rligion

i believe in god the painter
i believe in the muse his model and critic
and i believe in the living work

god is in the gaze
the painter flicks between
his naked lover and the splaying pigment
his muse is better found
in how the stroking brush sounds
to the woman lounging
on the darker side of the canvas
we are but one blue-green blob
a tiny speckle
in the image's eye
and however much
we explore the surrounding paint
we'll never see Miss Universe
only the smallest portion of her rendition
and hear only the echo of her reaction
on a vibrating canvas string

Blank Verse

The pleasures of a page unpenned
remain uncounted and unknown
the bright possibility
when dwelling on
the blankness
the whiteness
the smooth unstained fibers
awaiting my inking
my loving tattooing
of thinking
meditating
on which words
are waiting
my call to draw
the figures comprising
the slippery substance
of idea, of writing.

The object intrudes
and the object eludes
escaping the focus
of my imaginative locus
Thus the page remains
a pleasure unpenned.

Orion

I strip my skin to step outside
before dissolving into sky.
Like some unlucky hunter seeking a glimpse of heavenly flesh,
I am rent by my hounds.
Memory, Empathy and Reason
snap at my sinew and I stumble.
Reason crushes my chest.
Empathy shakes my skull.
Memory's black maw closes around my throat.
Before I am silenced, I submit.
My skin sloughs off and muscles melt.
Bone blows away as dust.
I am alight on the wind like pages freed of their leather bindings.
All that was written is now released
and I am left alone with enormous space.
There is floating and shadowlight,
a gaping mouth and an impossible gaze,
and whirling
like a child's spirals,
or the taste of tail to the dog,
or a camera recording its reflection in the monitor's glass.
A cleansing blankness suffuses before I belt back in
and say goodnight to the stars.

Congratulations

My brother is engaged as of Saturday.
At Monticello, amidst cherry blossoms
and fragrant magnolias
his future bride blushed
and said "yes!"
April forestalled her showers to mark the occasion.
There will be a time for showers later.
Today required burnished gold
and sapphire
so two could share a picnic
and a lovely view
and the tender memory.

Land of promises

This moment passing now
is pungent with years,
reeking of impulsive,
self-immolating whimsy,
and has eaten away the years ahead.
How much time is left,
now that all the world is taken?
This moment passes,
and with it, promise.
Ever the future's promise sings louder,
and we listen enthralled,
good little consumers all
spending (it's your patriotic duty!),
accumulating (it's the American dream!),
tearing up and building down
our disposable culture (see how easy it can be!).
Inconsequential Americans,
living outside of time
and above the world,
let us eat cake since we got it.
World and time and cake enough
for our bellies to grow big and strong
enough to eat us up.
Always an urging,
life breeding life within living bodies,
urging then spreading, contaminating in a moment's bliss,
and leaving a void when fulfilled.
Airports, interstates, bridges connecting
metropolises languishing
with empty condos and empty industrial parks and empty malls,
while alone in our darkened bedrooms
we shop and socialize bent over some flashing screen
consuming
until bloated and sweaty we crumple
like some financial market.
Cruel future.
Your promises unfulfilled,
you arrive with a stopping point.
All this pent up waste
gushing forth like rivers
breaking the banks,
washing tons away.
Future now present,
you shake us and
blinking, we creep out of the dream,
look around, and see each other,
and see the years behind us.
We were saviors once
and could do no wrong.
Our star rose with glorious enterprise.
Democratizing opportunity,
enmeshing nations on these stolen shores.
This living experiment sewn together from disparate parts,
kind of like some movie monster.
We burst upon the scene,
a radioactive giant,
and wonder why the world recoils
at our lack of self-awareness.
Waste more, want more.
We fuel our desires with oil and green,
and in the burning,
world and time are drying up fast
with no future left to fix it.
We catch up to civil rights
only to realize we're fifty years behind
(Closer to a hundred and fifty if you think about it.)
and the world wasn't waiting for us.
The giant went back to sleep
while dragons and tigers and whole menageries woke up.
We awoke on a quiet September Twelfth shocked and paralyzed.
And lumbering out of slumber,
we struck back.
Only we're fatter now,
and far too proud.
Eight years and two wars and no resolution
jutting into a future that may not be there tomorrow.
And we're beginning to look like the bad guys
even in our own fun-house mirrors.
We have tortured. We have terrorized.
We have leveraged the world into serfdom.
And we are everyone of us culpable.
Where was the protestation now that the hippies have all grown up?
The hippies we idealized and emulated
with flower-print skirts and folk revivals
were just snake-oil salesmen
profiteering on counter-culture
when it was most marketable.
Yeah, what they're doing is wrong,
but look at these prices!
We bicker over the meaning of 'is'
while our leaders steal the rain,
prop up dictators, and train terrorists.
We are willfully ignorant
and far too safe.
We are demand
in a such a glut of scarcity
that even Liberty thirsts and
not even a feather rests near an empty perch.

A song of the ward

"Man reached too far ahead of himself,"
she said in the courtyard one day.
We had come down for cigarettes
from that balefully sterile cage.

The only taste of freedom there:
the addict's acrid smoke.
The only truth taught me there:
the maliciousness of hope.

"What to do when all seems lost?"
I asked my trusted friend
who replying said "Talk to God,"
but Faith had reached its end.

"The way to speak escapes me now;
I've forgotten how to pray."
"Just talk," quoth she, my guiding sprite,
and then she turned away.

