Nothing Ages

From many sides and pieces
we move like refracted light
in transparent spaces between
now and future past perfect tense

an arrangement of letter
into word obituary likeness

now, then! only this remains,

something that was said, immortalized,
can be forgotten,

this is easy and often happens,

there is no other way
we must force tho we rage
we must access the tumble
and smoothing aspects of time
accept loss, accept being lost

in one hundred years
there will be no memory
of us having walked the
earth, there will be no flowers
to mourn,

there will be nothing to hold on to.

Past year

a backlog of memory
to sift through,

an empty bottle, open,
left out in the sun,

tinted shadow
green and long
thrown over
wood surface

faded imperceptibly,
from its source,
like years, now gone.

Intergalactic Hitch

hollow skeleton hobo
poets hang on branches
in the sun, weightless
like bird's wings
flapping old toothless
jaws, readin' with
archaic sounds,
swinging torn shoes,
biting tin collars,

up on the wire
handkerchief to break
impending fall, over
all beady heads
singing songs,

tweed jackets like
lightning spark up
a breeze, a fantasy
shower, there's not much
left in this dimension gate
they gotta be going
no one listening no one
believing,

there, out there,
beyond that golden orb
is another gal-
axy far gone

ears and eyes
to turn on

flowers to give
gardens to sow.

Poems about American Road

got that pit in my gut running
entrails like the gray road spun
beneath my tires, that uneasy
nervous tick before setting off
hands on wheel, so different
in my imaginings than cool
relaxed reality of humming miles
eventual ends, dreams again--

they told me, "write a book about America!"
                                                  so I wrote one about myself--

I get where I'm going
daydreaming, weaving
involuntarily, unconsciously
working on learned motion
subliminal practice,
hours miles feet seconds exits

are you wandering still?
                      throwing your voice across the mountain,

I gotta get my head right,
it's not so long now,
it's not so long,
before I'm
gone.

Time Ploy(Plot)

while Proust
eats Madeleine
sea shell crumbles
on ocean waves
of fragrant undertows
sweet rip tides sucking
scent of rose petals,
bergamot peals, sour
sweet shore breezes,
our sky is falling
elsewhere, go
run the cowered
mass of humanity
shoving each other
at the door, one more
building to fall,
hoping to make the
top floor,
shield their heads
with books, the largest
novels wastefully,
paper cannot halt
the meteor storm,
to be dead on top of
screaming bones and
bloody flesh, dead eyes
on blue sky, cloudless,
all wishes gone,
by the old lunch cart
ol' '52, stale boiled coffee
cents a pound, we drink
it up all day, in an idea-
effort to build the storm,
took near 500 year, year
2450 in fact when the
corrugated shells slipped
without warning past mars,
struck god/man down, when
paper, buildings and thought
were razed. it's an eventuality
everyone dies in literature
the books forgotten, quotes
misused, idols misjudged.
so we brought it all down
she said on the executioners
chair, we died on the bottom
floor, smiles on mounds of
concrete death, letters on
our tongues.

We are a part of it

they dip their
hands in cosmic
goop of no hands
with no-sat eyes
nova explosions
in the hypertime
void;

the past is moving quickly away
we are lumbering into the future,

there are gods spread through
4th dimensional bleeding walls,
able to see structure of birth and death
concrete, only in its non-existence
solidly opaque,

this is nothing out there
but the rough edges of an explosion,
rattling through space,
dragging about time,

grasshopper

there's a rock,
heavy, tragic
chipped and chalky
brown, nestled
among the crabgrass
of suburban ameria,

I can point to it in
our past,

an indoor porch,
screen doors, screen windows.
inside, children's toys
piled high in boxes,

my memory shift

out back behind house,
chrome ladder turned
lengthwise on its side

white shingles of the
adjacent shed,
dirty old, fading
to speckled gray

that first child's recognition of death

when rock strikes brittle legs,
a confused mind
showing pain
absurd, unnecessary
immeasurable
due to its inhuman nature
imperceptible
to the laughter and malice
of innocence

to the children
running around me

I watched you die
though I left before
the final breathe
not even looking back

I have been complicit
in your death my entire life,

still I am guilty
still I am killing you
have killed you
will kill you

everyday I am killing you
I live on

years and years
I have taken from you
buried you in them

If I could touch the past
it is in that moment
& and other cruel moments,
moments of my failure
embarrassment
that you are reborn

If you recall the sky that day
looking up now through years
and painted death
it was blue, so few clouds,

How many more remember you?

where are their thoughts headed?
Where have my own gone?
What have I gained from any of it?

