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.