A Reprimand to Paranoid America

We are the fading ones, our promise is forfeit,
Our children are slaves of their parents devise.
America wants free range birds but not free range kids,
Our poultry will breathe air from the land of the free
But our future generations can breathe nothing but video games and T.V.
That act like a leash to the in-door demise,
A catapult to the obese fears that let our chickens free.

How can we live in this place where chickens are free
Before all human life is secured?
Jefferson wrote of men, not how chickens should live.
But when paranoia is free, no one else can be free -
We're afraid of our streets and the drug addled night,
Mistaking the moon for a voyeur thief
(We'd turn it in if we only knew how)
The news spins our stories, everyone is a crook
And they are out to get you - yes you! Not him next to you - You!
Every school has a shooter, every bar has a rapist,
Every playground a pedophile, every town a racist.
They're out there, its true but there's no army yet
And no precaution can dissuade the lone wolf from the hunt.

No seatbelt can save you and no pill will redeem you,
We face the casm with no parachute.
Its a tough road to swallow, it'll make your mouth dry,
Safe is as safe does but safe doesn't mean live.

We deny the outside like Judas did to Christ.
We love freedom but fear it like Jack said we did.
We measure a man by his faults, not by his loves,
And we refuse the holes and idiosyncrasies in his heart
But accept our own as our best excuse.

I try and laugh each day, but I weep in the night
For our hypocrisy and the children locked away in the dark
Who never wrote a letter to try and find their own hand,
Who have no friends save the facebook menagerie,
Who's hair has never been messy or felt the wind on a bike,
Who don't question their teachers or stay long after school,
Who have never walked alone through night-time lonesome,
Who save themselves for marriage by refusing young love,
Who bore too easily in the face of all things,
Who see all drunks as alcoholics and smokers as disease,
Who fear what their parents fear and never decide for themselves,
Who hate what their parents hate and for shame they continue,
Who see math as a punishment, not the poetry of the cosmos,
Who think they are different when different is a plague
And later become punished for being all too the same,
Who can never breathe easy outside, alone
For them and for us (for we are them) I weep strong.

America, I hate to tell you but you are planting your end
When you harvest bloggers who complain more than think,
Those who speak to the internet, by the internet, for the internet,
Never believing that more information could breed the ignorance we abhor.
Democracy is good but not in the extreme.
When all voices speak just gong-clamour sounds,
Obscuring the words that might come from God
Or his subsidiaries, whoever they may be.

We are not connected to the pulse-jazz-electric -
That mythical mystery that makes things profound,
The unifying love underlying our days,
The love to keep moving out, out, out, out, towards the moon.
NASA was once our newfound Jesus Christ,
Walking on water all the way to space,
Opening our dreams into realization's core.
Nothing can impress us that way anymore.
We've crucified NASA and given in to irony
Because its simpler and meaner than being sincere.

No more miracles rezone our tight imaginations;
The trends air to homogenization,
Because it seems the more we know,
The more we stay put,
Afraid of the too many lurking harms to bear witness
To life and we suffer for it in ways unexpected -
With weight gain and hair loss and the lost, wasted years;
A longer life but one worth the extension?

I am scared of the internet and the people we're becoming,
Every word can be a bullet while every man becomes a pawn.
Each nightmare becomes a nexus of possibility and thats insane.
We know harm will befall us but we think we can control it if we try
And we do try by shutting down, closing off, signing in,
Sealing our customized catacombs for inner-life stagnation.

To summarize for children:

America you are chicken for letting your chickens free
That we might eat healthier animals in our diet
While we keep ourselves couped up in our homes
In a stasis where the only option is to get fat.

Children, no matter your age - 5,7,10,15,22,45,90 -
Live, Live, Live, Live, Live, Live, Live, Live
With as little fear as you can,
Then eat those chickens to your heart's content.

To summarize for America:

We drink bottled water, we refuse the tap.
We like the bottle to say its from a mountain spring,
But when allowed to drink from a spring in the mountain
We decline - we've brought bottles, they have less germs,
Or anthrax, or viruses, or pollution, or fear or whatever...

America you refuse the source and deny the soul!
I hate you for fear mongering us into control.
We are not rapists, child mollesting whores,
We are not drug dealing, pot smoking, pedophile bores,
We are not kidnapping, killer, porno-racist uptights
Who thrive only under neon red lights!

We are good people, for the most part its true,
Imperfect but good; forgive us criminals too.
The demons we fear are present but few,
America, we are lakes of fresh water and biology and life
But you treat us like bottles
And so we treat ourselves much the same.

07/09

Where I'm At Blues

I am still bored.
All the information I could ever need,
At my fingertips' pleasure, the click of a mouse:
I have news instantaneous and banjo instructions,
The dreams of the bloggers and Obama's old words,
The crystalline plumage of the global chandalier,
Reflecting the terrors and hopes of a hundred lost nations
Who can't vocalize freedom as well as we can
And I am still bored.

