Trying, typing, trying

Couldn't find a way out today
or a reason to write
anything worth noting or
worthwhile, I just watched the sunrise
and slept and read in the afternoon
heat and then the sun set slowly
over pink hued Philadelphia
coating my room in thick soupy
darkness,

Whit ignored it all
except for the shade on
the porch and the food in
his bowl,

he sleeps soundly at my feet
retracing his steps,
ready to take them again
tomorrow
and I'll be there
trying to do the same.

What's piling up in our city sewers?

I was standing in
the bathroom the other day
watching the wall on the other
side of the window
daydreaming,

recalling the faces and memories
of the past, drifting in and out of
experiences,

tho I can't for the life of me
remember now if they
were happy or sad, I smiled tho,
several times,

and I know that I wanted
to write about them
and made mental notes

the poster on the bathroom wall
melted like burning wax,
it was the summer heat and sweat
gliding to congeal on the floor,

I washed my hands and face in the sink,

and burdened with those thoughts I
carried them to my room
like rolled maps and old tomes
tucked tightly between my arms,
pieces seeping, dripping out onto the floor
tumbling down the stairs,

I tried to save as much as I could,
as they splattered the hardwood
and leaked through the boards,

I listened as they hit the living room floor
the rugs, the conquistador,
I heard them wash up
against the front door like unstoppable
tides, sat at my desk and imagined them
coating the sidewalk, rushing for the sewer
to vanish forever in the mud and gunk
beneath the brown streets,

holding my breath
until the sound abated, I remained
still in my seat, frozen, delirious,
my daydreams flushed and gone
in the darkness of the city two
stories down,

finally after the last sweet memory
had been sucked into the void below,
I  pulled the string hanging from my ceiling fan,
cutting the lights, and threw myself onto the bed
to watch the invisible specks of dust
collecting in the corners of my eyes
until I could sleep,

time careened imperceptibly forward,
hung like twisted vines from gray clouds
I remembered seeing on another night long ago,
a night without stars or moons or sound,

On the afternoon of the next day
I wrote this poem.

SPAM- delete forever

Spam Swiss Pie - Bake 45-55 minutes 
or until eggs are set- the poetry of a good
gmail ads usually makes up for the loss
of privacy I sacrifice as they scour my files
for anything self-incriminating
or childish enough to sync
up to the bullshit $$$millions$$$
that keep them running my life,
filling my calendar and
classifying my emails day and night.

inbox
sent
spam
chats
trash

The free space keeps deleting, expanding
re-formatting, retaining
deleting
expanding
re-formatting
retaining

spamming

I'm certain that

there is nothing sadder
than a suitcase and
the inevitable pieces of
myself that I leave behind
to harden, dry out
and crack its wheels.

I've spent the last
four years of my life
leaving someone behind.

Grillin'

there's a thing
about grilling outside that
allows you to forget
all those god damn buildings
around you
and all those god damn people
in them.

Sure town

small town shore

kids studied me with 

discerning skeptical eyes

as I asked questions about 

"rout" 609, the girl ringing up

costumers in the supermarket
shaped like a barn asks whose

house I planned to visit

and what's the address,

I'm just trying to find the road

I tell them deflecting their 

questions for whatever

paranoid northerner's reasoning 

I could muster in my brain,

The kid in tight gray jeans bagging

finally rattles of a convoluted 

left-right-left, pass three churches
(holds up his fingers) then you'll run into
611 and camp grounds and
there on your right should be 6-o-9,

thanks I wave and head for the door running
the directions like a Rolodex through my
driver's brain until I hear the girl,
innocently blonde and bright
pink lipsticked, ask if I want
a paper and pen to write it down,

I'm not out the door and
could have easily turned back around
but I don't.

Do Not Swim Here

six hours toward
a no-name beach
and I stand dejected on the shore
next to black snake-like pipe
worming it's way toward the bay
the rocky un-swimmable bay beach
I can make out a light house in the distance
guiding sailing boats into the
Chesapeake and beyond
a group of yuppies rides in
on a golf cart drinking (what I assume)
is an expensive craft beer,
Felicia holds my arm in consolation
reminding me it's better than she expected,
finding a smooth white shell, she presses
it into my hands and into my pockets
my pockets are empty,
aren't there any hidden beaches left on the east coast?

