Lore

The essence of the beast keeping us

all terrified to wander into the woods.

Keeping those in shining knight armor

well employed, what with the slaying,

and the chivalry, and the stone.

Midnight Marches

I’ve come and gone through the business of sound, ten dollar

bits, falling in and out of lines, the movement so subtle and

rippling so far down the charts. Stringing odd syllables along.

Tarnished skin. Moving in midnight marches, the joyous chorus,

with throngs lining the boulevard, so many voices, so many hands

and faces moving past, in time, on the moonlit path, leading to door

steps and cell phones, lost matches and found hearts, blood soaked

terror and sweat stained sheets. The rhythms of wood on metal, weight

on steel, crumpled aluminum, broken glass on concrete, the city

squirming within its limits, fabricated, sectioned off by illusions

of power. The dancehall moving as one. The grim motion of deception

on weekday mornings, the soft touch of pillowed walls, reverberations

swaying like brick backed epicenters sending shockwaves in all

but the most feasible directions. Angels leave their harps to peer over

the edges of clouds to witness this movement of the human orchestra.

These chords, their bliss ridden eternities will never teach them.

Even as they watch through the wondrous shapes and colors they see

pouring from intervalled openings in our strange incarnations of his

image, smile eyed bewilderment is the best they’re afforded, so much

blending of love, which they perceive beyond imagination, with

the sharpest reds and blacks of despair, that leave them gawking, as we

would at fashions of past decades. They head back to their jubilant

strumming, bemused, but quickly forgetting the strange little artists

they can’t figure out. These strange little artists so sure of their genres,

so sure of their scenes, their sounds, and their subcultures, so all at once

alive and dead, kind hearted and brutally selfish, witnesses to our own

award ceremonies. Last year’s forgotten winners tuning up for crowdless

nights spent polishing their hardware.

Dirty

There are those who would say I’m dirty. My last

shower lost in time’s hot moisture. My last shave

sharply apparent. The quality of my presentation

dismissible amongst the plastic plates and trampled

cardboard of the dust drenched city streets, where

moral character is second to house number, bank

balance, and suit pieces. My greasy mop unfit to wash

exhaustion from the purchased floors of tired travelers. They

themselves expecting the squeaky clean demeanor

of quality service to grease their squeaky wheels. My

sprawling ears and multitasked smile giving them every

opportunity to lament through the lingering sensation

of humanity they can’t seem to remove from the holes in

their head, even through their constructed, plastic barriers.

Their talk of the obvious reality they’ve settled for does

nothing to change the fact I don’t know how to change

the linens in their room. My eyes sullen, still bright

from the hopes of witnessing another fantastic dawn on

the confluence, soft, flowing with the power to shape

nation’s histories, so far away from the rising tide of their

speech. Most would admit, themselves, to not bathing

in its apparently unending magnificence. They feel they

are not dirtied by it, simply because of their distance from

it, and still they languish in the spewing filth of their wasted,

radiated, polluted, and apparently unending flow of words.

We are here now because the trepidatious braved the grim

uncharted to find such an excellent fortification. Centuries

later my silence is under attack at all hours. The weak

ammunition assaulting the battlements which took lifetimes

to build to Heaven, foundations forged in the pit of survival,

piled for eons with so many invisible books, swaying in the

simple harmonic motion of so many unnecessarily fired shots.

The war is over. Humans won. But humanity on the front lines

is too busy reloading its musket to read the messenger’s face,

too enthralled by headlines to empathize with the shelled rubble

of ancient Rome, laughing with closed eyes at reality star’s

tweets, not realizing the dark hue and iron taste is the blood of

the red wheel barrow rusting, and it leaks through the cracks

in the dried skin of their clawing, worn thumbs, having bit

their tongues clean off long ago on some side mouthed insult

of someone they, apparently, love, or someone they never saw

again, wondering why no one listens to their volumed attempts

for attention, waving their right to embrace silence, lacquered,

thrashing about in putrid piles of sharp, infected, single use

words, despite the surgeon general’s warning, plunging them

into the chipping asphalt like so many municipal Marches

revealing cobblestone in its beaten actuality for miles and

miles but getting no closer to where they wished they were,

horns blaring in the rush hour red light grid lock mad

at the mechanic, on his time, trying to fix their blown tires, hands

slick in their teenaged spray, lubricated, ignoring the effectiveness

of liberal use. They wouldn’t use a whole tube of toothpaste for

one brushing. That’s wasteful. Or a whole tank of hot water, and

a bottle soap to wash the dishes. Well guess what? I do.

