Miss mother nature, goddess of earth
your grass masturbates my feet
and the clouds cushion my bedhead –

I am alive
as the plants breathe, I
can watch myself as they watch me.

I am mundane, plain, a concrete building
brutalist and manmade
but their real existence, live vines climb
and make me seem attractive…

Even as I want to be dead,
they kiss me as a husband would his
sleeping wife –

even loving when unaware, forgetting
acknowledgement
being beautiful all alone.

Miss mother nature, goddess of earth
I am alive
no longer manmade in your home.

I grew into you like vines, delicately covering a brutalist form with a love I only know. My heart is submerged in a little ocean, its depth grew in me as I carried the weight upon my soul. The waves painted me blue, reminding me of all my sad lullabies.

Your name is a possession and embodies all that you are (it's the only way to keep you.) If I got the chance to love you, maybe I'd be much more than a supernova, devouring its life until the very end, traversing the boundless space, and it would leave traces in a thousand years; my love for you would still resonate, like the haunting interludes played by a piano in the epilogue of a song.

Through the street lights  and brutalist cliffs,
blinking beams echo my breath.

Laughter still bleeds in my throat, conversations still pierce my ears, alas
A Kodak haze,  a synchronized buzz

and agony is gone. For most are
nothing but pines,

A sleeping balm, a charming whiff, all the
same submissive to a whirr.

As a child, they  left me in awe
Now I know they're nothing more

than a palisade for the sea.  Those
that bid time in the isometric

backwoods, simply haven't the clue,
that no concrete can still her.

The First World War destroyed anything beautiful that existed within the human spirit
You cannot simply walk away from industrial mass slaughter unaltered
You cannot hide it behind decades later mass slaughters of equal importance
You cannot hide behind getting excited for next mass slaughter
WW1 may have been the force that killed anyone’s feelings of honor or bravery in war
And that’s almost as great a tragedy as all the bloodlines severed
War and violence and conflict will always be with us
It is deep within all animal DNA and no matter how many daisies are put into the barrels of rifles you will never escape it
There is a great tragedy to violence but at times there is a beauty and there is a necessity
When the Soviet forces finally breached the walls of the Führerbunker
Don’t you think they were smiling?
Reality is never black and white
It is shades of tragedy, shame, beauty, and glory

It may be seen as “Eurocentric” of me, among other things, to carry WW1 with this weight
It was not a purely European conflict of course, but the main theater was
Besides, I am descended from Europeans, and some nights when all is silent I wonder if I can hear my ancestors weeping
Or are they screaming?
We as a species have allowed our greatest inheritance to be squandered
Pure wild nature
We have sold it for same Starbucks coffee shop in every college town, Kroger, and corner of New York City
We sold the forests for New York City
Are some sins unforgivable?
In the place of the old growths we build buildings of subjective beauty
Subjective beauty always bows to objective beauty
Yes, there is objective beauty
Buildings that are built in the Brutalist style are subjectively beautiful
Forests, undeveloped fields of flowers, the rushing flow of a river
THESE ARE THINGS OF OBJECTIVE BEAUTY
To argue otherwise makes you a liar or a coward

Unironic nihilists have none of my respect
They simply do not deserve it
If you want to be taken seriously find something greater than yourself
Something outside yourself
Something that came before you, exists above you, and will be there long after you are not
That’s why I chose God and Nature
Some see these as interchangeable
I do not but I’m not here to split hairs
The problem with modern society is we have become ironic nihilists, which is almost as bad
Everything becomes chalked up to subjectivity
We crack jokes about how it’s all meaningless and eventually down the line we believe it
This is a pathetic cope
The meaning of our lives, like the objectively beauty of nature, has been bought or stolen
You were not born to consume product
You were not born to work and make things of cheap plastic
You were not born to enjoy next superhero movie, twice a year, every year, until you die
To our ancestors our lives now must seem like decades long suicide pacts
I want out of this state of unliving
We were born to be physically strong
We were born to create things of beauty
We were born to meet hardships, embrace conflict, overcome them, conquer them become something superior to what you once were
YOU WERE BORN TO BE ALIVE
CREATE THE MEANING IN YOUR LIFE IF YOU HAVE TO
Just please
Don’t be a nihilist

I try to take my multivitamin and multi mineral vitamin every single morning
Maybe a fish oil pill or two throughout the day
I have become consumed with the idea of getting more sun on my skin
I have been consumed with the idea of improving my gut bacteria
I want to talk about these things without sounding like Patrick Bateman
To improve your inner flora it is recommended you replace processed and fried foods with sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, or something along those lines
I know sunshine and sauerkraut aren’t going to fix your depression or rid you of your years of trauma
But there’s no shame in trying
On Friday I bought a full 16oz jar of kimchi and proceeded to eat the entire thing in less than 24 hours
I will never apologize
I will never feel shame