I have nothing to say.
It has all been said before
- or so we've been told -
By Jesus, Socrates, Aristotle, and Bush
And they said it to everybody already,
To Romans, Greeks, Americans, Sherpas, kinghts and the like.
We keep the gems in mind but we will circulate the trash
Over and over and over and over, again and again.
Our words are like air, our actions are birds,
None in the face of the cosmetic sky.
We roam deserts of ignorance so thirsty for knowledge
But we drink water because it tastes better on the tongue.
All the while our boats sink, people die, poetry tries to be new,
The sun rises and sometimes all is well -
There is family, friends, good food and hope for the future.
But the sun closes too and we're left destitute,
Learning life is hard and it's hard to earn.
We repeat quiet beatitudes in the dark,
Solemn praise for riotous earth,
Untempered reason in the reign of chaos' son,
And I have nothing to say.

I have nothing to do.
In this free range office world laced with liquor breath
The insensitivity that made Charlemagne conquer nations
Lives in our souls still but we label it insanity
And force-gulp sedation down our throats to our hearts
Where it will never return except as indigestion.
But unsedated are the seas that pummel earth
With danger unspeakable and fear yet unquenched!
Winds howl at twilight, they drone out the monster's song
That carries night's veil over the strange land of men.
Volcanoes beg for sword fights where destiny has no say:
The border towns live! The cleaver is their gavel,
Outlaws storm the backwoods, justice is dead,
The hurricanes come in gangs too strong to count on,
And the battles against forgetting continues.
I can barely find a reason to cope
And I have nothing to do.

Life avoids me.
Or maybe I'm avoiding it,
With my tickets unpurchased, friends uncalled,
My lawn chair opened and set firm on the sidewalk
Watching the parade of time passing by.
The internet could guide me away! No. It can't.
I am stuck in the casm of home life despair
Where the wax museum tapestry begs me to join
The television succubi that give no guy no chance
In faithful allegiance to the zombie screen stare
And I can't do that; I just can't.
Too afraid to act, too afraid to not,
I pledge nothing to life and so nothing to death.
This is no time for safety or reason,
We are wallflowers with fascistic hearts -
A day's gift is promise of another,
A day's curse is so many have gone by.
I can't help but to think I avoid life.

07/09

$487.54

Life is a death rattle,
So those who really live shake it.
It is a despot miasma
But its better to breathe and live longer
Than hold your lungs rigid
And die premature.

All in all its all worth $487.54 -
Life, the hereafter, and the after there -
So spend it. Spend it all. Every dime.
The last thing you've got is time.
Buy stocks and trinkets, Go to Paris and learn.

I'm Ok with freedom,
But it too often mingles with despair.
Don't become a slave of freedom
Or completely free of a slave's despair.
Try to do with none of it if you can,
But love it anyways,
Because that is hope
Or at the very least, it's something good.

07/09

The Magi

Part I: The Launch

I am bigger and better than the world I was born into!!!!
Strung out on coffee, I have no desires.
Nights and days are just days, no black, no white
Prejudicing my perception of time, no darkness or light.
Beatrice to me is my shoes - birkenstocks worn down;
They are comfortable, molded to the shape of my feet.
They let my feet breathe in ways they could not
Stuffed into dress shoes a wedding requires.
I wear socks with my sandals, I don't care what you think.
Call me 'Canadian' or 'Socialist,'
Write a letter to your Senator.
I'll still wear my birks with socks in the winter
To challenge how comfortable you think you are.

Its hard to stay trendy when this internet don't die.
America lives in the next minute all the time.
You got people who's job is to hunt through the trash
To find the next cool thing in the cycle of cool,
Be it flannel, hip-hop, raybands, heroine.
But its never that crystal clear image of self
In the sun's honest light
Because if we don't know ourselves thats great!
We'll keep buying and buying whatever we want
To fill in the holes that Shakespeare sold us
In the advent of the modern age.

Are we flies to wanton boys?
Really?
Has the Dow got you down?
Really?
Have a sip of my pills,
Go on a trip.
I stole them from my parents.
Don't be modest.
Take what you will
Lest ye be swatted for sport,
Again and again.

Part II: Journey of the Magi

On my journey toward enlightenment
I wandered savage desert with magi.
My gift was A.I. and we looked for the true messiah
Underneath every star that had God's approval.
When the journey got long (and pointless perhaps),
We began harassing the sheperds who lay in the fields
Till they confessed they'd seen Angels announcing a babe
Who had come to save the old world entire.
Not satisfied, we water-boarded the shepherds
Until they gave to us the Angels' directions
But the directions were far too indirect for our tastes,
So we took the matter to gMaps and we found a better way.

