03-19 (i dreamed i died)
Wearied echoes asking why
Cast into the endless sky
The Dream circles in the square
Wonders into everywhere
The returning voice of not alone
Birds that chirp at the wind that moans
Through the stars that fill the dark
The Mystery that holds the spark
I am cast on to the scene
Of a play in which gods scheme
To take a chance on what I say
Make a move and call it day
It’s Time’s delay that offers choice
Who is the owner of that voice?
Who then terminates my station?
A commuter God of this creation
From the smoke there comes a truth
A fire started in my youth
Fuelled by sticks that bore the fruit
Whose seed is nourished by the soot
That serves us up another round
The stuff that makes a song of sound
That is the beauty of the bite
To worship sun that brings the night
The light was summoned by a scream
To slay the darkness of a dream
The eternal light in the abyss
Illuminates what I shouldn’t miss
And all my moans are met with manners
The intentions of the city planners
Making order of the bends
Knowing that the straight line ends
At the end an angel molts
With Michael’s mood the earth revolts
Time will turn the other way
Our tomorrow will be here to stay
Born to be out of the blue
The end of me, the end of you
The fear that is the end of fear
Of seeing nothing in the mirror
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
01-21
end of numbers met the first
and with that came a sudden burst
smashing rocks there came a spark
a light to shine upon the dark
circle splitting into cells
the silence broken by the bells
man and woman float in space
believing they are in a race
lives an end inside us all
behind the words that form a wall
secret of the holy grail
intentions from behind the veil
not The One that did divide
only a hole with God inside
There is Zero, there is One
There is Moon, there is Sun
end of numbers met the first
and with that came a sudden burst
smashing rocks there came a spark
a light to shine upon the dark
circle splitting into cells
the silence broken by the bells
man and woman float in space
believing they are in a race
lives an end inside us all
behind the words that form a wall
secret of the holy grail
intentions from behind the veil
not The One that did divide
only a hole with God inside
There is Zero, there is One
There is Moon, there is Sun
11-27 (abc's)
A black crow dies
Ebony feathers gain heaven
In just kind love
Made new on passing
Quiet raven soul time
Until v wills X
Year Zero
(until v wills x refers to duality and the beginning of our existence. An x literally is a mirror image of v…like a black hole. It was a hard line to finish on an already difficult poem project for myself, when it suddenly dawned on me that an x is a v on top of it’s reflection…a closed shape able to open up...and a v reminds me of wings and the crow is a big part of the poem. the idea of a harbinger of death, dying. the beginning and end of it all)
A black crow dies
Ebony feathers gain heaven
In just kind love
Made new on passing
Quiet raven soul time
Until v wills X
Year Zero
(until v wills x refers to duality and the beginning of our existence. An x literally is a mirror image of v…like a black hole. It was a hard line to finish on an already difficult poem project for myself, when it suddenly dawned on me that an x is a v on top of it’s reflection…a closed shape able to open up...and a v reminds me of wings and the crow is a big part of the poem. the idea of a harbinger of death, dying. the beginning and end of it all)
11-26 (world wide whispers)
Words breathe off my fingertips
Whispered from the modem’s lips
Secrets for the lonely souls
As passwords offered up to trolls
Truths in transit to tomorrow
To Armageddon’s spoken sorrow
Broken backs bent breaking bread
For celebration of the dead
Long to be in borrowed words
Joined at the ears this human herd
There comes a time to make you see
How much of you goes into me
The deconstruction of definition
Chaos comes into fruition
And everything you think you are
Is wished upon a shooting star
Like martyrs thrown before the lines
Answers waiting for the signs
In riddling rants and rambling rhymes
Professing good and confessing crimes
A war of words is never won
The Human Race is always run
But for an hour and a minute
You are all and out within it
Words breathe off my fingertips
Whispered from the modem’s lips
Secrets for the lonely souls
As passwords offered up to trolls
Truths in transit to tomorrow
To Armageddon’s spoken sorrow
Broken backs bent breaking bread
For celebration of the dead
Long to be in borrowed words
Joined at the ears this human herd
There comes a time to make you see
How much of you goes into me
The deconstruction of definition
Chaos comes into fruition
And everything you think you are
Is wished upon a shooting star
Like martyrs thrown before the lines
Answers waiting for the signs
In riddling rants and rambling rhymes
Professing good and confessing crimes
A war of words is never won
The Human Race is always run
But for an hour and a minute
You are all and out within it
(inspired by a member of a site i post at who killed himself and the pictures he left behind in the archive...)
07-20 (justaman)
Lonely yodel echoing through yesterday
Painted irises opened to see
The stilled water of frozen canals
Their monuments made yours
The power of pyramids and empire
A crumbling world digitized
An actor in the architecture
Through the terror of times traveled
Skulls silently staring forward
Alone in the crypt with your future
All the good things men can give
Left at the gates of greatness
To the places that haunt us
And the heights that inspire
With your back to the world
You left it, justaman
07-20 (justaman)
Lonely yodel echoing through yesterday
Painted irises opened to see
The stilled water of frozen canals
Their monuments made yours
The power of pyramids and empire
A crumbling world digitized
An actor in the architecture
Through the terror of times traveled
Skulls silently staring forward
Alone in the crypt with your future
All the good things men can give
Left at the gates of greatness
To the places that haunt us
And the heights that inspire
With your back to the world
You left it, justaman
03-07
Every answer ends with why
The god who lives behind the sky
Is not then
Was not before
But is now
Forevermore
The endless question starts with why
The strip of light that parts the sky
Is ever there
In measured days
A way out
And always
01-06
The morning clouds pulled like gauze
Across the gunmetal blue of banker's dreams
Grey wool of the world caught in the steel teeth of now.
I am, red fingers, pinching what was yesterday
Into the light of today our dreams fashioned
Tugging on our yarn, god knits a future.
I wake to the truth of the mercury monkey
With reflections running down my back
Eyes behind to keep the tigers at bay.
01-19
Limp in the smell of an African spa
Alone in my tinfoil hat
I am all that-
And so much more-
There is to know things
Then there is no thing
I am snuffing out life-
And everything all around me-
It exists in a jelly of God
A moving mold-man
An assembly line of souls-
Leading to the sweets on my table-
I draw no conclusions in the blue haze
I am truth in Times New Roman
Strung through the ears to the collective sound-
Finishing this sentence.
02-01
Who are these people?
The saboteur
The saint
Kindness of the broken hearted
Giving what they haven't got.
Who are they?
Telling me what I think
Being right
Human beings
Busy scratching at itches
Which come from nowhere.
What do these people want?
Besides belief
Beneath their grief
A bass beat for that techno tapping
I dance best when I'm alone.
How do I hear these people?
Behind my echo
A great chamber
The void toward which we all share
And are all poured out of.
Why are these people?
It is happening
Now or never
Man's a moment that's a maybe
My flat feet are measuring a round earth.
What will happen to the people?
In the digital daze
Watching the clock
I grip the transfer in a giddy panic
Made witness by this ticket from God.
11:11.
02-16
I wonder why and life is because.
02-22
Holding up the sand and sea
I scratch at an itch that could make me rich.
The sun in my eyes forms a pearl
A moment to be worn around my neck
Polished by the hands of the invisible man
Made shiny by the spit of God.
Pressed to the spinning wheel of living
I am perfect.
02-24 (for my mom)
The all-seeing queen of my being
Called out from an archway
Of assembly line architecture
This was my red brick riot
My bucking the system
I was like butter in the gutter
My balance a guide for the garbage
A thousand days to a "Fuck you!"
To suffering the safety of the sidewalk
But I wasn't on the road either
And she knew I had her beat.
03-06
Gripped in a linoleum lament
Laid flat in fresh cement
I dried up.
Yellow fingers rolling cigarettes
And failing to live the life he forgets
I breathed deep.
The silver man came in microwaves
To remind me what the body craves
I was screaming.
Madmen mingled in marble halls
The ghosts were holding up the walls
I shook inside.
Hand out and shackled to good intentions
Twisted by my soul's dissention
I was betrayed.
The fattest man I'd ever seen
Was worth his weight in human being
He was truth.
The warmest light I ever felt
Came through the dark to where I knelt
I was alive.
03-20
Be cautious while the angel molts
My wings are razors
Spiraling steel peels back
Gives birth to a sharper edge
Filings caught by the magnet
I slice through the air and escape.
04-10
Limp flag's flutter lingers
Barely hinting at the hidden spin
That drives the gears that are within
Me
Mother nature crunches numbers
The ordered cards beside the clock
Helps the man out selling stock
You
Fear is a feeling fashion
Sewn together by master tailors
Why we smile when we see the sailor
Die
Silence is singing scared
A chorus of slaves with angelic voices
Clip their wings and sing of choices
Live.
04-27
"Eat", said Ug and Og ate. If it was sour he spit it out and Ug would write that down. If it was sweet he would smile and Ug painted his picture on the cave walls. If it was poison,
Ug would do his best to nurse Og back to health. When Og died in his care, Ug decided what that meant and through his tears forever came to be.
Inspired by the wailing at the pyre and the cherry stained fingers pointing the way, Ug gripped the club tighter for the good of the tribe. He filled the black behind the stars, shaping an image of God with his own hands, seeing a future with his own eyes and taking mankind with him. God was like Og and all who went before him. Ug wore a mask the ladies made him behind which he hid the truth of not knowing. He was the very first actor to rule the world.
And when you think about it- God as the image of man was also the first astronaut.
06-17 (mercy)
The dying tree bled
Death's dark syrup
Stirs a lazy fog
Lapping emerald pools
The fish frozen
In the sticky sweet
We poked at the piranha
Sister and Brother
Alone in the branches
Forcing it to float
So we could regale
In what's to come
I cut that tree down
To keep it from falling
And built a fire
With its remains
Which cooked a feast
I share with all
07-22
This poem
Took
50
Digital
Digital
Dance steps
07-28
This longing is short
I am miniscule in time
Cannibal trappers
Metal in meadows
Caught by rusty wisdom teeth
I chew my leg off
07-28b
Tea stains the white cup
Indicates a future told
The empty present
08-16
You-tensile digs deep
Ladles language like pixel porridge
Feeding orphans silenced by shame
The sound of empty stomachs
And those who eat with their mouths open.
The hands on the clock clap
Breaking the silence of being served.
Eyes rising from their bowls of being
To see they are not alone at being alone
They feast on freedom for a while.
08-21
Reality is what is written
The little boy a little smitten
-A toothpick blonde, super-vixen
Purring like a chubby kitten
I wanted to eat her.
Redemption leans against the screen
Listens well to what I've seen
She lunges at my very being
Forcing me to split the scene
She gobbled me up.
Walking back toward my home
The calmness where my soul can roam
Longing for the all alone
Mother Nature, Mr. Jones
I felt like shit.
10-20
In one breath, I declare:
I have reached the level of penultimate enlightenment and let me just say:
This really hurts my head, which makes me think:
My life is a wonder-whirl of absolute nonsense that goes to show:
The colon reads both ways.
10-02a
did you know that you are born
each time you blink?
seriously-
can you imagine??
but it's true.
the past and future are
the brief moments
when our eyes are
closed.
when nothing
really matters.
10-29
Today I saw my frozen breath
Like staring at a shard of death
A moment of a moment passed
Shelter from the swelter
In the shadow that god casts.
The red band stretched across the why
Like a zipper in the sky
Holding back a vicious fuck
A peeling ends up revealing
This naked nothing birthed of luck.
Today I saw a crystalline death
Living on my very breath
Held there like some holy ghost
A god or just a silly sod
Feeding off the wholly host.
07-17
Eleven split by white light
Stillness mirrored in emerald pools
We float in the space of a moment
Rocket through the grey of better days
This thing transmitting god
Blinked me into its existence
Void of why and stranger to the mirror
Is my reflection bouncing back
For safety I have drawn the blind
Wonder is my curse in words
Shining sun on the dead grass
The all begging to be baptized
You have stake in your salvation
Our dreams are living gods
The sun shines light on deep waters
Threatening the cold that cradles creation
And lo!
I am born again.
07-27
the grave robber is a saint
whose actions are his life's complaint
a man who makes the ladies faint
and covers up his tracks with paint
digging deep into the dirt
where mankind likes to hide its hurt
under mother natures skirt
the innocence we all subvert
buried deep inside a tomb
a treasure hiding in the womb
conceived of our impending doom
evolves to give a new way room.
07-31
i remember looking
and it was just
there
as if it always had been
mine
all mind
from my own imagination
signed from above
with hate and love
and the somewheres in between
but i had been wrong before
and this all happened
to me
i am freed from the cage
singing like a little lonely bird
happy to be alone
so long as it's free
to be
there is a time
where i sing for my supper
and feast on my brain
which tastes like forever.
(the colon says the time is now)
08-16
Red and white
A slippery mint
Resting in the river's mouth
Past what holds us
This black desire
Of shining stars
The witnesses
Back in business
Feast on fowl
The good bound
Olives at their feet
A cure in the crush
Feeling up fate
It danced with my fingers
Manipulating data
Make moments move
Letters shadowed by intentions
That follow the fader
It is not what I expected
This stale routine
Nibbling on dead ends
The more is magic
I am forced to consume
An all which sustains me
09-11
I wore my crime around my neck
In big red letters on half a sandwich
And sat in a marble park scuffed by youth
With the litter of a great revolution.
Surrounded by shadows and provocateurs
Who milled in amongst the Buddhists
The continual beating of the beaten
Hammered out a familiar rhythm.
