The leaves billowed from the heavens, a roasted brown or Sunkist yellow. Mixed into the mess is the liter of the ages; a pattern, a rhythm, a song of color against dismal grey concrete. I pass the man with the tenderized face, jeans with holes and a twisted limp. But he smiles, teeth like termites. And though he smiles, later he won’t. And though he greets me with a kind face now, later he won’t. We know this, we know the binary of the demons and the angels. It remains unacknowledged, but the distance is respected.
Killing For Revelation
There are holes in the Ziploc bag.
Snow coated.
Breaks in the lines,
Sparking electrical wires
Melting alpine peaks
And itchy noses
Cut with methamphetamine
And the surgeon’s
Favorite razor.
The poets are scratching,
Shitting poetry
Bearing teeth
And grinding needles
In mildew corners
“Shit stings brother”
In that lavender pink
Codeine sky
The sweet thick stink
And an oasis of empties
Christ on the cross faded nausea
Accumulation
Fish eyed
stoic reflections.
A little wired
Little crazy.
Wilted ass flower,
Chatted furs
manage to misunderstand.
They drugged Jesus,
The Son
Nauseous with nothing to nibble,
Nothing
Far from original sin
Smoking on senile hand rolled slugs
Racing past
Settling insectile faces
Behind sterile windshield
I need these antithetics
To get through the day
The list travels through L.A.
And Tokyo
Coilng around the world
Knotted ball of twine
Each thread the next scroll
Of my prescription
Of prick the fingers,
Make him bleed,
painkillers
They whisper it,
Hiding behind sweaty palms
As I stumble to the curb
“DRUG ADDICT”
“HAGGARD DRUNK”
“RAPIST OF THE SOUL”
the roach that go away
The sky is stained with exhaust
The strip with buds
Accomplices
In my land
Two layers closer to hell.
“Don’t Try”
They’ll bludgeon you for trying
rape your persistence
the only thing
to hold us down
with their nostalgia
tripping from grave to grave
watching my old friends
my lost love,
lie
waiting for death.
*The title is a quote from Charles Bukowski’s gravestone.
Sedimentary Chest Cavity
weeds, onion shoots
growing from the side
of abandoned dirt roads
careless carbon, without consciousness
not content nor contempt,
just being
energy in the atmosphere
always we press on
with the force, their breath
moving us through
eternity
the yoke splattered on my shirt
subtle reminders
that the soil and my soul
aren’t so damned different
and acidic pieces of death
in the air
passing through
keeps me moving
keeps me alive
the potholes
keep me awake
on my long drive through Hell.
Roaches Striking at the Ballpark
Neighbors have a bug infestation
My personal manifestation
From streets to the bus station
In an overcast nation
Call it tradition.
We’ve run out of munitions.
No ball players,
but the pitcher’s pitching
and we’re Nothing
but strikeouts
Finished Before the End of the Sentence
I can feel it dripping
Down my throat
Like turpentine
Taste it tainting
The water supply
Sometimes it sticks
Festering through my lips
To catch a whiff
At all hours of the day
It sticks to your clothes
Like cigarette smoke
Death
In the floor and the ceiling
Asbestos and mold
Death
Printed as the watermark
On every page
The wriggling tongue
Behind sealed lips
Death
I’ve been carrying death
With me
The most fashionable
Of face piercings
A skin condition
from within
to gradually
Consume all.
From Maggot to Fly
The cigarette bud is crushed
Into the creases
Of rotten Would.
I can see my face
Resembled in the ash
And know we are
One and the same.
Though I more closely
Imitate the insect.
Rummaging through cadavers,
Squirming boils burst
at their own
volition
Dug deep into the earth
To taste the red hot
Of my species
Under so much weight,
I begin the great ascent
Knowing it’s likely
I’ll never see
The green surface.
It’d be easier to accept death,
But what’s the point
Of a bug like that.
Writhing in Tepid Streams
Hell bound Hounds
We’ve found
we’ve drowned
Could the sea
Wash more away
Than sin?
More than body and soul?
So unassuming,
So indifferent.
Maybe the secret to the pursuit,
Is in the changing tide
Unsure of what’s to be.
Sacrificed for this brittle end,
But with laces tied
And eyes covered
I walk.
The World in “Why?”
An open letter to critical thinking.
The same sights, the same sacred, lonely people. The same puddles, trees, cars. I’m stuck in another cage. Is this all there is? Transcending through one cage after another, imagining some framework to progress, but we don’t move progress or regress. We move horizontally, shifting to a different cage, but still just as trapped as when we started.
There are varying grades of containment. In the heart of the woods, on the ocean front, at the mountain slopes, forgotten wetlands, I feel most free. The natural is fleeting landmarks to human spirituality. Simultaneously cruel and nurturing. A multitude of spiritual paradoxes deep within despite whether or not we know or acknowledge it.
I reach out to expand, to grow, but they’ve clipped my wings, they push my curious head back into my cage. They obstruct the view of potential in the outside world and I can’t have it. I’m ready to pull my hair out, to mutilate, disfigure, until someone listens.
There’s something to this. The self-expression, a window to Aristotle’s divine manifestation, (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html) and though I’m stuck in a cage in nature, I’m closer to transcending than ever.
Reality consists of perspective.
Death is not a thing to be feared, death is not something to be cherished.
It is simply the unknown. We only have one life, but we’re contained by the limitations of our body,
we can’t imagine what it would be like to be free of our aging bodies, but we’ve been given an opportunity.
A break from the eternal after. A chance to suffer, to show who we are, and what we’re willing to do with the chords that chime so intimately.
Proving what our love can do in another realm from the norm. We have all of eternity to be in the bliss of after, this is our chance to suffer, and have something to show for it.
This is the time to discover Humanity. If you can, please, try something new today. Open a book about a subject you haven’t explored, a genre of music or literature.
Please anything to stimulate the mind. There’s so much to learn in the folds of history, so many skills mastered through the practice. It is a constant struggle to keep the mind elastic, but learning to be flexible in every facet of one’s life is an important, fulfilling skill. Curiosity trumps all.