Of
Man .
The inherited
T h in g .

The
weight of the world sitting dumbly on
those fructose eyelids.

They, in turn.      melt into the mummified  
morning.

laying in the corner forever like a
favorite-shirt
ruined in the wash.
Every other stripe on you is stained pink
from
some cheap volunteer tee that ******              up
The whole load.

Each ray from the blinds
Takes some life away.


Searing past you- into the floorboards
with
quiet fury.

Time passes_
It shoves us down into compact spaces.
(but)
I thought of you
In a shoplifter's prayer.

(There is something left that evaporates out in the form of you)

I imagined you
Still.
But growing
Like
Crystal salts
Crusting up the pores of the earth.

Vapors fumbling upwards to rehydrate
My dry fingers_


We make decisions . that stick around.

We break off blisters. Rip little things that hang off our lips.
We take breaks before we need them.
Take too long to say
**** this.

Thoughtlessness.



Somewhere out there, they are screaming loud.

Somebody either cares or
Doesn't.


The marks on the carpet know better than
us
How to last forever

door  
$40 used on ebay
cleaned it up. made it good

(wore the **** out of that thing)
i found him there,

i fed him my paintings.
lured him out
with my bad poems. he
found friends in the array of ghosts i maintain under my fingernails,
and
in the old wool watchcap kept stuffed down at the bottom of my studio bag.

i fed him in the framingham night
and in the cold foreign springtime.
and we
made
peace-raids at the reservoir.
kept track
of the hours of "stargazing" spent there. while pale gods lay strewn  allover
the hillside
and in the rain
and the snow.
and the overcalculated days where it was too hot.

outside,
we sweated morphine
and ****** to tom waits,
luncheoned on the grass.
i
bore our banner and he reared his
black
buffalo head.
we slunk down into breakfast booths

i had soapy teeth.

he had a gut that burned slow like a trinket-drawer left
unopened for
years.
the ghost in my jacket, he shrinks down and curls up when he
should get big.
-reaches out to the tops of cabinets nobody can reach.
i remember him
my ghost thinks he's funny,
but
drawers get opened.
and ghosts get nervous
and coats get put away.

holds us.historically hostage
as our.future splays out like frayed wires
under the nav panel before [me]
this is your captain speaking,
we are going to be hitting some bumpy
a|r
remain seated/as you dare

they mightlike you but they don't understand
your

violence.they don't  get: you got to curate it a little.
i know- it's worth it in the end












































/

is performed on one’s self

now, that’s what i call alchemy vol. ||1iIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii­iiiiiiiii
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiu­uiiiiiiiiiiiiii

the warmth of dusk,
cold science of night,
holding on to the promise of
changing,  with weary fingers
tracing shapes on
invisible seconds,
that came before:
-improbable.

I was entranced to begin with.
nothing you could have done would've changed that.

as music the fills hall-less, drifting assembly
of
[]ears

seeking, ever skyward, a pedestal to
****
from


demigods and demagogues.hum.with  the
white-hot vibration of  
          erasure  

needing to sting
like needing to
***;


needing to *** like
needing
   bread;


dis mantling   the
lapis-dark
shawl of the
           night

in search of
   the
hubris
    of
  other .

their kindness


    is a kind of lobotomized love.+pushing paper around.like making everdistant promises of delivered goods

//:scarring dragonbelly sized trenches into the slowchurning flesh of the world.a widening gap between
actualized.v.abstract justice .            1t’s virtue on credit,
paid off in laundry loops w/o a tangible exchange .



   choose
   now!


or find these heart-sized boxes made of an entropic eventuality:this habitual tug into the center_towards willful repose _laying down.beside
the fluttering lashes,glazed over in the cool bath of dawn
///
waking too late
loving too late
******* too late .
***-slung beside the driveway sun.

i lift my soft scale belly to the yawning expanse,
       aim now !

aim now ! !

                                aim now ! ! !



?:

Was cut
A long time ago.

mouth to mouth-
crystalline tiny cubes of light
into tasting pieces of acid and spill them all over
your black spaghetti straps
tugging at the bottom of your machine washable
dungeons
you purr words of inconsolation and inconsequence  
stream-line savior
savour the swift
elongated tongues
of amateurs -
sky machines
sent to lick the blood right off my feet
and from the streets-
swimming into the soft-tailed waterfalls that spill over
cavernous eyes

In enclosing circles/and/between quick, jittering slices of their mantras .
Dropping staves of sing-song leaflets on the city from fluttersupreme
Aerial invasion

Discordant.diatonic_
A final, unheeded plea for
Human
Surrender


Warning the sleeping populace of impending
Obliteration   and
War.





They are here in my neighborhood,
As they have been
.

counting the world on your fingers
counting.

wilt at the tolling of enough
bells

the harder it is to prove that it happened
let alone, who did it.

.
is the thing that you
want back

In summer, the young tree bore many fruit.
Not large, nor well formed- as the tree was yet young and only in the second year of fruiting.