Melted crayons cooled in the gloaming
Passionate pixels raced to kiss my ears
Come and join the party dressed to kill
This genius score for a monkey movie
Black-booted vultures coaxed the carrion
Whose look said it was about time
I remember being here before
And in the way of my cause dies the pigeon
A ghost caught in the ruffled feathers
I walk around this moment that we all share
What's next with the flick of a finger
I turn up the volume and remember to forget.
09-27 (America)
There in the shadow of the vulture
Dies your culture
Eagle strangled by the snake
A virgin to the great escape
Kicks at the inevitability
The fading possibilities
Of soaring at fantastic heights
Tethered like a living kite
Claw to set your spirit free
Manifest your destiny.
10-02
On breath that smells like rotting sugar, i declare:
I have reached the level of penultimate enlightenment and let me just say:
This really hurts my head, which makes me think:
My life is a wonder-whirl of absolute nonsense, which just goes to show:
The colon reads both ways.
10-03
Every time I blink I'm born
From Mother Nothing I am torn
The Archangel Whore
I am a steady soul in constant chaos
A gyroscope of seeing in orbit around pure potential
And all the dark matters to attend to
Done in polished shoes and my Sunday best
I charge at what was always never there
A knight in the order of the clock
A peasant in some forgotten palace room
Taking the time to make it mine
This pixel preacher and the saving sound
Healed by reflections in the monitor
And the jumble of difference that fills him in
Standing in a puddle at the crossroads
Two lane choices in all directions
I check my watch to find a masterpiece
It seems I am early
(111 words)
11-7
I have a sweater
The color of a bruise
That I think
Makes me handsome
Virgin wool
Made in Italy
11-8
the wind sounds
like my broken whistle
because the breeze blows
for me.
the rain drops
are a symphony of tears
because the shofar sounds
for me.
the sun rises
gives greetings to the glory
because the night falls
for me.
11-14
Memories like wreckage scattered on a silver sea
Emerald pendants floating on a string theory necklace
The day of reckoning is like any other day
The day of reckoning is like any other day.
This is the mercury monkey-man airborne
The silence shattered by the sizzle reminds me-
Today is a lot like yesterday only now
Today is a lot like yesterday only now.
11-22 (tv runs on empty)
Buried in their boxes
The Electric Company comes
Scanning lasers split my eyes
(The fix in by five
A sell-out at six)
They are followed by the White Horse
Their goodness wears a mask
Striking Indian poses
I am sold a vacuum
A nothing production
Rainbow test patterns
Stretch across a blue-sky substitute
The charged gray fog rolls over
A battle-hymn of Sinners sung by Saints
A crescendo of symbols declaring
"This before that."
The junior junkie sinks his hand in deep
Feasts on the essentials and waits
(The weight of wait eternal)
The current see
Plugged into knowing
The machine making ghosts
That never disappears
That never disappears
And it is on.
Big Bird pecking out our brains
Cross-legged and lock-jawed
Worms reach for the sun that kills them
I can smell the ozone burning
An invisible fire of knowing
Fouls the air that I breathe
I am nothing, but my lungs and heart
Each breath asks why I'm breathing
But the beat goes on without a word
And the beat goes one
And zero-
The hero that never was
The off button
The air I breathe and never think about
Poisoned by our arrogance
Made better by madmen
Channeling my spirit since existence
12-01 (the amber ants)
Marching amber ants
Time-machine riders
The frozen chosen
Born again among the wreckage
I wear their terror as a pendant
Timeless I candy
Burning paper bones
Shine on this poplar Polaroid
The now pulled under
A poet tree
The ashes of why inside an empty fruit juice bottle
And my remains pour out like sap
Portrait of the blind
Drawn for me
The beautiful smiles
From the darkness of my heart
Forged in the mills of the gods
The See by the sea
The root leaves itself something to eat
Covers up the same path
Of the reincarnating cannibal
In the universe of one
And the ants keep marching on.
12-04 (you never saw Charlie)
fairer faucet
spilling over
big boobies
electric angels
vaporized.
god
the finger.
i am become tv.
12-12b (the day I got the news)
I pulled a spark from a vacuum
That appeared without reason
And I did it
In a bubble
Of being
To touch nothing
To make it everything
I did this
With my completeness
I have a feeling
Things are going
To change
10-06 (Toronto)
Saturn blocked by the all-night deli
But I can get a corned beef sandwich.
I can't see the green because everything is stoned
It just means I'm always tripping.
The lake is filled with invisible piranhas
Circling yachts that shine on the water.
And this sharing in crime and disease
- An excuse for a million parades.
Our genius blocking out the sky
The stars live right beside me.
Sharks that swim in a school of sardines
My balcony at the ballet…
1-11 (07)
Reality is a way station
For my imagination to rest upon
Concrete and comprehension
A puny witness to the weather
My dreams are disgusted
At what I do while I'm awake
Overset in understanding
The murdering mind lingers
Taking pictures of the crime scene
The stadium blocked my way to the game
Left this Time's New Roman
Alone in a crystal coliseum
I control the World Bank
Privy to the reason why
Everything ends in electricity
poem
vanity is what i felt
as death cinched up
his buckled belt
and pain burst forth
released my soul
to empty out and fill the whole
moleculize into the ether
creates the god
and all beneath her
death gives birth
to empty space
infinity contains no waste
meddling mercury monkeys
reflected equations
and what the monk sees-
a balanced pole
the tension wire
performed above a ring of fire
death is simply testimony
the universe-
a ceremony
and times direction
confused the beast
west is always sometimes east.
James Lake
The most real and lucid dream I ever had was about an old friend of mine who ended up killing himself later in life. We were from the same neighborhood and probably spent a good decade together, as close friends. His name was James Lake, and I always called him James, though some called him Jamie. He was a very handsome young man who had plenty of girlfriends and a bright future in having many more. He was a gifted athlete and excelled at football, being scouted by American universities, offering scholarships and a chance at playing for a living and being paid big bucks to do so. He was compassionate, not very 'jock-like', loyal and giving. He had a big heart and was wise enough to stay out of the trouble I got into. I knew him well enough that he truly had an impact on my life, making him a part of the person I am today. That's a good thing because he has since checked out.
In my really real dream about James Lake, I was standing in my elementary school playground. I remember being very aware of the textures and how I used to perceive them. While standing there I realized, I was not alone. I turned to look, and suddenly, I was staring straight into the eyes of James. He was as real as he ever was and I could smell that sweaty, dirty smell that all pre-teen boys get after a long day of just playing. I could actually feel his warm breath on my face and it smelled sweet, as if he had just been eating jujubes. He stared at me and smiled. I asked him, "Why are you here, James? You're not supposed to be here." James just looked at me and smiled so wide it pulled my eyelids open, and I was awake. Or had I always been?
James committed suicide about four years ago. I wasn't able to attend his funeral because of work and that seemed a blessing to me. I remember acting very stoic when I heard the news, but was really wounded by it. I had spent a lot of time growing up with him and was lucky to have known him. He was a good friend who would always listen. For a big druggie-drunk like I was, it's good to have a friend like this. As a selfish addict, it's probably why I was friends longer with him than I was with anybody else, even though I never called him my 'best' friend. That title usually went to drinking or drug buddies, who were a dime a dozen. I was such a fool.
When I was around seventeen, James and I stopped hanging around so much. He went his way, to a life of sports and a future full of promise. I went my way- wherever the next party was. I didn't see him very much, but I would hear about the football scouts and his popularity at school (we went to different high-schools), and I was happy for him. Then one day, somebody told me that James had tried acid and got really messed up. That he was institutionalized and was vegetative at times. I couldn't believe it. He was not a druggie. Sure, he drank like most teens do, but not like I did. He partied like a normal person parties. Apparently, he had wanted to try it that once and ended up having a terrible trip. He went bonkers- took the brown acid. Poor James Lake.
He ended up living with his sister. A few years later, I heard he was doing a bit better and got up the courage to call. His sister answered and she remembered me. I asked if I could speak to James, but she didn't think he would take the call. She told me he wasn't at all the James I would remember. I heard her ask very gently, but I couldn't hear his reply. She came back on the line and told me he couldn't talk right now. I thanked her and wished her well. She seemed very sad and I really felt for her. I hung up the phone and next thing I heard, James had hung up his life.
I had a lot of guilty feelings about this. There are MANY occasions where I should have died. I have no idea how I'm still here. It was me who was the alcoholic druggie- if anyone should have gone…and all that jazz. But still I'm here, doing my thing. I know there is a reason for that, simply because I'm still here, but it's still a sad story and I cry about James every once in a while. Sometimes they're 'oh woe is me' tears, sometimes it's at the cruel logic, but mostly it's because the world is a little less without a James Lake in it.
When I was fourteen, a friend of James' and mine, died. It was a real tragedy, with our friend, his sister and parents, all being killed by a drunk driver. On the day of the funeral, I couldn't bring myself to go. I just couldn't do it. I had been to funerals before, but I just couldn't go to this one. Well James was going and he was wearing a sweater and dress pants, which he didn't like because he had wanted to wear a suit, but didn't have one. James and a bunch of the neighborhood kids dropped by my place on the way to the funeral, to pick me up. After telling them I wouldn't be able to make it, James asked if he could wear my suit. I said sure. It was an awkward fit, but he seemed to be ok with it.
It was the first of two times that James Lake would wear my suit to a funeral…
Larry, With the Cup of Holy Spirit
I was talking to Larry, the Christ-bum, and I asked him what he thought of the tsunami and all the aid it has generated. "What tsunami?" he asked.
There is a reason we are asked to pour our goodness away from ourselves. We throw money at those we don't know, while millions waste away here, in poverty and jails, for crimes committed in the act of living; charged for the benefit of fat fucks. Those poor souls in other countries need much help, but it would only take the actions of a few old men in suits tailored by the devil himself, to release that tight grip of debt. Eliminate money, eliminate poor. Keep the money flowing, keep the problem going. That might be dreaming, but it's logical (or so I told Larry).
Our good intentions always placed outside ourselves (money makes it easy)...what do we really do for us? What am I really doing for myself? "Not much" said Larry, the Christ-bum. "Very funny" I said. "I'm just the genius in an Eagles record, standing out while fitting in. I don't make change when I pour my goodness out and leave myself empty. It's the pull of all that goodness that keeps the world spinning to the bad. We are running on a wheel chasing what will make us whole, when we could just stand still and experience it for real. We are the 'mark', the 'sucker'. We are born every second and every second is shackled to time."
"Here's the deal" said Larry, the Christ-bum. "Most who do evil never really know they are doing it. It is done disguised as an act of goodness, but that act is toward things outside of themselves, things they've been given to see. This leaves the good guys empty and easily filled with the evil concepts that create the situations they pour their good toward. It's how situations like bombing a country to set it free and make it better, come to be. Those who think they are doing 'good' don't even notice the wrong that's filling them up inside. It's done with great cunning by little old men who know what I'm talking about, for I am the thing that makes them what they are. We think a lot alike."
Wow. I told Larry that what he said kind of blew my mind. He told me it was blown long ago. "Ever wonder why it's so hard to get people to understand you, or get them to listen to reason?" asked Larry. "It's because they are so busy doing good and believing they are doing good, that they cant see what's really happening to them. They block it out because they are afraid you might be right. They just point to their actions and justify it in the name of love and other such nonsense words you've been given to deprive you of it."
I kind of understood then, dropped a quarter into the cup with the hand of the Holy Spirit reaching out of it, and thanked Larry for everything. He just went back to constructing his cardboard palace, the one he built for Lola and all her phallic glory.
11-21
Sometimes there is beauty when you don't look away. A moment of total understanding grafted to your eyeballs. It is a white steed in the wind on a field of black satin flags. It's the snap from pleading for your life to losing it. All who see it, witness the perfection of the great ape's grace swirling in its sewage. Glimpsed on the box that talks and tells you to kill your parents. "He never saw that coming!" The sound of the shell hitting the floor was like music you can bite into, but I had to put down my sandwich. I saw the silent release of all that holds us down, set free too late, but free nonetheless. Staring into the cold hands that work in the sales department and the soul of all humanity, I was molded to the moment. This man is going to die and he was taking my fear with him. All I heard was the flow or life and a beating in my ears, like listening to two sides of a record at the same time which, of course I was.
That was the day I realized I was already dead.
That was the day after yesterday.
01-01
Mithra was a modern man
Sold salvation from the sand
With fingers sifting out the past
A tight fist makes the feeling last.
Jesus was a juicy tot
Candy that your grandma bought
A trick to stop the children crying
Distract us from the fact we're dying.
Horus hanging to restore us
Gives meaning to the royal chorus
Singing for the king of kings
And all the pain believing brings
The balefire burning bright for Bacchus
Signaled armies to attack us
Born again- the Dixie Dionysus
Made of man to entice us.
Krishna carried on through time
Content to know redemption rhymes
The dead king's will professed in chant
The savior is an hierophant.
01-02 (the static cube)
I lay curled in the corner of the cube in the familiar fetal position and closed my eyes so tight that I thought they might pop amplifying the blackness I knew lay outside my body and listened while a man and a woman screamed at each other in an argument that seemed ancient and tired but still had the power to pierce my ears and fill them with a sound perfectly pictured as a violent white like the swirls that swim in the hash of a detuned television with the dial stuck between channels best describing this feeling of flux which left the metallic taste that precedes vomiting and that I think is how I came to be in the first place.