Ah, Newport, I think, one bridge to cross and
only an hour away
but I'm already shaking my head

We killed them

Artists don't sit inside all
day to write and type and suffer,
they play on their iphones and macs
with dull eyes editing music files,
remixing old sounds, taking
photographs that seem
somehow older even though they
don't know why, they catch the movie
to marvel at the book (it's YA fiction)
then the next day read it on the train
cover out and facing the crowd, and
they dance at night clubs to hip-hop and
techno in the nearest up-and-coming
neighborhood, their drunken image tagged on
facebook, exchanging that for actual fame,
and remain blissfully ignorant of the truth
because artists don't think for themselves
or think at all anymore, hell,
they don't even try, because
for the most part
when their head hits the pillow
around 5am
they're plain fucking dead
and nobody gives a fuck.

Laundry list

Contemplating walking
downstairs in my underwear
printing these maps out
while sipping free coffee
then going back upstairs
making sure I tread slowly
by the lobby's long mahogany
security desk and when
I'm finally back I'll get dressed
finish this beer and shower
completely clothed
just
to
make
some
point
I've already forgotten.

Nameless

Hey Watch!
Our days are shifting and numbered!

We've let them build these
walls between us,

left with one recourse
we cast furtive sad glances
at each other from behind the
keyboard screen that marks
a false understanding, a
confession of our othering,

don't be fooled
we
aren't lost
or
beat,
we are
hidden by power from view &
from ourselves,

millennial is a false term,
is a false charge, merely
an abstract something to
further classify--

I see the same looks on
our faces, I see an age on the streets,
loitering, unemployed, over-educated, uneasy,
I see an age trying to type out a cluttered, hectic,
misspelled thought on facebook only to
delete it before they're through,

what are we but an ignored generation,
a ghost generation?

A stymied, restricted
herd of idiots & beaming fools,
following the trends, mainstream news,
catch phrases, catch words, issues, .coms,
.govs, .whatever?--It's what they tell us to believe

that's truth--accept. Obey.

No. That's not what I've glimpsed,
I've found that sparkle behind the eyes,
that knowledge we're all wanting
to share
but are too paranoid no one else will agree--
To seem mad? Different? Is suicide-- They've
made us all uncomfortable spies for their cause
& what we have left are whispers & secrets & stares--

what we ignore are
the unspoken moments, the intangible
idealistic belief that there is another way
tho we've been taught not to see it,

seek it out, find it, dream it, covet it, or yearn for it

instead we're taught to fear it as rebellion, terrorism, insanity
the actions of the pariah, parasite, loafer, lazy
mendicants who hate and contribute nothing
to the grand illusion--

(Ack! Meaning
Aww!)

Acronym extortion into the
ether, onto the file that the FDACIAFBI has been
building against us, & we're afraid
to venture off the guided path
that they've convinced us is our shared dream--

There are those of us that get it,
right now hiding behind vacant masks,
pretending we haven't peeked over the
burgeoning void--and

So at night we meet in those ancient places,
those lamented, clandestine & rented places,
shouting to each other over beer
& smoke & liquor & pounding hearts,
brandishing our own rehearsed lies,
making sure never to let slip the truth of the
nameless generation
they won't control.

Trying to get some sleep

I could hold the sky in my palm,
wipe it onto depth-less reality like
an unguent cure in this after-night
morning glow pink rising to a
dark purple that settles like a fog on abandoned streets,
instead I get up and walk heavily to the bathroom
to wash my face and hands,
the floor boards creak with each step,
my ceiling fan whines non-stop,
the subway makes its first run, and
I'm alone counting the surges of pain in my knees,
waiting for the next rattle of tracks heading north,
waiting for the sun to rise from the east
and annihilate this perfect thought

Status Update (1 min ago from Somewhere)

Is
there
a
comment
on
my
status
update
yet?

It's been 10 minutes
and my refresh doesn't work
but it looks like
the CIA just checked and read
all my messages

I repeat this mantra
I delete myself

I
hope
I
spelled
everything
right
and
was
concise

Just so everyone is sure
of what I'm doing
so everyone knows where I'll be (am)
and the spiders keep crawling
within the system like
wingless angels consuming
homogenized ideas

How
do
I
know
if
what
they're
writing
is
real?

And not some sleeper program
experimental delusion
formulated by a collapsed entity
wired into our programming

I repeat this mantra
I delete myself

As
long
as
I
keep
posting
it'll
be
okay

It
is
OKay

even if I'm not sure
that the eyes on the other end
are there at all

There is nothing empty like

Out from the Demon Box
I paid the fee
not for the swinging doors
or doldrums this place
has seen

I paid them from my soul
for something greater
than how the words felt
when we spoke them
clouded with mirth and laughter
over raspberry tarts and lamb

in the ruins of a mind
cradling blue clad insurance agents
of the executive execution squad
(they pay fees daily to the citizens
afraid to raise a brow) biting
at our feet, spilling trends trends
gnarled trends
in the swell, the squall
out from my heart
what few cents I managed to hold onto
I placed at the foot of gods greater
than those we create

We took one swing and knocked
that door in--Kesey felt it
in Oregon heavens out of time--
and he kicked too.