Hole

In the basement there’s a bed

that had nowhere else to go, boxes

of clothes, more boxes of my

papers, the laundry machines, so

much of the girls’ things that I

wouldn’t know, an ole timey

wardrobe, some shelves with old

paint cans, a table, the hot water

tank, two trough sinks, the fuse

box, an ice box, the cat’s dishes

and litter box, and most of its on

the floor, which bows up at the bottom

of the stairs, with a huge hole that leads

to dirt like a tree root grew there, it’s covered

with a carpet square and falls in if you step

on it wrong, just making the whole larger.

Blood

I have seen what kitchens can become,

molten holes in homes, heat

melting plastic cutlery on place

mats that show us where we are

in the world, for that moment,

The magma spewing long enough,

cooling fast enough, to make islands

between even the closest of tabled

seats, Infant shorelines braving the brunt of

tides ill adjusted to their new boundaries,

sheering into rock, if only to leave

a mark, Time, the true story, as Pangaea fades,

Hawaii, so distant, so right in front of our eyes,

our living screens, so hot in the summer, so humid

in spring, steam from the coast dissolving into

the stratosphere, Mushrooms growing taller

than the largest buildings on Manhattan,

the shadows of praying, dormant volcanoes,

Vacations worth the hours spent working, grass

huts, great at blocking wind, singed at unbelievably

safe distances, The roving sheet of the planet’s gushing blood.

War

Time is such a thing

as to be every evil, or any

good. The cleansing decay

of supposed biological

demise… Strange how faces,

with the so sudden imposition

of photographs, showing us

just how similar all life is.

Disturbing casually, in the horror

of heritage, forgotten in the

assumption of identity, increasingly

stagnant, in the wading pool of

the generation gap. Bloody

language of the greatest age, battle

of sound and taste stalemated,

sublimated in the historical significance

of the cycle. Ignored, but begging

to be recognized like a slasher flick

banking on gore. My misidentification

honest, not intentional by any means,

lasting in the shallow list of material

accomplishment, enjoyed, but not checked

off. Rocked out in an act of reaction that

seemed to happen everywhere and all at once.

Just how it seems to always do. So, who’s

to say it’s not just as true? The blinding

hate? The serving rage? The perspective?

Dogma

My exhaustion means

nothings. There are consequences

to endure. The repelling aspects

of electrical beings, the appalling

state of affairs. One man’s

sounds on the street is another’s

obnoxious whistling. So much

to be concerned with on our

walks back

from restaurants.

So many dogmas.

Choose yours

and work, not to

prove its reality,

but to discredit the rest.

Sunny Afternoon

Pick it up sometime on a sunny

afternoon. Cool breeze flipping

the page. Birds all chiming away.

That rusty gate. Carpenters pounding,

one house over. Sounding more like

too late Sunday morning. Cheap

band saw in my back yard, building

me a fence, splaying and popping.

Then the nails go in, much twangier

than down the street, much springier.

Then a hack saw starts on a metal pipe,

over concrete. All I want to do is sleep.

Crowd

There are some very odd rules here, in this end of town. There are metal benches and stone slabs that are also used as seats, but to sit on the backed metal chairs, you have to be alone, despite adequate space for three or four people. The parties of two are then designated to the concrete, where they must sit, straddling the wide rock, facing each other, some sort of mating ritual, I suppose. All the while, amidst those generally passing through, tour groups come around, and the guide explains the rules and gives tidbits about who’s been caught sitting incorrectly.