I was hurled from heaven.
01-06
He rolls back on the wheel
Sparking the imagination of all mankind
Witness to the genius of the naked monkey
Glimpsed through a fissure in time
He breathes deep
Knowing it will not last
Opening the door he goes inside himself
Every atom has congealed into a single thought
This is the sparkle of salvation
The bubbles in champagne
Overwhelmed by the stickiness of his situation
He giggles when he tries to cry
This is as good as it gets
This is the art of manipulating the universe.
01-11
Mars who married war to season
Gives the winning side a reason
Wrapped in bales of pill bottle cotton
Eyes to the sky and ground forgotten
The dying plant forgets its roots
Straight at the sun the pistol shoots
Pixels bleed the rusty rocks
Leaking time and scrolling stocks
The mynah speaks of vanity
Hints at the insanity
Rockets race into the black
The light that's always fighting back
Who am I, but a man?
A universal master plan
TV is a Trojan horse
Clicking thumbs that plot our course
Willing words we hate to hear
Sucks the power to fuel the fear
I strike the pose of prose and not knowing
The future is a red light glowing
01-24
The sun blazed its intention through the bathroom window
Framing the moment for her to see
The universe curled and purring at her feet
She has a date tonight!
Pulls her worth from up off the dresser
Littered with rocks and glass to impress her
A sudden burst of everything reflects from the mirror
The sparkling source blinds from behind
Rubbing Oneness from her eyes
She blinks in a new reality.
When no one shows up at her door
He's the man that she's been waiting for.
01-24b
Sunk deep in the glow
The blue haze of late nights
And the awful sound the all makes
Furiously bursts forth
An electric stamp on my eyes
It screams in my ear
Hypnotized by the chaos
A black and white madness
This atomic routine
My eyes fuse to the glass
Blinded by its insidious intent
I feel it circle me
A burst chasing the fading light
Of what it used to be
Circling a speck of mystery
That vibrates to keep time
Inside this electric soup
There is a signal from our sleep
A single voice from the beginning
Threads your ears
Wear's your ring
A necklace made of string
A test pattern
I'm holding my position
Black
And Christ comes in the room
In a Nehru jacket
With glitter in his hair
Dollar signs in his eyes
I've gone and done it again…
02-02
Hate
Kills
Weeds
Out
Field
Army
Marching
Ants
Marching
On
Drugs
Hugs
Tight
Grip
Slips
Money
Murders
Children
Sing
Softly
Falls
Forward
Moving
Up
Town
House
Boat
Sinks
Slowly
Dies.
02-02a
Love
Kills
Germs
Spread
Butter
Bread
Mold
Life
Sentence
Structure
Fails
Completely
Exhausted
Supply
Demand
Answers
Questions
Authority
Figures
In
Between
Friends
Forever
Now
Playing
Parts
Sea
King
Elvis
Lives.
02-03
such a pretty flag
inspiration ugly
waves for the joy division
lunge toward unknowing
grips the pole
then the world
running is the wind
our reasons twist in the breeze
they see us coming
they do not run
bowed in defiance
backs to the enemy
we defeat them
deflate them
poured out on the ground
a slick of sadness and shame
this is just a job
this is not happening
points to where the line starts
never sees the irony
and the silk still caresses the air
frames the flowers on the grave
bearing our intention
stitched with genius
a product of mad manipulation
a warning flag
02-10
I remember
Watching boomtown rats with no nipples
Being eggs over easy trying to scramble myself.
The flash and crack when lightening hit the transformer
How I froze- knowing it was the end
I was excited…and pretty scared.
Then suddenly life is like a Christmas present you'd been hoping for
Wishing for
Wanting.
You go and drink wine and smoke weed and live
And laugh
Be.
I remember
Change carried on a current from my waist
Warm ears cocooned in silky sound
The potential of all mankind took double-a batteries.
Our failure was grease on my gloves
The fat of some animal teaching me a lesson
That I must not hop the fence and I am not free.
A trail-blazer
Foiled.
So I went and drunk wine and smoked weed and got bitter
You better
Run.
02-11
Dive into the blue
This collective wandering
And wondering
Where am I going
Forgetting to breathe
But I do
There's a buried will
Within who I am
Split in two
I am at war with the worms
The battle is a bright light
Shining on the jagged rocks
The future fighting in the foam
And the now is your head above water
Eyes set on the swarm
Fate frozen in amber
A moment like all other moments
One away from dying
And still my lungs fill with air
Proving me wrong
Genius is why
Sweet fruit makes slaves of some
And poisons all the rest
My belly aching for relief
I refuse to eat what she tells me
I cease to believe what he says.
02-14 (for Freddy)
Smoke on four legs
Laid flat
The cat
Was fat
Now thin
Within
Ruffled gray of yesterday
A toy
The boy
End joy
The pride
Cried
Suddenly stunned senseless
Their tears
And fears
Are spears
My heart
Apart
Forever grinning like a cat
02-19 (for Condi Rice)
Smirking bitch-rat biting at the zipper
The supper of sycophants
Swallows the world-
The madness in her belly
Our congealed guilt mixing with the caviar
Retching out her bad decisions
I saw her tongue taste the air
Sensing the prey
The colour of hope
The other side of the fence
Champagne stains the boat that floats on a sea of fear
Formed in a primal squat
Pissing ourselves in its maintenance
Oh you could have been a queen
Like we never ever seen
But you became my worst nightmare
Not a mother, or a lover, or the other side of the pole
Just a man with nice legs and no penis
Chopping the world into little pieces
Feasting on the blood of dead things
Farting in my face
Now I smell what you eat
Defeat is a sweet bouquet
You feast on rose petals and raspberries
Because I say so
You are a weight I bare
A creation of deadlines and sound-bites
I had a vision of you naked
Saw the tail you tried to hide
And scales littering the floor framed your feet
Cold and dry and ancient like the desert
We had already known for a long time
And you shone in all your glory
This is my story
This is love
You are not that
You are an interpretation of what I pray, goes away
To be replaced by my surplus of hope
Created to find the balance
And when I find it
I will tip things the other way for a while
I would love to see us smile again
03-14
There's something in 11B
That's slowly taking over me
Something green and old it seems
Is rooted in my deepest dreams
Concocting all these killer schemes
A multi-matrix time machine
Something hums inside my head
A tune made famous by the dead
I am given all I've got
What I think is not forgot
Splits air like a rifle shot
Crosshairs fixed on what I'm not
Toes grip hard the timeless sand
Waiting for the waves to land
My eyes are floating in the see
Words that wash right over me
Drowning what was meant to be
Suspended in their history
Salvation calls out from the shore
Points to what I'm looking for
03-17 (for my sister, Suzanne)
Suzanne the master plan
Ripping roots in white light
Outta sight
Put the label on the table
Peeled perception torn apart
Jump start
Galley slaves in the waves
Redemption rides the crest
No rest
Eyes befall the paper walls
Surrenders to the serpents word
Never heard
Lost in the lull of an empty hull
Made to save a thousand times
Nothing rhymes
The cutting knife giving life
Purpose pours out to the floor
No more
It's a bit of a twister little sister
I think I heard the angels sing
Wild thing
All light was born to fight
Put your dukes up for the dawn
Rock on
04-18 (the dead Pope)
Chaos and cut corners
The photogenic mourners
Sobbing sloth and linen cloth
A pageantry of lies
When the old man dies
Stealing Sunday morning
While waiting on the warning
A second chance slow dance
And hope walks away
Into endless days
Flat on a bed of forever
Pulling the lever
Spilling some of what's to come
The twisted kind
The blissful blind
And I can see right up his nose
Wonder where that darkness goes
Beyond the night and out of sight
Bundled in three boxes
Guarded by the foxes
From the overwhelming sheep.
05-01
I sleep so soundly for the thief
To have him steal away my grief
Bundled in my blind belief
A crime that is my soul's relief
Rolling pens that guide the flock
The nosey neighbors on the block
Scare me with their busy talk
In shadows working off the clock
But I'm all snuggled in my bed
The sheet that covers up the dead
Tucked beneath my lightening head
Shining for what others dread
In sentences I have tried
To see the place forever hides
Beyond the truth in which I've lied
The universe is wonder wide
05-10 (for Mark Duitsman)
The madness of the moment
Gives way to the serene satisfaction
That what sounded like the voice of God
Was an echo in the chamber of breathing
Sanity spit on the sidewalk
Panic in the cool wind rushing past
The horror of what was done
Dissolves quickly into the calm of knowing
This is really it
A life lived in nine stories
An end determined by whispers
Ghosts and gods and silly sods
This is the will of the digital witch
Gathered at the cauldron and singing out time
Sounding like my mother
And a blue eye bubbles up from the fog
Speckled brown and showing the future
Finishing in a fit of realization
That between the horror and the lolling tongue
There was the sheer bliss of what you knew all along.
05-11
Scraping by
On a sidewalk that never cared
One way
Or the other
It splits in two
The worm who wondered why
And ate along the way
Feeling the rhythm of the rain
It danced with the roots
On its way up
To see what what's coming down
It lived
The slither severed in half
The gap grows for the whole
The birth
Envy of the ends
For a moment
There is movement
Then no more
Purpose peeled off with a stick
The mother of all inevitabilities
It is strange
A relationship of ends
Seeking safety in the hole
Grows farther apart
Never knowing
It was one to begin with
On its way out
05-12
Plaster of passion
Is fashioned
To rebar
Sparking stars
Divine rods
Cross for gods
A new routine
Matrix machine
Forms a hunch
Then out to lunch
On triple cherries
And fresh strawberries
The guillotine
Slices tangerine
On paper plates
Held by magistrates
Oh Socrates!
You cruel disease
Ravaged me
Through history
The spoken word
Spooks the herd
The past molds
What the future holds
Now is flux
The bronco bucks
In paper cups
Giddy-up
06-18
This
Is
The marrow
Of the moment
Feeding the bone
Of being alone
Is
This
You?
Are
A vacuum
Sucking knowledge
Filling wholes
Burning coals
Are
You
Hearing me?
06-18a
Sentience is a sentence
Spoken in desperation
Are you?
One hard fuck
And your being-
Soul sprung from a rainbow box
God has baby hands
The face of a killer
With a peak-a-boo penis
Falling out of the sexiest skirt
Money could buy
It's time I pay in moments
The current sees
I am a genetic all star
Launched in that infinite whore
Doing what I say
I am the boss
But it's her picture on my money
And life in her belly
God save the queen
A human dream
That puts food on my table
With all the wrong reasons sorting the bills
(and colored pills)
The things I live for
Are not mine
But borrowed from some ugly man
Who said he was my uncle.
06-27
A vision of my future played out
In the land of the dead
Shuffling over what's to come
His heavy cross to bear
To me, was light
And when my mother cut her finger
I placed it under cold running water
Like my mother would
The blood fleeing from what made it
I wondered-
These bits of who she is should stay
But it continued to pour out
Knowing it was beyond my control
This flow that carries me
Will carry her away some day
My grandparent's headstone had a hidden vase
That tucked away when not used
I pulled it up from the ground
Secured by a chain as in life
It held my flowers as they died.
06-30
She was wooed into believing her own lies by the smooth Latin accent of her echo. A false assurance that everything would be ok, something she was eager to believe. Joan of Ark was burned beyond recognition and only the experts could tell it had ever been a lady. And so they told.
07-14
The Holy spear it
The wicked cast out
God the worm
Weaves wide holes
That blaze in the inky infinite
And you
Human
Are hooked to the whole
Shitting out your days
With a confident flush
The worm eats it all
Returned to earth
Back to birth
And that fantastic itch
Plasma pearls under the tongue
The wait
Human
Is the work of the worm
Waiting on the rhythm
Of a lonely heartbeat cradled in cries.
08-02
It's a strange and phantom force
The buyer and this odd remorse.
Caught in gray and silky strands
Shrinking when my life expands.
Like a veil of cotton gauze
Whispers curse the all because.
Poke a straw into the sun
Suck it till its just begun.
A mind outside the governmental
Feelings that are elemental.
This is how it's supposed to be
This is free of history.
Who is to say this is a year
Or even if I'm really here?
And lying in a field of cotton
I think of things I'd long forgotten.
I arrange a symphony
With notes that were assigned to me.
Arranged so I find comfort there
So as to find it everywhere.
Heard in news and sung by sparrows
A slaughter under all those arrows.
Rising up to greet the stars
Greased to slip between the bars.
Hiding so I can be free
I think of how I used to be.
10-26
The feeling of such sudden bliss
That opens up to all of this
That sparks the thought to blaze a trail
The seconds slobbered by the snail
Wearing heaven as a shell
Saves you from a burning hell
On our way to destiny
Exactly where we used to be
Neither here nor there it seems
There's no direction in our dreams
The comedy is cruel my friends
Birthed to have our meanings end
God is just a liquid mirror
This is why you never see her
And when you die you leave your light
To reflect and give another sight
When finally we see the all
The universe is bound to stall
Until a sudden thought occurs
Infinity wears riding spurs
There's no telling where existence bolts
Reality forever molts
10-29
Today I saw my frozen breath
Like staring at a piece of death
A moment of a moment passed
Shelter from the swelter
In the shadows that gods cast
The red band stretched across the why
Like a zipper in the sky
Holding back a vicious fuck
A peeling ending up revealing
A naked nothing born of luck
Today I saw a crystalline death
Living on my very breath
Held there like some holy ghost
A god or just a silly sod
Feeding wholly on this host.
