poem

a day in the life by the beatles

poetry

as i walk in the clerk behind the counter debates with his associate when they think i will kill myself. i tell him that i was raised on the american dream. and i drove down here with my windows down. and i’m never happy for very long. we traded currency and i went back my hole. it was dark and dry just like i like it. i’d like to have a much bigger hole, however. and maybe one with an adjustable darkness knob. i never let my mother visit. she thinks i live up high, with the star-fuckers. drinking that currency in a bitter drink that is awfully bad for you. i’ve come to understand that for as much as i do, there is more that i don’t. my nights are very dark and dry, i only go out to be insulted by clerks, usually. they live in my neighborhood though so it’s not that big of a deal.

i just wish i could invite my mother over.

this is not my land

poetry

this is not my land
it is not your land
we were just born here
orphans to an island
you may build a fortress
but time moves like water
existence is arbitrary

i go walking
i don’t claim it’s my way
all ahead of me
lie omnipresent highways
and below me
there are metal bi-ways
this land was made
for you and me

i move and trample
with the fall of my footsteps
my will imposing
destruction begetting
and all around me
no horns were playing
this land was made
by you and me

the sun is rising
i am unknowing
of who got it going
now the clock is rolling
each tock is tolling
and my pride is growing
this land is for me
and only me

this land is my land
this land is your land
from california
to new york island
rom redwood forest
to the gulf-stream waters
this land was made
for you and me.

poetry

There is a place not far from here
where the wind whips fiercely and
the sand and dust flies in your faces
so that you can not even think to go
further

The water is cold on this ill-tempered
beach and the ships have all come in just
to stay alive amidst a red-flag warning
and water was boiling and everyone was
cold and alone and etc etc etc

so we walked streets that offered nothing
and we saw ships that we fancied all the same
for different reasons. We watched the ducks.
You shivered.

We came back, then, from that treacherous place
feeling glad to be alive even if we hadn’t got
our toes wet like we wanted to, and as far as
I could care those waters are still boiling
and everyone is cold and alone and etc etc etc

except for some of us

the giant

poetry

depressed
modern
eating disease
today-america
apathetically excretes
missiles
and
inference

in god-like
proportions

equal in appetite
necessarily naive
an organism
kept ignorant
by the very structure
of her foundation

this cell,
laughs!
and whistles while he
labors!
for where else are
we to go?
where there is only
servitude, or exile?

no direction for the aimless

poetry

you feed your self dog food
you’re soaking up rain water
they call this progress
you write to pass the hours off
on to someone else
hoping for validation
from like-minded beings and
publish them, anonymously
you are afraid of your own thoughts
you hear yourself say garbage words
you just walk along the hard ground
finding solace in it’s curvature
there is no direction for the aimless.

tim is in a bubble (part 5)

poetry

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.

tim is in a bubble (part 4)

poetry

the bills were payed
the car was running clean
the sun was high and shining
and so was tim
messages, on his phone
were full of things to do
full of wanting lovers
and not so full of shit
at this time tim was a member
of a higher type of being
and feeling a unique euphoria
touching the bottoms of a holy aura
his moderation might be questioned
but his spine was true
and at the top of the hill
speeding along felt just fine
but one even sure of grip
knows the old addage
“what goes up,
must come down”
and down he’d
go
just
like every
breathing minute.

tim is in a bubble (part 3)

poetry

he sat as a beggar and held
a shakey hand out to the princess

she gave him a slice of bread and
it was wonderful,
wonderful enough to well up tears
in his hungry eyes

but later, as the pangs began anew
in his lowly stomach, he saw
trough a thicket of bush

the princess
frolicking in baths
filled with the finest meals
with fat
smiling men

fat smiling men with fat ear to
ear smiles like they could die and
be happy
fat smiling men that could die a
happy death in pools of the
finest meals whose stomachs
would be full and souls would
be empty and so tim the beggar
moved on again

his hunger subsiding.

tim is in a bubble (part 2)

poetry

in room 104
in between rooms 103 and 105
he lay unconscious

if you walked from one room
to the next and to the next
like he did in his dreams
you’d see vacancy,
of all sorts
and you could imagine
people coming and going
all wrapped up and tight
like little springs

the doctors and hangers-on
discussed mortally while he
floated in his dream way
above their heads

but then

hadn’t he

always been

above their

heads?