Gatherings greater than two persons are allotted to the sprawling lawns that surround the towering cathedral. It’s not long before the lawn hits capacity, as everyone there is laughing and slapping knees, scratching backs, what have you, leaving them pouring into the spaces reserved for the singles and pairs. The authorities quickly rush in, brandishing Billy clubs and plastic shields, to pound the communal mob back into its place. Those standing on the outside don’t care too much for this at all, and while they cry out and push back against the bashings, those in the center continue to enjoy their afternoon, not hearing the pleas of their peers over their own lighthearted chatter.

Slowly, reports from the lawn’s fringe make their way inward, sticky bits of flat bone passed from person to person, until the biggest talker, whose centered himself in the crowd, and the only one with enough room to move freely, having set his biggest, strongest listeners as fence posts around him, leaving a decent sized plot, which he uses all of during his continuous, amplified discussions. These can even be heard at the lawn line, where, occasionally, a hushed fatigue falls over those administering the beatings. The beaten fallen silent many strokes ago.

Under The Table

Who’s to say, these days, what’s right or wrong

anymore, anyway? If I smile and don’t steal anything

noticeable, and business goes on like I’m not even there,

isn’t that enough to allow me some freedom

where my money left over from rent and bills

can go? Isn’t that the ideal for consumer

based democracy? Last I knew that was

the purpose of this nation, founded on freedom

for those who could negotiate under the table.

Nope

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t

shake it, that one grey cloud

covering the sky

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t

shake it, one grey cloud covered the sky

As much as I wanted to

Raving

“Alright! Alright!” He said, standing and louder than he

had intended, suddenly frozen in the silence that flooded

into his empty seat. He’d been quiet for quite a while,

and the crowd in the quaint establishment had filed out,

or fallen silent, but with an unknown number of attentions

paid to it, he sat back down, and without further invitation

from his tablemates, he spouted, “Markets, men. Its markets.

There were tribes. There were settlements. There were

civilizations. There were sects. There were states and nations,

and nation states, and now there’s markets.” “And coalitions,”

another added. He pointed at the remark. “And they may not

have to bomb every frontier they conquer,” he said, and fell silent again.

Most Especially!

Knowledge, like space time, is relative.

Instinct bread out of us, still psychology

debates Nature V. Nurture.

             Nature, in humans, decides one thing:

             How functionally violent you are.

             The rest we get from the media,

                                              or history,

                     as tribes were extinguished

                     in the American Genocides,

                     think that’s why our government is

                     always so inclined to ‘help’ the

                     ‘misfortunate’ citizens of the world

                     (We’re no longer inhabitants)? They’re afraid

                     of karma? So we call it democracy

                     and spread it everywhere, by any means?

                     Nothing like the Christians of the quote dark

                     ages, no. We’re not killing anyo…

                     Well. We’re not intentionally killing civilians.

                        Civilian (N.) – Person, who

                        is not involved in the

                        ideological wars waged

                        by nations, but pays the price.

                        We’re for their freedom.

                        We’re free. Why wouldn’t everyone

                        want to live as free as we do?

                        We’ve been saved. Salvaged (That’s the past
tense for the quality of salvation, no?).

                        Why wouldn’t everyone want the salvation we have?

It wasn’t righteous then and it’s not right now.

History only teaches us as much as we’d like to learn.

Here comes the CRAZY idea, like savings, the bigger

they be, the harder they are to believe (Fuck your capitalism!),

we’re fighting the same ‘sacred’ wars, because democracy is 

only mind control. So the public governs the government 

by opinion, and the public is all about reality on television,

convenience in their materialism, and everyone agreeing with them.

                  Fuck your religion!

                  Love thy neighbor!

                  Honor thy mother and father

                  And worship no false idols!

                  American or otherwise!

                  Don’t worship those you feel you’re supposed to!
Believe in what you believe in!
                  Don’t get caught thinking you believe in something
because you’re opposed to its opposite! 