11-04
As sand conspires to move the dunes
The mood is married to the moon
The vermin feast on peels of dreams
While fat men mold the parrot screams
All sound at once a witch's wail
That grabs my ears and lifts the veil
The light that brings my thoughts to be
Has shone while I read history
Freedom leads us to the trough
State marble echoes repeats the cough
Fear has formed in silent lines
The witness to our life of crime
Our silence deafens out the sound
Of futures drilled deep in the ground
I saw a sheep who wore a sweater
A sign that things are getting better
We exist in outer space
I kiss the all I gave a face
11-08 (the messy poem)
Words swim in the spit on your lips
Feel up the truth with remote fingertips
And blister the brain that balks at belief
Then opens its doors for Money the Thief
The soul in a satchel at the side of the road
A thumbed resurrection lightens the load
But the stranger's always danger
The monkey riding silver soul
Fits nicely in your eyeball hole
A simian steamer blowing smoke
Causes all the world to choke.
Salvation is a wanted thief
Evading capture in belief
The monkeys wearing silver souls
Secure inside their eyeball holes
Blindly follows grasping hands
They trample over sacred lands
Pistons plunge to fill the space
The running of the human race
Fate's a thing I've had for dinner
Cold fusion works to make the sinner
God the poet reading time
Making sure the atoms rhyme
Being is because gods speak
Existence takes about a week
The everything inside a name
A wooden box that holds the flame
Dusty on the mantel shelf
Dependent on the old man's health
We all know him by his crown
And how he makes the ladies frown
11-20 (autobiography)
The black breached at birth
Moans the mother of the moment
Life pulling on the leg of our being
She is beside herself
The worry of the world
Is the wind that rocks the baby
Swaddled in society
It fights to breathe
Smothered in love
It dies.
11-21
Sometimes there is beauty when you don't look away. A moment of total understanding grafted to your eyeballs. It is a white steed in the wind on a field of black satin flags. It's the snap from pleading for your life to losing it. All who see it, witness the perfection of the great ape's grace swirling in its sewage. Glimpsed on the box that talks and tells you to kill your parents. "He never saw that coming!" The sound of the shell hitting the floor was like music you can bite into, but I had to put down my sandwich. I saw the silent release of all that holds us down, set free too late, but free nonetheless. Staring into the cold hands that work in the sales department and the soul of all humanity, I was molded to the moment. This man is going to die and he was taking my fear with him. All I heard was the flow or life and a beating in my ears, like listening to two sides of a record at the same time which, of course I was.
That was the day I realized I was already dead.
That was the day after yesterday.
11-21 (the eleven song)
The clock that's used to telling time
Is laying down the fattest rhyme
It says eleven eleven!
Bent back and my complexion green
The answer's somewhere on the screen
It says eleven eleven!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
Living life is throwing dice
I think I saw salvation twice
It was a double eleven!
I thought I was all by myself
Questioning my mental health
But I know I saw heaven!!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
Now I have some change to make
I'm serving up some wedding cake
For those loving elevens
The recipe is who I am
I create me so I understand
And I love those elevens!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
12-3-4
Blessings going up in smoke
The all leans in to hear you choke
Offers you a glass of water
While leading common sense to slaughter.
The cat who breathes in all you know
The reason why its eyeballs glow.
Chaos curled begins to purr
Ancient feelings start to stir
Then the matter of the moment
Living is the soul's atonement.
(For wanting to know why)
12-09
I am slithering salamander
Pulling like ribbon through the reeds.
I am the modern malaise
Silent reflections cast back from the store window.
I am forever frequency
Weaving wormholes through the shortwave.
I am in the terminal calm
While the hot breath of the machine bears down.
I am chaos come to call
The still who seeks what makes it so.
I am a picture of the all
The light that allows the negative to form.
I am framed in the end
Destiny is a devilish definition.
I am powered by the sun
And the number, one.
I am
So I say I am.
But who told me?
12-16
A harbor holding more than ships
Opens out to finger tips
Feeling what it has to know
While waiting for the wind to blow
Hulls rub hard against the dock
The tide is mother natures clock
Floats the dreams of better days
Hope is left to drift away.
The anchored fleet awaits command
Water is their right to land
Admirals search the stars for truth
Knowing it was lost in youth
Then orders all the ships to sail
The dog that leads his wagging tail
The great armada breaking waves
And witnessed by the galley slaves
The smoke of spoils filled the air
And left the sailors unaware
Scattered on the open seas
Pirates pirate as they please
Soon the wounded fill the bay
Thankful for another day
12-16
Cornered in the static cube
A vacuum
You've been here before
Forever is the moment before birth
A total shift in being
Held cradled in a scream
This is how it was
Lost in the signal of all time
The sound's born in you
This is the moment of beginning
The question why
And the sky split
This is us begun.
12-17
Hope smells like plasticine
Colored wax and rubber boots
It's the warm morning sun on new faces
Diffused by wire
And windows like you've never seen before
Calculating in their design
Something wants you to stay
Leaves you feeling alone
Hope floats out the crank handled window
Designed to keep you safe.
Freedom smells like green
Holds the comfort of cardboard boxes
Daring you to turn and run
But it's too late when the bell rings
You are pinned to your definition
Loving lines and order
The sweet smell at the beginning
Lost to the stench of genius
Hot air from rusty holes
Hell is an invention
12-22 (for Tracie)
She was an alabaster blaster
From the future walking past
He offered her a piece of gum
With flavor meant to last.
She's mustard on the custard
The perfect blend of wrong
When she simply said, "no thanks"
It was every single song.
A Freddy Fender, gender-bender
Who never said a word
Until she finally had a piece
Tasting what he heard.
She's olive oil about to boil
A calm that can't compare
Blowing bubbles up to God
When two becomes a pair.
12-30
This.
This is…
A digital diorama of difference
People powered pixels
Serving up their light of knowledge
Like electric pez.
Breathing is an equation
One of God's sudden revelations
Scribbled in the margins
The matter of fact.
Walking projectors beaming light
Play out the script
Hollywood is full of Jews
Writing movies for the lost tribes.
The promise of man
Hides in the hills around Jericho
I can see the rows of progress
The potter to the king
My life made a little easier
I drink from my earthen cup and wonder-
When will the spirit of what we were return
Hungry from its time in the mountain?
Now?
Right now?
Matter Matters
matter matters when you wonder why
a universal engine
idling
wondering
will it stall?
held firm in the answer.
The Red Rose Motel
When I was in my late teens, I was totally out of control. I was a crazy, pill-popping, booze-swilling, loon. I hung around with a large cast of characters, a good deal of them shady. I was a popular kid, but never really fit in with any one group. I just bounced around from shindigs to booze-ups. I was the party guy everybody admired for my ability to not go down from mass consumption of all things intoxicating. I could and WOULD talk to you for hours about any subject, until my mouth would finally stop working. I was the thinking man's Spicoli. I was the life of the party! I was…hell, I was a loser.
My drinking was really getting out of control. I had a best friend at the time that was kind of a bad influence on me. I guess the same can be said for yours truly. We crossed the line of legality in a lot of the things we did for fun. He would end up going to prison for rape and assault a few years after we parted ways. He didn't seem like a rapist when we hung out, just like a guy who liked to party hard. A good, Canadian, metal-head: "Take off, eh!"
My friend got the boot from his home one time, so he cooped up in a motel. This was a really seedy place that prostitutes used. It was called the Red Rose Motel, and it was even featured on 'America's Most Wanted'…and it's Canadian! Anyhow, he was living in this place, working some factory job and cooking meals using a hotplate. I used to love going over there because I could do what I wanted and it wasn't my misery providing the privilege of such freedom. We got fucked up a lot at the Red Rose Motel…
During this time, my buddy introduced me to a friend of his. I wasn't too keen on this kid. He was younger than us and full of bravado. We did not hit it off and always seemed on the verge of coming to blows. I was older and more street-wise and I liked to toy with the punk. I only met him a few times and mostly at the motel. He was just as big a druggie-drunk as me and we would compete to see who could stay conscious the longest into the wee hours of the morning, with me always winning. I rarely lost to anyone. It was an ability that lay hidden under my skinny frame. Big dudes would challenge me to drinking contests. I would pace them until they passed out and then drink the rest of their beer, thus sparing my own for the morning.
At the time, there had been a kidnapping and murder of a teacher nearby and the killers were still on the loose. One night, after my friend had passed out and it was just me and the rookie, I told him that we had committed the crime. I got really gory and into detail, telling him that if he told anyone, we would do the same to him. I know it's an awful thing to do, but I was really fucked up. The kid fell for it and was shitting his pants. He got this look of fear that instantly made me feel bad for what I had done. I told him I was just kidding and to relax. He didn't believe me at first, so I had to assure him that we weren't the killers. Finally, he believed me, but not after having had the wits scared out of him.
Not long after this happened, the young stoner took things a little too far and died after huffing Pam cooking spray. What a crappy way to go. He had a heart attack and he was only 16 years old. He had been at a party and was showing off to some girls. Foolish boy…I remember thinking- was the look on his face the same look he had when he thought he might die in the room? How strange for my life to have encountered this person, someone who only brought hostility into my life and who left me introverted and wondering why. What was the purpose of his being in my life, this bit player with a tragic ending? Was it a warning? If so, it failed because it took years for me to finally stop drinking myself to death.
Although it's a sad tale, strangely, I don't feel much at all. I never really felt too bad for the kid. He seemed so doomed. That looked of fear I saw in the motel room fit him like a glove. I often wonder about him and why he came into my life. It's sad because I can't even remember his name. I think what it did most, was make death seem not so bad. I didn't envy him and I wasn't suicidal, but some people just have to go at certain times. Maybe there's a lesson in it, or maybe not, but stressing over the inevitable that can happen at any time, stunts your growth and leaves you stuck in a motel room…or a prison cell…or church.
09-09
Venus with the rising sun
Light supplied and seen by one
Tasty humans feed the earth
Death is what gives life birth.
Beamed upon the inky black
The stagehands laugh behind your back
Played before the crowd unseen
The story of a human being.
Ghosts burped up from underground
Giving all the letters sound.
Earth's an atom 'bout to split
And that will be the end of it.
Until the all begins to think
A thirsty man will always drink.
So Barbara Walters says to Holly,
damn you dig that dalai lama
i bet you wanna be his momma
bring that man a little drama
your sentence parted by a comma
take a breath
and begin again.
06-03 (the hero or ground zero)
The hero of ground zero
Shines in the light of lunatics
In Tojo glasses and jackboots
With torch and ticket in hand
Front row to a show that never is
Nuts on the net redeemed
The quickest grin there's ever been
And my love is vaporized
My fear terrorized the moment
Before the moment that never was
Fused with my family I fly
Into the ass of forever
The mouth of God
Feasting at a banquet of fools
I am done like dinner.
Walking With My Old Uncle Neil
It was really warm here in Toronto. Yesterday, the city woke up to being covered in ice. Today, people are outside with no coat on and enjoying a day that feels more like spring than the middle of winter. I had the day off, so I decided to walk to get my hair cut.
I had a nice long shower before I went. I used this expensive soap Tracie and I bought as a Christmas present for us. It's from a company in Italy that has been around for hundreds of years and made soaps for royalty. It smells really simple and old, with a fragrance that isn't masculine or feminine, just fresh and clean with a hint of pomegranate. I lathered up some Johnson and Johnson's baby shampoo in my hair, followed by a fancy conditioner Tracie uses. It has this manly, old, English smell, like something you would buy at Marks and Spencer. It reminds me of my old Scottish relatives. While that was on my head, I used this facial scrub that we bought from some shop that sold products made in the Middle East. If the soap smells old, this stuff is ancient! It smells so familiar to me, but I've never been there before, at least not in this lifetime. It's filled with the sand of the desert and feels wonderful against my beard, like a dog being scratched. And yes- I use a facial scrub…so what!?
Ok, and I've also been known to use a little bit of anti-wrinkle cream once in a while, but that's it! I swear!!
Back to my gay, I mean day...
I always walk really fast, but today I decided to take my time. I saw Larry, the Christ-bum, but he was sound asleep over a subway vent, so I high-fived the hand of the Holy Spirit that was sticking out of his tattered coffee-cup and continued on my way to the barber. I don't much like my barber at times. It's a love –hate relationship. He is this nasty, racist, Italian guy, with a thick accent and who likes to call people from certain cultures 'animals'. This from a dude with hairy knuckles! Anyhow, I go to him because he keeps it real and because I know, even he wants what I do- a little peace. He just thinks you get it through killing those 'animals'. Whatever, he is an artist with the clippers and a piece of my childhood brought to life again, minus the booster seat.
On my way there I saw a lot of squirrels that had obviously been woken from their winter sleep by the strange warm weather. They were molting and quite disheveled looking. Actually, they looked completely fucked up and I found this very funny! I saw a big black one on a garbage can, so I went over to him and in his haste to run away, he ran INTO the can itself. "Ha-ha, Now I've got you my pretty." I went over to look inside and study my cornered piece of the wild. When I popped my head over the can, he jumped up and stood on the rim, watching me and eating a french-fry that somebody had thrown away. At first it looked like a cigarette and I laughed out loud. He looked at me and I looked at him- it was love. It was also then that I noticed the two girls (who were obviously tourists) staring at me and talking softly to each other in what I think was German. I just gave them my best smile and tried to look cool. They smiled back, impressed with my nice skin.