The path to Bethlehem was treacherous,
Filled with heathens who smoked hookah when they killed;
Their machetes were bloodied and quite old.
We passed the weeping masses, huddled together for warmth,
Crying for their ill fate as the indifferent moon stared them down.
"Why do you cry?" I asked one girl.
"My friend has not responded to my text
I fear he is as dead as God."
Looking at her with sad sympathy I said:
"Not responding does not mean he's 'dead'."
"Thats not true." she replied with a slight bow.
I watched as she slit her thin throat with her cell phone
(It turns into a knife faster than a camera).
We marched on leaving her body behind.

I saw Queen Mab in the Apple Store on the way to Bethlehem.
From idle brains she begot twelve children
That swiftly floated up and expanded into the dreams
That entertain sultans of other worlds.
Now Mab hangs around Apple Stores, ever lonely and lost.
Since she quit smoking she has never left.
She weaves around the tables, touching every screen,
Weighing each computer in her nimble, old hands.
She fondles the ipods, they giggle in response.
Hiccups of Britney and Snoop Dogg are her delight.
Queen Mab will never die while the ipod is her king. No. No.

We stopped into the Apple Store
To pay our due regards to Mab.
"How long have you been here?"
"Since computers became so smooth."
"How long will you stay?"
"'Till the ipod goes atomic."
"Why do you linger here?"
"I don't know how to have."
"That's an ontological crisis for sure."
"I know, I know."

I told the Magi to go without me;
I had found my messiah in the Apple Store,
The golden rings of the holy host had embraced my light.
When I looked up and saw Bethlehem's star
It was hovering over the Apple Store in the night,
Emitting the natural glow
Of an angel chorus singing noises
Far more satisfying than any computer could know.
The vast realms of space opened revealing nothing
But its emptiness and beauty
In all the Universe's core and soul and heart.
There are no modern messiahs,
Only legend and myth, religion and our faith,
And none of those things yet have use for a cell phone.

Part III: The Return

I can speak like a motherfucker,
Sword fight like the night.
Do you doubt me? My banjo is machine gun,
My song is knife.I try to kill disconnection when I can
But I never win and never will.
We are all fools with dumb stares instead of faces,
We rot our eyes on screens,
Becoming Gloucesters of our own demise.
Virgil is getting tired of showcasing hell
So he directs us to read CNN on computer screens
Or watch it 24/7 on your TV.
And by the by we are chewed up by Satan,
Spit out on the street,
Raped by indecision
And back again, knocking on Virgil's door in the morning.

07/09

My Old Path

My old path cut through the woods
Leading to a hidden pond,
A museum of frogs
That made the water seem alive
More than one time
A swan tried to seek refuge
In this wood I called mine,
But it was not hers to claim.
This was turtle land.
I remember the turtle -
A snapper so big,
It hissed at anyone
Who came near.
We never dared go near,
My friends and I;
We were too afraid
That he'd take our fingers
And keep them for life.
The pond was his after all.

07/09

Near to the turtle's pond was a place
We called "Place" because
It was a place to place yourself
In the hot afternoon.
It was a clearing in the woods
That seemed so enticing.
At one time there was a table,
At another time there was a sofa,
Another time there was a painted wood structure
Made from the table
A shopping cart and beer bottles were
The regular refuse of "Place."
One day Ian and I walked down my old path
Approaching "Place" from behind.
Before we arrived we spied two older kids
Smoking, drinking -Smokers and drinkers
Were the architects of "Place."
From that point on "Place" was spoiled,
Corrupted by teenagers
We did not yet understand.
So we found a smaller clearing
On the other side of the pond.
That place we called "There"
To stick by the vague names
We found so hilarious.
"There" was not so large.
It was smaller, mosquito full
And thorns hung around instead of smokers.
Even so my friends and I
Stayed there for many afternoons
Until the day we caught poison ivy.
After that "There" lost its appeal.

It didn't matter though.
There were too many paths and passages
Weaving through the woods
To keep only to one spot.
John and I would chase my brother
And his friends, scaring them in the woods,
Jumping out at every turn.
We knew the woods better than they.
But my dog sam, he knew the woods
Better than me.
He would forage and hunt
But never catch a thing,
Miniature domestic that he was.
Back then, unleashed, my dog
Would stampede into the pond water
To terrify the ducks.
They would quack at the invader,
Flap their wings, then take off.
My dog, so proud,
Would think he had won.
Two minutes later the ducks would return
And continue their lives
Like nothing had happened.
This cycle occurred time and again
Until one day an embittered woman,
Fed up with the poop from the ducks in the pond
Fed the ducks poisoned bread,
A devil's communion.
The ducks ate and were killed,
The town picked up their bodies,
And the pond became silent
Of duck calls and shit.
No duck clan would ever Live there again.
Honeymooning ducks might stop by
For a time, once in a while
But the pond was a massacre
And no duck ever stayed long.