Reading

Oh shit. There’s
Billy from marketing.
I hope my hair looks
good. If he says
something to me, I’ll just
die. What was it
Cosmo said I should
say, to be subtle,
but not too subtle?

Alright! There’s
Tiffany from H.R.
I’ve got my Old
Spice, and my Maxim
pick up lines, time for
Operation:
Lunch Room Date Get.
Subscription
don’t fail me now!

Endless

And, for once, I don’t see the time
as a bad thing. Who gives two goddamns
if tomorrow is oblivious, I say today
was a good goddamn day. Joyousness
in all the depths of despair and dismay
of the human condition portrayed, as a soap
opera goes. It’s a week’s worth of stays in
the hotel setting that I’ve never seen.
Wait…
Gateways
open while we smoke and state,
our intentions blatantly to guests
who hate waiting. Because I am first
goddammit! At the reception desk
and the Grammys and the restroom
and the planet! I am a fucking astronaut
so back off or I’ll pull the airlock, you
selfish fucks, look at the world, see
it from here, through your own eyes,
then choke, and fucking die.

Van

“In my younger days, I used to traipse about these parts with nary, uh...” He inhaled, “Uh...” And he thought in the motorized silence, “Uh, a misstep.” He said.

Wasted

In fingering shake from the bottom of the tupperware we kept the bag in, a cat hair turned up with it, and in trying to remove it from the leavings, it flung most of the leaves off into whoknows.

What I'm Writing About

What am I writing about?
My frustration in answering.
When stated face to face everyone
seems disappointed, life, I say.

The world, I say. I’m writing about
answering that fucking question for Christ’s sake.
Because I can’t say love without
some stereotyped view being emitted.

My love is understood, at a slow pace and
is silent. Hallmark cards and wedding bells
and vacations and late night telephone calls
are not love. Love is old. Those things

are more recent than most would believe.
I’m writing about perspective, trying
to keep an honest one. I could churn out
a short story about a stilted lover getting

a text message right now, like snap.
But that concedes to two views I very much
disagree with, so fuck it. I’m starting to
get angry, so I might as well do it, because
if not this’ll turn into more ranting bullshit.

Ideal

Ezra was wrong because
we won the war.

Surely, as all should live,
he sees me in his defeat, bending

to the whims of any patron,
talking under breath

of the services, spending most
of my time to allow them, unappreciative,

to believe, anyone could do what
I do, but I’m the only one here, so

these folk’s unseen intentions, or
their apprehensions, or their integrity,

is left to me, and despite my full efforts,
it seems some of the public will never

be satisfied. But who am I?
I, the recipient, though hardly

the receiver of reason, of such complaints,
the face to smile and agree, taking, unjustly,

responsibility. Who am I to those who
cannot see their world is truly unrealistic?

I am responsibility. Goddammit.
Or should I say, goddamn the way of greed.

Ignorance

It's easy to spot the tourists round here, he says, loose
hand on the wheel, cigarette hanging out the freezing
opened window. They do things like that, pointing
from his drag to the car pulling straight through the intersection
from the adequately marked turning lane. Just because
you don’t know where you are, doesn’t mean you have
a choice about following the rules.

Present

Where does tomorrow go in these
exalted instances of now?
Exuberance of inebriation fades
into the expanse of solitude

Moments that you meet yourself,
mania, not the assured death of
doppelgangers, because me now
is not me then, is not who I could be

tomorrow, nor all three the me
I would like to be. Uncertainty
the mediator of the all too often
necessary negotiations, so dominated

by the voice of my present course,
the future discouraged by the information
presented, screened by the past, disguised
as choice. Agreement will come with Time,

but he’s blind, and hasn’t read the notes.

Rules

‘U’ before ‘I’ as in
unconditional or
suicide

Art

Art, the unintentional contact of inspiration,
the greasy labor of production, the feverish
virility of art, the unintentional contradiction
of inspiration, the grassy labor of prediction,
the fiendish viscosity of art, the unconditional
accident of interpretation, the glossy fable of
direction, the ghoulish reality of perception, the

Goodbyes

After the clatter of traffic and
goodbyes fade from the street,

over the distant train tracks,
there are birds singing.

