Right afterward

If we would have known
I'd be writing none stop for the
finish, the EMP-bop
ice on angels wings and it's dark
over Philly and cool and sunny
some place else. You've got
your jackets on anyway tho & It just shows up
my eyes are red waiting
awaiting
a sign
at 4--letters from around the world
from around--where the sunlight
bends away, ah
I can't help watching the
sky, from my window it
looks so small--I see
blinking lights, bleak walls,
maroon walls crumbling--I saw a plane today
only one, the clouds were purple sad
puffs of smoke and disappeared into
the night--I looked away and typed

Cellulose

Vitaly nodded like Ginsberg on
blow--
          wrecking the car, the beers
were cheap but the place shit
fishtown old spot to hear music
but now the 90s dance throb was
bleeding--my ears, and the girls--
    sorry this isn't for you, tho you looked
nice I guess, I was drunk & Vitaly had the
Christian Bale going, where it
was going--to the corner, the lights,
the trolley line--
   
     wheels were blue 'cause gawd couldn't
double park

for shit.

The smell was mold and lights
when I pissed in the alley
at 3am
forgetting the names.

Mill Shoals and Walt Whitman

You're blue darkness in the
Illinois night, a collection of trailers
and white silos, there's not one
picture of you but what I have
from the back seat of a car without gas,
I can't even hear the sleeping cows or
the time changing. The sun dips
quickly along the fault lines,
time lines, man made constructions,
.4 miles from the highway, too bad we
only found dirt roads on the way to
St. Louis or back-- I tell Whit
it's an hour shying away
it's what America looks like at dusk, but
he only wants to rub against my
face--he's been lost before under the stars

Postage

Spanish in background--the northern lights
are burnt into CME sky tonight--somewhere
--where--it's not very cold--I'm
waiting, the sunset was cold embers
and cola burning, bright--it's getting
on to be--scary--or dark or--
and there's a quiet that drifts west
a quiet they're taking away--a--
I can't write about it or I'll be on those
FEMA trains--concentration trains--
cattle trains--Agenda 21, the future,
the road, the wilderness, the mountains
without beginning--the rivers dried up
but flowing beyond our sight--the ghost--
razor wire--demons--my angel reeling
a cold song bleeding--naked and
staring at gas chamber walls, shower
head, chilling floor--we are
at an--end--we deny it

Considering

I'd consider myself a poet
if it
killed me,
if I died drunken on my own
words in the gray street
without help,
I'd consider myself a poet
if not one single person
read
a word I've ever wrote

Pickett's

In view of the copse of trees
I study your poetry and make my mind
to charge and scream and yell and die
on the field
out off my glittery big tired
american eyes, tired legs
and arms seated in grave
chariot rolling across the golden
wheat fields that aren't wheat anymore
but some demon creature conjured in our
dreams that is hard to digest and only
two feet tall, what the fuck?
I want a poetry collection with my name on it
and nothing else, no color just black inky
nothing nothing nothing
nothing
nothing

okay?

mhmm.

That's okay as long as I am lost

It was cold this afternoon
when little orange cat greeted me
by running over lawns he'd
annexed as his own, past sinking bushes
reminded of the sinking roads of my memory--
I think of dying everyday or if I'm swirling in
my own aged mind at the end of my
life, seeing illusions I can't break out of,
listing back and forth between consciousness
and unreality, untethered.

Am I living in the past
dreaming of you?

I fear I am.

almost a sentence

In the rain tonight I
beat my feet on the ground,
the orange light and my head
forgetting to look up, at the sky,
I was blind...what it was...
in the rain, cold winter rain, with black dots
along my iris, and...
in the night sky over DuPont circle
there was nothing there, only...
where did the rain come from?
in the glow and time after all, looking...
up.
               ***
sirens scream past my window,
a body on the hood of a car,
in terror, what's happening? truth
is often times so absurd we ignore it
and lose ourselves...
               ***    
put these sunglasses on and look at my
shirt, get it?

or you could always just die.
It's just a thought

for all I'm sure of is that literature is in the wrong hands

Don't be surprised when you're
kicked in the face, the acceptance letters
are as torturous to read as the rejections,
the stamped letters or the replies
are as much junk as the shit I sent to
them four months ago,

who'd wanna read

anything

written by anyone?

