue and horrible. There is no sky, only a bleak embodiment of loneliness or sadness. Only clouds, piled one on top of the other. Each bigger, solid, thicker than the last. Unmoving, they only hang there, glooming at what was once Earth. The vision swoops down like a camera close-up in a film, slowly, evenly, shifting just a bit on an angle to the right as it nears the surface. Images of great frozen landscape, the clouds seem to tumble and fall over the edge out of the farthest reaches of our eyes. Think endless. It is endless in my mind; Lovecraftian. My stomach drops in a plunge toward minute dots that are men moving into a pitched valley. The valley is like Moses parting the red sea, as if God had memorialized the deed. The sight line dives, dives, dives the dots becoming larger, fuller, real, and soon gone; into the mind. The perspective twisted; the bird but a dream. Now, I am the narrator. The singular voice.

***

               It was all foggy but we'd been walking since I could remember. There was no way to tell time. There was no sun or stars or anything like that. It was cold and we kept our heads down. We kept our feelings to ourselves. I wasn't tired. Wasn't ever tired. I'd long since given up escaping this frozen hell it seemed. I couldn't remember why anyway. I just walked on.

               Joe was up ahead of me. We walked in single file and there were seven, no, eight of us now. Who knows how many there had been at the beginning, I couldn't tell you. Joe was adorned like all the rest of us, like a medieval Viking; a ragged body under some heavy fur animal hide, hood and jacket. It appeared to be wolves coat, a gradient of brown, white, gray. He carried a heavy pack and leaned as heavily on his walking stick, tripping and dragging himself through the snow. He made no sounds of struggle or fatigue.

               The descriptions of the others up ahead and myself taking up the rear, like I said, were the same. Our faces were meaningless, and altogether hidden under folds of dried leather and matted fur. We held our own identities inside. Or whatever was left of them. More of the landscape was coming into focus.

               We'd entered into the valley sometime ago. Maybe forever ago. But suddenly it was new, altogether different. The walls were higher, fiercer, older (?). They leaned like crashing waves left motionless throughout time. We were directly beneath their sheer icy, unclimbed walls. They rose hundreds of feet into the sky. I could feel that we hadn't reached somewhere like this before and IT was on us before we'd realized. Now we'd have to make our way through.

               It was a wasteland God dammit. There was a sense that something had happened here-- important, great, terrifying--that maybe something was still happening here. There was death, the power of it. Like God had dug the place out himself, with one great sweep of his hand. I stopped and set my pack down. Removed my hood. It was as though everyone up ahead could feel the thing slide from my head. They stopped and turned one by one, Joe first and at regular intervals, each person ahead of him in order. Some I seemed to recognize, some I did not.  

               Unconsciously I raised my arm as if drawn by some damnable sense of sudden awareness and pointed to the cliff face. Inside were millions of dark objects just now coming into focus. The longer I pointed the sharper, the clearer, they became. Millions of sharks, twisted teeth and crystal black eyes. We watched them in silence, like a laboratory experiment, like a mass. There was something awesome in their existence, sacred, something horrible. How long had it been since we'd seen life? I didn't know. How long since we'd eaten? Slept? Rested? Spoke? It was all the same. We were no longer bodies able to contemplate these things. Or we weren't, until these sharks. They brought it all crashing down.

               "Shit," Joe spit. It was jovial though. Ah, maybe not, I had felt like it was at first. He hadn't spoken in a long time, it's possible he'd forgotten the emotion he was searching for. Shit, the same for me then listening. My ears were hollow and old. His face was hard and his stare was harder, sadder, blank like the void of the clouds, like the bone of the earth; pearly white. There was nothing like life in his eyes. His beard was overgrown, had long since become his face. I was sure mine was too by now.

               I felt a power in this place. A connection running through my feet, hands, face. I was not afraid. Yet. I was burning up. These sharks were the harbinger of some great god ruling on earth. A truth. We were bottled up. The sharks unable to move watched us with lifeless eyes. I'd heard that before, somewhere across time.

               "Shit," It was Tommy this time. his hand held above his eyes. He caught us each one by one. "Sharks, Jesus. They're so many...what'a we...?"

               But the only thing to do was to keep walking.

               We did just that.