Title # 9

What’s that they say about good things? Can’t
have too much of em? Or is that good friends?
Or good times, maybe? What if things are great?
Would the same standard apply? If that’s the case,
what about bad things? Or shitty things?
Or not worth mentioning, mundane things?
Wouldn’t it have to go both ways?

Focus

This clean peace actions got me standing
sideways on the smooth flow of majestic
costal beaches, a horizon, stretching a
thousand miles wide, shoulder to shoulder,
from side to side as far as the eye can see,
a very tranquil scene

That’s somethin like a
rectangle, man. Whatchu
gettin at? Come on, man,
get to the point already.

Alright. Fine. After all, this
is what you came here for,
isn’t it? What you paid
to see. We’ll alright. Here
ya go. Just for you. Lordy.

Perception

I’ve become obsessed with this idea of perception.
I’ll leave the case open for it being the major culprit
in this poetically deficient stint that’s now dragging on,

the one man, one measure idea of Heraclitus, from multiple
thousands of years ago, occupies me so fully, in attempting
to determine any honest sense of reality. The visceral reactions,

sensations of mind, through the extremities, at sights, at
sounds, at language, surely there must be biological
similarities between each human being, still we debate what’s

normal to no end, and don’t we come to find, through such open
negotiations of the term, that things we fear most often, in hopes that
no one finds out about, are the same? Is abnormalcy the

only thing we can be sure of? Yet, what’s abnormal to me could be perfectly
ordinary to the next guy. Could this not be the democratic standard?
Or does that assume too much commonality? Enticed into believing that

true freedom is the choice between this or that? Unfathomable to me
that one man’s views could lie beyond either platform in a
two party system. You’re with us or against us. It’s going to

rain tomorrow, or it’s not. I’ll sell the movie rights to a story and get
rich, or I won’t. Decision making is that simple. We know that’s not
realistic. That’s just how we do our business, but that’s not how it’s done

everywhere. It barely works here anymore. So to understand what
existence really feels like to those in underprivileged nations relies on
experiences most of us here will never have, still we

argue over actions whose devastating consequences don’t actually
affect us, but what it comes down to is, we all want to be happy, right? Or am I
assuming too much there? Or is what I’m assuming simply

linguistic? My definition of happy may differ from yours. Lots of cars, a
lavish home, fancy clothes don’t play into my happiness. Good friends and
long nights are what it takes for real living, but that’s just my perspective.

Identity

Identity cofounds! Are we really different
people in different situations or are we
dimensionally complex creatures? No
humans have ever had to deal with
the tribulations of our day! Who you were
at the market would not compete with
yourself in the factory because they would
never have met. Duality, tripality, quadrality,

quintality, sexality, sebsality, hexality. The global
community was not always watching from their
pant’s pockets. Triviality discourages attempts
of self fulfilled existence. At any time, we’re all
on trial for our views of the world. Competition
is intrinsic to existence of the most basic order
yet we speak of elevated consciousness, which
in fact, only lowers ourselves to the perception
of those around us. Ants, of course, are insignificant,

nuisances in our busy, productive lives. You think
they’re walking around wondering what the others think?
Or are they focused on their production? We watch
sports teams because we’re not team players. It’s ok.

I’m the most important person at my job, too.

Growing Pains

As my lapcat rests all her weight on my supportive
yet tiring arm, I find such pleasure from watching
her lounge, her teetering enjoyment of my behind
the ear scratching, her halfway eyes and popping
purrs., the fullness of her comfort, in my handling
her, something
like a child, I imagine, a child that won’t grow
into some jaded asshole, or yuppie swine, and
I smile and make noises at her while I pet her,
limbs limp, chin out, so content and adorable
before she bears down, trapping my arm, and
sinking her teeth into the flesh of my hand.