I drink a glass of water
wishing it was milk, alone in
the dark, with the shutters down
it could be morning

Girls and beers

I drank a blonde beer tonight
and there's a girl with dark
hair in the shower right now, I hear
the water running as I'm typing, getting
good responses, terrible responses,
scary responses, the label was blue
from the texas, the girl blue robed
from taiwan to new york but me,
me, I'm just the same idiot
wearing torn shorts and stained
flyers shirt typing while there's a
girl in the shower

Baby it's a dream away from reality

fix up these stitches
on my eyes rolling forward
     into the past I made up
the part I thought up
while we was walking in the cold
     not so cold wintry VA
I need to wet them in the shower

the guns outside are clean
not yet fired, but the crowds
are thick and vacant,

the matrix atop the tower
the bodies in cages underground
dreaming of a constantly shifting reality
a school, three unwanted plotting,
tho we can't steal the...something,
then it all blows up killing each other,
there's no reason...

then a house in the mountains, changing
scenarios but my fevered mind catches on,
I leave and come back, the landscape, beautiful
too green and sparkles red, pink, yellow
to be real, folds up onto itself in the distance,
the house is brick, mortar,
wood, a cabin, Victorian

the lights aren't on, but I'm holding you anyways
why does this thing light up and burn?

they
      are
          coming
                     FOR
                             me
                                  FOR
                                           me

I've run so long
long
long
long

the crotch is torn out the bottom of my shorts
I'm not worried, worried about anything
I'll wake up, drink a glass of milk

it's so cold out I'll probably burn

Saturday Collage

Sometimes I go to plays
and
sometimes they're by Henrik Ibsen

Sometimes I've only read A Doll's House
and
I'm watching Hedda Babler
tho
her last name is Tessman by marriage

Felicia is tagging me on Facebook at the
H Street Playhouse and my sister is
tagging me at a party in PA

I'm in two places at once, I
thought I didn't allow tagging on my profile?

I guess the CIA decided for me like
the zombie that got the bees

it's figuring us out

we're next you know?
No more sitting passively, it'll
be us fleeing from the hive,
or into it, in perfectly straight lines
waiting for the incinerator,

checking our watches

Sometimes I'm the only one
okay with it,
sometimes I'm the only one
to realize we lost,

Hell, it was 400 years ago

Sometimes I'm seeing plays
by Henrik Ibsen
sometimes I'm seeing myelf

They're both the same

I
think
when
I
was
drowsing
open eyed in your bed
watching
the
ceiling,
I
mistook
myself
for
a
poet or a fool,

what's the matter?

fuck it, Saturday morning
the
mailman can keep his stamps
on glossy paper and his cart,
because
either
way
I
was
right,
we're
the
same
god damn thing.

and
There's
no
reason
to get up

Shave

Joe threw his shit down on the curb,
back pack, boots, sleeping bag, hammock,
and all, and I dropped mine beside him, Dave
was supposed to pull the car around 15 minutes
ago, but there was no sign of him, we took pictures
of each other so we could look back and remember
what we looked like, because we thought maybe we'd
forget, this is how I'm going to start it, just
like those 7 days started, standing out on Broad
flannel shirts and dreaming of the west, the last fast
food stop on Oregon and then straight to the arch,
we got to see middle PA, but this isn't about that
this is about the before, standing still, I kicked a
bolt rolling on the sidewalk, it was there when we
got back, it was all there, but different, that's why
I'm glad we took those pictures, the receipt in my
pocket is less than 24 hours old and already it's faded