This all took place beneath the world largest phallus, the CN Tower. Canadians love their big penis. It's wrapped in our pride like a pair of tight fitting jeans. Although I walk directly beneath it almost every day, I don't really notice it anymore. That's saying something- a thing as big as the CN Tower, a marvel of technology, human endurance and genius, but I only notice it a few times a year. Maybe it's too much of a reminder of the reality we are living in- a wonder on the outside, but empty at the core. Anyhow, I finally got to the barbershop and he had just started cutting another guy's hair. I didn't feel like waiting, so I decided to walk around downtown and watch the working people.
I walked over to union station, Toronto's train palace, and waded into the hustle and bustle. This is a big junction for public transportation and it's always busy during the day. I did a lot of people watching, smiling first at the girlies, then at everybody. People smiled back. That seemed like a good thing to me, like hope. I went by the food court and got a great waft of sweet air from Cinnabon, thought about it, then decided I should be a good boy and just make my way home.
Today was a light-grey day outside. I decided I would walk home even slower, like my favourite, but dead uncle Neil used to do. I dreamed about him last night, so he was on my mind. In my dream he held my hand and led me places, but i can't remember where we went. I pretended to take hold of his hand as I made my way home, taking on the style of his golden years. In the end he developed that old man walk, where they stop every twenty or so steps to take it all in and wonder about thing. It's just like kids do, except kids do it because they haven't been here long, old people do it because they won't be here much longer. The daylight was the perfect brightness to make the details of all the buildings around me stand out. It was as if I could sense each building as being its own entity, alive and with purpose, not just a part of the background.
I looked at all the skyscrapers, the Skydome, the Skywalk...all of this stuff that man has made in some weird attempt to solve a riddle they asked themselves. It all stood before me like a large grouping of monoliths, each an offering to the gods, any god. I felt like a speck of calm in a sea of noise, but though there was constant motion all around me, the earth felt very still. I breathed deep, inhaling everything all at once and it smelled like the first day of school. It was the subtle hint of promise blowing through caverns of misunderstanding. I felt so alive against it all. For a moment I shone and saw what everything around me was for…nothing. I felt liberated by the perfect absurdity of existing. I let go of Neil's hand.
I then went about writing a post, describing my day. This is how it ended...
01-25
The conscious river running down
Water falls
The foam floats over a rolling boil
A web woven above it all
The spider waits
Feels the struggle of its prey
Wrapped in good intentions
Silken steel strands
Of what I can only imagine
That one dies so one lives
The fish sees it play out
And thinks the same thing
And man casts his line at the side of the river
Silver wisps through the air.
Every answer ends with why
The god who lives behind the sky
Is not then
Was not before
But is now
Forevermore
The endless question starts with why
The strip of light that parts the sky
Is ever there
In measured days
A way out
And always
01-06
The morning clouds pulled like gauze
Across the gunmetal blue of banker's dreams
Grey wool of the world caught in the steel teeth of now.
I am, red fingers, pinching what was yesterday
Into the light of today our dreams fashioned
Tugging on our yarn, god knits a future.
I wake to the truth of the mercury monkey
With reflections running down my back
Eyes behind to keep the tigers at bay.
01-19
Limp in the smell of an African spa
Alone in my tinfoil hat
I am all that-
And so much more-
There is to know things
Then there is no thing
I am snuffing out life-
And everything all around me-
It exists in a jelly of God
A moving mold-man
An assembly line of souls-
Leading to the sweets on my table-
I draw no conclusions in the blue haze
I am truth in Times New Roman
Strung through the ears to the collective sound-
Finishing this sentence.
02-01
Who are these people?
The saboteur
The saint
Kindness of the broken hearted
Giving what they haven't got.
Who are they?
Telling me what I think
Being right
Human beings
Busy scratching at itches
Which come from nowhere.
What do these people want?
Besides belief
Beneath their grief
A bass beat for that techno tapping
I dance best when I'm alone.
How do I hear these people?
Behind my echo
A great chamber
The void toward which we all share
And are all poured out of.
Why are these people?
It is happening
Now or never
Man's a moment that's a maybe
My flat feet are measuring a round earth.
What will happen to the people?
In the digital daze
Watching the clock
I grip the transfer in a giddy panic
Made witness by this ticket from God.
11:11.
02-16
I wonder why and life is because.
02-22
Holding up the sand and sea
I scratch at an itch that could make me rich.
The sun in my eyes forms a pearl
A moment to be worn around my neck
Polished by the hands of the invisible man
Made shiny by the spit of God.
Pressed to the spinning wheel of living
I am perfect.
02-24 (for my mom)
The all-seeing queen of my being
Called out from an archway
Of assembly line architecture
This was my red brick riot
My bucking the system
I was like butter in the gutter
My balance a guide for the garbage
A thousand days to a "Fuck you!"
To suffering the safety of the sidewalk
But I wasn't on the road either
And she knew I had her beat.
03-06
Gripped in a linoleum lament
Laid flat in fresh cement
I dried up.
Yellow fingers rolling cigarettes
And failing to live the life he forgets
I breathed deep.
The silver man came in microwaves
To remind me what the body craves
I was screaming.
Madmen mingled in marble halls
The ghosts were holding up the walls
I shook inside.
Hand out and shackled to good intentions
Twisted by my soul's dissention
I was betrayed.
The fattest man I'd ever seen
Was worth his weight in human being
He was truth.
The warmest light I ever felt
Came through the dark to where I knelt
I was alive.
03-20
Be cautious while the angel molts
My wings are razors
Spiraling steel peels back
Gives birth to a sharper edge
Filings caught by the magnet
I slice through the air and escape.
04-10
Limp flag's flutter lingers
Barely hinting at the hidden spin
That drives the gears that are within
Me
Mother nature crunches numbers
The ordered cards beside the clock
Helps the man out selling stock
You
Fear is a feeling fashion
Sewn together by master tailors
Why we smile when we see the sailor
Die
Silence is singing scared
A chorus of slaves with angelic voices
Clip their wings and sing of choices
Live.
04-27
"Eat", said Ug and Og ate. If it was sour he spit it out and Ug would write that down. If it was sweet he would smile and Ug painted his picture on the cave walls. If it was poison,
Ug would do his best to nurse Og back to health. When Og died in his care, Ug decided what that meant and through his tears forever came to be.
Inspired by the wailing at the pyre and the cherry stained fingers pointing the way, Ug gripped the club tighter for the good of the tribe. He filled the black behind the stars, shaping an image of God with his own hands, seeing a future with his own eyes and taking mankind with him. God was like Og and all who went before him. Ug wore a mask the ladies made him behind which he hid the truth of not knowing. He was the very first actor to rule the world.
And when you think about it- God as the image of man was also the first astronaut.
06-17 (mercy)
The dying tree bled
Death's dark syrup
Stirs a lazy fog
Lapping emerald pools
The fish frozen
In the sticky sweet
We poked at the piranha
Sister and Brother
Alone in the branches
Forcing it to float
So we could regale
In what's to come
I cut that tree down
To keep it from falling
And built a fire
With its remains
Which cooked a feast
I share with all
07-22
This poem
Took
50
Digital
Digital
Dance steps
07-28
This longing is short
I am miniscule in time
Cannibal trappers
Metal in meadows
Caught by rusty wisdom teeth
I chew my leg off
07-28b
Tea stains the white cup
Indicates a future told
The empty present
08-16
You-tensile digs deep
Ladles language like pixel porridge
Feeding orphans silenced by shame
The sound of empty stomachs
And those who eat with their mouths open.
The hands on the clock clap
Breaking the silence of being served.
Eyes rising from their bowls of being
To see they are not alone at being alone
They feast on freedom for a while.
08-21
Reality is what is written
The little boy a little smitten
-A toothpick blonde, super-vixen
Purring like a chubby kitten
I wanted to eat her.
Redemption leans against the screen
Listens well to what I've seen
She lunges at my very being
Forcing me to split the scene
She gobbled me up.
Walking back toward my home
The calmness where my soul can roam
Longing for the all alone
Mother Nature, Mr. Jones
I felt like shit.
10-20
In one breath, I declare:
I have reached the level of penultimate enlightenment and let me just say:
This really hurts my head, which makes me think:
My life is a wonder-whirl of absolute nonsense that goes to show:
The colon reads both ways.
10-02a
did you know that you are born
each time you blink?
seriously-
can you imagine??
but it's true.
the past and future are
the brief moments
when our eyes are
closed.
when nothing
really matters.
10-29
Today I saw my frozen breath
Like staring at a shard of death
A moment of a moment passed
Shelter from the swelter
In the shadow that god casts.
The red band stretched across the why
Like a zipper in the sky
Holding back a vicious fuck
A peeling ends up revealing
This naked nothing birthed of luck.
Today I saw a crystalline death
Living on my very breath
Held there like some holy ghost
A god or just a silly sod
Feeding off the wholly host.
07-17
Eleven split by white light
Stillness mirrored in emerald pools
We float in the space of a moment
Rocket through the grey of better days
This thing transmitting god
Blinked me into its existence
Void of why and stranger to the mirror
Is my reflection bouncing back
For safety I have drawn the blind
Wonder is my curse in words
Shining sun on the dead grass
The all begging to be baptized
You have stake in your salvation
Our dreams are living gods
The sun shines light on deep waters
Threatening the cold that cradles creation
And lo!
I am born again.
07-27
the grave robber is a saint
whose actions are his life's complaint
a man who makes the ladies faint
and covers up his tracks with paint
digging deep into the dirt
where mankind likes to hide its hurt
under mother natures skirt
the innocence we all subvert
buried deep inside a tomb
a treasure hiding in the womb
conceived of our impending doom
evolves to give a new way room.
07-31
i remember looking
and it was just
there
as if it always had been
mine
all mind
from my own imagination
signed from above
with hate and love
and the somewheres in between
but i had been wrong before
and this all happened
to me
i am freed from the cage
singing like a little lonely bird
happy to be alone
so long as it's free
to be
there is a time
where i sing for my supper
and feast on my brain
which tastes like forever.
(the colon says the time is now)
08-16
Red and white
A slippery mint
Resting in the river's mouth
Past what holds us
This black desire
Of shining stars
The witnesses
Back in business
Feast on fowl
The good bound
Olives at their feet
A cure in the crush
Feeling up fate
It danced with my fingers
Manipulating data
Make moments move
Letters shadowed by intentions
That follow the fader
It is not what I expected
This stale routine
Nibbling on dead ends
The more is magic
I am forced to consume
An all which sustains me
09-11
I wore my crime around my neck
In big red letters on half a sandwich
And sat in a marble park scuffed by youth
With the litter of a great revolution.
Surrounded by shadows and provocateurs
Who milled in amongst the Buddhists
The continual beating of the beaten
Hammered out a familiar rhythm.
Melted crayons cooled in the gloaming
Passionate pixels raced to kiss my ears
Come and join the party dressed to kill
This genius score for a monkey movie
Black-booted vultures coaxed the carrion
Whose look said it was about time
I remember being here before
And in the way of my cause dies the pigeon
A ghost caught in the ruffled feathers
I walk around this moment that we all share
What's next with the flick of a finger
I turn up the volume and remember to forget.
09-27 (America)
There in the shadow of the vulture
Dies your culture
Eagle strangled by the snake
A virgin to the great escape
Kicks at the inevitability
The fading possibilities
Of soaring at fantastic heights
Tethered like a living kite
Claw to set your spirit free
Manifest your destiny.
10-02
On breath that smells like rotting sugar, i declare:
I have reached the level of penultimate enlightenment and let me just say:
This really hurts my head, which makes me think:
My life is a wonder-whirl of absolute nonsense, which just goes to show:
The colon reads both ways.
10-03
Every time I blink I'm born
From Mother Nothing I am torn
The Archangel Whore
I am a steady soul in constant chaos
A gyroscope of seeing in orbit around pure potential
And all the dark matters to attend to
Done in polished shoes and my Sunday best
I charge at what was always never there
A knight in the order of the clock
A peasant in some forgotten palace room
Taking the time to make it mine
This pixel preacher and the saving sound
Healed by reflections in the monitor
And the jumble of difference that fills him in
Standing in a puddle at the crossroads
Two lane choices in all directions
I check my watch to find a masterpiece
It seems I am early
(111 words)
11-7
I have a sweater
The color of a bruise
That I think
Makes me handsome
Virgin wool
Made in Italy
11-8
the wind sounds
like my broken whistle
because the breeze blows
for me.
the rain drops
are a symphony of tears
because the shofar sounds
for me.
the sun rises
gives greetings to the glory
because the night falls
for me.
11-14
Memories like wreckage scattered on a silver sea
Emerald pendants floating on a string theory necklace
The day of reckoning is like any other day
The day of reckoning is like any other day.
This is the mercury monkey-man airborne
The silence shattered by the sizzle reminds me-
Today is a lot like yesterday only now
Today is a lot like yesterday only now.
11-22 (tv runs on empty)
Buried in their boxes
The Electric Company comes
Scanning lasers split my eyes
(The fix in by five
A sell-out at six)
They are followed by the White Horse
Their goodness wears a mask
Striking Indian poses
I am sold a vacuum
A nothing production
Rainbow test patterns
Stretch across a blue-sky substitute
The charged gray fog rolls over
A battle-hymn of Sinners sung by Saints
A crescendo of symbols declaring
"This before that."