A Spring Time Walk

Across the linoleum covered table, moving the moisture from the glass with the tip of her, often, gentle finger, resting her cheek on the folded wrist of a table elbowed arm, watching the droplets shift, she asked, “You still gunna get the special?” Relaxing her shoulders and making eye contact with him, the man she came in with.

He sat with posture, hands folded in the lap of his short pants, noticing how locked her eyes were on his, “Sure,” he said, with rhetorical intentions. Tapping the passing barmaid, he told her to add a beer to their tab. “Draft. Biggest, cheapest you’ve got.”

Just outside the window front, a small child, hand handled by a presumable responsible adult, skipped a step and planted its knee square into the corner of the only concrete stair to the establishment, paused at its conflicted instant, pain pervading its neural network, face reddening, the parent picked up the child, half sorry, half smiling, and continued on their way.

“Let’s get some beers to go,” She told him, breaking her visual bond at his involuntary response. Her exhale of vented laughter, accompanied by the around the place, returning glance, the pause of confidence, smirking, raised eye brow, her slightly parted lips emitting the beckoning question again with only a playfully inquisitive, soulfully serious sound, moving over the musical scale, low, hesitating, quickly rising, and holding a half measure longer than any that had been asked of him in his recent memory. He agreed.

The vibrant day outside faded into their little dive bar booth, the greasy food, so decadent in its deliciousness, so stumbled upon by the out front sign, so much right then. Unaware of anything past or future, eating fries. Drinking beer. Noticing anything only for the reaction of another. Perhaps the universe, he thought, is only slightly bigger than our brain’s space. Just enough that we can’t grasp its entirety. The ocean no longer concerns itself with the land. The sea knows who has lost.

Questionnaire

So, so what’ll it be? What’ll it be
today, huh? Huh? What’ll ya be
so inclined for the having of? What’s
got ya hankerin’ from anticipation
today? Huh? What’ll it be?

Epilogue

Hardly the place he'd thought he'd be,
but it’s better than being alone, thinking humanity
as a condition is the answer. Lonely in the physical,
left, singular, in the ideal of ideological reinforcement,
seemingly uncurable demise of the unending factory
of healthy well to do workers, what's to be done when
the watch has been wound long enough to let this time
last until utter destruction? He knew he would sustain,
physically, until his dying day, but what of his ideas?
In a culture where ideas lasted only as long as sales
are on the up and up, despite everyone being too poor
to buy, and no one listening to him yelling on the street,
everyone passing him off, writing his ideas off in their
shifted, substantial enough living, continuous day to day,
teaching their children, this is how life is meant to be lived.

When the truth gives way
to what is popular, we leave
ourselves no choice but conformity.
Is the whole worth the cost of sacrificial integrity?
Only the future will tell. We must not doubt our own genius!

Do Any Of us?

I watch my cat sitting on my lap, enticed
by my petting hand. I'm watching an octopus
on tv, making life and death decisions with
equal easiness. Does the cat know the dangers
beyond the door? And does my hand hold nothing
more than destiny? Does she know better in not
going back out there? Does she ask these questions?

Well, Tip Off Is At Four

Not even 2:30 and the scalpers are already milling around
the bottom of the hill. Their signature songs rising above
the pedestrian bustle and motorized clanking. Despite
the color clad crowds, no one seems interested.

Gameplan

You can’t force it. You son of a bitch. This is something
you know. So enjoy the pace, but focus on the flow. Life
will show that the lanes will open, as the D collapses,
and holding the stone only leads to traveling violations
and five second infractions. Modern coaches boast.
So let’s let it run its course, then we’ll worry about who’s
got the court next. It might look grim, but there’s no mercy
rule for their score. Just keep shooting. They’ll start to fall.
Keep getting stops, and the crowd’ll get their hearts right back into the game.

What's The Count?