After the duck deaths
A family of beavers came to
Saw down the trees and make a dam.
Their dam clogged the stream
That drained the pond
Causing the pond to flood
Through the woods, into "Place"
And beyond the far reach
Towards the bike path
And beyond.
The town complained about the flooding
And the beavers were killed,
Their dam broken open,
And the floodwaters drained.
But the mud from the flood
Lingered on through the seasons,
To the winter's harsh cold
When it froze in the ground.
If you lifted chunks of the earth
You could see ice crystals collected
In the black dirt;Little crystal kingdoms
Lost in a world of utter blackness.
When the snow fell, the mud was covered,
The woods became new;
A blank canvas for nautre and history,
A new-born world for me to leave footprints upon.

In Silent sunday mornings
When Lexington slept
Colonial times could be resurrected
For seconds at a time.
My woods held devils and prospects
But above all it held beauty,
Sublime reverence for land untouched,
Harboring still the spirit of freedom
And the ruthless heart of nature in one.
There was, of course, the tampering of man
But always it was overshadowed
By the progress of time
And the trees' willingness to grow
And how the mud persisted still!
And the heart persists too
In a place and a time
When there was my family,
Having just moved to a new house,
Deciding to explore the snowy, silent woods,
Early one sunday morning
When Lexington slept,
And we got lost heading down
This new path to the pond
We did not yet know was there.
My brother and my parents and I and my dog
Got lost in the woods in the snow.
Though lost, we found snow drifts
Silently falling from the trees and up from the ground.
We laughed and made snow angels
Knowing home was not far away,
We could get there if we tried,
If we wanted to...
But for that brief moment,
For that sliver of memory and space,
We chose to be lost in the woods
By the turtle's pond in the winter
Of the first year in our new house,
Walking along that ancient wooded path that stretches
From one point in history to the next
In a spectrum of feeling and sight and memory
That we can't help but quantify as God,
With no beginnings or ends
No failures or wins
Just slices and portions of lost, lost, lost
And found again
In a blanket world of snow and purity
In my woods by my pond off my old path.


Coda:

Last week I tried again to traverse
My old path
But it was overgrown.
I could not get through
No matter what I tried.
I had no machete,
Nor would I have used one if I did.
I was shut out from the woods
Like a trapped thief of memory.
But then, so too must we all someday
Stop walking on, lose sight of,
And be deprived of
Our old paths.

07/09

If (Take That Rudyard Kipling - This is a Prayer)

If there is no happy ending for any of us,
If death coats the walls of the halls of life,
And if we cover the walls of life with fresh wallpaper,
Call it salvation or hope and call it new,
But then at the heart of existence is a black-hole miasma
Rotting away meaning and truth like wooden treasure chests at sea,
If we light every lantern and hold in our breaths
To rid ourselves of ghosts and devils that can't exist,
If the smokey hand of time will ravage our lungs,
With the liver to follow, bowels, then the heart,
If the beginning of the tunnel is pain in focus,
If the end of the tunnel is irrelivant,
If the lights we lit cannot save our treasures
And yesterdays are just nails in our casket
And todays are avalanches of nothing,
And tomorrows are indeed never assured,
If the earth could cross paths with a meteor
Or malfunctions cause nuclear wars,
If barbed wire lines the walls of the halls of life
Tearing the wallpaper, ripping salvation so that death looks through
And we can see it each day, undoctored, in focus,
If there's a chance that death-knowing could drive my life mad,
Then at least give me back the time I spend
Waiting for slow elevators in the morning!

06/09

The Last Pedophile King

The last pedophile king is dead,
Ancient Greece is truly gone -
No more saturnalia,
Fellini Satyricon.
Put out each star, like Auden said do
Ring the bell in the steeple
Count every tear too.

The last pedophile king is dead,
Be sure to blanket each wish,
Coat the sun in a mournful grey,
Cover every uncovered dish.

The last pedophile king is dead
The feast is over now.
Let acquittals rest,
The lost boys take their bow.
Too weird to live, too rare to die,
He's returned to the wild
And never said goodbye.

The last pedophile king is dead,
He's advertising money spent.
Every paper and website asks
Where pieces in him went?

The last pedophile king is dead
On the slab and cold as ice
Walking on new moons,
Throwing devil's dice.
Sing words of praise, think your dismay,
Neverland is closed
But never far away.

06/09

Is This Real Life?

Daniel, the drugged boy, looked at his father
In paranoid disbelief and fear.
With the world bent west and bones of reality exposed
He could not comprehend the new world in his eyes.
"Is this real life?" he asked in amazement,
Ignoring his father's laughs and reply.
And so too ask I, though I am not drugged
Nor a child (anymore)
Though I wish that I was.