***

               The bird again, this time low to the ground and traveling well in front of us. A mountain in our path, black and ancient. Circling, circling, making out the shape. A great Killer Whale. Larger than it should be. We were dwarfed by its hulking mass. Only its back and fin made it to the surface. There was too much below to even fathom. The creature swung around steadily and met my eyes again.

***

               We were standing next to it. Christ, it was nearly as high as the walls. I prayed we wouldn't be able to see its eyes. Its teeth. Anything that would give life to its form. I stuck my walking stick into the ground. It had been a long time since I'd felt the cold. If indeed it was cold at all. We were standing by the things face. Each of us alone. For the first time the ground felt unsteady, different. Less...concrete.

               I turned my head to face the direction in which the beast must have been hurling itself. Two larger bodies, breaking the ground like submarines of some lost era appeared there. Had always been there I guessed, but crashed and heaved into my mind in that second of realization as if moments ago they had raged to the surface. It was like walking on the street you grew up on with your head down and suddenly there's a 100 story building in front of you. I gasped and the others turned to face it.

               Whatever image of ourselves and the solidity of this world we had before we'd turned was gone. We were nothing. The sharks were only the beginning, the orca, a continuation. These...whales were the end. What did it say? They were infinite beasts frozen in terrible waves. The world below us is an abyss meant to drown our paranoia. We edged closer. Something was different. I felt I could see their skin-- rippling, alive, and a blue so deep it was black against the gray hungry sky. The eyes followed us. They were alive. For a millennia or more trapped, enraged, snarling, longing, waiting within their icy tombs. Suddenly we were forced around them. I could not escape that one piercing eye. It was trying to say something, what I did not know. But some force would not allow me escape.

               The ice was crumbling in my mind. However long our world had suffered this fate, I knew we were at its precipice, unprepared, but compelled to drop. The ground was giving way. We had come all this way in single file torment, through time immemorial, forgotten past lives and homes and golden sun, we had come all this way to find these beasts, to bring about this change. I watched the other's faces that were my face, no different, the environment had seen to that. I was off balance on one foot, falling toward that eye. I felt Joe smile, or maybe it was someone else. I wasn't ready to know, and there was not time enough to ask.

               There's no use in vocalizing the apocalypse.  

Fly

All this world out there
and you can't reach
any of it, and neither
can I right now, Only
I know about it
you can't even realize it,
even in the end,

this glass is ugly
people cough, piss & die
it's reflected on me,
windows divide the cosmos,
the very black hole of reality,

you stick to it,
falling sideways,
crawling about my books.

Experiments

Keep right on
Give me up those jagged edges
Those even falls, I'm wasting
My spaces are hell alright
but you leave me no choice
two to one to god damn space
I'll make my bargain alone
UNREADABLE UNCORRECTED UNDONE
A poem should always bleed ink!
A Sign! A Son!
A quarter sorry word slapped on the edges
makes me all right all formless
all the god damn way WAY

Your mysteries will be mine

Great Ghosts!
I offer hellish nightmares for betting and stuffing
holy birthdays of ole PA
in afternoon moons wavering, full,
a great corpse slinking backward to time

tread how how howl howl people standing everywhere

I fade

LINES
       LINES
               LINES
                       TWO LINES
                                       HIT IT TWICE
                                                           WHICH WORKS
                                                                                 EVENTUALLY

What really matters is how slow you are
the most care wins
the X's miss, WHAT small creatures
weep for them wholly, biblically, fitfully,

the world is an idiot's poem

Half past the gas stations

A vision on that dirt
Lexington, Kentucky road,
standing on barrier between
worlds
         given
         to
      descending
           imaginings
on red railings
made
   of God's metal
American metal
in and
          out of America
alone on the border
of
    ALL
EXISTence
                   I heard
followed in the
rising heavy
                  pounding sky
a tumbling chorus
imploring me
to
OPEN my EYES 
                           for
all times
             for every waking body
forever and ever
there
       is an infinite trail OUT here
that YOU must take
and never stop
never stop
never go back
wish all well
                   and cut THOSE
                                      ties
you've work to do before you
die
you've roads to cover
before you die SO
be weary
SON
you'll never
be done
            get
                 mo
                      ving.