I was in the kitchen when I heard it happen
a sick shattering of wood and
primal cheers,

She smiled and knew the world was watching

She wore a pretty blue and white dress
that wasn't quite flowers but abstract
images of flowers meant to trick the mind and you
couldn't tell unless you looked up
real close and even then
maybe you wouldn't believe
the truth,

She clacked along on matching
high-heeled shoes in the
way too hot for May DC sun
and I watched her move past
booths and colorful flags,
mascots and steaming grills,
I watched her blush,
turn, smile, laugh, brush her hair,
and I didn't care if she knew
it.

I

I
don't write
when I'm behind
I
think One More
Shot will win the Belmont
I'll Have Another wins the triple
crown TRIPLE CROWN
we're rolling again
on the film but it's a
digital
recording in a
digital era where if it's
real it ain't worth it
and if
it's obvious some idiot on
the internet made it up.

all my sentences start with the
and at the end I add a period

Amigos

Chicanos here, man, no like, eh, 
why no like?
said the Oakland Mexicano
whose left eyebrow was an open
gash bleeding from alleyway fight
with six guys pounding his brains,
we were standing outside the bar where the
owner's father was weighing heavily
on the drinks his son could sneak,
Chicanos here no like, eh?...Gringos man, (he pats me on
shoulder, smiling into my face) like man, 
blancos like, in Oakland man,
bap bap bap (his hand pointing finger pistol on
angle) bap bap bap you know, Oakland Chicanos man
he meant to go back later and make those
Philly Mexicans pay, I shook my head
in rags and passed him the napkins, a lost soul, and
left to get a beer and he was gone,
then later
when we were done drinking and he passed with
friend praying for dirty looks or cross words,
finding a fight in even our friendly faces with
his sleeves rolled up and bull face hating
everything, and old bar fighter face,
my bloody friend assuring him
no man, amigos, amigos, they amigos and when
they walked away back to alley where the
fight began that full-circle night
his friend was caught up in nothing that was there
his own hateful illusions I guess,
calling us pussies, calling us faggots,
just plain not getting it.

I see

the monsters when I remove my glasses,
dark, sunken eyes brooding from ugly
gaunt-yellow visage,
blurred and hidden in perfect sight,
I see the sins bared empty on your souls,
the demons struggling to be free,
your true faces turned away reveal
a scowling bitter mosaic,
I see the sun a phantom fireball at dusk
burning, burning, into infinity, burning
all eventually, burning even truth--

I wipe my glasses of the scum
and put them back on so I
can keep smiling.

And it was sweet to the taste

It was coming down
O Saroyan! Ah Blake!
but too late to save the
anyone, writing on the temple
walls, not like before--I'm carving up
with my fingernails (bleeding/breaking) the bland, the
homogenized new american thought, illustrating
the spectacular book cover forcing you to buy,
consume, believe, bless,
It was coming a grand joke,
Kerouac Aw! Hemingway BLAM!
I'll follow to the grave,
I'll sacrifice my fame.

I need to somehow find a bed

There's an empty space like
a discolored floor,
or crippled boards and
misspelled names stacked on
naked bookshelves distorted by
the whine of fluorescent lights,
spilling methane, fluoride, mercury
dreams into our brains.

You'll bury it deep where I'll forget
that something is here
covered by our yellowed veins,
that black hole space
you thought was so vast it could
contain everything at once,

When you laughed and threw
my soul in I watched,

In a moment
you'll forget
why I dove in to catch it.

Comics on buses

Gods war above man, beyond men,
in heaven, today I believed in all
time as one time watching the clouds
crawl across the magnificent blue sky
that seemed to stretch on infinitely
full,
hurtling toward us they blanket
our heaving reality, atoms/blah/
molecules/strings/holes torn
in dark matter death cylinders,
a black racer
choosing it victims wisely,
foolishly we host sacrificial
lambs in ancient fires,
turn your back on humanity
it is a vain, arrogant creature,
kneel before the gods
new and unborn,
cruel.

