ah the phoney drunk on
god’s greens in this modern
age they’re much easier to pluck
which plays to the phoney’s luck
and the critics agree
that his poetry on sitting
is of the highest degree
and his necketh doth strain
as he rigidly rambles
repeating retarded preambles
his living quarters in shambles
his bookshelf lined with candles
about hypothetical rain.
this, with none to gain
but the lull that come with refrain.
once while hallucinating in
the northern woods a beautiful
fairy did come to me whose
soul was twice-size and she
spoke and made me feel bad for
those like lost and confused
out in the murky-ness pissing
in the wind (thanks neil)
and i thought of you, janelle
and having not felt bad for
you yet, i still cringe watching
you play out your favorite scenes
from friends out in public
at the bar
with that nerd
on your arm
who will put his dick in you
finally, while across the
city i write this
and the thought of you was not fond
because the real test, i feel
(and never expressed to the
fairy) is when a person gets
kicked when they’re down that
they get back up and remain
honest
and i believe, janelle
that the first time you pricked
your finger on a bush, you held
it against the allmighty himself
and took up to acting
to get your dopamine
when not working for it like
everyone else
and here i sit, insulting you
in prose
because i don’t believe
in fairies.
the television is deceptive
in that it seems to project
but really it injests
all your time and energy
and people being frail
things then go unfixed
you
gotta grease a human’s palms
to get him to do a thing
or else he’ll sit right
by his television,
and it’s deceptive in other
ways, too.
why are you living today?
and if that doesn’t bring
you rain then why are you
looking up at all?
will the glare that you
catch every time
going up the hill to work
get you tomorrow too?
and when it does
when it does
will you look up
and will it finally rain?
i surely do see clouds
but in my years i’ve come
to not expect anything at all
–
it didn’t rain on the
president
or you
yesterday
i suppose it never will
and in the name of the
great drought
i pray
amen.
i thought i’d try and tell you
about what might be going down
around here these days but
weird things always seem to get
in the way of what i mean.
we don’t have to live this way.
i don’t know if the
road to peace has any
mile markers on it but
i’s counting my footsteps
up ’till today and i
wish i knew how much longer
to go cuz i’m so so tired
hiking from atom to atom
to the tempo of all of the
multi
cellular
war
drums
and
their
chanting
sounds so beautiful, some
times
and their eyes are so
beautiful some
times
and i get up
things spread back out
and disappear
and that beauty is replaced
with waves of electrons
and even then things are
beautiful some
times
and lo my thumb hits the air.
hear hear a year’s worth
of sentences
whispered to oneself among
the frenzied crowd
crawling at 8, 12, and 6
buzzing all around a
universe to their own
sentences, sentences,
that perspective’s glare
won’t penetrate
the naivity of this year to come
the rotting of the innocent fruit
and agony whispered all the same
cyclical breezes,
migratory patterns,
and what to the man flipping
through the paper on a park bench?
and what
mothers will grease the wheels
while the age-addled trumpeters
volley their breath against the silence
war chariots march onto
the swamps, t’wards the dragons
with eyes watching backwards
waiting for someone to save them
these are the days of our lives
the callous cannibals crowing
for corpses with
the great imperial shield
on each chest
the signature verifying
the combined hopes and dreams of
wall street, main street, cork street
gandhi may speak to me
however those things may be pronounced
tolstoy, probably
the buddha, too
but one thing i can’t quite understand
is how to forgive one for his ignorance
when this ignorance takes shape
of fist
or otherwise
t’wards me
or otherwise
and then yet when his fist
has been planted
and the light shine on him
so he may reckognize the
err in his step
or
otherwise
and yet a second is thrown
or otherwise
i must ask you
why forgive?
to have ones meals prepared
and to take walks
to be able to focus on reading
to not think about much
to find a spot
and watch the sun set
there
to no longer be late
or indebted
whether to grow old
or to let it go
if that is the coward’s
way out
then i ask you
what is the
noble one?
before i knew not
to love you
winter was our
season
not by design
it just seemed to
amplify
every
situation
so now when winter
rolls around
it reminds me most
of just down the street
ps2 and coffee
and the gentle tugging
on my shirt
every time
i took a corner
too fast
in
the
snow
none of this was by design
but this year i wont
be searching for drugs in my own car
or biking to work
in the cold of mount pleasant
michigan
finding out the car just
won’t start
i don’t think i will feel
lost
or like i need to take a walk
and that’s why i
am glad i learned not
to love you
or, you could say
thankful.