he’d not find himself, tim
on this plane or any other
ever again
he’d never find himself ever again.

tim is in a bubble (part 1)

poetry

this is a room full of televisions
turned on and on and on and on the
same volume and on and on and on
different channels on and on and on and on
they play filling this soulless room

distorted
distopian
discordant
distant,
lost;
the colors flash and the sounds to
a trained ear tell you to run away

our protagonist friend and narrator
lies here emitting putrid electric waves
shaking up the air for no genuine reason

he’s just a television,
after all.

Poem Titles I’ll (Probably) Never Use

poetry

“Compressed Carbon” 
“Afraid of the Dark” 
“Homegoing” 
“The Color of the Sea” 
“613” 
“Socially Adaptable, but I Digress”
“Rose Petal” 
“Some Trust” 
“Groups of Three”  
“Articles and Prepositions” 
“Why you have ten toes instead of eleven and other such oddities of life” 
“Albert and the Infinite Abyss” 
“Killed by the King of Spades” 
“Amoretti”
“Wink and a Gun” 
“Jumping the Check” 
“Never Met a Weekend I Didn’t Like” 
“So Constant, So Monochrome”
“Enstasy” 
“Learning to Walk (Again)”

poem

poetry

here he sits reading
the cliff notes in a
history book
listening to far out
jazz

the main character
in a book he’s
currently working on

is he the writer?
is he the protagonist?
is he both?

every day he wakes
with old eyes and
a young heart
and the pages fill
and disappear

all with the same
fiction
the same drivel
different titles

he finds familiar
dialogue in his stories
he sees his own words
in the history book

he thinks “man,
i must be the
only one alive
out here”

a picture is all you need

poetry

a picture is all you need
when you’re yearning for the past

like my bike ride to work
and the dim nowhere sky

the booze in the autmn
leaves
it’s been a year

it’s been a year

or the party with the crazy guy
the one who knew
your perverted friend

and the yellow colored
lights in their house

file errors

you can almost smell the
girls,
on your bed
flipping you off
on a laptop

or the ones of you trashed
by yourself
bloody-nosed
in the mirror
in your bathroom
all alone

followed by the dead foliage
pricker bushes
and nasty landscape
of the lot behind
the parking lot of
your hellish old,

whatever,

a picture is all you need.

trying to find the center

poetry

alone is different than lonely
but god I tell you I am both
and am walking ’round in circles, here
trying to find the center

and this is a true account of my days
written here for you to see
as usual, and of course
I can’t let go of the words, oh

what’s more is you can have all my stuff
i don’t care about much anymore
but i miss your dog, i miss your dog
yeah yeah, yeah yeah, etc

but if you wanted me (and you don’t)
I would’ve saved you yes I would
but your love is such a weighty lie
your love is just a sucker game.

partial lyrics on a sunday

poetry

the ghosts of rocks tap your window
your friends are all dust in the air
you feel like some low-budget horror movie
trashed on a god-given sunday

and i’ve not got any pain left
and i might die but that’s okay
and this old movie called “youth”
well it gets old in it’s own way

the monkeys turn tricks on the boulevard
the leaves flap around in the sunlight
well painkillers make me feel alright
i guess that’s how i lie to get by sometimes
i guess that’s how i lie to get by alright.

my tombstone should include “wide-eyed” on it somewhere

poetry

i am wide eyed and high floating
above rivers of happy
philistines and i find that
everything is funny because
it’s all so very grave.
waves of irony end their journey
from: our massive sun-god
to: my face and
amplify my smile;
coloring all things in their
deep, deep comedy.

i smile and graze over the
earth with my eyes lightly
so as to not break a thing.

“humans are bad balloons”
i think and
look down
as i deflate
the crumbly breaky surface
giving way at the thought of
my come-down. sunshine
turning into heat
bird chirps
turning into traffic
smog
all things blackening and
crumbling as i come down.
i grab at the comedy but
cannot hold anything,
not even the air.