Yes, this must be the worst of times, too many
people, not enough resources, not enough
entertainment to go around, too many folks
all focused on one thing, that really doesn’t get us
anywhere, like a lethal roller coaster

whipping us around sharp curves and building
us up, only to send us down at breakneck speed,
the most exhilaration one can find outside of real life
or death experiences, still always ending up at
the place we started from. Thinking we’re in

control. While citizens of the Middle East rally
to challenge their government to civil war, we drive
to work in a union arrogant enough to boast it won
a war so titular, we commemorate it by definition,
advantageous enough to imply that was the one and only,

that the instance of disagreement would ever come
to such a boiling point again, why, another civil war?
Has any war been civil? Has not every republic splintered
only once, to remain as one forever afterward? Over
saturation does not always lead to drastic spillage, does it?

And have we not been taught that there’s no use crying
over spills? Be it milk, or money, or blood? If we don’t see it,
the blood that is, without referees, then there is no foul.
At least, that’s how I came up in the game, on a concrete court
with plywood backboards at Charlie Curtis Park.

You might have got us off the court by winning a game,
but you never took it from us. Even after they put in the coin
operated night lights, we had the key to the switch.
Those were great times. Our battles, even without mercy,
had guidelines and respect. We had it then. We ran our world.

The Ship

The Eriesponsibility of
Us responsible

Try as hard as you might
We will not give up

Poo Poo To Beer!

No. I’m not. It’s just that cold,
and dark, oh so very dark, out there,
that I left it all to chance. Ha!
That’s a funny kind of thing.

Hard to say there’s such, but
as cold as it is in here, I’ll leave
one or two lines that only fill in
the gaps, I’m sure. Yippy for mathematics!

Maybe I Am

As the idea simitrates
Perhaps all that lead to this

release was only some
homemade love triangle

The short wheel being
Left out in the cold
For years and years

Tobaccy’s soothing affects
even against that cold,

I hope it shows
in the handwriting

because I am not
that fucked up,
well

Into Symmetry

Bossman asked Nick while I was
standing there what was up with

I’m sorry for the abrupt
stoppage, but I feel this is
a night of reckoning

That the waves of affect
will flow naturally as
the order of the world falls
into place, once again, and always

Mammalia

What is it? Excitement? Anticipation? Lord!
Thank you for this bounty! Pure pleasure again
in the rigid flow of life’s grandest illusion!

Contemplation, at times, should be left to the
unsure, lest they discover the immediate pleasure
of thinking fueled by atomic power! A true Chernobyl!

Lasting only as the reactor cracks, overdrive
splattering waste upon the virgin landscape, lungs
forming in the absence of liquid air! Such grand

steps! Although, later, there were those
who decided to deny it. Flourished in the sea.

Under Old Management

Balance lending itself to Repetition,
Sublimation, again and again, Salvation
elsewhere, still tangible like Imagination,
infuriating transitions, pausing, tranquil,

rocketing off through the universe, the door opens,
a familiar face enters the scene,
Well, They certainly weren’t lying, Were they,
dialog scant, Surprised, so much of nothing

to say, That’s certainly one word, speechless,
There are chores to be done, Anticipation leans
on it’s cane, enjoying the buzzed silence with
Responsibility, as Intimidation steps on the wood,

the dry snap echoing in days, weeks, decades,
Quiet’s relative, Confidence, watches it’s old friend
withstand the uninstigated attack, like, somehow,
it had seen it coming, Premonition left, the coward,

hours ago, leaving a fine terror behind, sandy, horse
hair moving over cello strings, low, vaporous, air
moving into heads, clinging, with death grips,
to the tiny particles it finds there, hearts

slowing, face down in the stream, breath shallow,
the others engaged, blood boiling, stationary, tin
expanding over trickling flames out on the horizon,
Optimism struggling, smoke shielding the enemy positions,

unable to pull itself off the sticky floor, cracked skin
finding little resolve in the moisture it moves, carnage
sustained, photographed, printed, distributed
down the ranks.