The junior junkie sinks his hand in deep
Feasts on the essentials and waits
(The weight of wait eternal)
The current see
Plugged into knowing
The machine making ghosts
That never disappears
That never disappears
And it is on.
Big Bird pecking out our brains
Cross-legged and lock-jawed
Worms reach for the sun that kills them
I can smell the ozone burning
An invisible fire of knowing
Fouls the air that I breathe
I am nothing, but my lungs and heart
Each breath asks why I'm breathing
But the beat goes on without a word
And the beat goes one
And zero-
The hero that never was
The off button
The air I breathe and never think about
Poisoned by our arrogance
Made better by madmen
Channeling my spirit since existence
12-01 (the amber ants)
Marching amber ants
Time-machine riders
The frozen chosen
Born again among the wreckage
I wear their terror as a pendant
Timeless I candy
Burning paper bones
Shine on this poplar Polaroid
The now pulled under
A poet tree
The ashes of why inside an empty fruit juice bottle
And my remains pour out like sap
Portrait of the blind
Drawn for me
The beautiful smiles
From the darkness of my heart
Forged in the mills of the gods
The See by the sea
The root leaves itself something to eat
Covers up the same path
Of the reincarnating cannibal
In the universe of one
And the ants keep marching on.
12-04 (you never saw Charlie)
fairer faucet
spilling over
big boobies
electric angels
vaporized.
god
the finger.
i am become tv.
12-12b (the day I got the news)
I pulled a spark from a vacuum
That appeared without reason
And I did it
In a bubble
Of being
To touch nothing
To make it everything
I did this
With my completeness
I have a feeling
Things are going
To change
10-06 (Toronto)
Saturn blocked by the all-night deli
But I can get a corned beef sandwich.
I can't see the green because everything is stoned
It just means I'm always tripping.
The lake is filled with invisible piranhas
Circling yachts that shine on the water.
And this sharing in crime and disease
- An excuse for a million parades.
Our genius blocking out the sky
The stars live right beside me.
Sharks that swim in a school of sardines
My balcony at the ballet…
1-11 (07)
Reality is a way station
For my imagination to rest upon
Concrete and comprehension
A puny witness to the weather
My dreams are disgusted
At what I do while I'm awake
Overset in understanding
The murdering mind lingers
Taking pictures of the crime scene
The stadium blocked my way to the game
Left this Time's New Roman
Alone in a crystal coliseum
I control the World Bank
Privy to the reason why
Everything ends in electricity
poem
vanity is what i felt
as death cinched up
his buckled belt
and pain burst forth
released my soul
to empty out and fill the whole
moleculize into the ether
creates the god
and all beneath her
death gives birth
to empty space
infinity contains no waste
meddling mercury monkeys
reflected equations
and what the monk sees-
a balanced pole
the tension wire
performed above a ring of fire
death is simply testimony
the universe-
a ceremony
and times direction
confused the beast
west is always sometimes east.
James Lake
The most real and lucid dream I ever had was about an old friend of mine who ended up killing himself later in life. We were from the same neighborhood and probably spent a good decade together, as close friends. His name was James Lake, and I always called him James, though some called him Jamie. He was a very handsome young man who had plenty of girlfriends and a bright future in having many more. He was a gifted athlete and excelled at football, being scouted by American universities, offering scholarships and a chance at playing for a living and being paid big bucks to do so. He was compassionate, not very 'jock-like', loyal and giving. He had a big heart and was wise enough to stay out of the trouble I got into. I knew him well enough that he truly had an impact on my life, making him a part of the person I am today. That's a good thing because he has since checked out.
In my really real dream about James Lake, I was standing in my elementary school playground. I remember being very aware of the textures and how I used to perceive them. While standing there I realized, I was not alone. I turned to look, and suddenly, I was staring straight into the eyes of James. He was as real as he ever was and I could smell that sweaty, dirty smell that all pre-teen boys get after a long day of just playing. I could actually feel his warm breath on my face and it smelled sweet, as if he had just been eating jujubes. He stared at me and smiled. I asked him, "Why are you here, James? You're not supposed to be here." James just looked at me and smiled so wide it pulled my eyelids open, and I was awake. Or had I always been?
James committed suicide about four years ago. I wasn't able to attend his funeral because of work and that seemed a blessing to me. I remember acting very stoic when I heard the news, but was really wounded by it. I had spent a lot of time growing up with him and was lucky to have known him. He was a good friend who would always listen. For a big druggie-drunk like I was, it's good to have a friend like this. As a selfish addict, it's probably why I was friends longer with him than I was with anybody else, even though I never called him my 'best' friend. That title usually went to drinking or drug buddies, who were a dime a dozen. I was such a fool.
When I was around seventeen, James and I stopped hanging around so much. He went his way, to a life of sports and a future full of promise. I went my way- wherever the next party was. I didn't see him very much, but I would hear about the football scouts and his popularity at school (we went to different high-schools), and I was happy for him. Then one day, somebody told me that James had tried acid and got really messed up. That he was institutionalized and was vegetative at times. I couldn't believe it. He was not a druggie. Sure, he drank like most teens do, but not like I did. He partied like a normal person parties. Apparently, he had wanted to try it that once and ended up having a terrible trip. He went bonkers- took the brown acid. Poor James Lake.
He ended up living with his sister. A few years later, I heard he was doing a bit better and got up the courage to call. His sister answered and she remembered me. I asked if I could speak to James, but she didn't think he would take the call. She told me he wasn't at all the James I would remember. I heard her ask very gently, but I couldn't hear his reply. She came back on the line and told me he couldn't talk right now. I thanked her and wished her well. She seemed very sad and I really felt for her. I hung up the phone and next thing I heard, James had hung up his life.
I had a lot of guilty feelings about this. There are MANY occasions where I should have died. I have no idea how I'm still here. It was me who was the alcoholic druggie- if anyone should have gone…and all that jazz. But still I'm here, doing my thing. I know there is a reason for that, simply because I'm still here, but it's still a sad story and I cry about James every once in a while. Sometimes they're 'oh woe is me' tears, sometimes it's at the cruel logic, but mostly it's because the world is a little less without a James Lake in it.
When I was fourteen, a friend of James' and mine, died. It was a real tragedy, with our friend, his sister and parents, all being killed by a drunk driver. On the day of the funeral, I couldn't bring myself to go. I just couldn't do it. I had been to funerals before, but I just couldn't go to this one. Well James was going and he was wearing a sweater and dress pants, which he didn't like because he had wanted to wear a suit, but didn't have one. James and a bunch of the neighborhood kids dropped by my place on the way to the funeral, to pick me up. After telling them I wouldn't be able to make it, James asked if he could wear my suit. I said sure. It was an awkward fit, but he seemed to be ok with it.
It was the first of two times that James Lake would wear my suit to a funeral…
Larry, With the Cup of Holy Spirit
I was talking to Larry, the Christ-bum, and I asked him what he thought of the tsunami and all the aid it has generated. "What tsunami?" he asked.
There is a reason we are asked to pour our goodness away from ourselves. We throw money at those we don't know, while millions waste away here, in poverty and jails, for crimes committed in the act of living; charged for the benefit of fat fucks. Those poor souls in other countries need much help, but it would only take the actions of a few old men in suits tailored by the devil himself, to release that tight grip of debt. Eliminate money, eliminate poor. Keep the money flowing, keep the problem going. That might be dreaming, but it's logical (or so I told Larry).
Our good intentions always placed outside ourselves (money makes it easy)...what do we really do for us? What am I really doing for myself? "Not much" said Larry, the Christ-bum. "Very funny" I said. "I'm just the genius in an Eagles record, standing out while fitting in. I don't make change when I pour my goodness out and leave myself empty. It's the pull of all that goodness that keeps the world spinning to the bad. We are running on a wheel chasing what will make us whole, when we could just stand still and experience it for real. We are the 'mark', the 'sucker'. We are born every second and every second is shackled to time."
"Here's the deal" said Larry, the Christ-bum. "Most who do evil never really know they are doing it. It is done disguised as an act of goodness, but that act is toward things outside of themselves, things they've been given to see. This leaves the good guys empty and easily filled with the evil concepts that create the situations they pour their good toward. It's how situations like bombing a country to set it free and make it better, come to be. Those who think they are doing 'good' don't even notice the wrong that's filling them up inside. It's done with great cunning by little old men who know what I'm talking about, for I am the thing that makes them what they are. We think a lot alike."
Wow. I told Larry that what he said kind of blew my mind. He told me it was blown long ago. "Ever wonder why it's so hard to get people to understand you, or get them to listen to reason?" asked Larry. "It's because they are so busy doing good and believing they are doing good, that they cant see what's really happening to them. They block it out because they are afraid you might be right. They just point to their actions and justify it in the name of love and other such nonsense words you've been given to deprive you of it."
I kind of understood then, dropped a quarter into the cup with the hand of the Holy Spirit reaching out of it, and thanked Larry for everything. He just went back to constructing his cardboard palace, the one he built for Lola and all her phallic glory.
11-21
Sometimes there is beauty when you don't look away. A moment of total understanding grafted to your eyeballs. It is a white steed in the wind on a field of black satin flags. It's the snap from pleading for your life to losing it. All who see it, witness the perfection of the great ape's grace swirling in its sewage. Glimpsed on the box that talks and tells you to kill your parents. "He never saw that coming!" The sound of the shell hitting the floor was like music you can bite into, but I had to put down my sandwich. I saw the silent release of all that holds us down, set free too late, but free nonetheless. Staring into the cold hands that work in the sales department and the soul of all humanity, I was molded to the moment. This man is going to die and he was taking my fear with him. All I heard was the flow or life and a beating in my ears, like listening to two sides of a record at the same time which, of course I was.
That was the day I realized I was already dead.
That was the day after yesterday.
01-01
Mithra was a modern man
Sold salvation from the sand
With fingers sifting out the past
A tight fist makes the feeling last.
Jesus was a juicy tot
Candy that your grandma bought
A trick to stop the children crying
Distract us from the fact we're dying.
Horus hanging to restore us
Gives meaning to the royal chorus
Singing for the king of kings
And all the pain believing brings
The balefire burning bright for Bacchus
Signaled armies to attack us
Born again- the Dixie Dionysus
Made of man to entice us.
Krishna carried on through time
Content to know redemption rhymes
The dead king's will professed in chant
The savior is an hierophant.
01-02 (the static cube)
I lay curled in the corner of the cube in the familiar fetal position and closed my eyes so tight that I thought they might pop amplifying the blackness I knew lay outside my body and listened while a man and a woman screamed at each other in an argument that seemed ancient and tired but still had the power to pierce my ears and fill them with a sound perfectly pictured as a violent white like the swirls that swim in the hash of a detuned television with the dial stuck between channels best describing this feeling of flux which left the metallic taste that precedes vomiting and that I think is how I came to be in the first place.
I was hurled from heaven.
01-06
He rolls back on the wheel
Sparking the imagination of all mankind
Witness to the genius of the naked monkey
Glimpsed through a fissure in time
He breathes deep
Knowing it will not last
Opening the door he goes inside himself
Every atom has congealed into a single thought
This is the sparkle of salvation
The bubbles in champagne
Overwhelmed by the stickiness of his situation
He giggles when he tries to cry
This is as good as it gets
This is the art of manipulating the universe.
01-11
Mars who married war to season
Gives the winning side a reason
Wrapped in bales of pill bottle cotton
Eyes to the sky and ground forgotten
The dying plant forgets its roots
Straight at the sun the pistol shoots
Pixels bleed the rusty rocks
Leaking time and scrolling stocks
The mynah speaks of vanity
Hints at the insanity
Rockets race into the black
The light that's always fighting back
Who am I, but a man?
A universal master plan
TV is a Trojan horse
Clicking thumbs that plot our course
Willing words we hate to hear
Sucks the power to fuel the fear
I strike the pose of prose and not knowing
The future is a red light glowing
01-24
The sun blazed its intention through the bathroom window
Framing the moment for her to see
The universe curled and purring at her feet
She has a date tonight!
Pulls her worth from up off the dresser
Littered with rocks and glass to impress her
A sudden burst of everything reflects from the mirror
The sparkling source blinds from behind
Rubbing Oneness from her eyes
She blinks in a new reality.
When no one shows up at her door
He's the man that she's been waiting for.
01-24b
Sunk deep in the glow
The blue haze of late nights
And the awful sound the all makes
Furiously bursts forth
An electric stamp on my eyes
It screams in my ear
Hypnotized by the chaos
A black and white madness
This atomic routine
My eyes fuse to the glass
Blinded by its insidious intent
I feel it circle me
A burst chasing the fading light
Of what it used to be
Circling a speck of mystery
That vibrates to keep time
Inside this electric soup
There is a signal from our sleep
A single voice from the beginning
Threads your ears
Wear's your ring
A necklace made of string
A test pattern
I'm holding my position
Black
And Christ comes in the room
In a Nehru jacket
With glitter in his hair
Dollar signs in his eyes
I've gone and done it again…
02-02
Hate
Kills
Weeds
Out
Field
Army
Marching
Ants
Marching
On
Drugs
Hugs
Tight
Grip
Slips
Money
Murders
Children
Sing
Softly
Falls
Forward
Moving
Up
Town
House
Boat
Sinks
Slowly
Dies.
02-02a
Love
Kills
Germs
Spread
Butter
Bread
Mold
Life
Sentence
Structure
Fails
Completely
Exhausted
Supply
Demand
Answers
Questions
Authority
Figures
In
Between
Friends
Forever
Now
Playing
Parts
Sea
King
Elvis
Lives.