"Is this real life?" is a question for ages
And angels too, if they oblige to respond.
But only a child hopped up by the dentist
Could ask it so clearly; no pretense, unprompted,
No nightmares of quantum physics to know
Or fears of the universe (how does it grow?)
Or lost wives to death in cemetery nights,
Pubescent angst in the rain soaked street lights,
The fog of sin in Christ's cyclops eye
The knowledge to know you can make yourself die
The black hole sight of fate in despair
Knocked around by the pinball mechanics of time.

"Is this real life?" Sometimes I wonder.
Because I long for things real but feel so often denied.
Is real life pretty or gritty or shitty or what?
Does it fly around in circles or walk the straight path?
The visionary's legs hold our minds in place
But the question resounds kicking away their strong stance.
Unbalanced and unhinged the world unravels,
Leaking monsters and Gods from the creationist sea.
Spatial colors blast from parallel suns,With hues that no earthly eye can see.
Galaxies roam in the back alley clinics
Looking for whores to preach to in vain
And the Einstein Kings live in their clouds,
Chaperones for the speed of light - the one constant that never will change.
"Is this real life?" Maybe is the only reply I know.

"Is this real life?" I heard Marion say too.
The cities swell with faces;
And some will be broken.
The drunks smoke cigarettes with cups in hand
Waiting for change too.
The rain falls sporadic, no one smiles on the street,
Umbrellars are open.
Hours tick by in seconds and minutes and days never end.
The news testifies to problems 24 hours at a time.
The problems never end.
Hands off or hands on the world crumbles because...
Mexico gives us drugs, we give them guns,
Through underground tunnels that bypass the fence.
I saw it on TV (it must be true!)
I learn Cartels from 'Weeds' and I laugh.
"Is this real life?" I hope not is the truth.

"Is this real life?" - a succession of books
With Hamlet at bottom, screaming for naught
Of a mad prophesy filled with computers and Nixons
Giving rise to Revelation with the union man's stamp.
Lincoln responds by quoting MacBeth
But he's thinking about Claudius and how he's him too,
With an Ophelia dripping that becomes a burned flag
Of a country divided and ripped into war
In a time and a place where the killer was silent,
Because the water we shat in was the water we drank
(This still might be true).
But Hamlet's life is the truest testament:
The mind left to wander finds what it seeks,
Be it conspiracies of fools with armageddons at hand
Or left wing vigilantes with bat wings in night
Or rose petals that smell of immortality and jewels
Or the tears that roll down from life's long divides.
The mind left to wander finds what it seeks
But it often never seeks the real life respite
Because real life boiled down is darwinian boredom -
Anticipation of an end inevitably diverted
By days in and days out of the strict reverie.
"Is this real life?" Yes, but none believe they're there.

Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,
Are you out of the lions den of your dentist dream?
I hope not, for your sake.
Jesus is in our computers
And the clock is ticking down.
I'll kiss your youtube stasis
And bow when you are crowned.

"Is this real life?"
I hadn't thought to ask.
But now that I've asked, I'm not sure.
And not sure I want to know.

6/09

Forgetting To Howl

for Allen Ginsberg

Forgetting to howl I lose my madness,
Become numb to a numb world;
I rally and ranch and free range into dumps
That siphon further into the underbelly
Of the Devil's Gulag stare.

Howl wolf, howl when you can!
Howl Lear, for the love you seek,
For the prisoner who could be free,
For the lost, lonesome 21st century,
For the moon - its yours if you want it to be -
Howl! Howl! Do not forget to howl.

The grazing ambulances make no noise anymore,
Their red lights turned on but no one wakes up.
The stars are shut down tonight to save on power,
So no one wants to be awake; no one howls.

Fools to live all, we are! Har, har.
With no howl, no life, no scars to move on.
Show me a pirate and I might join him.
My poverty is poverty too; my light is dimming.
I would join Clark Rockerfeller in his cell if I could,
He must howl for the lies that he knows.

And jail wouldn't make much difference to me.
I'd bunk with Rockerfeller, criminal mastermind -
Not the dead rich robots who beep for their food.
Yes, I'll dine with fake rich heirs who live in their dreams.
(Twisted though his dreams may be)
Maybe his dreams will help my dreams be joys again -
Not saving suffocating nuns by knocking books to the floor.

Joy to the world.
But are we saved?
No. A thousand times no.

Not until health becomes like the night
In whispery, universal winds of soul,
With vagabond horsemen turning the gyre of the moon
So that everyone can see it at their whim.

Not until the poor have their daylight restored
From the depths of how it never was there to begin with.

Not until thousands of fears can confess
That the world they fear does not exist,
Could not exist, ever at all, no how.