(i just wrote a thanksgiving day poem)
23 years of
feeding pigs
other pigs
and lost
the rhythm
ears ringing,
and somewhere
a metronome
devi
ated
stickman falls
to the
stretching
of a new back
illusioned still
the land where nothing sucks
down in the valley of
the land where nothing sucks
there is naught but a
forest of carnivorous weeds
it is the norm of the valley
for there to be no sun
and it is their way of life
to love darkness and eating
so not being one to judge
i avoid the valley
as often as humanly possible
and stay downwind
–
the butterfly in the valley
and once
a butterfly
i saw did
haplessly
flutter
into the
valley
and the weeds did salivate
as it was their norm
and who am i to judge?
looking away as
they devoured her
wholly
mountains
impress me
the united states’ highway
system
impresses me
how millions of men over
a hundred years built
concrete and steel structured
planes across the expanse
of the entire united states
moving
daily
an unfathomable amount of things
that impresses me
your
bottom drawer wit
and parlour tricks
do not.
i gathered up rocks on a beach
i put them in order and began
the inquiry
which of you will kill me?
these rocks being people, though
after the inquisition i
ran up a hill
lost my foothold and fell
passing through the void
i knew i knew i knew i’d
been right
but i could never know which
and this is how it always goes
the greatest speech i ever wrote
was told in front of the hangman’s noose
for a moments time the nearly departed did think
“why maybe this aint’ so bad”
and the greatest moment in my career
was communicated through the still, dead feet
no twitching
a relaxed hanging, i thought
is a good one
i felt most human then.
it’s the grey cloud
that will be all there
is to write down that
you were here.
frustration is not
quite the word for
what it feels like
screaming into this
thing wondering
what it will write
if it writes
anything at all.
no i won’t take you to the coffee shop
because it’s friday
so you can sit behind the myth of
shelter from your mocha froth
no not even if you thought you were
on another planet,
not even
and i won’t take you to meet your friend
“fake gold chains” or get your name
tattooed to my skin in a different language
even though you might deserve it
for how hard you tried to stand
when i walked in
i won’t take you so you won’t go
because you can stop but you can’t stop
thinking about going
so what’s the difference anyways?
so what’s the difference?
tiny diamonds in fire
you could never grab them,
though
and hang them ’round your neck
no
they disappear too quickly
to keep and show your friends.
“the violently shaking house”
“the undoer”
“corn syrup baby”
“i wish i could eat different food”
when i read through, i remember
the police laughing
“this house doesn’t shake so bad”
they said
he must’ve not had the spirit for it
everyone thought
when i read through, i remember
how he kept repeating
“i wish i could write different stuff”
“everybody wants to read different stuff
but this is all i feel”
and i wonder what happened
to the corn syrup baby
growing in a stagnant puddle in his shower
i wonder what came from that cesspool
if it killed him or if he killed it
if so he didn’t say so
in his journals.
i am getting better sleep than you
and i will tell you why
because man has split the atom
but you can’t wake up on time.
a gazelle in a shopping mall
eventually, ragged from stress
finds a common state where
the mad feels ordinary
before it’s eyes glaze over
and it gets washed away in a river
of people.
what parts of him left strewn
accross the ground
looked like spares
and that put together
they felt unique and
part of a whole and
where significance was
placed there was no
longer
you could see
naught but
extra
but spare
skin,
arms,
period.
there was a chill in the air
sweeping in from the cities
where all of the breathing
organs felt best
and prime
but could’ve had just numbers
and definitions attatched like one
and two or lung or liver
but they had names
and had for moments the light
of interest shined upon them
and they all swelled and
burst and felt significant
and unique
for they had not yet felt
the chill come sweeping in
from the cities,
and the worms crawl around
them and the totality
of being a spare
or an extra
or skin
period.
a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
that the gutters would give them back
so lowly i feel to your porcelain skin
so lowly that my heart swims with the rest
pity goes, however
to those still encased
in grinning ribcages
gaps from bone to bone
all naive and waiting to
tumble down and go for that
long, cold swim
a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
it has no corporate support
and the porcelain displays reflect
light onto the gutters in the daytime
in your locked bedroom closet
where scientists can’t study
old cans of coca-cola
high fructose corn syrup
giving life to what undoes you
when you’re not quite finished
but ready to give up
crack the door, another can
more soldiers for the civil war
the looming corn syrup rebellion
when they found your body
green organic mass about
closet door cracked slightly
scientists baffled over your lifelessness
and your terrible smelling closet
and i could say what ate you
what the scientists don’t know
what the neighborhood watch don’t know
what sugary greenness was growing
if words could move you now.
He was teaching you to walk
and you got up to run
away you went
looking and walking anew
seeing with untrained eyes
touching with shallow
translucent
skin
then you tried to speak to me
and though i understood your sounds
and their order
i felt the shortness of breath
behind every syllable
and i realized
that you can’t even breathe right
and here you are trying to talk to me.
stone eyes was given love
at great cost to his lover
he cast her down, he raised her corpse
high
he said “a feast,
tonight”
and he ate away with his friends
if stone eyes could really smile
it might’ve been then
but he kept it to himself
the company wont pay
these machines must run on
through the powers of man
through the night and these
are not cheap
machines
ma’am
and unless you can afford
your sun will fall past
the horizon a last time
forever nighttime
forever more
(in this universe, far away
tim was unaware
of conspirators
itching for the bed on which
his mortality still lie
and of his mother’s love
being trodden upon
by the company
and the hospital)
and in this moment,
she noticed the ticking of
the clock for the first time
and with empty bank accounts
and an empty heart
she said goodbye.
at times my mind feels akin to driftwood
and good words like the tide
washing up the sand to touch me
alas, again, not today.