laundry list

Complete OMEGA-3.6.9
     Vitamin C (Natural through the middle)
MultiVites 200% Vitamin D Gummy Vitamins
     Cocoa Truffles
                                An empty mug
Contact Lens Rinse
     Allergy Relief
A 5 Euro bill
     CVS Extra Care Card
                              styrofoam cup
(also empty)

typing away, submitting my empty life
on lifeless computer screens, without paper

a Christmas card, neatly folded
bordered silver and red, my clothes on the floor
lunch is coming
this thing is not forgiving
 

thinking maybe 1,2,3 turn the cold water down

Is this what we do now,

Sit and stare and grow old forgetting?

I can feel the lines on my face each time

you close your eyes and say

you're tired...the world outside

is blasting colors at our windows

but we are here wanting to grow up

wanting to die

I don't get it

sleeping soundly for anther day

so what? the sun comes up and 

we can see and superman gains the 

ability to fly, he's younger than we are at

75, he may last forever on the page...the guy against

the window tries to help me, I'm telling

the teller-ticket-taker someone left a phone,

I give it to her knowing she's just gonna

sell the fucking thing, but there's nothing I 

can do, I could take it, steal it, destroy it

I don't get it,

what do they want leaving things on the seats?

herded out of buses, the wrong buses,

idiot buses, he's got thick glasses/Obama beret,

I die each time I see that

Days Inn, with the no cars

and pretend continental breakfast savior...

when am I going to blow it up?

I dunno, I'd like to soon, but there's no 

explosives left in a dying world,

just us, frown on our faces in the shower

leaning against the tiles afraid to pee,

thinking, ah the hell with it, then taking a

breath and starting all over again

Remember this one...

Saw you sitting across
from me at McDonalds,
you looked so sad eating your
yogurt parfait alone and staring
with pock-marked face, the lights were
something else, hey?

I heard a couple walking by,
two men, one said, "I was too busy
trying to take it all in," but that
was later in the night, after you
left and I was getting flour
across the Potomac watching
red lights and green lights and yellow lights
and like always

there are things you hear and things you know

The guy that stole the
diamonds was 6 feet 4,
he had eyes and hair,
he passed me on the street
and slit my tires later that
night, I asked the newspaper
stand man on the corner a question
about immortality, the clouds were
a gray 17 degrees and dying,
he grinned and tipped his cap with
my car deflated in the street,
and the diamonds
got away

drinking on a mondee

Drinking coffee(black) over
tired conversation in the kitchen 6am,
my drunk wearing off and pulling me
to sleep, Whit already upstairs
hiding, which is very unlike
Walt with so many guys here and
cats normally liking attention,
I can imagine the dinosaurs outside
growling at the sun,
the high topped trees standing
against the wind, that flag reflecting
off man made surfaces, not so old
red-white-and-blue at the bears tasting our flesh on
paved sidewalks covered in rainbow silly string,
the coffee's now gone cold and
we're looking at each other probably,
for something, who knows, who knows
but we're looking anyway,
I tell a story about a gutted dog I
never saw and Joe is growling at the sun

tonight

Tif said it's poetry month,
means a poem a day, so I snuck
up here, slightly buzzed to write something
down with Joe Rossi in the room next to
me checking his backlogery, and downstairs
kung fu masters draw blood feuds
and Felicia's told me about the Condor Heroes
and I tell Wally
what the fuck is up with that?

New

New years past, and here's one
for the archive-storage-kbs-mbs
2012, it's already gone
I guess that's fitting the theme
since lately I've dreamt of the end
of the world, which is kinda like
hot pot in that everything is
thrown into the same reddish soup to cook
called entropy, homogeneity, whatever, bubbling.
My new years eve dinner
just that and some beer to wash it down,
with the fireworks unheard outside going up for
hope, realization, numbers, obligation to
the end
I'll hold your hand until
the end
even so
The tigers will pick our bones clean in
the end

I've had enough