Yet the number of apples was many.
And this tree grew honestly.
It was not grafted, but planted, and came to maturity in the natural way - with years of patience.

Some time ago, before the new families moved in, someone had planted this tree, hoping it would grow, not knowing if they would be around to witness its fruiting.

And they were not.

Whomever the planter has been, their part had been played and none more is known.

Yet the tree grew.
And it began to learn it’s trade.


But the apples were of poor quality, the tree being new to the task. And, as is to be expected, more time must come to pass before the fruit may become beautiful.

These early-borne fruit fell often, never reaching full size. And they littered the dry lawn in multitudes.

The small apples would rot, and became gnawed and ****** upon by all matter of things. Birds, bugs, beasts - started to devour the littered horde, but never fully.

So half-carved fruit carcasses lay around the base of the tree and reached out past the extent of its shadow.







Take me at face value

nobody knows the neighborhood like  the garbage man
hanging on by half a shoe to the back of the
truck
out there in the world, day to day. part of the universe.
probably says hi to people .
probably averts his eyes .
watches the girls jogging.
he's cooking all day in the sun
his
skin is
grass in the yard.
it's another heatwave out there and the garbage man is part of
the world.
he's probably out there (now)

you waded into me like aflame.
floating atop paper.

you flickered and danced as your sparks tickled the air above you

you sank into the river. as if there was nothing about you.

Joyless
Path.

Path.

offered
with
this
legal tender love

offered
with
this
legal tender love

chains in the name of
it

flattened planes in the name of
it

it’s all the same in the name of
this




if it looks pretty through the fashionably-branded 3rd eye in your hand
it must be _

(when i was young)
she would take a pair of rolled up socks from my parents' room and
bring them around with her, in her mouth.
in the dead of night- or when she thought no-one was home,

she'd set them down on the bathroom floor and meow long, sad calls
(out)into the stillness

[i wondered if she remembered her mother.]

before i was born, my uncle found a kitten outside, meowing.
as i grew, i learned more from her than anyone.

(i am now older than she ever was,
which had seemed impossible at the time.    she had always seemed
infinite.)

the shape of a moment
your geometry in bloom



the Real Thing
is finding out

is being what
happens


is Here .

Is that when followed to its logical conclusion,

The shadows on the cave
Become corporate trademarks

And all of human thought and emotion
Becomes the very
Commodity, itself

To be bought, sold, and
Broken when failing to meet certain quality control
Standards

the arrogance to act.
the hope without good reason .

the necessary prerequisites for
animation :

tilting at the gamma-wind, ye
terminal fingers (flowering buds) of the bloodline

homesick meteor,
deep with longing

heavy ,mineral heart

first, man imagined god_
then, he built it

with mother-minded longing .
from that lonely vantage in space

some remember the debt-
others, the
intoxication of rubber bands breaking against their forearms
amidst
the long flat bodied spiders that make lonely homes
with picket fences and
lighting strung up on silk to rally us towards
celebration

i call you a crybaby because i never could understand.

you browse through my being
with fluttering eyelash-
squinting at the unpleasantries and
tugging at your brows with nervous thumbs.
i wonder-
will you know me any better by it.
sipping from the warm marrow of old bath water and running our hands down eachothers' sides. i
watch you take another big gulp of nothing
-find your feet amidst the company of elongated creatures that walk idly on the flat- smoothed out places of the world
that stretch
far and wide like some never-ending ungodly plane. you
scallop out pieces of your knowing just to make sense out of this happening. you
forget to receive beauty in all your eyes devour-
and in all you can crave.
the stiletto legged spiders cross paths like stilted walkers, wishing they were smaller
and you
will know nothing of them but will speak as if you've known them. i
can tell
you've never known them. i
can tell
. you
extend your limbs, hands open
as wide as the sky before you, you fancy your fingers as feathers,
and your outstretched arms as wings. i
know your bones must be hollow because
i've never heard such terrible sounds from them knocking together-
drumming out strum-songs because no strings could be used to make noise
in this place
you are lonely-
feeling as empty as freshly blown glass
and with
pins sticking out of my fingertips
i cannot drum along to your sound,
the crackling scratch of a vinyl record as
a cat claws at the beige carpet and
catches like velcro loops. i
know i've
put less thought into greater things
and
you
hold me
for only one second and
you are the tear in my jeans at the knees,
the flecks of dried paint in my black eyebrows,
and

infinitesimally small particle-sized portions of us all
bouncing around in the dark parts of your irises
like over-exited electrons colliding in a
cloud
of everyday
dust,
exiled into the far corners of
heavens.

you grasp the air around you like a flightless bird i used to know and i
peel
back
everything i might of known about you before
that lash-fall instant
in which
you
smiled

(hand over heart) this is a right.
(forefingers to the temple) this is a privilege .
( both hands cupping the stomach) this is a fight for survival.

