poem

No-One Is Listening

poetry

You are a pirate transmitter in an ocean of unauthorized frequencies
that cascade together creating distortion and static

My receiver picks up on a stray, clear transmission every now and again
so I can piece together your path based on your current bearings and location

I know that you have undertaken a grueling course through dangerous waters
without the help of your officer, who left you and your few crew members for another ship

The most of it, though, is hissing noise washed out by other radios with bigger amps
and one day among the swirling interference, your signal will go cold

Maybe I will notice.
Maybe I will not.

But based on my most recent data
I will be forced to understand, unfortunately,
that you have drowned

And that none of us other broadcasters
had taken enough time from our programming blocks
to help you out at all

I can’t stop looking at my phone and computer

poetry

part 4 in a series inspired by Shia LeBeouf’s tweets
—

tell me you think i’m beautiful
even if it is a lie
and let us not shy away from
the utility in fucking
the rent is paid now for sure
but i still feel homeless
i know you too well now to even
have a firm idea of
well i mean the relativity of it all
is the only solid thing
i can’t stop looking at my
phone and computer

even heaven seems really boring

i don’t know what i’m waiting for

this sinking feeling that is bottomless

you can’t talk your way out of this one

hold your breath, count to two

poetry

part 3 in a series inspired by Shia LeBeouf’s tweets
—

hold your breath, count to two
dive into the deep end

remember: you must get out
or you will dissolve eventually

close your eyes, count to two
don’t let your teeth fall out

remember: you need air to breath
grab the firm ground and pull

—

your limp body out
don’t go back until
you’ve learned to swim
dry off in
the light of a dying star
the summer sun
on the floor of a rounded
petri dish
floating like a soap bubble
through the void
it’s just like your mother
never taught you:
find what’s inside
while you still have time
and hold it with your breath
mark the moments
with your counting
open eyes and start anew
open eyes and start anew

davey and judi

poetry

she had no home but
that’s ok
davey had a fast car
and everybody knew it
and she thought she loved marky
but then when she got pregnant
marky just stayed with doretta
isn’t that messed up?
and when the pills didn’t work
(it was too late)
no one would come over
so she panicked,
and she kept it
and then built a home with ronnie
but she always was with davey,
in his fast car
always skinny
always young

if time could travel backwards part 3

poetry

you are scooping bowls of ice cream
it is 1978 and you are scooping 3 bowls
1 for you, your daughter, and your son
in the distance you hear them laughing
at the television as the bright spring
florida sunset beats down on your kitchen
you struggle to pick up the bowls and carry
them to the basement
but you make it just fine
and as you set the bowls down you forget
what or who you were getting them for
because you haven’t spoken to your children
in years
it’s 2016
and your wife is crying.

your life is your life

poetry

part 1 in a series inspired by Shia LeBeouf’s tweets

—

your emotions have
locked you in a box

your life is your life
and your life is hate-fucking
a bad ex-lover
whenever they come around

i’ve no sympathy but to unlock
the door
you can’t hear me knocking,
anyhow

my turned back finds a dusty trail

to follow but wherever i go

it’s like the fucking

hate-fuck capital of the world and

it hurts most

when the faces are

familiar

Hanna, Or the terrifying and uncanny methods available to the Modern human for uses in communication and documentation, and how even those can not protect a person from developing a rather slanted world-view (and perhaps may even encourage it)

poetry

I would call your phone sometimes
hoping the voice-mail message
at least meant you had been alive
recently enough to pay this month’s bill

When it started to ring
to one of those robots –
an IVR they call them
in the telephone industry – my
sure-shot measurement method
went bust

Text-Messaging wouldn’t do, either;
There isn’t even a robot to give
the common courtesy of a senseless
fleeting hope in the first place

but every now and then I’d get a word
or two, and so at least I knew that
someone was still using your
number

Then it was 2015

and somehow, the telephone slash camera
that I carry in my left-front pocket
started swapping stories with yours

Then, not just spare characters or
a pre-recorded speech, but real
actual photos would appear to me,
for only a moment, as if in a dream

Rather often, you are very nearly smiling

So now I am glad that, so far as my
millesimal view of your days can show,
you are well

but I wonder
if I had dreamt you,
actually,
all along

This is a poem about death

poetry

Not about a walkabout skeleton
in a black robe, with a threshing blade
or a plague or a sickness
or a rock-and-roll band

This is about the feeling
that washes over you
as you stand in a room
while another human being
struggles to keep blood pumping
through their veins
even though everyone knows
they should be gone by now

This is that stone in your gut
as you hang up the phone
from hearing the news: someone
whom you loved very dearly
had wrapped a strong rope
about their neck and throat
and tightened it somehow
until they were no longer breathing

Here, now, the dizziness that comes
when you remind yourself
that the phone number you were dialing
no longer connects

Here, the pain of knowing that
nothing you can do can
bring somebody back,
so it’s too late for some things
and all the apologies you owe
will have to go unsaid

This is a poem about death
and it is not romantic
because there is no romance in death