Impressions

The older guy, getting out of the nice
red car, obviously cold, adjusted his
down home jeans up over his home
grown gut, leaving an instant, but
lasting, impression of what god
had given him originally. Slightly
less impressive than what he’d earned.

No, no. Double click it.

Ceaseless activity of the ol’ pusha button, pulla
Lever, tired as it may have seemed, such
Insignificant muscle motion certainly did better to move the
Cholesterol than desk tabled soda fries and burger
King sandwiches, absent-mindedly perusing the internet

Rainy Afternoon

He watched the ice fizz on his 2:30 barstool. Faster then he forecasted the cubes smoothed down into smaller and smaller pebbles. Taking a swig, he turned back to the empty tables and sunny windows behind him, to congratulate with the crowd the excellent service, and celebrate a day off, so he turned back, raised his glass and clicked his tongue, winking in appreciation at the barkeep. She’d probably been on the job since before he even worked a day, but mockingly returned his expressions and went back to stocking up for the inevitable Thursday crowd. Tasty, he said, sending ripples over the surface of his drink, before finally committing, finishing the thing off, and placing it back on the bar hard enough to attract the bartender’s attention once more. ‘Nother one? She asked in a silent nod.

Good, All

Much like the lion prides
on the African plains

or the orangutan clans
of strange, wild, Asia,

I can’t help but feel connected
to these ambiguous, yet

involved groups of human creatures,
their flights of fancy and followers.

Madness

I went out to smoke with just a hoodie on after six p.m. for the first time all year in the still sunny world. Toward dahntahn, the sky was turning a typical gold but the other hotels and the hospitals hid most of it, leaving the rest an almost summery blue, crisscrossed with seven or eight lines of thick, but fading, white smoke. No one ever told me exactly what they’re purpose was but I’d seen on TV and in magazines speculations involving the government’s HARP project, using ionized material in the atmosphere to manage the weather to some degree. The same initiative had been cited numerous times in the more radical magazines, as well as one mainstream television program (“That’s Impossible” from The History Channel (Other topics from this program have hit mainstream media, yet, not this one (It only lasted six episodes in 2009.).).), as a means of civilian mind control. One plane, tiny from my view, moved northward across the sky, leaving marking its path with the freshest mist. I followed it as best I could, enjoying my break, and the light, and the warmth, under an already luminous moon. A previous trail caught my attention, falling noticeably toward the surface. It stretched the length of my north south view, yet tapered off over the Mon River as though its source had not flown off over the horizon, but crashed somewhere just behind the mountain. I watched it, keeping my focus on the moon, as the vapor moved down past it, in a position almost directly above me, to a height just over the treetops, dissipating into translucence from the constant wind. The remainder of the plume, still atmospheric, was drifting down over the river and hills, out of sight. Dragging long on my cigarette, only from the uncertain reassurance of knowing what I was breathing in, I watched the other lines in the sky do the same, yet at much higher altitudes. My vision, on the solid palette of sky, began swirling in tiny molecular swoops. I looked away and they vanished, then back upward to the stark blue and they returned. I felt no lightness or dread, as usually accompanies such ocular anomalies, so I took a breath, eyes closed and got back to work.

Confession

Father, forgive me. It has been seven days
since my last confession, and apart from
sloth, greed, betrayal, gluttony and a myriad
of carnal exploits, worst off, I can’t help
but feel, somewhere, in this last week, I’ve
compromised myself. Yet, I cannot pinpoint
exactly where or how.

Perspective (of us[U.S.])

Cringing at the televised ideals of the 19teens,
at the things our government did then, that we
can’t see them doing now, the ridiculous ideas
they fed an unwitting public, that we can’t seem
to taste today. Maybe we’ve gotten used to it.
I can’t imagine how dumb we’re going to look

Running

Insight leading only from contemplation
Yet identity comes from all the outside forces
Wisdom gets lost in scales and numbers
Old age discredited for the state of the world

Responsibility displaced
Inaction in the motion of modern culture
exemplified by the forces that keep the
mo(e)to(e)rs running. This doesn’t make you think?