Dentist Appt.

olive chairs
lined in a row
one two three four

I am at far end
alone, in a corner
this is purposeful,
by design

this is something sinister
here, something about the
dark finished floor boards
something in the foam green
colored walls

there's no gaps between the
wall and my feet.

My Stories

After waves of the undertow fix
ferruginous, rotted, inchoate
fingers remote control fingers
childish yearning fingers extension
of the reeling mind fingers twitching
jonesing aching fingers turning
television channels over in the void

what's the come on, next reality put off
time is a relative circumstance
in this world one program is three in the next
what threat is prioritized in expanding number-scape
a push and incursion world collision
these tumbling time strapped pieces never the same
adrift in pre-programmed resonance
ghosts of the ideaverse
their skeletons made up of words.

Put in the Oven

Are we baking under
florescent lights?
     wasted
          wasted away
to day-glo skeleton
     colorized bones
          sell me out
wake the dead police
     they zombies
          not for brains
               for order
     for order & honor & duty
I am hand shackled
     to dying trees nobody sees
                          nobody care
those concrete monoliths now
     steel framed
          invincibly framed
stare down on high
     from techno-heaven throne
where data goes
     down
               collected
               know all
redact edit binge
the modem-brain-CPU
Casting long fiber-optic shadows
     over ruined cities
     over ruined heads
removed/euphoric
entitled
     to grow under
     artificial suns--

fortune teller

boxes stacked upside
down from heaven facing
earth like pyramid corpse
clouds of the infinite
sinking extra-dimensionally
into blue globed linear space
time limited vision reality
speaking in splintered images
they rupture the earth:

I
the past can be pointed to from all sides

II
every photograph we have
of ourselves show faces painted on
paper film skin

III
the future is an endless tidal wave never to break

theme here seems to be my own paranoia

oh, america how have I gone
this far into the cold night
of darkness
locked away in my room,
watching past orange lights
and silver spiked crown
at your pentagonal heart?

Where do I go from here
slipping through your
varicose veins mucous
dripping dried up white
blood cells waiting from
recycled heavy and war torn
overblown hero stories of
imperial empire anguish?

ah, oh, I am just one flicker in
the star scarred sky,
a falling streak of light
struck by a shadow,
never was or here or going
which-way any way,
but out out Out

ah, longing for that voice
on the page, hoarse and
mumbling and calling,
I'll be patient, still as
skeletons of old dead white
bones, faded to grey dust
scattered like poems
as ashes on western wind

After All This

As heavy thoughts I am
here come to you laden
with dreams and fears
and not much else to say
standing by your bed
at the rail at the foot
in the dark dark night
I am phantom as lucid
dreams of me as sleep
paralysis thought nightmare
do I look like withered
old man horror spirit
weighed down? I feel
this image of the mirror
ticking in my vision
fire heat cold burning
vision nighttime dream
aged hands reaching out
to torture you forged beyond
our summer veil and knowing
I asked too much I silent scream
vanished oblivion obliterated
as if nothing gone remains
you are the same confused self
peering out into bedroom coal
black blurred shadows
I am nothing real after all.

Grief

seminal line

               dropped dripped streak

on thought paper spread

               crumbling fluid analysis

barbaric nomad

               emphasis on phallic features

sparing dreams 

               felt fallen erected

on sparse landscapes

               mind body endorsed 

enriched condolences 

               pouring white souls

grieving

Hit the breeze

little movement on the outside, looking down, peering down, facing down over the queue of cages on precarious angles humanity in miniature moving toward the fine end the .07 lens scratched into cave lines too thin to see what if it's ended you think it could be ended any time any time soon any time a thousand million years ago looking back you can see the crystallized civilizations on mars now red with inert dust of ages piled up or swimming in the gelatinous sea of pre-history azure gurgling waves bodies on the shore pointing toward montana-like rising clouds like big blue sky montana with clouds that dwarf man's greatest tallest invincible steel god-buildings and white capped waves crash and dinner bells all across america clang in the after war years drawing to a close just before you were born in a simpler time gentler time a time with more time than now slipping away on some open thought that rings vibrant green open golden sun falling sky on western shore horizon swinging off the primordial cliffs of pacific coast endings far from here far from whose eyes can see fleeting blear-like eyes tear like eyes falling as sheets of rain over northern roads swirling winds updraft from flat land grassy land lift up your shirt head body toss in the wavering voices of the mad lost souls you can channel them on the television reality just after the calm just before the plunge blinds rattle eyebrows stiffen lashes flicker flutter slicker in the tar night beyond the day the mask that hides the endless stars