Prayers

please forgive this prayer,
I've made many oaths, and
I'm just so lost; out there;

but it goes like this,
the air conditioner hums,
I can't tell what's going 
on outside,

it could all be over, just as
easily over as still going,

I didn't look up at the clouds today,
often I forget they're there,

if I died right now
what would I remember?

nothing--

Bless those faces I've seen,
they carry with them the sadness
inherent in existence, and

I was made to write it down.

Ben's Next

today on the train
Jack was conjuring
the Dragon boat
in lost journals written
1956-57,

at U Street the civil
war was raging still,
tho in bronze cold form
and running before the
Gettysburg Address,

we stopped at
Ben's next door,
there was this guy in there
who couldn't sit,
didn't want to, he was up
following the waitresses,
ordering some Stella Artois,
"Daaaaaamn, this Stella is
goooo-ood!" he let the bartender know
as she attempted to slink away,
he was full of fucking energy,
walking table to table and inbetween,
taking in the scene in which
he was the spectacle,

I felt bad for his kids,
huddled up together
eating their wings,
ignoring their dad trying to
fuck, showing off, dancing
by himself,

when he slowed down
they paid for the food,
got up silently and left,
I watched them pass
Sportscenter and tried not to look.

Can't understand

when in the drowsy hours
you speak to me in tongues
I can't understand,
is when I realize we must
be doing this for a reason,
to get to some end, or
to prove something lost,
and you wait patiently for me to answer
in huffy silence until you recall that I can't
speak a bit of mandarin
and you laugh, a sweet,
funny kinda laugh before
you fall asleep and forget.

Peasant Bread

Fresh bread, whole
house smells like the
hearth and what's missing
most of the time.

I made sure I was
wearing Lenin's shirt
when I poured my coffee,
when i tore off the first
piece, the steam burnt
my finger tips in the
air like the steppe,

I blessed it
and prayed over it,
saw a vision in its
austerity, it was pure
and smiling,

I chewed and
swallowed with my eyes
closed, washed it down
with bitter blackness,
unsweetened,

I knelt down too,
in the kitchen that
was like a hall that was
in many buildings anywhere
to finish this song

Put up the signs

Got up at 7:30 to
hit some estate sale
in the 99 degree hell
that was outside waiting
for us, all the power
out at Medical Center
so no fucking street lights
on Rockville Pike
and for that matter no
sidewalks either,
we had to check both
ways and book it,
our destination was on foot
and a half hour away,

the cars were confused
the trees were down
the glass was broken
the lights were dark
the storm was past,
the TV's were out,

I squinted into the sweat and emptiness of
wherever it was we were in
the homogenized suburbia of
Maryland
only to find that it wasn't an
estate sale at all, just a yard sale
with fantastic marketing.

Bathroom Break

Everyday the same fuckers in
the bathroom, washing their hands,
brushing their fucking teeth, afraid
to catch eye contact in the mirror
because then they might have to
admit that there's other men out there
that piss and freshen up, remembering
to flush when they fart (out of
embarrassment), waiting for you
to leave before they shit, (embarrassment too)
ignoring the cleaning guy cause he's just
some poor Mexican and they fuck
enough poor Mexicans in the ass
long distance that they're dried out by the
time they see one in person,
everyday I watch these assholes and I glare
into the mirrors waiting to catch them
so I can give them a half smile, the kind
that says "I know you,"
the kind that says, "I know you and
I hate you."

Just before dreaming

You gotta cut that underwear
so it fits, or like, at least slash at
the seams holding tightly
onto those legs where we
all get to watch,
and
in that vision purity is
a pool above the mind dripping
deep cool water from out the night,

a car backs up,
no, a truck,
I hear the beep-eep-eep--
It's far away

what matters?--
too often it's nothing,

If you're still struggling
baby,
I'd suggest you just take them off

None of the Dharma

Everybody walks on water,
is messiah, is god,
is endless endless nothing
reaching backward through time,
everybody is falling apart
falling down, getting back up
splitting their head in worry,
in frustration, pounding the wall,
the wall is almost nothing,
is a sentimental thing, is a lie
perceived into existence,
everybody is prescient on the stand,
above the stars, at one with the chaos
tearing the universe into tiny little
shreds, of paper, of harmony,
tossing them into the
air, waiting to catch the remnants
that are drops of blind divinity,
that flow like the water
we all walk to in the end.