It is not beautiful,
there is no beauty in it either

it is dark and cold
and it is sad

harness your dreams

poetry

the lighting of a candle
starts with the intensity
of a spark born of friction

and when this spark finds
a body for flame, it eats
and eats and eats and eats
because that is what flames do

but the candle’s body, by design
slowly kills the flame

there is no more intensity
only a slow diet of the same shit
every
single
day

when at first the flame was eating
with the passion of the spark
given to it by the friction and destruction
and even a type of devastation on a
molecular level it now,
distant from such an event,
eats only to stay lit

each day it dims with it’s steady diet
and lives in it’s own shit
and one day won’t even be able to breath

about midway through its journey
the flame dreams of the spark

if only it were a human
and not a lit candle
and could harness
it’s own dreams.

wasting potential

poetry

i will leave you on the shelf
fresh and new in your wrapper
but i will shop here every day
and buy anything but you

every day i will scan the isles
just to catch a glimpse

sure, i could take you home
unwrap you and use you
find all the things that make you great
but also the shortcomings
of your design

i’ve come to hate my own tastes
anyhow
and i’m sure i would treat you
no better than i treat myself

even the illusion of you
deserves more than me

so i will leave you on the shelf
shiny and wrapped up
i will shop here every day
and the distance between us
will feel like miles, to me
just another nameless face
at the store.

the wolf on wall street 2

poetry

now i will tell you about
the wolf on raymond st

i had been holed up blissfuly
in my home for who knows how long

i heard you howling outside
caged by my spineless greed

and i hiding away from the
relentless cold wanted to check
to make sure you were still living
boxed and forgotten in my back yard

startled at the cold, yet the
only one willing to brave it

a child of maybe 12 wincing at
the truth of your morbid reality

you had always greeted me with warmth
even when in the most bitter cold

your water-bowl had been frozen over
for days, possibly weeks

i would refill it, only to forget
again and let it freeze over surely

and you were always a wolf, to me
wild as the virtue of nature

and in the dead quiet winter night
an unwilling accomplice to torture
i sat with you and tried my best
to beg forgiveness, crying

and one night i saw you
climb clear over the fence
and unflinchingly sprint
into the night

like the truth in world
full of liars.

on 26

poetry

he changed his surroundings and then
they changed him in a cycle that would
spit out each year for evaluation an
entirely unanticipated product

engineers could not figure out
this mechanism

“and here we see”
it was mused
“our 26th variant.
this organism which had built a hut
from dinosaur bones and aspired to
dominate its surroundings has since
put on considerable weight,
lost all appetite,
and lost all vision and drive.”

at what point
they wondered
do we cancel such an expirement?

never, said the boss
who colluded with the stars to
what ends no one could imagine

“let him stew in his own filth,
as he is doing now
and if he dies from it,
make note.”

“note down what?”
asked one of the engineers

“everything he ever thought and did”
said the boss.

“if we don’t get it right this time
at least we won’t have wasted data.”

the engineers scoffed at this idea

from their perspective,
this one organism had no worthwhile data
to note

the organism, however,
agreed with the boss
although neither of them
knew it. the 26th variant
would hear these things in
his sleep
every night
but could never remember
his dreams well enough
to break the endless cycle.

if time could travel backwards part one

poetry

i thought if someone asked me right now
i would start over at that beach

and maybe i would do everything differently
or maybe i would try and keep it the same
but i would know if someone came to take me

back to floribama
instantly

my mind spends time there
sometimes
i freeze as i peer out
to the part of the beach that
curves around to just more
ocean on the other side
like we had reached the
end of the land
sun beating down my face
ocean breeze whipping around
right before the first love
that i had known since loss
crumbled in my hands

and maybe i would watch it crumble
or maybe i would stop to save it
i can’t know now
but i would know, instantly
if someone came
to take me.

urinal bug

poetry

you don’t know that you are

the bug in a urinal

 

standing by your broken car

on romence when the great flood

comes

 

even in hollywood

they will all scurry

with no horns playing

to add to the suspense

 

just bug screams

and the loudest sound you

ever heard

as the water come down

feelings

poetry

you just want to fall down wherever you like you think the tears from your bruised knee should stop traffic you think fair for you is fair for everyone you think your mental boulders are real you think it makes me cold-hearted that i think you’re wrong you are crushed beneath the weight of a boulder and you are lying there with no strength to lift it you will spend hours wondering whether your time being offended at other people’s lifestyles helped you in any way move that boulder but it has no feelings to manipulate and you are powerless to move the objective things with no subjective ones around you are an individual worm who all along felt it was more.

what should i say?

poetry

i understand the river
of thought and learn
to breath among the
creatures of the riverbed

i speak but the words
get carried away
back down the curvature
of the giant sphere

i add my own water
to the stream but it
seems a pointless
endeavour

it becomes foreign
immediately
just like my reflection,
the morning after

one thing remains true:
that i cannot breath
in this land
of fish and mossy rocks

i feel freer with
my feet hovering just
inches above the ground
and drier, too.