I kept it going

You pumped your fist at me,
I understood the silent stare, the flush at
Starbucks wasn't working,
the handle was limp, other
option closed-down-rubber-mat-
folded-up-over-two-cardboard-boxes
tight, I remembered your serious face
as I pissed without looking,
no paper towels and I pushed
my hands under the faucet dripping,
wiped them on my pants and
kicked that door open, an old lady
caught my eye (next in line)
I passed it along darling,
don't worry
I pumped my fist and locked my sights

Publishers Unanimous

Quick before our mistake's apparent
foster a forgone age of time,
I haven't written you in a while
the cosmic dreadnought reality--here,
a winding poem, an effortless poem,
a liars poem, gently, nauseatingly
furious, with it
I bend worlds of light and
magnets, of magic and music
lashed over your haunting voice,

to misunderstand is
paramount to truth--

and
if you don't
get it
you probably
write
edit
teach
and read,
holding some grand
position from
which you decide what shit
gets printed next
to shit in our ears
and brains
in hopes of making us forget
that there
were writers
before JK Rowling
and
Dan Brown

No money

Cacophony of sounds moving in,
Jack reading Bowery Blues,
chains, bed posts slamming to floor,
feet on the stairs, hammer, nails, screwdriver, screws,
grunts and exclamations, creaking
boards, click of light switch, Whit
moving between rooms his wonder
sonorous in the hectic clatter, rain
pelting old city streets in the night
outside, cars passing, tearing at puddles,
ripping up the mold and dirt of past droughts,
the discordant era blessing a new day
coming, a prophetic dream,
an idiots dance

On-coming

Saw the tracks on the
wrong side of Columbus,
Vitaly had pulled out into
on coming traffic, wrong side
of the road, heading right into
old broken down trolley river
styx and we were next to try
and cross it, but I noticed in those
final seconds and we slid to a halt
on a patch of grass, and the faces in
the cars were watching, the headlights
blaring, the last vespa bent to the road south
before we could u-turn the bitch and
get on I-95, "Fuck, Vitaly, you
almost killed us!" Will was hammering
the dashboard, "Yea,
I admit that but they gotta put up some fucking signs,"
He's right I thought in the back seat
there weren't any signs, no signs
pointing the wrong direction.

Downcast

God

feeds 

the 

sharks

chumming

the 

ocean 

waves 

with 

blood

and

language

and

ships

propellers

that

drag

us 

down

deep

drag 

us 

down

where 

we 

can 

no 

longer

see

no 

longer 

retain

our

individuality

the sharks feed blindly on our bones

after we're gone 

To dream of Reality and the outcome

We stood back-to-back
against the insane map of the stars
bordering on un-reality,
I saw every twinkling existence
the shroud of the milky way
the black holes and supernova
births, we stepped toward them
and the darkened path moving away,
our footholds were hard, invisible
but concrete, space was something
else entirely, not what we'd been told,
each time we moved forward
it was like gigantic light-speed leaps,
the stars were merely illusory lights
a thumbnail of burning gases on black wallpaper,
there was the great charade, the great
universal lie,
our lives were vindicated.

The Soul Gems

10 months ago
I had the same amount of money
the same house
different pants
and no job
I tell everyone about a dream I
had when I was younger, I woke up
the morning it happened and ran
downstairs to check if anything
had been real,
it wasn't.
The game I'd imagined did not
exist, the promise wasn't there,
I think about that morning
often,
and promises and
things just not being there.

The factory

We can find the bed forever
for whatever you want
or nothing, heaving dry promises
at the crowds, I'm full of promises
and most don't work out as I planned,
or work out for me, or ever come
to fruition,
I get caught up in making them
preparing them like a cracker
each layer folded over the last
until it's so heavy I can't lift it
and you have to chew through it,
all the flour and salt and no water
to wash it down

Midnight Release

Came home to the shambling
wreckage of a party that I'd missed
knocking back one beer and then
ignoring everything for Avengers
midnight release screaming THANOS
as the credits scene rolled and I
was rushed back to bright lit
movie theater where Joe'd crossed
the line and enjoyed some popcorn
castaway getting over his drunk and
we tip toed past the bodies sleeping on
the floor and the bodies leaning on tables
wobbling and reeling from beer and shots
and grief and Hulk smashing to pack up and
move out and enjoy the night and the heroes and
the cheers out in the orange mist

Bus notes

I know you're out there
lugging my bags 137 miles,
your skinny arms straining,
sweating and hating me in the sweet
way only you can, I know I'm
going to see you soon and you'll give me that
look that growls and rages and would be so cute
if it wasn't so scary

Epilogue

This is the second piece
that makes no sense because
you
haven't
read
the first
which is vanished into the blistery corners
of my brain
and
was really
meaningless anyway
and probably would have left you
even more confused.

Yes
feel
lucky
you're only reading the end
always feel lucky
about that.

untitled

I have old knees
think old thoughts in the bathroom
reading poetry without my glasses
wondering what time it is
hearing my phone ringing downstairs
letting the voice mail get it