2005 i think

Humility 11.5

i understand what michelle meant now
she said 'for the first time i am proud'
i am too
this moment is bigger than her husband
full moon cedes to new
black moon rising
gives light to stars
America
this night is ours!

November 5, 2008

Rhyming

Flick the lights
and close the door.
The cold sneaks in too fast.

Cook your meal
and watch TV
to laugh away the past.

Grind the green
and roll it up
when laughter fails to mend

the bleeding,
weeping, keening heart
beating now within.

Smoke can choke
the lingering
of a traumatic break

be it nose
or heart that's broke.
(Both actually in my case.)

Quick fixes
last until I pull
the sheet above my head.

In the dark,
the weeping starts.
No comfort waits in bed.

Suns first, then
moons, then seasons pass.
Repeat repeat repeat.

Cook and watch,
grind, smoke and sleep
and weep and weep and weep.

Broken now,
like a vinyl scratched,
I'm no longer good for play.

Awareness
of this lifeless life
brings me now to pray:

'Weeping heart
do your tears refresh
that troubled god within,

or do these tears
accumulate
to drown this troubled man?'

blogging

disembodied and faceless
i speak through a thousand eyes
never all closed at the same time
winking across miles and states and nations
publication without profit
i speak to the murmuring internet
and some may hear
and few may listen
perchance though i am passed
out-blogged with catered subjects
or flashy lay-outs
or platitudinous encouragement
or lush self-flagellation
or the banalities which fill our days and posts
and which ultimately yield meaning
fulfillment
is it so truly an admirable goal?
can it be a goal fulfilled?
is it happiness or the pursuit that matters?
i am not fulfilled
in fact i'm rather alienated
so i shout into the darkness
and my words are quite literally illuminated
should an eye be open
i shout into the roar hoping to be heard
seems absurd
no i am not fulfilled
nor wealthy nor popular
i am shy
and too smart and too pretty for my own good
i am not fulfilled but i am full
full of memory and hope
and few things hurt like that duo
someone full of memory and hope can appear absent
but he is full
he is full of regrets and old wishes
so now a change
shout into the roaring darkness
without a body, face, or name
and be heard for once maybe
be heard by the unseen
perhaps you hear me now
perhaps you're listening
well i will show myself to you from the inside out
first these disembodied thoughts
soon a gesture or a smile
then i may restring my bones tie on my flesh and zip up my skin
and you will see me
naked shaking and beautiful
and you will see the scars
and understand how they are memory
and how they are hope
and i will love you a little bit more
and trust you with my name

by the wayside

chamomile is my favorite weed
such sweetness in the dust and gravel of crumpled concrete
tiny leaflets
prenatal petals surrounding the yellow-green dome
when you chew it it doesn't taste the same
it's sour
i've read that handling it can cause a rash
but that's never happened to me
i've handled it often when sitting in the dust
once, i could smell it from the ground when walking by
and so i stopped Katie and we picked it for tea
later i kissed her and told her i loved her
which i didn't and i knew it
i didn't brew the tea either
it was a dirty road where i found the flowers

Mt Vernon People

Mt Vernon people are wordly
for an American small town
A liberal arts college
next to a religious institutw
my class
death
wordly people
our high school
contact now
New York, L. A.
education
erudition of the "uneducated"
art
life
indifference
free thought
is this a poem?
not yet
dot connecting ensues
alcohol
pot
they're on my mind
notice the spelling of institutw
why didn't i notice that?
Hell, why did I repeat it?
*looks slyly*
I know why, he thinks, thinking we don't watch him (but we, do as we read on
)I know why, it was easier than erasing the w
but looking back in the preceding lines
it wasn't easier
what's up with the pretentious line break?
pretentious?!?! why did you fucking call it a line break?!?!
why didn't you type that '")" starting a line thing'?
that was pretensious too, you know, as is all
propriety
life
Star Trek on the tube
a thirty year mass market franchise
eternal now
like God
Trekkies=Christians
not really
maybe
not really *smiles to himself*
and whats witH these "*" things?
Stupid.
Fun though.
*smiles to himself*
Enough now.
This is not poetry.
or is it?

Thought happened hence the Enter button
is this poetry?
i dont know
lines spewed forth in the break
and even preceding the start
lines accompanied with tobacco smoke like:

"you got milk in one hand and a cigarette in the other,
health is in your grasp, but what's the right hand holding?"

"Let's take life like we take our tequila,
without training wheels"

drugs
religion
social connection
all on a disc of melting snow
Spring on the third rock
orbiting
one of beyond counting
and we're alone enough
and only know enough
as much as we can
limit approached
but this isn't poetry.
or is it?

Life brought me to drugs.
This slow suicide has burned the fuel faster
but what thought was produced!
thought not often written
or typed
or texted or Twittered
perhaps it should have been
but my thoughts are mine alone
unless you read them
in which case i typed them
(notice the informal "i", you'll see
im comfortable now")
i typed them to be read
to be known and
to be free
free
free of memory
free of angst
free of self-retribuition, castigation, mutilation
free of love and hope
the cruelest of evils
Pandora locked them in, remember?
of course you don't
neither do i
at least not correctly
love wasn't in the box to begin with
but hope
cruel hope
raptors had feathers too, you know?
before they'd eat you
love and hope and jest
in a second's time
when the planet observes her infection
she can't even see it
its all mold
resilient
resistant
and this isn't poetry
it just isn't.