I have not seen salvation approaching
Though I look for it at all hours,
And when the thought of it not coming,
Stirs the night and folds the sails,
We must howl or face our death.

Howl wolf, howl when you can!
Howl, Lear, for the love you seek!
For the prisoner who could be free,
For the lost, lonesome 21st century,
For the moon - its yours if you want it to be -
Howl! Howl! Do not forget to howl.

Watch me hurry to the beaches -
Desert sand bordering desert waters -
I'll feed on the catharsis I will castigate myself with later.
The crabs die here for want of water,
The birds feed on their carcasses and bread
Strewn aside by picnickers who did not need communion.
Nothing seperates desperation and luxury,
On the cold, desert sand its all survival
With or without the pursuit of true life.

I escaped to the wasteland beach,
Became aquainted with silent night,
Felt guilt unbound as Prometheus' fire
But felt the crows from Promethus side
When the guilt from no guilt arrived.

And all the while I forgot to howl,
Stupid wretch that I am,
For to howl is why I went.
I've been on the edge of so many breakdowns
There seems to be no solution but...

I Am Transported

My friends hold precious tickets in their ready hands
Soon to be transported to distant, other lands:
John, will see America and her wide open arms
Stretching from high mountains to her lowest farms;
Michal will cross the sea for Moses' newfound home,
To Greece, Istanbul, London, and then onto Rome.
Jessie will fly west to know the North West Coast
To a wedding of a frieind, she must make her toast.

And I, barren soldier, must kiss the barren earth
And stay a while longer in my place here.
Biding my time, not minding its passing,
Be it week, month, or stationary year.

But in the night, my fears unhinged,
I see Yosemite and Frisco, the Pyramids, Paris
Greek Islands and Greek shores,
Temples, churches, hills, cliffs, and moors,
The endlessly sacred and the secret divine
And I, not placed at a single one, die unknown.

To breathe, I step outside
And behold Atlas' mighty burden,
More ancient than God himself.
The clouds like fallen ice shelf adrift at sea,
Illuminated by moon, take my breath away.
The stars, older than time, shine with open delight,
The blackness of night erodes my wanderlusty fright
And I am well in happiness again -
Seeing miracles and knowing it,
And I am transported
Away, away.

6/09

Rubicon

There, in the shallow banks where the grass peers through the water
And tiny fish dart amidst the shells,
I have seen miniscule bubbles float from the earth's womb
To deliver a message from the grave of the Gods.
"You have met your rubicon,"
The bubbles announce as they pop.

No one hears them, and no one would listen anyway,
But I hear them and keep it to myself.
I can smell my favorite of all smells:
Fresh water on the breeze.
So nothing worries me, not a rubicon or impasse -
I am taken in by the withering bliss of dividing bubbles.

5/09

Old Titans (Underneath America)

Part I

We are all a little windy lately, off balance but standing still.
Like a death wind blowing with the sails put away,
We can't move anywhere but there's no place to stay.
Go Away Old Titans, we don't need you tonight,
You haunt our dreams of freedom in our days of night despair.
I put Ginsberg in a box and told him to slip away.
Kerouac's gone and done howling I say!
He's a mute, white wolf now.
And that Junky slipped through my fingers towards junky Tangiers.
Yes, Old Titans, you are needed no more!
We've found your drugs with a brain on the floor.
The raven who quothe "Never more."
Said it for you, never for me.

I too have seen America laid flat on its back
To be fucked by Homer the Greek
Though it thought him Homer Simpson.I
too have seen late night crime on a box on the cold floor
With dribbling language defiling the temple of my ear
And I've escaped to a bottle where the end of it was as enlightening as -
Or as redemptive as -
All the match box closure of rolling the end credits.
No, I have seen nothing.

The ephemeral day is the roladex of the universe.
It reveals the limitations of our minds
Who close the bank of dreams while we make a run on it like it was 1933
When Auden was still alive and should have been wearing a crown.
He knew freedom. Whitman knew it too. Where have they gone?

But the days of language have met their end.
Conversations - Ha! I have seen the noose made up.
Where are the Old Titans now?
Escaping still into that night or that road?
My internet has a Cat O' Nine Tails and it has put me on no road.
I am whipped every day and night.
The glass whipped into my back gives me shimmering glimpses
Into the simplified life of anyone who dares blog (I am no exception. I am no Christ)
And I see their blog and I know them because I have made love to their words
Because their words are so silly, rediculous, forboding, redundant, meticulous
And corroding
And meaningless.
They throw their words to the ocean, like bottles in the sea
But no one can remember the sea any more.
Not you, not me, not me, not me.
We have other oceans to sail, other seas to traverse:
Knowledge Oceans, information delux, data, gossip, celebrity, perez
And I make love to their words all because their words are just nothing
With no conception of their nothingness.
Susan Boyle is to swine flu as we are to history;
Just the next thing in the line to oblivion.