I scream all of these things into a bathroom mirror when I am alone
I wrote this poem for myself
I wrote it for all of you
I want out of this soul crushing alienating techno industrial hellscape
I want the nightmare to end but I’m in too deep
If I melt down my cell phone, crash my car into an empty Wendy’s, and make it my moral and ethical duty to take down the power grid, I may get expelled from grad school
I might get arrested
I might just be forgotten
So for sake of legality I cannot endorse looking up how a cheap bandsaw can cut down a cell tower
I do no endorse bringing the technological nightmare to its knees for the good of all living things
I do not endorse arson, even when no one gets hurt
It’s a mean world out there
I only endorse breaking free
Any way you can

A composition, bordered by brown track, white shelter and
yellow line;

off-white, smear-windowed building (background)
                                  hexagonal floors, brutalist mandala;
triangle across the frame, a *****, polluted structure
                                  one half of a red cross logo, boarded windows
                                  - chipboard, corrugation, MDF;
and Southern Rail green is grass in the lower foreground
                                  arrows, words, people.

4/23/2016

"Speaking of batteries,
what's the positive in this? Negative?"
she threw out there, lithe little

extensions of her hand palely wrapped about a martini glass stem. It held seltzer and ginger.

Long Island City, Queens
twinkled cobaltly, covertly, in the
harbour

incognito, morphing into the sky
in the gloaming.
"All those people," I said, ignoring

the question. I always ignore the question. "So many. But this city
so cruel and brutalist and impersonal."

She shook her head,
stirred her cocktail stirrer
the mint sprig moved to the bottom

of the glass.
"As opposed
to what?"

I am a broken toilet
Spouting crazy ideas in the basement of some brutalist mansion
My thoughts gone lurid, growing on the whitewashed cement into flowery moulds.
I am a scarlet stain on the ceiling and I am loud and furious and I reek of guilt and decay.
editting editting editting becoming becoming becoming
I am an alpha particle.
Writing writing writing down everything.
I am a ray of light.
I cannot tell if I am real so I feel my face.
I am superfluous, overdone, like a Christmas sweater, Rococo, overtilled to the point of erosion.
I am last night's espresso into this morning.
I am twenty strange projects
and I scrap them as if they were funhouse mirrors.
I am shaking like a leaf.
I am manic and I am happening all at once and I can't ******* stop.

O, cry morning,      sun breaks again

In that history of banalities
Are written, I finished the cigarette
Before the coffee, twirling wind

O, sigh morning      as inverted

Could carry me to the rock wall, thinning grey,
Of the house where egos, bruised, seek guidance
The black bird builds a decoy nest

O, shy morning.         churlishly answering questions never

Asked before, “nah-uh, nah-uh, nah-uh,”
(A ****** is heard, of most[ly] fowl)
Spoken mostly to the fact:
It is what it is. Acceptance

O, belie morning.          builds a brutalist window, round by row

The they that walks whistles low with nebulous intent
To remind itself to forget
Abysm is a stranger in your city streets.

O, blithe morning.          Such cringing in place

Of those sleeping hours, parsing the drop-ceiling’s
Calligraphy: kings be draped in robes of flesh
To depose the anarchists in cerebral lands,


O, yes, my morning.                     a lechery for the heart,

That religion of my given path
Or its surrogate, the lawful rebels
Writing on every city row, so willing but rough,

My guest, O, my morning,                         such a pity!

Restless and genuflect, the they does not find itself
Swayed by the largess of absence
Craning neck eastward toward the perfect morning,
Ever on the cusp of the perfect twilight.

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

it ain't the same
remember your street
how colorful it was
almost like a yellow brick road
or a gingerbread house

your friends congregating for a game of 21
americana incarnate with illegal fireworks
and soggy doritos after swimming for hours

what's really so different
everyone becomes an adult eventually
I just hate different the birds sound
They don't even sing much anymore

Colors muted and sights replaced
brutalist and architecture meant to appease shareholders

Nostalgia and cynicism are best buddies
and I here I am...
misery comes in threes

I take the night bus
From the inner city,
Where nightlife spills
On icy sidewalks
And aliveness soaks brutalist concrete.
I do it all,
I do it all for you.

I ride the lonely mastodon
Out of the new self.
A teal finback slicing
The sea of blinding halos
Who only come in pairs.
I do it all,
I do it all for you.

I cross the Rubicon
To the frostbitten lands,
Where the sun set at four.
The bungalows leer at me;
I am a stranger to your world.
I do it all,
I do it all for you.

the word verbosity,
the words for ****'s sake.

those are some words
that come to mind
when I think
about your attempt at trying.

you either **** or **** later.
ivory towers turn
to chalk in the rain.

