Monday, February 29, 2016

skullface, in smoke, again

ivory eyes through the hallway

skull in the wall

     the build up in the shower head
each tiny hole

old, everything around is old
     useless and old and hollow follow down
and clog the clod the drain

night in through the window soundless

bones in the wall

cardboard thin walls bent inward
     visible cracks in void

     weary, rattling death
straight through my gaze in the dark
     and tip-toe beyond and sink

seated somewhere close by

chalk outlines the floor

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Better things coming...straight from the mind to the voice; (driving Arlington Blvd on a sunny sunday afternoon looking on the strip mall signs)

an amplified understanding
bliss colors beyond my billboard head
tagged four score cracker barrel porches
on every earthly roadside
baked in folded butter biscuit homicide
the way
is soft serve refugee crisis
man in mixed ice cream reality
the pumping speakers of the damned
tv
question
better things coming
better letters in you forwarded mail
folders watermarked spam seal
upended
straight from the diamond
to the voice

what the guy upstairs thinks

well i dunno man, is today the last day of february?
          are there any last days, who knows? what?
the last day, the Last Day, man. the last day, shit. shit, shit.
                   it's over. fuck man, god damn, this shit.
I dunno, it's like, what? Not sure, really. it just feels kinda empty.
     like not there, like not there, like nothing is. nothing is there. yeah?
yeah that's how i see it. the date doesn't matter, just wanted to know
          the month. turns over, it's leap year. or something.
too many days are nothing. have nothing, if i can have anything
                    i'm not sure what i'm, what i'm trying to ask, say.
but you know, there's this blank, this fucking blank space
     my head, where it shouldn't be. there should be like, some
some sort of response and there's nothing, like truly nothing, shit, man
          there's nothing
and see, i gotta, i gotta get going, get, somewhere
     it's all fucked, man, i guess, it's all fucked, everything.
i dunno.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Let me be

I've stolen lines from many poems.
all of them mine. I'm not sure
where all this is going, but I'm
sure my student loans will make it
there before me this time.

                                            How many years
is 40 thousand dollars really worth? how
many office hours? how much PTO?
who can tell you but the banks and your
most recent training/orientation exercise?
there's a sun being built on the inside
of every office temple in the western hemisphere.
I hope I can retire here, in another 50 years. what
a wonderful gift to my children that would
be.

       Voices whisper down the lane.
the next powerpoint is the next great line.
Assembled oldest to youngest by height
by sex by weight by skin by hair made sure they
look almost all the same, from the corner near
open door bathroom stalls. Graffiti on the walls
in black n' red ink. Each carry the link to the
ledger online. You can pay your taxes complain and
pay a usage fee at the same time.

                                                       can you make out
what they're saying? It's hard to tell what it means or
where the money goes and hopefully you'll have
worked yourself to death before you're forced to utilize
such degrading charity.

                                        Take a number and wait in line.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Rainy days and cloudy days and the sun

Seperate 2.851 miles no traffic
under torrential rain
by window pane by work pain
are droplets on my cheeks
in my sleep with indigo sky
cloud filled sky 43 h drive
away
          from what I have wasted
here is everything I have not been.
In chuckanut an old VW van rots.
clothes hang out in the rain. from
tree to tree. from branch over underbrush.
It is raining all the time. Hopefully there
is only a drizzle they will dry
today
           at least the sun can decide the
body can decide when you wake. the
cold glass the endless gaping space.
How can it be pierced in all this glut of time.
how to traverse these gray lines our palms.
Wasted as ever. and done.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The word as punctuation

seems like it's quick time to hit the punctuation heat map
novels without words for sentences fit with morse code
trap doors in the 70 thousand character variety
each line is a breath
breadth of space in line demarcated by the edge
everything within in blank colorless space
without is blank colorless space again hands on topographical error speech
fill in the gaps of memory release
plugged into television cable screens
converted letters to image momentary pleasures
adrift in past along seas of gray frayed remains on page
no stops on the line no unused place
without air
Go on
it is written
breathe deep

There, is the goal of the Nameless

Hammer in the streets
yellow tape
detour road signs
dust & smoke
*
happiness is
hot coffee in your
hot office wondering
where the windows
went
*
what's up in the sky
gray clouds gray background
ceilings and tin can
roofs
*
in 8 hours you'll be
8 hours closer to the EXIT sign
it might come in 20 years or
during the drive home
*
inside the freezer
the lulling eyeballs mask
four walls of a coffin
looking out
*
too many too many too many
bodies dried out in the sun

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Sing-a-Long

go away and go away and
hang your sinking skin

I am looking for many other places
have never looked within

go away and go away and
hang your sulking skulls

on coat racks made of pearl white bones
and closets packed dark with stone

come away and come away and
hang your lonely hand

there's only one of me that can't
and only you who can

come away and go away and
disappear your head

they've found the me that wouldn't fit
and have eaten you instead

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

As He Stares

he stares into the blank rectangle of night
making out thin shapes,
there are those that sleep all around him,
she is one,
he is without, not sexless, but;
many are the disembodied sounds
unkempt out and down and below,
where do they all go and why, he thinks,
is there anything left to accomplish, it is so late
and work is done and day is done too and only
will come again and again and like this again,
she is smiling beside him in dream,
just vibrating colors indigo violet black blotches,
there is a film of light glimmer from the street lamp
reflected off the telephone pole transformer,
in the morning you'll be gray, he thinks,
and you and you and I will be gray also, but not yet,
now you are nothing I can see or be or have,
he holds her tight,
good night, she says, go to sleep,
you know it's getting late, as
he stares into the blank rectangle of night

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

among the old there were memories of a leviathan

they whisper, the towering figure on the mound
where he stood, they didn't see it, it was maybe
their mother's mother's grandfather, when the village was founded?
no, the village has always been here, by the mound,
at the foot of the white foam and the sea, they say
that is why we carry the old wood plank up the hill,
they say it is on the anniversary of his coming,
what does the plank mean, where did you find it?
oh it must have been from atop the mound, they say
my grandfather brought it down, but that doesn't seem
right, they say he stood there, and they say he left,
no one saw him go, he was just a spirit and he was gone,
that is why we bring him the gift, they say,
because he was here and then from nowhere he was gone.

Monday, February 1, 2016

these are the roads to heaven

atop the lofty
gold beringed clouds
of montana flat lands
sits a lonesome figure.

she looks out, ahead,
ascetically, almost bored,
at the spinning wheel of the
blue sky looking back.

that which is time is not.
that which becomes space is not.

"from here," she says,
"I can see the diamond star,
the swirling wisps of unborn galaxies,
the deathlike blackness of space."