02-03
such a pretty flag
inspiration ugly
waves for the joy division
lunge toward unknowing
grips the pole
then the world
running is the wind
our reasons twist in the breeze
they see us coming
they do not run
bowed in defiance
backs to the enemy
we defeat them
deflate them
poured out on the ground
a slick of sadness and shame
this is just a job
this is not happening
points to where the line starts
never sees the irony
and the silk still caresses the air
frames the flowers on the grave
bearing our intention
stitched with genius
a product of mad manipulation
a warning flag
02-10
I remember
Watching boomtown rats with no nipples
Being eggs over easy trying to scramble myself.
The flash and crack when lightening hit the transformer
How I froze- knowing it was the end
I was excited…and pretty scared.
Then suddenly life is like a Christmas present you'd been hoping for
Wishing for
Wanting.
You go and drink wine and smoke weed and live
And laugh
Be.
I remember
Change carried on a current from my waist
Warm ears cocooned in silky sound
The potential of all mankind took double-a batteries.
Our failure was grease on my gloves
The fat of some animal teaching me a lesson
That I must not hop the fence and I am not free.
A trail-blazer
Foiled.
So I went and drunk wine and smoked weed and got bitter
You better
Run.
02-11
Dive into the blue
This collective wandering
And wondering
Where am I going
Forgetting to breathe
But I do
There's a buried will
Within who I am
Split in two
I am at war with the worms
The battle is a bright light
Shining on the jagged rocks
The future fighting in the foam
And the now is your head above water
Eyes set on the swarm
Fate frozen in amber
A moment like all other moments
One away from dying
And still my lungs fill with air
Proving me wrong
Genius is why
Sweet fruit makes slaves of some
And poisons all the rest
My belly aching for relief
I refuse to eat what she tells me
I cease to believe what he says.
02-14 (for Freddy)
Smoke on four legs
Laid flat
The cat
Was fat
Now thin
Within
Ruffled gray of yesterday
A toy
The boy
End joy
The pride
Cried
Suddenly stunned senseless
Their tears
And fears
Are spears
My heart
Apart
Forever grinning like a cat
02-19 (for Condi Rice)
Smirking bitch-rat biting at the zipper
The supper of sycophants
Swallows the world-
The madness in her belly
Our congealed guilt mixing with the caviar
Retching out her bad decisions
I saw her tongue taste the air
Sensing the prey
The colour of hope
The other side of the fence
Champagne stains the boat that floats on a sea of fear
Formed in a primal squat
Pissing ourselves in its maintenance
Oh you could have been a queen
Like we never ever seen
But you became my worst nightmare
Not a mother, or a lover, or the other side of the pole
Just a man with nice legs and no penis
Chopping the world into little pieces
Feasting on the blood of dead things
Farting in my face
Now I smell what you eat
Defeat is a sweet bouquet
You feast on rose petals and raspberries
Because I say so
You are a weight I bare
A creation of deadlines and sound-bites
I had a vision of you naked
Saw the tail you tried to hide
And scales littering the floor framed your feet
Cold and dry and ancient like the desert
We had already known for a long time
And you shone in all your glory
This is my story
This is love
You are not that
You are an interpretation of what I pray, goes away
To be replaced by my surplus of hope
Created to find the balance
And when I find it
I will tip things the other way for a while
I would love to see us smile again
03-14
There's something in 11B
That's slowly taking over me
Something green and old it seems
Is rooted in my deepest dreams
Concocting all these killer schemes
A multi-matrix time machine
Something hums inside my head
A tune made famous by the dead
I am given all I've got
What I think is not forgot
Splits air like a rifle shot
Crosshairs fixed on what I'm not
Toes grip hard the timeless sand
Waiting for the waves to land
My eyes are floating in the see
Words that wash right over me
Drowning what was meant to be
Suspended in their history
Salvation calls out from the shore
Points to what I'm looking for
03-17 (for my sister, Suzanne)
Suzanne the master plan
Ripping roots in white light
Outta sight
Put the label on the table
Peeled perception torn apart
Jump start
Galley slaves in the waves
Redemption rides the crest
No rest
Eyes befall the paper walls
Surrenders to the serpents word
Never heard
Lost in the lull of an empty hull
Made to save a thousand times
Nothing rhymes
The cutting knife giving life
Purpose pours out to the floor
No more
It's a bit of a twister little sister
I think I heard the angels sing
Wild thing
All light was born to fight
Put your dukes up for the dawn
Rock on
04-18 (the dead Pope)
Chaos and cut corners
The photogenic mourners
Sobbing sloth and linen cloth
A pageantry of lies
When the old man dies
Stealing Sunday morning
While waiting on the warning
A second chance slow dance
And hope walks away
Into endless days
Flat on a bed of forever
Pulling the lever
Spilling some of what's to come
The twisted kind
The blissful blind
And I can see right up his nose
Wonder where that darkness goes
Beyond the night and out of sight
Bundled in three boxes
Guarded by the foxes
From the overwhelming sheep.
05-01
I sleep so soundly for the thief
To have him steal away my grief
Bundled in my blind belief
A crime that is my soul's relief
Rolling pens that guide the flock
The nosey neighbors on the block
Scare me with their busy talk
In shadows working off the clock
But I'm all snuggled in my bed
The sheet that covers up the dead
Tucked beneath my lightening head
Shining for what others dread
In sentences I have tried
To see the place forever hides
Beyond the truth in which I've lied
The universe is wonder wide
05-10 (for Mark Duitsman)
The madness of the moment
Gives way to the serene satisfaction
That what sounded like the voice of God
Was an echo in the chamber of breathing
Sanity spit on the sidewalk
Panic in the cool wind rushing past
The horror of what was done
Dissolves quickly into the calm of knowing
This is really it
A life lived in nine stories
An end determined by whispers
Ghosts and gods and silly sods
This is the will of the digital witch
Gathered at the cauldron and singing out time
Sounding like my mother
And a blue eye bubbles up from the fog
Speckled brown and showing the future
Finishing in a fit of realization
That between the horror and the lolling tongue
There was the sheer bliss of what you knew all along.
05-11
Scraping by
On a sidewalk that never cared
One way
Or the other
It splits in two
The worm who wondered why
And ate along the way
Feeling the rhythm of the rain
It danced with the roots
On its way up
To see what what's coming down
It lived
The slither severed in half
The gap grows for the whole
The birth
Envy of the ends
For a moment
There is movement
Then no more
Purpose peeled off with a stick
The mother of all inevitabilities
It is strange
A relationship of ends
Seeking safety in the hole
Grows farther apart
Never knowing
It was one to begin with
On its way out
05-12
Plaster of passion
Is fashioned
To rebar
Sparking stars
Divine rods
Cross for gods
A new routine
Matrix machine
Forms a hunch
Then out to lunch
On triple cherries
And fresh strawberries
The guillotine
Slices tangerine
On paper plates
Held by magistrates
Oh Socrates!
You cruel disease
Ravaged me
Through history
The spoken word
Spooks the herd
The past molds
What the future holds
Now is flux
The bronco bucks
In paper cups
Giddy-up
06-18
This
Is
The marrow
Of the moment
Feeding the bone
Of being alone
Is
This
You?
Are
A vacuum
Sucking knowledge
Filling wholes
Burning coals
Are
You
Hearing me?
06-18a
Sentience is a sentence
Spoken in desperation
Are you?
One hard fuck
And your being-
Soul sprung from a rainbow box
God has baby hands
The face of a killer
With a peak-a-boo penis
Falling out of the sexiest skirt
Money could buy
It's time I pay in moments
The current sees
I am a genetic all star
Launched in that infinite whore
Doing what I say
I am the boss
But it's her picture on my money
And life in her belly
God save the queen
A human dream
That puts food on my table
With all the wrong reasons sorting the bills
(and colored pills)
The things I live for
Are not mine
But borrowed from some ugly man
Who said he was my uncle.
06-27
A vision of my future played out
In the land of the dead
Shuffling over what's to come
His heavy cross to bear
To me, was light
And when my mother cut her finger
I placed it under cold running water
Like my mother would
The blood fleeing from what made it
I wondered-
These bits of who she is should stay
But it continued to pour out
Knowing it was beyond my control
This flow that carries me
Will carry her away some day
My grandparent's headstone had a hidden vase
That tucked away when not used
I pulled it up from the ground
Secured by a chain as in life
It held my flowers as they died.
06-30
She was wooed into believing her own lies by the smooth Latin accent of her echo. A false assurance that everything would be ok, something she was eager to believe. Joan of Ark was burned beyond recognition and only the experts could tell it had ever been a lady. And so they told.
07-14
The Holy spear it
The wicked cast out
God the worm
Weaves wide holes
That blaze in the inky infinite
And you
Human
Are hooked to the whole
Shitting out your days
With a confident flush
The worm eats it all
Returned to earth
Back to birth
And that fantastic itch
Plasma pearls under the tongue
The wait
Human
Is the work of the worm
Waiting on the rhythm
Of a lonely heartbeat cradled in cries.
08-02
It's a strange and phantom force
The buyer and this odd remorse.
Caught in gray and silky strands
Shrinking when my life expands.
Like a veil of cotton gauze
Whispers curse the all because.
Poke a straw into the sun
Suck it till its just begun.
A mind outside the governmental
Feelings that are elemental.
This is how it's supposed to be
This is free of history.
Who is to say this is a year
Or even if I'm really here?
And lying in a field of cotton
I think of things I'd long forgotten.
I arrange a symphony
With notes that were assigned to me.
Arranged so I find comfort there
So as to find it everywhere.
Heard in news and sung by sparrows
A slaughter under all those arrows.
Rising up to greet the stars
Greased to slip between the bars.
Hiding so I can be free
I think of how I used to be.
10-26
The feeling of such sudden bliss
That opens up to all of this
That sparks the thought to blaze a trail
The seconds slobbered by the snail
Wearing heaven as a shell
Saves you from a burning hell
On our way to destiny
Exactly where we used to be
Neither here nor there it seems
There's no direction in our dreams
The comedy is cruel my friends
Birthed to have our meanings end
God is just a liquid mirror
This is why you never see her
And when you die you leave your light
To reflect and give another sight
When finally we see the all
The universe is bound to stall
Until a sudden thought occurs
Infinity wears riding spurs
There's no telling where existence bolts
Reality forever molts
10-29
Today I saw my frozen breath
Like staring at a piece of death
A moment of a moment passed
Shelter from the swelter
In the shadows that gods cast
The red band stretched across the why
Like a zipper in the sky
Holding back a vicious fuck
A peeling ending up revealing
A naked nothing born of luck
Today I saw a crystalline death
Living on my very breath
Held there like some holy ghost
A god or just a silly sod
Feeding wholly on this host.
11-04
As sand conspires to move the dunes
The mood is married to the moon
The vermin feast on peels of dreams
While fat men mold the parrot screams
All sound at once a witch's wail
That grabs my ears and lifts the veil
The light that brings my thoughts to be
Has shone while I read history
Freedom leads us to the trough
State marble echoes repeats the cough
Fear has formed in silent lines
The witness to our life of crime
Our silence deafens out the sound
Of futures drilled deep in the ground
I saw a sheep who wore a sweater
A sign that things are getting better
We exist in outer space
I kiss the all I gave a face
11-08 (the messy poem)
Words swim in the spit on your lips
Feel up the truth with remote fingertips
And blister the brain that balks at belief
Then opens its doors for Money the Thief
The soul in a satchel at the side of the road
A thumbed resurrection lightens the load
But the stranger's always danger
The monkey riding silver soul
Fits nicely in your eyeball hole
A simian steamer blowing smoke
Causes all the world to choke.
Salvation is a wanted thief
Evading capture in belief
The monkeys wearing silver souls
Secure inside their eyeball holes
Blindly follows grasping hands
They trample over sacred lands
Pistons plunge to fill the space
The running of the human race
Fate's a thing I've had for dinner
Cold fusion works to make the sinner
God the poet reading time
Making sure the atoms rhyme
Being is because gods speak
Existence takes about a week
The everything inside a name
A wooden box that holds the flame
Dusty on the mantel shelf
Dependent on the old man's health
We all know him by his crown
And how he makes the ladies frown
11-20 (autobiography)
The black breached at birth
Moans the mother of the moment
Life pulling on the leg of our being
She is beside herself
The worry of the world
Is the wind that rocks the baby
Swaddled in society
It fights to breathe
Smothered in love
It dies.
11-21
Sometimes there is beauty when you don't look away. A moment of total understanding grafted to your eyeballs. It is a white steed in the wind on a field of black satin flags. It's the snap from pleading for your life to losing it. All who see it, witness the perfection of the great ape's grace swirling in its sewage. Glimpsed on the box that talks and tells you to kill your parents. "He never saw that coming!" The sound of the shell hitting the floor was like music you can bite into, but I had to put down my sandwich. I saw the silent release of all that holds us down, set free too late, but free nonetheless. Staring into the cold hands that work in the sales department and the soul of all humanity, I was molded to the moment. This man is going to die and he was taking my fear with him. All I heard was the flow or life and a beating in my ears, like listening to two sides of a record at the same time which, of course I was.
That was the day I realized I was already dead.
That was the day after yesterday.
11-21 (the eleven song)
The clock that's used to telling time
Is laying down the fattest rhyme
It says eleven eleven!