I'm exhausted with the stakes,
as well,
so don't take any
offence from this.

i stare at my half-clothed body in the mirror,
comparing to your red-filtered half-skinned silhouette
in the photograph you sent me ever so faultlessly:
brutalist and surreal, in sharp monochrome definition,
with an expression as cold and unfeeling as concrete...

all bright eyes, wry grins,
and a corrugated abdomen:
yet your arms conceal
your chest and navel,
betraying a baser shame

you need not hide from me,
my laurel-crowned achilles:
in these eyes, you will
forever be god incarnate

emulation comes natural
(i could only ever behold
beauty by plagiarizing it):
so i shave.

not just my face...no, i take the razor
and drag it into the heath of my underarms,
across my chest, the insides of my thighs,
tracing my collarbone and (waist | waste)

i shave till my skin is raw, blotchy red;
till hair no longer bristles against
the strokes of my jaundiced fingers

i want to tear off patroclus
like the ill-fitting bandage he is:
his shame is my own, seborrheic and crawling
(learn to treat the source, not the symptoms;
cull those parasites from their deep-set roots)

god, would you grant me your favor...
if i was youthful as ganymede?
call upon me in your times of need...
if i was faithful as hephaestion?
give me all i have ever longed for...
if i was as narcissus, that conceited beauty,
who was no more egotistical than he was honest?

i clutch the rolls of subcutaneous fat in the shower,
cranking the faucet in hopes of
rendering it out with the heat
like some ****** up confit;
such is the price of my babylon

bloated, the cystic acne on my back
bleeding into my bedsheets,
i realize it is moments like these,
when my woolen throat abrades at my voice
and i want to retch with each inhale;
when torpid tide pools of saliva
lap against my cheeks
and nausea consumes me:

i am at the mercy of my body and its afflictions—
i can only take these sensations, seen and unseen,
silently as they come, moment by moment,
patiently enduring this migraine of the heart.

the only thing that gives me joy
is seeing the water roll down
my body in beautiful thin sheets,
unobstructed by thick forests of hair

a diagnosis would only warrant my weakness,
justify the existence of the black villous mass
beyond mortal comprehension within me—
within us, wretched god—

i resignedly accept that your messages
will find their way to me only in the dark hours;
i know this even as i text you on the bus ride home,
because you never had time for me but i find myself
constantly making time for you,
begging for someone to care the way i do...

oh but there are still debts to be exacted,
reparations to be paid, my bright-eyed misgiver
(and you won't want to be around
when i collect on them)

when you gaze upon my withered husk
on the hospital bed,
permit me my resplendent self-destruction
silence those morphine alarms
trace the morse code scars on my arms
read and heed their silent plea:
do not resuscitate.

Time as a concept
becomes especially troubling
once it makes itself known.
Now you’re against the clock.
All progress a single
stuttered step
from falling apart.
Brutalist landscapes
masquerading as a bioluminescent,
science-fiction sentient beings.

Unfortunately the clock,
is ticking.
Hours go by the past
increases the future
recedes. Possibilities
decreasing regrets
mounting.
Do you understand?

When it all burns,
as I assure you it will,
every empty office lobby
and husk of window looking down
from tender jagged tenement towers
will pour rivulets of ash across
broken bricked sidewalks
like crawling fingers of lace.

Only the mosquitos will remain unchanged.
Spilling deftly from the same canals as each
and every brood
to have ever come before.
Nipping the skin of those left behind,
to sing the names of the dead
into the corn seeds scattered hopefully
in cold air.

meanwhile,
drip,
drip,
drip,
it's all good.
this is fine.
the woods are whispering
my name.

my real name.

I love you.

no words to describe the mass,

the danger of it all, the hate  that

rises.



the parallel,

the home, the black chair.



power house.

bone house.

Close the door.
Put in your IV, dopamine drip
With sympathy blaring like a trumpet through your ears. Down the staircase.
wait by the road, Spare the commuters
the trauma. Creeping across the bicherman, walking dead. Reanimated by duty, or was it instinct. ‘I look good disheveled’ haircut screaming otherwise, clothes hanging off of you like a bad omen.
Shuffle into the car, driver already half infected, indifference swearing as an old drunk would. I care because I’m paid to. I’m very co-operative when I have no other Choice.

At the workplace, brutalist demeanours, menial brutality.  Welcome me back to reality with plastered smiles, they smell your ambivalence.
Shelter in the breaking room, delay the inevitable. punch into the machine ‘64’ ‘D7’ coffee and confectionery like rudimentary medicine.
Collapse at the desk, you skin loosens. Falls off. a slow 37.5 hour decay begins.

The most delicate sleep
Brings brutalist dreams
When you leave the herb alone
At least that's how it seems