So much white hot vibration of
Hatred
Stuck inside these little cubes
Buzzing like madness against the walls
Thrashing to get out - as the
Walls shrink
In the name of efficiency
And the tower rises further higher
Into the thin mists of false nirvana / vacuuming us
Upwards^
As the vapors disperse
And all is knowable
And all these cubes smashed together in a grid
Of silver light
Of radiating illumination, railing against any slim crack of peace-like darkness left
And

The grid is god
The grid is greater than god
The grid is us as gods
The grid is finality


We are each cube, thinking we are the grid, itself

Thinking we are anything except
Caged into electron-cloud-mind-
Uncertainty

Thinking we are anything but driven to
Extinction

Still spasming, there, in the light
Still burning hotter than stars, but with the heat wicked away instantaneously and by design
Leaving nothing but cool,
Polished
Fear :


•


In the
Cathedral, again_

There are only ways
And the time we spend
Together.

Than a
Perfectly
Machined
Enigma .

to
       happiness
is getting so
        sick
of sadness and
        
       anger
that you can’t
**** with them
any            more                                                        .

Have long since grown

And their powerful roots
Tear my foundation to a rubble of
my towered look out

Themselves,
Are
Darwinian .
Not just arms races - though, they are that as well-
But more so : direct byproducts of the environment
Shaping the necessities of continuation_
Not just in sustenance of the body
And of bloodlines /
But also of the required toll of will that must be paid in adequate measure.

The corporate office ,
The slaughter of peasants ,

The tv writers room,
The pursuit for the eradication of a neighboring people ,


All the religions   ,
Scientific principles ,
Moral codes of conduct ,
Feelings of oneness with the earth,
Pre-
Flight checklists,
Favorite routes home   ,
Tomes of philosophy,
Secret dreams,flickering close to the heart- just barely
JUST BARELY -
But still there,

That which erupts spontaneously ,
That which is handed down by lessons or cell-memory ,

That which calls us to act,
To cower, or to dream ,
Or  
To yearn out
In the self-measured sense of appropriate
Orders ,


The things that are handed out as truths _

The years, the miles, the skull-buckets between     them all
That flip.  And chip away these absolutes  over and over
And over
And over _

Despite all courage
Pride
Or convictions ( genuine or feigned )
Of their espousers

The ideas remain -
Or are removed :

Retain some semblance of source ingredients -
Or are rewritten by force or forgetfulness
Each time.

Here is what it means to live  .

To stake claim
To stand

To rot slowly
Or to combust with brilliant light

All the truth ,
All the reasons


All the best-fits that become clawbound needs
Gripped like seized tendons
And unloosed to the last mud-song breath


Each “Last” is different
With different truths.
All new and mutated absolutes are born and mutilated forever , a million times over in a million parts of a concurrent witnessing of a second .

They fight for that huge gap between “it worked”

And
“ it works”

Until it can’t anymore
And goes away

That’s
Ideas
Baby.

Keep
Doin’
‘Em.

[in hushes, they name him]
                  
and we are huddled together
in closeness_
the life pit flickers
in warmth and
running ember
upon
the stone sky.
the young are ****** out of their bodies and into the air around
each
dancing breath.
the old nod, as
the strong wear too-thin masks
of
feigned indifference, leaning in from the outer
ring.
the story man comes.
and the future is
    woven
in this collective.

world swallower.

become mud soap
as the mad wraith
tithes the
Land
tell your heroes
not to
come .

Turns in a wet hand
As the other holds the leatherman
Preparations for a dog’s breakfast
As the earth and sky
Also

somewhere in the universe (read:back
hallway) she covers her ****** and
pretends to be a brunette

/who the helll are you/

and the reply came :
/a problem you may not fully be able to solve./


the repeater traffic
went
fuzzy
and
warm.

as a means by which our star-long horizon can be further darkened
—
nothing gets hidden in this seascape;
only more water added between
us.


we are counted on not being able discern the difference between swimming and  having been
swum through .
—

tidal pulses .
storm brow crinkling up, as the nostrils flare against the wind.
night-sail diadem , let loose from atop ill-begotten cedar mast .

shaking
shaking
shaking sea

despite the futures that we are said to be robbed of

Think the truth is invented so that they don’t feel left out

And the other ones
Feel like truth is invented so they can do the leaving out

Why must either be accepted

fitting together like guns to a victim’s head:paving over holes in parched landscapes_and
parsing out factions in a divided populace

they are

finding and
braking

handholds

in the artificial rock wall
of
a
city made out of
pictures of cities.
selling
an exclusive virtue
made out of

want .


my

want
for us
       is otherwise.

you say, as
all of recorded history is
annihilated in favor of
quarterly growth


and in the coldopen, the sun rises over joggers
going nowhere .

fills a void in you_
like the mist of dawn settling into
the untreated
wound of last night’s
moral dilemma.
the tendril fingers
of something older
than
domestic man.
it’s
war-moon waxing
like

a faltering empire /
like
an island
  amidst the heaving breaths.of a
dark ocean

:
is just fear of the unknown -

but it remains that only through
questions
that we can take any
actions
at all