Old Joe, new nights death and jumping

"What if I just dove off this balcony?"
He said,
"You'd be dead, " I answered.

He was standing in the doorway
drowsily, old Joe drunk, sorrowful,
lamenting, that layer of phony happiness
and smiles torn away by scotch and
beer, we were bare-chested, bastards, fuck-ups
in the summer's heat, the party in shadows behind us,

"I'd rather jump off the Whitman,"
I told him, and truthfully told him,
"Yeah," He mulled it over sloppily,
"The Franklin seems too popular,
everybody is jumping off there, you can't
just walk up on the Whitman, that's determination,
if you did it you'd have to stop traffic, even swerve
your car into both lanes and jump out,
run over the hoods of cars,
climb up to the edge and just go,
and when you're floating between the
bridge and the water, with your arms
outstretched like this, forcing all those
idiots to confront the end, mothers
holding their hands over their children's eyes,
that's when you're truly, finally free, that
moment is it, the only time it's
possible to escape this...this shit.
I'd like to walk the Appalachian Trail,"
He finished.

"And when we do finish," I figured,
"We fucking jump off the Brooklyn Bridge."

"Yeah! And we keep detailed notes, and
take our poetry with us, send it all, send
everything out the day we jump, to
publishers, media, everybody."

"Man, if we did that," I said musing
over my empty beer, watching his
dulled eyes, "We'd
be read man."

"We'd be dead," He was reeling
in this thought, the possibility.

"Yeah, but we'd be read," I repeated
and we smiled at each other through
the years and the trust and the pact,
through the meaningless nights and sounds.

Alone at the Beach, I prayed it was enough

In the journal of my soul there are cliffs and girls, and other such things that bring us down, to earth or stars, or some other place. I prefer to write it out in staggered lines known only to me. I was alone on the beach, sun coming up and then up, watching over. I took my hat off and sighed. Placed it on my towel, the only one I owned, now down beside me in the sand. I was the only person, I was the only living thing in sight. My glasses began to tint in the new born light. I removed them too, placed beside the rest. I took one great big breath of God and jumped into the morning waves. Salt and force shoved back at me. I launched myself without fear or embarrassment. I tasted the sky, alive about me, the ocean, churning beneath, the day, brave and innocent. I let out a single chilled bellow, it was all the love I had to give to the Earth.

Two Punks

Two Mexican punks
at the corner of Baltimore
& the Best Western Travelers Center
walk off into the past
without phones or music or time;
Irrelevant musings at the 
fire hydrant and spiked vests
blur silent conversations as
the bus they escaped lumbers
by, forcing them into heaven
or oblivion, unto heaven
and oblivion, maybe? Or shit,
maybe they huddled close
experiencing that copy scene,
that cyclical memory,
those black, white, silver shining
unnecessary spectres 
of Philadelphia
of New York
of gray east coasts
of Nowhere 

and the world as a frayed stem
continues to hang, shit, fuck, piss, spit, yawn
ball and turn
without misery

Go Go Go

New Jersey lies

foggy and mysterious

across the blue mighty

Delaware this afternoon,

like some foreign land

of Avalon beyond the shore--

trees are greener today, lush

with warm breezes,

water as clear as the 

sky and tumbling out of heaven,

my bus is nearly empty 

and the great road groans,

crashes, moans, and gapes

south,

I follow it along

going going going

non-stop

Southern metro cookin'

They had us in a fish fry
like sardines sweating those
remaining hours away before
a hand grabs and pulls them
toward God, like the can with
the curled up top that looks like
some satanic soda pop,
and the girls were grinding their
teeth all smiles, a group sang happy
birthday outside Arlington cemetary
which I found kinda funny
in way, I guessed for all the oil lost
and we boiled crispy and golden
until we hit the end of the line
which was just two slices
of white bread and a side of slaw
away from the Pentagon.

