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