So we aim our orgasms at the red sun and run around in circles,
Burning our eyes out with dumb cigarettes,
And frenzied coffee stares - coffee has not been proven bad for health yet! -
And our green earth wilts still!
There aren't enough hotels in the world to house all the fears we create
For ourselves in the bathrooms and junkyard alleys.
I have seen all the statistics.

Let me breathe carcinogens, I'll call myself a Martyr.
Let me eat at McDonalds, I'll call myself King.
Let me forget terrorism, I'll call myself Dreamer,
I Have an ocean full of swine,
I write letters to the government.
This Poem Has No Filter.
I'll make love to Castro for a Cuban Cigar.
I'll shoot JFK so I can save him again.
On and on, yes, on and on.

In America April is not the cruelest month.
Its December, when the bums freeze and when the bums die -
The bums and hobos, homeless and deaf, who are, I am starting to believe,
The wisest creations we have in our midst.
Yes! The wisest ones we have.I
salute always to President Hobo
Who has seen beatings and crack dens and babies alone.
I have never seen these.
Who has seen rapes and murders and blood not spared.
I have never seen these.
Who has seen prostitutes work for less than minimum wage.
I have never seen these.
Who have not seen the end of the bottle and never black out
Who have tangled with police for a bench and a howl
For a place to rest, a bed, a park,
Who do not smoke weed or take LSD so they can brag
But take heroine and crack and alcohol and cigarettes to live
And curse at the forgetful cities who denied them the talent of Coltrane, Armstrong.
They know to live is to live is to live is to live
That there is no inbetween.
I have never seen these.
To either hunger or be dead is to live is to live.
There is no internet or Susan Boyle (whom everyone has forgotten already)
There is no Hilton or recycling becuse there is hunger too hard
Or Forward onto the next thing while we forget to read and talk
And lose homes in recessions because the Moloch of Morgage
Wound a clock too tight so the center could not hold.
And maybe we too are becoming bums, but we know we are not.
Not at least until China calls in our debt to make us vagabonds on the universal curb
Not till then will we be wise,
Know hunger
Salute the president Hobo -
The one Dos Passos ended his trilogy with while we vomited on an airplane.

Part II

All my pleasures are like yesterday,
With the blind flow of motion, the waves taking me under America
Where in the sewers the secrets are sacred.
The women who weep
In Orange trees
Feel the breeze
Under America, this labrynth of mirrors.

('Stop this silliness you are thinking' - this poem is pretense
No one has yet found the tense we need and no one has dared.
Where is the post tense, I ask you. Where?
So I live under America
And it is not for you vague reader who has come so far to reject this notion,
But for the conicise who have paid their way with eyes.)

So I live under America
Where the flotsam of dreams meet the jetsam of desire;
Where cannibals feast on Shakespeare and Chaucer
Under the dim florescent light called God in our midst.
Where the darkness forges forgetful sorrow, disregarding
All things beautiful, symmetrical, corrupt, and forlorn.

We shall dine at the feast of the Craigslist Killer
(Who's only sin was murder).
There we shall discuss the origins of species and to conclude we'll curse Darwin's name.
"We came out of no primordial soup," say we,
"That degrades everything in us."
We emerged from glorious chaos - beauty unparalleled
Because it is so lost beyond perception.
We shall overcome - someday
To return to where we went or came
To say 'Holy, Holy' in someone's name.

Can it be that the halo is the storm of the angel,
The symbol of frightful submission,
Giving rise to the tepid, torrential, and modern waves of guilt and rage?
Curse the waves and lift them all.
I'll not be damned under a sea.
Mickey Mouse is sorceror no more!
We can bash the heads of our overlords against the curbside,
Watch clouds bleed from their heads,
The dreamstuff escaping. We are our own kings. Never forget.

Democracy Overcrowded, let the small ones be alive
Let the old ones be dead, let the poor be complete
Let the powerful be light, and the dead be content.

Wherefore art thou Old Titans?
Fire rages in the belly underneath America
Consuming its static flies and maggot squatters.
Is the question of life to be a nomad or dead?
Or are we condemned to an eternal safety
That burns hotter than hell and bores with a vengeance,
Littered with statistics of cancer and anti-smoking trends.
We are supposed to not do so much
Its amazing we can do anything at all.
This is the truth emblem emblazed on each stamp
Underneath America
Where the postal system still thrives.

Part III

No.
Forgive me.
Today I am anxious, not seeing through my fog.
Lights seem dimmer and fading into distances.
If I am left alone on the London streets I would die;
Jack the Ripper still lurks in the valley of life.