Bent back and my complexion green
The answer's somewhere on the screen
It says eleven eleven!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
Living life is throwing dice
I think I saw salvation twice
It was a double eleven!
I thought I was all by myself
Questioning my mental health
But I know I saw heaven!!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
Now I have some change to make
I'm serving up some wedding cake
For those loving elevens
The recipe is who I am
I create me so I understand
And I love those elevens!
And I'm just trying to get me some answers
I'm just trying to find my way
Oh I have to start making the answers
I have to start something today.
12-3-4
Blessings going up in smoke
The all leans in to hear you choke
Offers you a glass of water
While leading common sense to slaughter.
The cat who breathes in all you know
The reason why its eyeballs glow.
Chaos curled begins to purr
Ancient feelings start to stir
Then the matter of the moment
Living is the soul's atonement.
(For wanting to know why)
12-09
I am slithering salamander
Pulling like ribbon through the reeds.
I am the modern malaise
Silent reflections cast back from the store window.
I am forever frequency
Weaving wormholes through the shortwave.
I am in the terminal calm
While the hot breath of the machine bears down.
I am chaos come to call
The still who seeks what makes it so.
I am a picture of the all
The light that allows the negative to form.
I am framed in the end
Destiny is a devilish definition.
I am powered by the sun
And the number, one.
I am
So I say I am.
But who told me?
12-16
A harbor holding more than ships
Opens out to finger tips
Feeling what it has to know
While waiting for the wind to blow
Hulls rub hard against the dock
The tide is mother natures clock
Floats the dreams of better days
Hope is left to drift away.
The anchored fleet awaits command
Water is their right to land
Admirals search the stars for truth
Knowing it was lost in youth
Then orders all the ships to sail
The dog that leads his wagging tail
The great armada breaking waves
And witnessed by the galley slaves
The smoke of spoils filled the air
And left the sailors unaware
Scattered on the open seas
Pirates pirate as they please
Soon the wounded fill the bay
Thankful for another day
12-16
Cornered in the static cube
A vacuum
You've been here before
Forever is the moment before birth
A total shift in being
Held cradled in a scream
This is how it was
Lost in the signal of all time
The sound's born in you
This is the moment of beginning
The question why
And the sky split
This is us begun.
12-17
Hope smells like plasticine
Colored wax and rubber boots
It's the warm morning sun on new faces
Diffused by wire
And windows like you've never seen before
Calculating in their design
Something wants you to stay
Leaves you feeling alone
Hope floats out the crank handled window
Designed to keep you safe.
Freedom smells like green
Holds the comfort of cardboard boxes
Daring you to turn and run
But it's too late when the bell rings
You are pinned to your definition
Loving lines and order
The sweet smell at the beginning
Lost to the stench of genius
Hot air from rusty holes
Hell is an invention
12-22 (for Tracie)
She was an alabaster blaster
From the future walking past
He offered her a piece of gum
With flavor meant to last.
She's mustard on the custard
The perfect blend of wrong
When she simply said, "no thanks"
It was every single song.
A Freddy Fender, gender-bender
Who never said a word
Until she finally had a piece
Tasting what he heard.
She's olive oil about to boil
A calm that can't compare
Blowing bubbles up to God
When two becomes a pair.
12-30
This.
This is…
A digital diorama of difference
People powered pixels
Serving up their light of knowledge
Like electric pez.
Breathing is an equation
One of God's sudden revelations
Scribbled in the margins
The matter of fact.
Walking projectors beaming light
Play out the script
Hollywood is full of Jews
Writing movies for the lost tribes.
The promise of man
Hides in the hills around Jericho
I can see the rows of progress
The potter to the king
My life made a little easier
I drink from my earthen cup and wonder-
When will the spirit of what we were return
Hungry from its time in the mountain?
Now?
Right now?
Matter Matters
matter matters when you wonder why
a universal engine
idling
wondering
will it stall?
held firm in the answer.
The Red Rose Motel
When I was in my late teens, I was totally out of control. I was a crazy, pill-popping, booze-swilling, loon. I hung around with a large cast of characters, a good deal of them shady. I was a popular kid, but never really fit in with any one group. I just bounced around from shindigs to booze-ups. I was the party guy everybody admired for my ability to not go down from mass consumption of all things intoxicating. I could and WOULD talk to you for hours about any subject, until my mouth would finally stop working. I was the thinking man's Spicoli. I was the life of the party! I was…hell, I was a loser.
My drinking was really getting out of control. I had a best friend at the time that was kind of a bad influence on me. I guess the same can be said for yours truly. We crossed the line of legality in a lot of the things we did for fun. He would end up going to prison for rape and assault a few years after we parted ways. He didn't seem like a rapist when we hung out, just like a guy who liked to party hard. A good, Canadian, metal-head: "Take off, eh!"
My friend got the boot from his home one time, so he cooped up in a motel. This was a really seedy place that prostitutes used. It was called the Red Rose Motel, and it was even featured on 'America's Most Wanted'…and it's Canadian! Anyhow, he was living in this place, working some factory job and cooking meals using a hotplate. I used to love going over there because I could do what I wanted and it wasn't my misery providing the privilege of such freedom. We got fucked up a lot at the Red Rose Motel…
During this time, my buddy introduced me to a friend of his. I wasn't too keen on this kid. He was younger than us and full of bravado. We did not hit it off and always seemed on the verge of coming to blows. I was older and more street-wise and I liked to toy with the punk. I only met him a few times and mostly at the motel. He was just as big a druggie-drunk as me and we would compete to see who could stay conscious the longest into the wee hours of the morning, with me always winning. I rarely lost to anyone. It was an ability that lay hidden under my skinny frame. Big dudes would challenge me to drinking contests. I would pace them until they passed out and then drink the rest of their beer, thus sparing my own for the morning.
At the time, there had been a kidnapping and murder of a teacher nearby and the killers were still on the loose. One night, after my friend had passed out and it was just me and the rookie, I told him that we had committed the crime. I got really gory and into detail, telling him that if he told anyone, we would do the same to him. I know it's an awful thing to do, but I was really fucked up. The kid fell for it and was shitting his pants. He got this look of fear that instantly made me feel bad for what I had done. I told him I was just kidding and to relax. He didn't believe me at first, so I had to assure him that we weren't the killers. Finally, he believed me, but not after having had the wits scared out of him.
Not long after this happened, the young stoner took things a little too far and died after huffing Pam cooking spray. What a crappy way to go. He had a heart attack and he was only 16 years old. He had been at a party and was showing off to some girls. Foolish boy…I remember thinking- was the look on his face the same look he had when he thought he might die in the room? How strange for my life to have encountered this person, someone who only brought hostility into my life and who left me introverted and wondering why. What was the purpose of his being in my life, this bit player with a tragic ending? Was it a warning? If so, it failed because it took years for me to finally stop drinking myself to death.
Although it's a sad tale, strangely, I don't feel much at all. I never really felt too bad for the kid. He seemed so doomed. That looked of fear I saw in the motel room fit him like a glove. I often wonder about him and why he came into my life. It's sad because I can't even remember his name. I think what it did most, was make death seem not so bad. I didn't envy him and I wasn't suicidal, but some people just have to go at certain times. Maybe there's a lesson in it, or maybe not, but stressing over the inevitable that can happen at any time, stunts your growth and leaves you stuck in a motel room…or a prison cell…or church.
09-09
Venus with the rising sun
Light supplied and seen by one
Tasty humans feed the earth
Death is what gives life birth.
Beamed upon the inky black
The stagehands laugh behind your back
Played before the crowd unseen
The story of a human being.
Ghosts burped up from underground
Giving all the letters sound.
Earth's an atom 'bout to split
And that will be the end of it.
Until the all begins to think
A thirsty man will always drink.
So Barbara Walters says to Holly,
damn you dig that dalai lama
i bet you wanna be his momma
bring that man a little drama
your sentence parted by a comma
take a breath
and begin again.
06-03 (the hero or ground zero)
The hero of ground zero
Shines in the light of lunatics
In Tojo glasses and jackboots
With torch and ticket in hand
Front row to a show that never is
Nuts on the net redeemed
The quickest grin there's ever been
And my love is vaporized
My fear terrorized the moment
Before the moment that never was
Fused with my family I fly
Into the ass of forever
The mouth of God
Feasting at a banquet of fools
I am done like dinner.
Walking With My Old Uncle Neil
It was really warm here in Toronto. Yesterday, the city woke up to being covered in ice. Today, people are outside with no coat on and enjoying a day that feels more like spring than the middle of winter. I had the day off, so I decided to walk to get my hair cut.
I had a nice long shower before I went. I used this expensive soap Tracie and I bought as a Christmas present for us. It's from a company in Italy that has been around for hundreds of years and made soaps for royalty. It smells really simple and old, with a fragrance that isn't masculine or feminine, just fresh and clean with a hint of pomegranate. I lathered up some Johnson and Johnson's baby shampoo in my hair, followed by a fancy conditioner Tracie uses. It has this manly, old, English smell, like something you would buy at Marks and Spencer. It reminds me of my old Scottish relatives. While that was on my head, I used this facial scrub that we bought from some shop that sold products made in the Middle East. If the soap smells old, this stuff is ancient! It smells so familiar to me, but I've never been there before, at least not in this lifetime. It's filled with the sand of the desert and feels wonderful against my beard, like a dog being scratched. And yes- I use a facial scrub…so what!?
Ok, and I've also been known to use a little bit of anti-wrinkle cream once in a while, but that's it! I swear!!
Back to my gay, I mean day...
I always walk really fast, but today I decided to take my time. I saw Larry, the Christ-bum, but he was sound asleep over a subway vent, so I high-fived the hand of the Holy Spirit that was sticking out of his tattered coffee-cup and continued on my way to the barber. I don't much like my barber at times. It's a love –hate relationship. He is this nasty, racist, Italian guy, with a thick accent and who likes to call people from certain cultures 'animals'. This from a dude with hairy knuckles! Anyhow, I go to him because he keeps it real and because I know, even he wants what I do- a little peace. He just thinks you get it through killing those 'animals'. Whatever, he is an artist with the clippers and a piece of my childhood brought to life again, minus the booster seat.
On my way there I saw a lot of squirrels that had obviously been woken from their winter sleep by the strange warm weather. They were molting and quite disheveled looking. Actually, they looked completely fucked up and I found this very funny! I saw a big black one on a garbage can, so I went over to him and in his haste to run away, he ran INTO the can itself. "Ha-ha, Now I've got you my pretty." I went over to look inside and study my cornered piece of the wild. When I popped my head over the can, he jumped up and stood on the rim, watching me and eating a french-fry that somebody had thrown away. At first it looked like a cigarette and I laughed out loud. He looked at me and I looked at him- it was love. It was also then that I noticed the two girls (who were obviously tourists) staring at me and talking softly to each other in what I think was German. I just gave them my best smile and tried to look cool. They smiled back, impressed with my nice skin.
This all took place beneath the world largest phallus, the CN Tower. Canadians love their big penis. It's wrapped in our pride like a pair of tight fitting jeans. Although I walk directly beneath it almost every day, I don't really notice it anymore. That's saying something- a thing as big as the CN Tower, a marvel of technology, human endurance and genius, but I only notice it a few times a year. Maybe it's too much of a reminder of the reality we are living in- a wonder on the outside, but empty at the core. Anyhow, I finally got to the barbershop and he had just started cutting another guy's hair. I didn't feel like waiting, so I decided to walk around downtown and watch the working people.
I walked over to union station, Toronto's train palace, and waded into the hustle and bustle. This is a big junction for public transportation and it's always busy during the day. I did a lot of people watching, smiling first at the girlies, then at everybody. People smiled back. That seemed like a good thing to me, like hope. I went by the food court and got a great waft of sweet air from Cinnabon, thought about it, then decided I should be a good boy and just make my way home.
Today was a light-grey day outside. I decided I would walk home even slower, like my favourite, but dead uncle Neil used to do. I dreamed about him last night, so he was on my mind. In my dream he held my hand and led me places, but i can't remember where we went. I pretended to take hold of his hand as I made my way home, taking on the style of his golden years. In the end he developed that old man walk, where they stop every twenty or so steps to take it all in and wonder about thing. It's just like kids do, except kids do it because they haven't been here long, old people do it because they won't be here much longer. The daylight was the perfect brightness to make the details of all the buildings around me stand out. It was as if I could sense each building as being its own entity, alive and with purpose, not just a part of the background.
I looked at all the skyscrapers, the Skydome, the Skywalk...all of this stuff that man has made in some weird attempt to solve a riddle they asked themselves. It all stood before me like a large grouping of monoliths, each an offering to the gods, any god. I felt like a speck of calm in a sea of noise, but though there was constant motion all around me, the earth felt very still. I breathed deep, inhaling everything all at once and it smelled like the first day of school. It was the subtle hint of promise blowing through caverns of misunderstanding. I felt so alive against it all. For a moment I shone and saw what everything around me was for…nothing. I felt liberated by the perfect absurdity of existing. I let go of Neil's hand.
I then went about writing a post, describing my day. This is how it ended...
01-25
The conscious river running down
Water falls
The foam floats over a rolling boil
A web woven above it all
The spider waits
Feels the struggle of its prey
Wrapped in good intentions
Silken steel strands
Of what I can only imagine
That one dies so one lives
The fish sees it play out
And thinks the same thing
And man casts his line at the side of the river
Silver wisps through the air.
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