Angles

Tonight I read a poem aloud
on the balcony alone, without
pens or papers or pencils or whatever,
I spoke it out loud once without repeating
to make sure I wouldn't remember it
when I got back inside,

When I got back inside it was dark,
I watched the cum slide like beads
into the toilet drain, congealed into
balls and rolling toward the abyss,  
I was up on one knee like the coach tells you
to stay when you huddle up in pee-wee
football until I flushed it all away,

I thought about metaphors
and Superman right then, thought maybe I would
call Will back, he'd rung while I was outside,
instead I took a sip of milk and played with
the brightness display on the monitor,
I tried to find a metaphor in that
and when I found one I liked
I went to bed.

The Statue

My beard grew grey and bitter
Waiting for you to get going
but you just sat there
immovable like a stern Buddha
saying nothing at all.

I stared really hard in every direction
tho you were directionless,
offering you a sign,

The wind whipped around
and you'd raise your head and give
me one great laugh, blinking
triumphantly into the void.
No kidding. I was there. Think about it.

I loved those Saturday mornings
and the kids playing baseball and the
red salamanders losing their tails,
and the statue of you they built
at the center on the grounds where
you sat smirking, smirking at the passersby
and the goings-on, smirking like
a real son of a bitch,

I knew it all back then, that you'd
never get outta there, and
that's why when somebody
goes, "Yeah he's still there,
believe me," I believe them, and
I smirk and laugh too,
as hard as I can, and say,
in my most stern voice,
"Well fuck you too, you son of a
bitch."

The Balm

Fuck, I'm dying from the taste of
banana/berry,
anybody can talk about Bukowski
talk about truth,
talk about fucking,
but banana/berry?

go ahead and say Hem
was your biggest influence
who gives a shit
he should be, really
think about it,
unlike banana/berry,
which doesn't think or
feel, just exists to torment--

I can't get this viscous,
vicious balm out of my
mouth or my thoughts,
even as your sleeping body
breathes in rhythm with the
tires crunching pavement outside;
I'm helpless--

and the world goes home to lonely
darkened halls and paranoid fears;
anybody can vomit some words
onto a page, for their own
self-serving needs, read
Blake swinging empty bottles at shy stars,
screaming of visions, moaning
into the face of it, groaning,
blithering, swallowing
banana/berry
but it talks an idiot to want to write about it

Days too, always go by without saying

So we dance again today,
eh?
On casual fridays in the
brown lights of the underground
no less,
You've found your book
I see, better reading than yesterday?
No? Well,
the tin foil you crumble
should block out the soundwave-airwave-
smart phone-imbalance, Watch!
Or it'll crawl off the table!
Watch! As we loose our lunch to the
compost machine blabbing-always-
blabbing-effortlessly blabbing-
blabbing-mockingly blabbing-
Wait!
What idiot tome do you suffer
over?
What fools do you read?
What jeans are honestly blue?
Oh.

Open up

you should turn
and face me so I can
glimpse up that skirt
instead of at its profile,
honey, it's useless to
play on that phone
way down here,
and there ain't time
enough to read,
'else
I tear the page out
to laminate it for ya,
it's just...you know?
it's just you
and the lunch room lights, so
Open up. See? Open up.
we can't all be poets
ruminating on old hearts
& fresh scratches,
throwing our fabrics to the wind
some of us gotta
suck it up an'
make a buck to live.

This is the first line of a novel

I've told so many lies in
my life, I'm not sure how this
should go,

I remember Hoffman park
with its old green
bridge that seemed taller
than anything I could think of,
it was worlds away and I never
dreamed anyone could reach
its tracks or know where in
some magically dark world it
traveled,

There were those large cement tunnel
pieces outside the picnic gazebo
strewn about and like Franklin's snake
scattered but whole,

There was something of another
time about them, something old, like the gods of
our forgotten imaginings dropped them there
to wait for us and I could stand inside
without touching my head,
they were so incredibly big! I remember my
Father would chase me, how he could
block each end no matter which
I tried and he would grab me
and yank me out,
I could never get away

until I found out where the tracks led
and I rode them everyday to
gray, worrisome destinations
and guess what, they painted those
pipes green now,
they're so small and sad
sitting solemnly amid the cigarette butts
and broken glass of 20 years,

I looked the park up on
a map yesterday, it was a green square
and there were no pipes and
no children,

tho I still think of it sometimes
in the loneliness of night
and I wonder if maybe my father does too