Do not hold on, but go always into whatever you can find.
I fear it is too late for this one. I am already lost.
Leave me here, those who can leave, you should.
The waters on this rocky river bank are grey and undrinkable.
Soon there will be deserts all around me and black clouds above.
I'll try my best not to think about it
Though I know that I will.

The rain falls gently. I see it collect at the end of my nose
And fall off into the oblivion of earth.
I do not seek shelter or use my hands to shield myself.
I am winter today
And the rain cannot melt me.

The Old Titans have left us for good.
We know this now.
When the rain began they fled into the wilderness and oceans.
But how we need them still.
They've run off with America on the road to the secret Mexico
Known only to the borderlanders who collect magic from the bleeding earth.
God to be on the road! How maliciously sweet.

I emerged from Underneath America and breathed the fresh air,
Then was grabbed and brought below,
Tangled in the mess of a hundred handed beast.

My eyes have grown grey and sleepless.
The rain tastes like heavenly copper.
The river swells.
Grow villain, grow, grow, and grow.
Listen to that wind who brings the rain in its arms
And will take it away when the hour comes.
All the while I'll sit here and try to be a monk
With my cuorduroy and sallow, unbiblical thoughts.

The energy of youth has been turned into clay!
The lavish night is imprisonned by day!
The stars are no miracles, just burdens to know!
The Titans from dreams have been laid down low!

Arise new Titans from the lava filled streams!
Go forth and give birth to apocryphal dreams!
Light new lights down the tunnels of woe!
Rearrange the life we think we still know!

I remember:I have held lightning in my hand,
Electric as the original seed of man.

The ocean swells are the Lord's orchestra in the holiest world of all.
They smash into rocks and make the earth new,
Forming cliffs and beaches through millenia of cycled moons.
Not one Ocean asks "Is this it?"
Because they cannot because
They are it, the one consuming ever lasting all.
Their breath is our life; their age our time;
Their salt, our knowledge;
Their eternal, our mortal;
Their holy is the only holy.

Cancel my vision or rewind my tongue,
I will still say we are ocean children,
Born anew to know and understand that Titans do not die.
They rest dormant in eternal seas.

And writing will never die while there are pens to write.
And America will never die, it will only move on.

New births! Carnivore storks! All abound in the valley.
In unlikely pairings we slowly come to know truth
And there is truth yet to come, indeed.

Take your passport and fly on good soldier
To the undertaking of the sky.

5/09

Souls Who Will Demand Satisfaction

I’ve been giving people cancer lately
In these, the waning winter months
When nearly all tolerance and forbearance has been cashed
To pay for the mortgage and other debts that destroy worlds.

“Can I do this and continue to live happily?”
I ask myself from time to time in my day to day.
No simple answer replies – no bolt of lightning crashes down.
Just the persistent heat stolen from the African sun responds:

“The north wind hunts wildly for souls
Who will demand their satisfaction,
In spite of all the canyon collapse that lay at their feet,
And the dead generations that live in the ruins around them.

When caught they writhe in such fits
Even a scoundrel’s fool would be ashamed.
They suffer and want for nothing more than their worth
And they cry harshly, critically, soulfully and then they die.”

I’ve been feeling my sore feet too often,
Enjoying my stories and fantasies too much.
In the night I do not sleep or rest because of the cries;
I hear them in the dream alleys that flee when I wake.

One day I shall be among them again, I know.
Though for now I must resign my throne.
One day I shall be a soul feeling life twice once more:
I shall cry out in anguish, become none, and never wake.

5/09

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation is the poorest heaven,
The darkest night of the terminal mind.
It preaches to the infinite but begs with the bums
And has a hollow face like a junky
Stark naked in the snow bleak winter of time.

Walking through the life-like valleys of night
The wreckage from eternity stomps you soul
Into paralytic threats of non-conforming wrath
And you are left there alone to die
With a tempest raging over your body.

Demi-Angel creatures lift your body on high
Way into the chloroform clouds into the space
Where stars in magnitude madden the mingling midnights,
With the vampires from Atlantis depths at your side
And celestial rolling ocean waves of thunder and redemption
Crashing perpetual on all you once called yours.

No darkness to envelope your light,
No soul to welcome you,
No banner that reads freedom, no sign of life
Just endless, endless, endless,
On and on into the collective point in the distance.

Poor souls, grasped in the salvation they did not choose!
Poor souls, founded in the foothills of solemnity purged!
Poor souls, who seek heaven and always find something less!
Poor souls, rerouted in plagued detours of the spirtual quest!

You have found Terminator salvation - it is not what you thought.
It is not a descent or a desert or clouds of machine demons
Or the romantic robot stream of life that led us once to nightmare basins.
No. It is a dark place, livid with hives
Cleansed by the honey of undisclosed dates and meetings behind closed doors.

Oh! To hell with machine pilots.
I'll be my own navigator and salvage my heaven on the side.

5/09